In association with the statement I made to the House yesterday in relation to discharging the Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training's obligation to present a report on its inquiry into the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Take Home Pay of All Workers) Bill 2017, I present the relevant minutes.
I have received messages from the Senate informing the House of the appointment of Senators to certain joint committees:
That senators be discharged from and appointed to committees as follows:
Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters
Appointed—Senator Colbeck appointed a participating member for the committee’s inquiry into the 2016 election;
Joint Standing Committee on National Broadband Network
Appointed—Senator Colbeck appointed a participating member;
Joint Select Committee on oversight of the implementation of redress related recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
Appointed—Senator Colbeck appointed a participating member;
Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth
Discharged—Senator Hume
Appointed—Senator Colbeck
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement
Discharged—Senator O'Sullivan
Appointed—Senator Colbeck
Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit
Appointed—Senator Patrick
I thank all of the honourable members for their contribution to the debate on the Investigation and Prosecution Measures Bill 2017. The Investigation and Prosecution Measures Bill 2017 makes two sets of amendments. Firstly, it amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 to ensure that legislation supports a restructure of the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption. Secondly, it extends the functions, powers and duties of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to the laws of Norfolk Island.
With respect to the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption, the commission plays a critical role in investigating, exposing and preventing corruption in the public sector. In November 2016, the New South Wales parliament passed the Independent Commission Against Corruption Amendment Act 2016. That act restructured the commission by replacing the former arrangement, of a single commissioner and assistant commissioner, with a full-time chief commissioner and two part-time commissioners. Assistant commissioners may also be appointed as required.
The measures in the bill will make a minor amendment to both the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 to ensure that the restructured commission is referenced appropriately in those acts. The act will then retain the commission's substantive powers under those acts. With respect to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, it provides the legal framework for specified intelligence and law enforcement agencies to access communications and data for the investigation of criminal offences and other activities that threaten safety and security. It permits eligible law enforcement and security agencies, including the commission, to obtain warrants, intercept communications, obtain warrants to access stored communications and to access telecommunications data subject to stringent legal tests and independent oversight.
The Interception Act vests certain positions within the commission's specific authority when undertaking functions. The chief commissioner, for example, will be able to authorise members of the commission to receive information gathered under warrants and communicate intercepted information obtained by the commission to other agencies in limited circumstances.
The amendments will allow the chief commissioner, a commissioner or an assistant commissioner to be certifying officers under the act. Certifying officers can, for example, be delegated the power to revoke interception and stored communication warrants, certify true copies of warrants and issue evidentiary certificates.
With respect to the Surveillance Devices Act 2004, that act governs the use of optical surveillance devices, listening devices, data surveillance devices and tracking devices by law enforcement agencies. The act complements the relevant surveillance devices laws of the states and territories by allowing law enforcement agencies, such as the commission, to obtain surveillance device warrants to help investigate federal offences and state offences with a federal aspect.
The Surveillance Devices Act vests certain positions within the commission's specific authority when undertaking functions under the act, and these provisions ensure that authorisations are valid and that persons authorised under the act to undertake those functions can exercise their prescribed functions legally.
The chief commissioner will, for example, have the power to revoke surveillance device warrants and authorise executive level officers to be authorised officers. Commissioners and assistant commissioners will also be designated as authorising officers under the bill. Authorising officers may, for example, issue emergency authorisations for the use of a surveillance device, authorise the use and retrieval of tracking devices without warrant in certain circumstances and issue evidentiary certificates.
This bill will ensure that the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption is able to continue its work and can access the investigative tools it needs to support its functions.
With respect to the Norfolk Island Director of Public Prosecutions Act 1983, on 1 July 2015 the Australian government took over the responsibility for delivering local, state and Commonwealth services on Norfolk Island, which are proportionally equivalent to services which benefit mainland Australians. As part of this process, it was important to review prosecution arrangements in order to align those services with those available on mainland Australia and other external territories. The measures in this bill will allow the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to take over prosecutorial and related functions in relation to the laws of Norfolk Island. This will ensure that prosecutions against the laws of Norfolk Island are dealt with by a professional independent prosecution service with, evidently, significant expertise.
The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills has considered the bill. The committee recommended that further information be included in the explanatory memorandum to the bill. As such, I present a short addendum to the explanatory memorandum to the Clerk. I thank the committee for their consideration of the bill, and I commend the bill to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
I move the second reading amendment that has been circulated in my name:
That all the 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 notes:
(1)the Government failed to deliver an impact assessment of the previous Exploration Development Incentive; and
(2)has failed to deliver for the people of Western Australia".
This bill introduces the Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive, a slightly modified reincarnation of the three-year Exploration Development Incentive introduced in 2014 which lapsed for the 2016-17 tax year. The Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive, as with the previous Exploration Development Incentive, enables eligible companies to generate tax credits by giving up a portion of their tax losses from greenfield mineral exploration expenditure which can then be distributed to shareholders. It is available only to junior exploration companies with no assessable income in a tax year. It excludes companies which have commenced resources production and companies connected or affiliated with an entity that has commenced resources production.
Entities must be disclosing entities under the Corporations Act, and the Treasury estimates that about 700 small firms are eligible. The scheme is capped at $100 million over its four-year duration. Its aim is to encourage exploration of greenfield areas, recognising that small exploration companies are riskier, in part because of delays and in part because of challenges in obtaining capital and the inherent risk in minerals exploration.
Tax law allows an immediate deduction of the full value of any depreciating asset where it is first used for exploration or prospecting for minerals and the taxpayer carries on mining operations, proposes to carry on such an operation or incurred the expenditure in the course of a business of exploration or prospecting for minerals. Smaller companies engaged solely in exploration for minerals may earn less assessable income in a given income year than they outlay on exploration or prospecting. Such companies would have a tax loss for the income year, but it would not provide a benefit until the company earned sufficient assessable income in a future income year against which the loss can be deducted.
Uptake of the previous Exploration Development Incentive was below the cap. Industry argues that this was due to a complex modulation of claims—a way of sharing the credits fairly. The new scheme's first come, first served approach with a five per cent maximum entitlement for any entity is designed to simplify the fair distribution of claims. Minerals exploration companies must apply to the Commissioner of Taxation and provide appropriate information to be eligible to issue the tax credits. The commissioner will determine whether the entity was a greenfield minerals explorer in that income year.
As the explanatory memorandum notes:
It is the Government’s intention that the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science will review the operation of the JMEI scheme by 30 June 2020 to assess both its uptake and efficacy in attracting investment.
The explanatory memorandum for the bill that introduced the previous incarnation of the program stated:
The Department of Industry will monitor greenfields exploration and the scheme throughout its operation, with a review of the scheme in 2016. Key performance indicators for the scheme, against which the review will be conducted, will be finalised by the end of 2014. Subject to the outcome of the review, the programme may be extended for a further period.
According to the new explanatory memorandum in early 2017, participants in the Exploration Development Incentive scheme and other stakeholders were formally requested to provide feedback on the existing scheme. The explanatory memorandum states the government would engage with industry stakeholder bodies, departments and state governments, but those materials are not public—a sadly common pattern with this government, which frequently chooses to keep non-confidential submissions private. The explanatory memorandum does not detail the impact of the scheme. That's what taxpayers are entitled to know. How much additionality did this scheme produce? How much exploration was done which would not have been done but for the expenditure of that $100 million of taxpayer money?
Labor supported the passage of the previous Exploration Development Incentive bill. We are supportive of this bill, but I reiterate to the House the words spoken by the former shadow minister for resources, Gary Gray, on 24 February 2015. He said:
The opposition supports this bill. I would, however, like to make some observations about the exploration tax credit. It is a measure which has been mooted for many years in Australia and over the years in fact we have had several of these facilities in place, most of them finding their way out of the legislation books as a consequence of the way in which companies had manage them or as a consequence of the measures themselves not working as designed.
Mr Gray went on to refer to the importance of the work of Geoscience Australia in driving exploration such as the Carrapateena resource in 2006—a copper-gold formation near the Woomera Prohibited Area and near Roxby Downs in northern South Australia. As he pointed out:
... it was not discovered as a consequence of a tax break for the people who went out exploring for it. It was discovered because of the prize, because of the international commodity price cycle, because of the belief of an explorer that he and his team understood the geology better than anyone else and had a scientific conviction that they could find that resource or something like it in the geology in which they were looking. That is the spirit that drives exploration. I have yet to find the explorer whose activity was driven by tax.
Mr Gray went on to say:
Having said all of that, it is with great interest that we will watch how this mechanism works. It is with great interest because it is a thoughtfully constructed mechanism. It is an expensive mechanism—it is about $100 million. But it is a mechanism that we hope will result in an industry getting more life and more vigour, that will keep more rigs at work, that will keep more of our skilled geologists and more of our exploration teams at work looking for gold, looking for copper, looking for lead and looking for those minerals that will be the future of our mining industry, and that will sustain a vibrant and capable exploration sector in Australia.
They're the words of Gary Gray, the former member for Brand, one of the most careful thinkers on resources policy to have served in this parliament.
Consistent with these comments and with Labor's strong commitment to evidence-based policy, we will be moving an amendment in the Senate to this bill. That amendment will require the minister to instigate an annual impact assessment of the measure, with provision for public consultation, particularly including industry. I would distinguish between a process evaluation and an impact evaluation. A process evaluation simply ensures that the scheme is being managed with appropriate propriety, that public moneys are being appropriately acquitted and that stakeholders are satisfied with the way in which the program is operating.
But an impact assessment does something else. It looks to assess additionality—what is happening as a result of the expenditure of taxpayers' dollars that would not have otherwise have been happening. At a time when we have gross debt—as the member for Rankin is so frequently pointing out—crashing through the half-a-trillion-dollar barrier, it is important that those in this House are careful stewards of the expenditure of taxpayer dollars. The amendment will require the Commissioner of Taxation to make publicly available the ABN and name of entities receiving credits and the amount of credits given. This is in accord with Labor's belief in transparency and rigorous policy evaluation to ensure initiatives work as intended. We may not be able to conduct randomised trials on everything, but we can raise the quality of the evidence bar.
I also want to inform the House that we have been engaging with the Treasurer's office on the amendment. We understand the Treasurer's office is across the detail and intent. Labor's goal is to provide extra certainty to all stakeholders, including industry and taxpayers, that the measure operates as intended. Rigorous policy evaluation helps guide targeted initiatives in the future to ensure that taxpayers get the best bang for their buck on investment and jobs.
The second reading amendment that I have moved also notes the particular implications of the Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive for Western Australia. The Prime Minister announced this measure while in Western Australia at the Western Australian Liberal state conference. That timing is interesting to those of us on this side of the House, noting that the government has continually failed to deliver certainty about GST distributions for Australian states and territories. The Turnbull government announced early in January that it would delay the Productivity Commission's final report on GST distribution. Such announcements are a reminder that only Labor has a plan to help fix the situation in which Western Australia finds itself with respect to the GST. As the shadow Treasurer said at the time: 'Let's be clear. The announcement by Scott Morrison of a delay in the final Productivity Commission report—
The member for Fenner will refer to members by their correct titles.
May I seek clarification from you? In quoting a member who has referred to a name, is it necessary at that moment to use the title? I'm asking simply because I'm uncertain on that point.
I can see that that's the case. You'll find in the practice that by merely quoting something you won't get around the rules of this place. It is a grey area, but I'm asking the member for Fenner to bear that in mind. You can't use a quote to use unparliamentary language—that's quite well-established. I'm just pulling him up now. It's something that I try to enforce rather rigorously. While we're at it, so that you're clear, so that you're under no misapprehension, whilst your second reading amendment refers to Western Australia, as a pious amendment, the subject of this bill, unless the member for Fenner wishes to explain, does not deal with GST distribution or the Productivity Commission.
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
So I hope that's clear.
It is crystal clear, Mr Speaker. I'm grateful for your guidance.
No, you're actually grateful for my ruling.
For your ruling, Mr Speaker. Let's be clear, the announcement by the Treasurer of a delay in the final Productivity Commission report, snuck out during the holiday period, is designed do one thing—to try and hoodwink the people of South Australia and Tasmania that there won't be cuts to the GST revenue that help fund their hospitals and schools. The uncertainty that will result from this delay will jeopardise the funding of services across the country. In October, the Treasurer firmly embraced the Productivity Commission's draft recommendations which would see South Australia lose $256 million in funding. In contrast, Labor has a fair plan to give Western Australia its fair share without punishing the people of South Australia and Tasmania who—
The member for Fenner, there's no need to resume your seat. This won't take long. I've cautioned you on being on the subject of the bill. I think we've both dealt with the tax bills a lot. The GST distribution and the Productivity Commission are not matters for this bill. It could well have been if the second reading amendment had perhaps dealt with those issues but it merely refers to Western Australia.
It does, Mr Speaker. I'm speaking to the second reading amendments, but I'll confine my remarks to the taxation implications. The distinction that I'm firmly drawing here is that this bill has been characterised by the government as an attempt to provide for Western Australia. And yet, this bill provides remarkably little for Western Australia, in contrast to the government's failure to address directly the matter of GST distributions.
Labor will support this bill, but we do so with a firm eye to its impact on mining exploration. Our intent on this side of the House is to ensure that taxpayers get good value for money and that expenditure, which is made on encouraging exploration, encourages greater exploration. We want to see Western Australia get its fair share and we do not believe that the government can simply use this junior minerals exploration measure as a fig leaf to address the broader challenge of Western Australian GST distribution.
Is the amendment seconded?
I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.
The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Fenner has moved an amendment. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.
I'm pleased to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive) Bill 2017. You are correct, Mr Speaker, it is very difficult to see how the member for Fenner during this debate could bring in anything about the GST. Yet from his speech it is very clear yet again that Labor believes in 'magic pudding economics'. A magic pudding redistribution of the GST is one where they give more to one state without taking away expenditure from other states. But back to the specifics of the bill—and this bill has one purpose: it is to continue the jobs growth and the wealth creation in our Australian economy that we have seen over the past two years and especially over the last 12 months under this coalition government.
Last year, over 400,000 new jobs were created in this economy. We can fill the MCG four times over with the number of new jobs in our economy in just 12 months—and 300,000 of those 400,000 new jobs were full-time jobs. More than 70 per cent were created in the private sector. In the coming months or, perhaps, even the coming weeks, we are going to pass the million new jobs mark. So, since the coalition government was elected back in 2013, this economy will have grown to one million new jobs. That number will be surpassed, as I said, most likely in weeks rather than in months.
Speaking on this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive) Bill 2017, gives us the opportunity to reflect on how important the mineral sector is to our economy. We know, from the numbers for 2015-16 alone, that our mining sector contributed $12 billion directly to Commonwealth and state government Treasury coffers. That's what pays for our schools, our hospitals, our aged care, our disability services and our pensions. Yet we see the curious inconsistency that those who are most vocal about demanding more government expenditure happen to be the same people who are most vocal about putting delays in place and about closing down and preventing our minerals sector from creating wealth in this country. Those who stand and protest about mining in this nation must understand that it is the wealth from those mines that pays for everything that we, the government, need to finance.
When it comes to our mining sector, it is important to encourage our junior miners. Unfortunately, in this parliament, many members who sit on the other side of the House like to go out and discourage our mining sector. I give the example of none other than the member for Port Adelaide, the shadow minister for energy—someone you would think would take every opportunity to talk up and encourage investment in our mining sector. But, no; the shadow minister for energy said last year: 'We need to be honest. There is no demand for additional thermal coal. Demand for thermal coal exports around the world is in rapid decline.' That's the kind of encouragement that members of the Labor Party give to our mining sector.
Let's just see how that prediction unfolded. Remember, this is the Labor shadow minister for energy saying, 'Demand for thermal coal exports around the world is in rapid decline.' He said that in the middle of last year. Let's just have a look at what actually happened last year. We will start with Australia. Although Labor believed that coal was in rapid decline, last year Australia's exports of coal hit an all-time record of $56.5 billion. It was an increase of over 30 per cent on 2016 and actually broke, or smashed, our all-time record, set back in 2011, of $46.7 billion. Of those exports, 20 million tonne was thermal coal and 172 million tonne was coking coal.
But it wasn't just Australia that had their coal exports increase, against the predictions of the best minds of the Labor Party. What happened in the USA last year?
According to the US census data, released only last week, US coal exports increased 60.9 per cent—a 60.9 per cent increase in US coal exports, yet the best brains in the Labor Party are telling us that coal exports around the world are in rapid decline.
Take Japan: what happened in Japan last year in contrast to the great predictions of the Labor Party? Here we are: on 24 January, a report from Reuters said that Japan's thermal coal imports rose to a record level last year:
Thermal coal imports rose 4.3 percent from a year earlier to 114.5 million tonnes in 2017, surpassing the 113.8 million tonnes imported in 2015 …
So there were record coal imports in Japan.
How about China? What happened in China last year in comparison to Labor's prediction of the rapid decline in thermal coal exports? A Reuters report on 8 February from Beijing said:
China's coal imports hit their highest in four years in January, customs data showed …
… … …
Thermal coal prices on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange touched a record-high of 679.8 yuan ($107.96) a tonne …
And they noted:
Seaborne coal shipments from Indonesia rose to 11.06 million tonnes last month, the highest since November, 2016, while coal arrivals from Australia climbed to their highest in months, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters Supply Chain and Commodity Forecasts.
Yet the experts in the Labor Party tell us that coal exports are in rapid decline. But it doesn't stop there. South Africa last year also recorded record thermal coal exports. It was the same in Indonesia: Indonesia this year forecast that their coal exports would be up seven per cent, and Indonesia expects their domestic demand for thermal coal to increase 17.5 per cent this year. And it goes on and on and on. Even the International Energy Agency has forecast that world demand for coal would hit a record 5.5 billion tonnes in 2020, up 300 million tonnes from the current levels of 5.2 billion. That is, it is forecast that 300 million more tonnes of coal will be consumed in four years time than today, yet Labor members of parliament—none other than their shadow minister for energy—are trying to talk down Australia's coal sector.
What do some of the experts in the industry say? Let's have a look at this report from TheSydney Morning Herald in January this year quoting New Hope Chief Executive Officer Shane Stephan, who told Fairfax Media:
We're seeing strong demand for higher quality Australian thermal coal in Asia, and that is what's driving the price.
They report that Rio's 'production was up eight per cent quarter on quarter, and up four per cent for the December 2017 half year'. Whitehaven's chief executive Paul Flynn is quoted as saying:
What we've observed is very strong demand out of Asia fuelled by their demand for high-quality coal to fuel their supercritical power stations.
'Very strong demand out of Asia'—yet we have the Labor shadow minister for energy telling us that demand is falling. We've even got MineLife's Gavin Wendt saying there is a very healthy price outlook for thermal coal.
Our encouragement of our mining sector is so important to the economic prosperity and job creation of our nation. To have Labor members continually running an anticoal rhetoric damages our economy and job creation. It damages wealth creation and undermines our nation's ability to finance the very important things that we continually hear whinged about in this place, from schools to hospitals to aged care, that we are not spending enough on. The only way that we can sustainably increase spending in those areas is to encourage those wealth creation industries, yet those who want the greatest government expenditure do everything they can to talk them down.
I'm sad to say that this anti-mining, anti-coal rhetoric is not confined to the Labor Party and the Greens. Unfortunately, it has affected some of our major banks. I'm talking here about the National Australia Bank, which put out a press release just before Christmas saying that they will no longer finance new thermal coalmining projects. We have record thermal coal exports around the world. We have the International Energy Agency predicting that the world will need 300 million more tonnes of coal than was consumed last year, yet here we have one of our major banks going out and issuing a statement that they will no longer finance new thermal coal mining projects. This is extremely disappointing. This is the greatest indication that our banks have far too much market power. To have such politically correct nonsense being put out in a press release by one of our major four big banks, talking down one of our nation's most important exports and our most important industries, is extremely disappointing, to say the least.
This coalition understands what creates wealth in this nation. We understand what creates jobs. We got the runs on the board over the last 12 months. We're going to continue that this year, because we understand that the best way to create jobs is not through big government, not through more regulation, but through taking the handcuffs off the entrepreneurs of this nation, getting rid of the red and green tape, so that they can go out there and invest with confidence and create jobs, knowing there is a government that will support them. That is what has worked in the past. That is what worked last year. That is what created those 400,000 new jobs. That is what will see this economy surpass one million new jobs under the coalition in the coming weeks. With that, I commend this bill to the House and I would ask members of the Labor Party to consider what is best for the nation, to put aside their anti-coal rhetoric and to get behind the mining sector and the wealth creation sectors of this nation.
Minerals exploration is important. We live in a world where it's easy to forget that so much of what we use, so much of what we depend upon, is made from things that are found and dug up. The best example that I can think of that is this the mobile phone, the smart phone, which almost everybody has and which is made up of more than 25 different metals, all of them mined here in Australia—everything from silicon, to make the screen, lithium and cobalt, in the battery, silver and gold, in the electronics of the phone, to aluminium, which is used to make the case. You can't have the benefits that these devices provide without the resources that are needed to make them. This phone is just one example of that.
The plates that we use to eat off every day have zircon in them. The glasses that you see here at the table are made from silica. The sunblock that we use when we go to the beach to protect us from the sun has zinc and ilmenite in it. This microphone projecting my voice has copper in it. Minerals are all around us, hiding in plain sight. They're not easy to spot here and they're not always easy to find beneath the earth's surface either. It's hard work. Exploring for minerals is a slow process, and without a proven resource it's always possible that you won't find something worth developing. It's expensive and it's hampered by unpredictable commodity prices. These factors add a lot of risk, and for that reason it can be difficult for junior minerals exploration companies to generate the capital that's needed to undertake the exploration of undeveloped regions.
Over the five years to 2015-16, expenditure on greenfield exploration around Australia dropped by 70 per cent. In 2014, to try to encourage more exploration, the government introduced the Exploration Development Incentive. This was a $100 million scheme which was supposed to incentivise greenfield minerals exploration. Unfortunately, the incentive was not fully used by industry, and the decline in greenfield minerals exploration investment has continued. The feedback from the minerals exploration industry is that one of the reasons that the incentive wasn't fully used is that it was too complex to access. The legislation that we're debating here tries to fix that. It makes a number of changes to the incentive. It implements a first-come-first-served approach and introduces caps on how much individual companies can access.
The trend of declining investment in greenfield exploration is a concern to the Labor Party. I'm sure it's a concern to all members here—at least it should be. That's why we're supporting this amendment to this legislation. We think it could help junior minerals exploration companies to attract capital and finance for greenfield exploration. Around 700 junior resource companies could be eligible under this scheme, and it has the potential to drive engagement and growth in greenfield exploration. The proposed incentive is only available to junior exploration companies with no assessable income in a tax year, and it excludes companies that have commenced resource production or that are connected to another company that has commenced resource production. We think that this draws a reasonable distinction between junior exploration companies and larger resource companies and that this incentive is targeted towards the companies that are serious about greenfield exploration.
The explanatory memorandum to the bill notes that it's the government's intention that the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science will review the operation of this scheme by 30 June 2020 to assess both its uptake and its efficacy in attracting investment. That's a good thing, but we think that this legislation could go one step further. We think there should be an annual impact assessment of the scheme and it should be a legislated requirement and publicly available. The member for Fenner foreshadowed that in his contribution a moment ago. It is our intention to move amendments in the Senate that would require an annual impact assessment to be conducted, the objective being to identify whether this legislation and these amendments result in additional exploration or prospecting. In addition to that, the Commissioner of Taxation would make publicly available the ABNs and names of entities receiving credits and the amount of credits given. We think this is important. If we're providing an incentive to business, it's important that we understand what the impact of that incentive is—whether it's worked or not, whether it's encouraged more exploration or not and whether it's delivered value for money to the Australian taxpayer. That's how we develop evidence based policy: assess it, pressure test it and make it public, and, if it doesn't work, change it. As I said, the shadow minister has foreshadowed our intention to move amendments to this effect in the Senate. I understand that the government is currently considering that, and I would encourage the government to support this amendment when it gets to the Senate.
Firstly, I want to take this opportunity to thank all members for contributing to this debate. As has been discussed, this bill provides a tax incentive for investment in small minerals exploration companies undertaking greenfield exploration in Australia. The government understands that the future prosperity of the mining sector is ultimately dependent on our ability to make new minerals discoveries, and the new junior minerals exploration incentive will help encourage investment needed to pave the way for resources sector prosperity long into the future.
It's small minerals exploration companies that undertake most of the exploration in greenfield areas for new discoveries. Exploration for minerals often involves significant expenditure and, ultimately, risks. While larger established mining companies are generally in a position to fund activities from their own activities and profits, smaller companies which focus solely on exploration are dependent on attracting investment to fund their exploration activities. However, the lack of certainty on exploration success can make it naturally difficult for these companies to raise the necessary capital. Australian resident investors of these companies will therefore receive a refundable tax offset where the companies choose to give up a portion of their tax losses relating to their exploration expenditure in an income year. The total value of the incentive available to new investors over four years will be $100 million from 2017-18.
The new incentive builds on the former exploration development incentive with improvements to address some of the issues that affected the take-up of the previous scheme. Eligibility for the investment is limited to investors that purchase newly issued shares. This ensures that the benefit of the incentive only goes to those investors who contribute new capital to fund, importantly, new exploration activities. Further, the incentive is allocated between eligible exploration companies using a first come, first serve process which will be faster than the previous scheme. Small exploration companies will know with certainty up-front just how many credits they have been allocated by the Commissioner of Taxation. The amendments to the excess exploration credit tax will ensure the fairness and integrity of this very important incentive. I, therefore, commend this bill to the House.
The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Fenner has moved an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view of substituting other words. The question is that the amendment be agreed to.
There being more than one voice calling for a division, in accordance with standing order 133 the division is deferred until after the discussion of the matter of public importance.
Debate adjourned.
I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
This bill amends the Corporations Act 2001 and other related legislation to radically overhaul the financial system dispute resolution framework by establishing a new one-stop-shop dispute resolution body—the Australian Financial Complaints Authority—to ensure that consumers and small businesses have access to free, fast and binding dispute resolution.
The bill forms part of the Government's broader commitment to ensuring that the banks and other financial institutions are held to account when they fail to meet community expectations.
The financial sector plays a vital role in the Australian economy by meeting the needs of its users, including consumers and small businesses.
Its role in the economy and the lives of all Australians continues to grow and evolve.
Given the crucial nature and role of the financial sector, Australians expect high standards from financial institutions.
Where these expectations are not met and consumers wrongfully suffer a loss, it is critical that those who have been wronged have access to redress in a timely manner.
External dispute resolution (EDR) plays a critical role in providing consumers and small businesses with access to an alternative, out-of-court dispute resolution service to hear and determine their complaints about financial firms.
The government is committed to having a world-class financial dispute resolution system.
That is why in April 2016 the government commissioned an independent comprehensive review of the dispute resolution framework (the Ramsay review), which was led by an expert panel comprising Professor Ian Ramsay, Julie Abramson and Alan Kirkland. I would like to place on record my deep appreciation for their hard work and the intellectual rigor that they applied to this very important issue.
The Ramsay review undertook a rigorous consultation process and received 187 submissions in response to its issues paper and interim report.
The Ramsay review found that the current dispute resolution framework is a product of history rather than design and, in significant areas, reform is needed.
The review made 11 recommendations to strengthen and futureproof the dispute resolution framework, all of which the government has accepted.
The review's central recommendation was to establish a new one-stop shop dispute resolution body for all financial disputes, including superannuation disputes.
In line with this recommendation, the government committed to establishing the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, or AFCA, which will be based on an industry ombudsman model, with additional statutory powers where required.
This approach combines the strengths of both a statutory tribunal and an industry ombudsman scheme.
AFCA will replace the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), the Credit and Investments Ombudsman (CIO) and the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal (SCT) and will reduce the unnecessary duplication and consumer confusion that has been characteristic of the current framework.
This simplification of the system has been welcomed by Gerard Brody, CEO of the Consumer Action Law Centre who has commented that:
Currently if you have a problem with a bank or finance provider, it is incredibly confusing to fix the problem. The people who call our services just want to get their lives back on track—the Government can help them by simplifying the system and giving it teeth.
CHOICE likewise welcomed the announcement of AFCA, stating, 'It will provide consumers with a single, accessible complaints resolution service when something goes wrong.'
AFCA will have higher monetary limits and compensation caps than those of FOS and CIO, and it will maintain the SCT's unlimited monetary jurisdiction for superannuation complaints. The new monetary limits and compensation caps are double and, in the case of small business credit facility disputes, almost triple the limits and caps currently in place. This will significantly improve access to justice for consumers and small businesses.
The creation of AFCA will also address recommendations of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics' Review of the four major banks (also known as the Coleman report) and the Carnell Inquiry into small business loans.
The Coleman report recommended that the government replace the three existing EDR schemes with a one-stop banking and financial services tribunal. The report noted that it would: reduce confusion for consumers; enhance small businesses' EDR scheme coverage; help ensure consistent outcomes for complainants; and eliminate unnecessary duplication. The AFCA will fulfil all of these requirements.
The Carnell report likewise recommended the establishment of an industry funded external dispute resolution one-stop shop with appropriate small business expertise to hear disputes relating to credit facilities of up to $5 million. The AFCA will meet this recommendation by significantly expanding small business access to redress through monetary limits and compensation caps that are almost triple the existing limits and caps.
Small business has welcomed the establishment of AFCA. Peter Strong, CEO of the Council of Small Business Australia (COSBOA), commented that:
Too often, small business owners are shafted by the actions of big banks and these business owners have little option but to take their medicine in the face of the overwhelming power of the big banks. But this new Authority will provide business owners with a clear mechanism to seek redress where they have been unfairly done by.
The bill introduces a new legislative framework which sets out the standards that AFCA must adhere to. Under the legislative framework, AFCA will be accessible to consumers and small businesses, who will be able to have their disputes with financial firms heard and determined by AFCA for free.
All financial firms, including superannuation funds, will be required by law to be members of AFCA.
AFCA will be a not-for-profit company governed by a board comprising an independent chair and equal numbers of directors with industry and consumer backgrounds. It will be funded by industry.
The legislation will ensure that AFCA will provide fair, efficient, timely and independent dispute resolution services and that it has the relevant expertise to resolve the disputes it hears. The legislation also includes a number of statutory provisions to ensure that AFCA has the necessary powers to effectively resolve superannuation disputes. Additional statutory provisions are required because of the complex nature of some of the superannuation disputes that involve third parties, such as death benefit disputes.
AFCA will have the power to join third parties to a dispute, require parties to attend conciliation and require the production of documents.
The statutory provisions available to AFCA will allow timely decisions to be made to enable prompt payment of death benefit amounts by superannuation funds to those who may be in need.
The framework does not dictate the way in which AFCA should deal with complaints. This will enable AFCA to adapt to change and to be flexible and innovative in its approach to resolving disputes.
To ensure that AFCA meets community expectations for free, fast and binding dispute resolution, it will be subject to a comprehensive accountability regime.
First, the AFCA scheme will be authorised by the government. I, as Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, will not authorise the AFCA scheme unless I'm satisfied that it has robust systems and processes in place to meet community expectations and the rigorous standards set out in the legislation. And where the scheme, once authorised, fails to meet these standards, I will have the ability to revoke authorisation.
In addition, I will have the ability to impose conditions on authorisation. This ability to set conditions will allow the government to ensure that AFCA is accountable to both consumers and member firms, for example, through requiring AFCA to report and provide reasons to the government on an annual basis in respect of any changes AFCA makes to its membership fees.
The AFCA board will comprise an independent chair and equal numbers of directors with consumer and industry backgrounds. At the establishment of AFCA I will make a one-time appointment of the minority of AFCA's board, including the independent chair, to ensure that it has an appropriate mix of skills and experience.
The AFCA board will include at least one director with a superannuation background and who will not be representing any particular segment of the superannuation industry.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, or ASIC, will be responsible for ensuring that AFCA meets the standards set out in the legislation on an ongoing basis.
To fulfil this role, the bill provides ASIC with the ability to set regulatory requirements that AFCA must adhere to and also provides ASIC with a general directions power to compel AFCA to comply with the standards set out in the legislation. ASIC will also have a specific directions power that can be used to require AFCA to increase its funding in the event that it is insufficiently financed.
The enhanced accountability that AFCA will be subject to under the new regime represents a significant improvement over the existing regime, under which ASIC has limited powers to require dispute resolution bodies to improve their practices.
In the course of passage through the Senate, the government moved a small number of amendments to provide additional certainty in relation to the handling of superannuation disputes and to enshrine in legislation the requirement that the AFCA chair be independent.
Additionally, the government will commission an independent review of the new arrangements 18 months after AFCA commences operations. This review will take into account feedback from consumers and small businesses regarding whether AFCA resolved their complaint in a way that was fair, efficient, timely and independent.
The review will also specifically examine the appropriateness of the monetary limits applying to complaints relating to credit facilities provided to primary production businesses. The government has announced that a primary production business with a dispute relating to a credit facility of $5 million or less will have access to compensation of up to $2 million.
The bill also strengthens the internal dispute resolution reporting processes within firms.
Internal dispute resolution is a financial firm's internal complaints handling process. That is, its initial response to a complaint. An effective internal dispute resolution process plays an important role in enabling financial firms to quickly resolve genuine complaints, without an EDR or court process.
To provide firms with an incentive to have best practice internal dispute resolution procedures, the government is implementing a new internal dispute resolution reporting regime.
Under the new regime, ASIC will be empowered to create a legislative instrument that will determine the internal dispute resolution data that financial firms will need to report to the regulator. ASIC will then have the ability to publish this data at both the aggregate and the firm level.
Publishing internal dispute resolution data will drive financial firms to improve their internal dispute resolution practices by providing industry benchmarks on how long it takes to resolve disputes and highlighting poor-performing firms.
Given the significance of these reforms, the government understands the importance of having a smooth transition from the existing dispute resolution bodies to AFCA.
That is why the government has created a transition team, led by Dr Malcolm Edey, a former Assistant Governor of the Reserve Bank, to drive the establishment of the AFCA.
The transition team will advise the government on AFCA's terms of reference, governance and funding arrangements. It will also make recommendations on the transitional arrangements required to appropriately resolve legacy disputes of the three existing schemes.
The AFCA transition team has held targeted workshops with key industry and consumer bodies and has undertaken a public consultation process to inform and seek feedback on these matters.
In particular, the AFCA transition team has had detailed discussions, including with representatives from the superannuation industry and the not-for-profit and retail sectors, as well as targeted discussions with the Law Council of Australia and individual funds and administrators.
The AFCA transition team will continue to engage closely with all interested parties, including all sectors of the financial industry, as well as the three existing schemes to facilitate an orderly transition to AFCA.
The bill also provides for the winding down of the SCT, which will cease to accept new complaints once AFCA commences operations. The AFCA transition team is working closely with the SCT to ensure a smooth transition between the SCT and AFCA. The government will ensure that the SCT is sufficiently funded to get through its backlog of complaints by the time AFCA commences operations.
Following passage of the legislation in the Senate in December 2017, I announced that AFCA would commence operations in the second half of this year.
In line with advice received from Dr Edey and the transition team and in order to facilitate an orderly transition to AFCA, it is my intention that AFCA will commence accepting disputes no later than 1 November 2018.
Once the legislation is passed by parliament, I will be seeking an application for authorisation. Following an assessment of that application, I'll be authorising a company as AFCA and making my formal appointments to the AFCA board. It is my intention to do this as swiftly as possible to ensure that the AFCA board has the maximum time available to secure membership and funding and to have appropriate staffing and dispute resolution procedures in place.
Following authorisation, the AFCA board will undertake public consultation on its terms of reference and funding arrangements, ahead of AFCA's commencement.
The new EDR regime will result in significant benefits for consumers and small businesses, with less confusion and an increase in access to redress and greater accountability for financial firms.
As the Consumer Action Law Centre stated, 'Australians need one high-quality service to resolve their disputes against financial institutions quickly and fairly. The one-stop shop announced today is a sensible move that can help Australians get justice.' This bill achieves this outcome and ensures Australian consumers and small businesses get free, fast and binding access to redress and compensation.
Full details of the measure are contained in the explanatory memorandum.
It's been quite a tortuous process to get here and this is a far-from-perfect piece of legislation. This is a piece of legislation which was designed by the government to avoid the need for a royal commission into the banking and financial services sector, which didn't quite work out for the government. They've tried all the tricks to try to avoid a royal commission and they were dragged kicking and screaming into holding a royal commission in the end.
In October 2016, in an attempt to distract attention from the urgent need for a royal commission into banking and financial services, the Prime Minister promised that we would get:
… a low-cost, speedy tribunal to deal with these types of consumer complaints, customer complaints against banks, and this will be real action …
But a little while later, the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, who is at the table, had to walk back from this and argue that the Prime Minister had really only meant. 'A little T tribunal; not a big T tribunal,' a distinction which failed to register with observers around the country, who really, with all due respect, had no idea what the minister was talking about.
Now, of course, we also have the 2017 budget announcing that the new body would be called the Australian Financial Complaints Authority—it's true, it's not a tribunal; the minister's right there. But this is also a misnomer, because the minister in the Senate confirmed that AFCA will be just another ombudsman scheme in the form of a private company limited by guarantee, so it's not really an authority. There are already, of course—and this is the key point—two of these services in existence for financial services disputes, the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Credit and Investments Ombudsman. So any suggestion that this bill is a groundbreaking reform which finally gives consumers rights that they previously did not have is simply not the case. This is simply a piece of administration. This is simply a piece of tidying up.
The bill abolishes three existing financial sector complaints-handling bodies: the Financial Ombudsman Service, the Credit and Investments Ombudsman and also the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal. For the first of these three bodies, the bill is in many respects just a merger and a rebranding—that's all it is. There is no, or very little, improvement in consumer outcomes contained in this bill. I know both of these bodies very well, as a former minister who, in a previous government, held the portfolio of the minister at the table. I had responsibility for these ombudsman services, and they were very good—
You were much better than her.
They were very good ombudsman services.
Ms O'Dwyer interjecting—
I was allowed to answer questions during question time when I had the portfolio, so at least I had that over the current minister. What we had was the financial ombudsman—and I would have dealt with payday lending, as the member for Oxley correctly points out. We did have Future of Financial Advice reforms other great reforms which improved consumer outcomes. We wouldn't have squibbed it on payday lending. I have to pay respect to the minister, she didn't squib it and she didn't want to squib it; she was rolled on that. The member for Perth and the member for Oxley will continue to prosecute that case on our behalf. The point I was making was that these are good ombudsman services and they work as they are currently constituted. They don't resolve every matter to every client's satisfaction, but they certainly get to the bottom of many and they lead to better outcomes. What the minister couldn't do in her second reading speech was outline how consumers will actually be empowered by these reforms, because they won't. The average consumer who's got a problem won't see any difference from whether they go in today to the Financial Ombudsman Service or they go in after the AFCA is established. They won't have a different experience and they won't have a different outcome; they'll simply have one body instead of three.
In relation to the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, we are not convinced that this should be rolled into the AFCA. The Superannuation Complaints Tribunal provides quite a specialised service, a different role. The Superannuation Complaints Tribunal is quite a different sort of a body to the others. The Superannuation Complaints Tribunal deals with very complicated and detailed matters in relation to superannuation, which is a particularly complicated and complex form of law, and we don't think it's appropriate that it be rolled into these bodies. Under this legislation, disputes over an individual's superannuation will now be lumped in with those from the banks, insurance, payday lenders and others. Our overriding concern with the proposed abolition of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal is that no evidence has been produced to demonstrate that the abolition of the tribunal and its replacement by an ombudsman scheme will result in more-efficient and better outcomes. This is the key point: the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal actually works quite differently from the other two ombudsman services. They have a different role and a different way of dealing with these matters, and we think that lumping them in with the ombudsman on a similar basis is a backwards step. The government—
Ms O'Dwyer interjecting—
and the minister, if I understand her interjection correctly—has pointed to delays in the resolution of complaints by the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal. That's a reason to shut it down? You could give it more resources and actually help it do its job. But, no; they say: 'We'll shut it down. We'll throw it in with the ombudsman. That'll fix it. We'll get rid of it. If it's taking too long to resolve problems, we'll just get rid of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal.' That's the government's logic. These delays are of course a reason for concern, but they're not a reason for abolishing the tribunal. I can think of any number of ways the government could have approached the matter of Superannuation Complaints Tribunal delays other than by abolishing it.
The Senate inquiry demonstrated that this government has neglected the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal quite dramatically. It's consistent with this government's ideological attacks on superannuation that they're dismantling a statutory tribunal for superannuation that has been an important part of Australia's compulsory superannuation system. The Superannuation Complaints Tribunal was established in 1993. It was introduced at the time that universal compulsory superannuation was also introduced, and it has served the nation well over that time. If the government have concerns about delays then, as I said, they could have any number of ways of dealing with them.
I agree with the chairperson of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, who told the Senate hearings into this bill:
I don't think it would be true to say, in relation to super, that it's a rebranding exercise. Arguably, it's quite a significant change for superannuation, specifically in terms of the external dispute resolution. It goes from a statutory body to a non-statutory body. It moved from a specialist body to a one-stop-shop body.
We have concerns about removing the statutory body when it comes to superannuation. When it comes to superannuation complaints, people have the right to have a powerful tribunal, a body with teeth, and this government is taking away a statutory body and lumping it in with the other ombudsman services, which have operated quite differently. We moved amendments in the other house to that effect. Those amendments failed. We don't like that, but that was the result. We don't regard it as a reason to vote against the bill as a whole, but we are pointing out that we think that the government has failed here and that to abolish the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal is the wrong lever. It won't stop us supporting the bill, but it does mean that we will point out strongly that the minister at the table has, I think, made a serious error in this regard.
We also have serious concerns about the transition arrangements for AFCA, as currently outlined in the bill, which are worthy of a few comments. The government has said that AFCA will start from 1 July 2018 for new complaints. As that is not that far away, we're hoping the government has given proper consideration to making sure this transition process works. The Senate inquiry raised concerns about this. Mike Taylor, in Super Review, summarised some of these concerns about the process in light of evidence given to the Senate. That report said:
There is much to suggest that the creation of AFCA represents a bureaucratic slow-motion train crash with the Treasury officials confirming that the financial services industry will have to deal with four different external dispute resolution schemes for at least a year after the necessary legislation is passed and that the SCT will still be clearing its workload as late as 2022.
So we're going to have a very long transition from the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal to AFCA—until 2022. This is going to create more uncertainty. It's not a one-stop shop; it's a four-stop shop that the minister's creating during that transition period, and we don't think that that's a very clever way of dealing with it either.
We questioned the government in the Senate about transition plans and about how they would make sure the transition would work, and the lack of detail in the answers was very concerning. It seems that, since the bill passed the Senate, the government has announced additional funding, in MYEFO, to help the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal work through its existing workload. Well, that's good. But it was concerning that the government did not appear to have properly planned for this when they announced the AFCA in the budget.
This has been an ill-thought-out process. It has been one which was very clearly created to avoid the need for a royal commission. Remember that period in which we had weekly announcements of new and shiny things in banking and financial services designed to avoid the need for a royal commission? We've had many announcements of things that were designed to stop the royal commission. The government were desperate to avoid the royal commission, and they were very reluctantly dragged into calling the royal commission. We were told by the government it was regrettable that we needed to have a royal commission, and yet that royal commission has started now.
I note the royal commissioner's comments—and I welcome his comments—about confidentiality and standing in the way of the royal commission's activities and operations. We will watch its activities with interest, more interest than the government, who didn't want to hold the royal commission in the first place and went through this elongated process and are somehow now pretending that amalgamating three dispute resolution mechanisms into one dispute resolution mechanism is some great step forward when it comes to consumer protection. That's simply not the case. It is an administrative measure which might provide some efficiencies in the back office et cetera, but let's not pretend that this is any great step forward for the Australian people. It's been done for the wrong reasons and the implementation has been botched.
We will vote for the bill, because we have no in-principle objection to at least two of the three coming together, and our objection to the third complaints tribunal being brought into this body is not so strong that it would prevent us voting for the legislation and facilitating its passage through the House.
Debate adjourned.
by leave—I move:
That the Treasury Laws Amendment (Putting Consumers First—Establishment of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority) Bill 2017 be referred to the Federation Chamber for further consideration.
Question agreed to.
I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
This bill amends the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 to implement a new governance model for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The amendments will strengthen the strategic capability and capacity of the authority to respond to challenges facing the marine park.
The authority plays a crucial role in protecting the iconic Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage site, now and for future generations. It was established through the actto set up and manage the marine park, provide advice to the government, conduct research and provide educational, advisory and information services.
The Australian government remains firmly committed to protecting the reef. Effective operation of the authority is central to this commitment. The Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan was established in 2015 as the centrepiece of Australia's efforts to build the resilience of the reef. The authority delivers key programs under the Reef 2050 Plan such as the joint field management program and actions to control crown-of-thorns starfish.
In March 2017 the government commissioned an independent review to determine whether the current governance arrangements continue to be the best fit to support the authority's important and challenging work over the coming decades. The independent reviewer, Dr Wendy Craik AM, considered numerous public submissions and held more than 50 consultation meetings with individuals from relevant government, industry, community and conservation organisations.
The 2017 review found these arrangements do not allow for sufficient strategic leadership or management commensurate with the requirements of the authority's functions and responsibilities.
The bill amends the act to implement the governance arrangements recommended by the review and accepted by the government.
The bill replaces the existing full-time chairperson position with a part-time chairperson and a full-time chief executive officer, and establishes one additional part-time member position. It also strengthens requirements for the appointment and termination of members.
The authority will continue to have responsibility for implementation of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975, and will be supported by the chief executive officer and staff of the agency.
In addition to implementing the new governance arrangements, the bill also makes a minor technical amendment to clarify the relationship between the suite of legislation underpinning the functions of the authority.
The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills has raised some issues about minor technical amendments in the bill. A written response will be provided to the committee shortly. The technical amendments in the bill clarify that the zoning plans and plans of management can rely on content in the regulations and other legislative instruments. It is not expected that any person will suffer detriment as a result of these retrospective provisions.
The government recognises every effort needs to be made to mitigate threats to the Great Barrier Reef and is committed to its long-term protection and best-practice management.
The bill will ensure the authority is best placed to meet the significant challenges facing the reef and continue its important work with reef users, business, research and government and non-government partners. I commend the bill to the House.
Much as I would love to allow the minister to speak on my behalf, as he just attempted to do, I'll have a go at delivering this speech myself. The minister, as it happens, on this occasion—and I won't reflect on other occasions—is accurate: Labor will be supporting this particular piece of legislation. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Amendment (Authority Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2017 is the result of a review and consultation process that aimed to improve the management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, ultimately to improve the protection of the Great Barrier Reef itself. Whatever differences we may have with the government on its actions in protecting the Great Barrier Reef, the governance changes that are here are common ground.
The government started the independent review of the marine park authority's governance in March last year. It evaluated whether the management of the authority under its current arrangements is adequate in delivering its statutory functions. The review process involved public submissions, a series of consultation meetings and engagement with a variety of stakeholders, including industry, community and conservation groups. The review found that, while the authority is widely supported, its current structure can be improved. This bill deals with those changes. I'd like to acknowledge the work of the head of the review, Dr Wendy Craik, who suggested that refreshed governance arrangements would enable the authority to better fulfil its role as the expert manager of the Great Barrier Reef in the future. The government has accepted all of the 24 recommendations for a new governance model for the authority, and Labor participated in the review process.
The bill aims to implement the recommendations of the review through a number of amendments to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act. These include separating the full-time chairperson position into two separate roles—a part-time chair and a full-time CEO. I must say that—without reflecting in any way on people who've held this position over the years—in terms of governance, you need a very good reason to combine the roles. As a general principle for good governance, I think it makes sense to separate these particular roles. Other amendments to the act include strengthening requirements for the appointment and termination of members of the board and a series of minor technical amendments to clarify the legislation that regulates the authority's functions. A modern marine park authority is important to Labor. It reflects our commitment to protecting the Great Barrier Reef. We want governance laws and policies that promote the reef's long-term health and climate resilience.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has been around for a long time. It was established through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act in 1975, and it was set up because Australia recognised we needed to protect the iconic and precious Great Barrier Reef. Let's not forget that around that time it was being proposed that there be drilling directly on the Great Barrier Reef itself. Further protections have happened with respect to the Great Barrier Reef over the years, but today the reef is viewed differently to the way it was viewed in 1975. Today, if you talk to most scientists, the key additional measures that need to be taken to protect the Great Barrier Reef are not within the boundaries of the Great Barrier Reef but external to them. For a long time, when you had projects being proposed such as drilling on the reef itself, all the focus was within the boundary. Now we know the impact of climate change and the impact of the causes of climate change, in particular with respect to carbonic acid in the ocean and ocean acidification and what that does to growth rates, coupled with the impacts of run-off, and the need to have tough regulations on fishing, not only within the reef area itself. These are regulations that were largely put in place by the Howard government, I would note—although, when I started to put marine parks in different places, some of those opposite were less enthusiastic. But within the Great Barrier Reef it was done by the Howard government. It is critical to make sure that we have restrictions on a series of commercial fishing operations, in particular in the Coral Sea, as the cradle to the Great Barrier Reef.
My view has always been that when we deal with agricultural run-off and chemical run-off for protection of the reef we need to deal with the immediate palliative care that you end up having to put onto the reef itself, and the critical example of that is crown of thorns starfish. Some people have argued that we shouldn't deal with crown of thorns starfish, that we should deal only with agricultural run-off. And it is true that agricultural run-off is the cause of the problem. But I have been supportive over the years of measures to deal directly with crown of thorns starfish as well. When I previously held the portfolio on that side of the chamber, very good scientific work was done to reduce the number of injections required to kill the crown of thorns starfish.
It is important that we couple the works together—that the work on the reef itself in protecting the coral is being done but that we are, at the same time, taking a direct role in dealing with agricultural run-off. The agricultural run-off can go to issues of chemical run-off. It can also go to straight sediment issues, and I do believe we should not have a discussion about the Great Barrier Reef without being up-front about the challenge of the change to land clearing laws that was made under the Newman government. That has resulted in increased sediment load within the catchment area of the Great Barrier Reef through some of the deforestation that's taken place. Fortunately this time, with a majority in the Queensland parliament, the LNP won't be in a position to block the reversal of those Campbell Newman changes. The impact there was direct on the Great Barrier Reef itself.
We often talk about the impacts of climate change. I'll probably get to that in the second half, which will kick off after we go to 90-second statements, so I imagine we'll be back later today. But I do think it's important as well, within the climate change debate, to note that the impact of the causes of climate change is not only in temperature, not only in increased sea levels but also in what happens with respect to carbonic acid. You see, the increase in major weather events means that aspects of the reef get knocked around more often than they otherwise would. Carbonic acid, which is not caused by climate change but is caused by the causes of climate change, means that those corals grow back more slowly. This is where the reef is being attacked from every side. Think of those beautiful images in nature documentaries—and there's still some of it on the reef, and I'm not pretending that there's not, and there's still corals in the reef, and I'm not pretending that there's not; we still have a magnificent piece of World Heritage there. It is the case that some of those tree-like corals, the ones that are really slow growing, are the ones that are being knocked around at a rate that means that to simply say, 'Oh, but there's still coral there' doesn't answer the question, because we are seeing a change in the ecological character of the reef. Those delicate corals are the ones most likely to be knocked out during a major weather event, whether it's through a massive inundation or whether it's through increased intensity of cyclonic activity. When they get wiped out, the increased sediment load and the increased chemical load that's coming off agricultural land, combined with carbonic acid, means that it's growing back more slowly. It's being knocked down more regularly and is growing back more slowly.
It's very important in any debate about the Great Barrier Reef that we don't simply ask, 'But will a magnificent reef still be there?' We also have to ask, 'Will the extraordinary biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef that was first being protected in 1975 still be there?' The answer to that will never be simple. Some people would like to pretend that the answer to that will be resolved by a single project—by either conducting a single project or by preventing a single project. Some people will talk about the need to act on climate change, and that is absolutely critical. But the truth is that the only way we're going to be able to protect the Great Barrier Reef is through action on every side. We need action from the left-hand side, when you're looking from the western side of the reef, with respect to agricultural run-off and deforestation, and from the east with respect to proper protections for the Coral Sea, and of course from above in making sure, both with respect to climate change and carbon levels—
Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Watson will be given an opportunity at that time to conclude his contribution.
On Friday the 16th we will celebrate entering a new year—the lunar new year. We will leave the year of the rooster and enter the year of the dog. This is pretty good, because I was born in the year of the dog, so this should be a great year for me.
Lunar new year is celebrated by many Asian countries—Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and China—and, of course, now in Australia. To my Vietnamese community: happy Tet! To the Koreans: happy Gujeong! In my electorate, to the over 28,000 who share Chinese ancestry: happy Chun Jie! For the Chinese, this day is the most auspicious and important in their calendar. It is described as the world's busiest mass migration, with billions of people travelling. People traverse thousands of kilometres in order to reunite with their loved ones, relatives and friends, just for this occasion. On the way back from the trade fairs in January each year, prior to being in this position, I got stuck in Singapore and Malaysia, quite happily, every year.
To the Chinese, the most fortuitous colour is red and the number is eight, so I'll be expecting lovely shades of red on the streets of Parramatta on Friday, and many groups of eight. On New Year's Day, I'll be visiting Nan Tien Temple in the morning before joining my staff for a Chinese lunch and then visiting Parramatta Park to immerse myself in the celebrations. I'm looking forward to celebrating with events, and expect me in red. Add me on Weixin to follow my celebrations in the new year. To others: expect posts on Facebook. Xin nian kuai le! Gong xi fa cai! Zhu nin shen ti jian kang!
I didn't know how to call time in Chinese!
I was here—with your dad, by the way, Mr Deputy Speaker—in 1991 under the Keating government when Gerry Hand moved some legislation through the House that ended up having a very detrimental effect on a particular cohort in our community, who were refugees; we left them with this massive debt, and it affected families for years and years. Eventually, we were able to repeal that legislation and free those people from that debt. One of my colleagues, Alex Somlyay, the member for Fairfax at the time, said to me: 'Russell, you were here when that legislation was introduced and passed; you didn't say anything about it.'
Well, there is some legislation that has come before the House now, in regard to public housing, and I think it's pretty poor legislation. It was introduced by Labor in their last term and has been carried on by this government.
When you look at public housing, it's all about Indigenous people, women and disabled people. So anything we do around the public housing area is going to affect Indigenous people, women and the disabled, because they are the people that mostly use public housing. If you're going to make changes and do those sorts of things, you have to look at the disproportionate effect it may have on a particular cohort of the community. If we, as a nation, don't look after, especially, the most vulnerable—women, Indigenous people and disabled people in public housing— (Time expired)
I rise to present a petition from Micah Australia signed by 135 Novocastrians. It calls on us to act on the 'severe and urgent threat that climate change poses to health, wellbeing and security of all people around the world, particularly our poorest and most vulnerable neighbours'.
It is a travesty that the Abbott-Turnbull government's climate change policy has been led by right-wing fringe dwellers with an active hostility to science. This government has eliminated the Climate Commission. It has waged a vicious war on renewable energy and set up an inquiry to discredit wind farms. It has slashed the Renewable Energy Target. Its Direct Action policy paid polluters billions. It ignored recommendations for the new vehicle emissions standards. It rejected an emissions intensity scheme and squibbed the clean energy target recommended by its own chief scientist. And it still has no credible climate change policy.
This litany of climate crimes and inaction means that emissions are increasing and Australia will fail to meet its Paris Agreement targets. It is our moral and our global obligation to act on this crisis, and act we must. I thank the Micah Challenge and all of the concerned citizens in my electorate of Newcastle for organising this important petition.
The petition read as follows—
This petition of concerned people of the electorate of Newcastle, draws to the attention of the House the severe and urgent threat that climate change poses to the health, well-being and security of all people around the world, particularly our poorest and most vulnerable neighbours. We remind the House that Australia's greenhouse emissions are the highest per person among wealthy nations while our emissions reduction targets are among the weakest.
We therefore ask the House to do all in its power to protect communities in Australia and our region from the harmful impacts of climate change - such as more severe heat, extreme and unpredictable weather and rising seas - by: committing to deeper and more urgent reductions of our greenhouse emissions; developing a plan to ensure Australia achieves zero net greenhouse emissions well before 2050, and supporting families and communities affected by the transition towards renewable energy and more sustainable land use; providing additional assistance to help our poorest neighbours adapt to the harmful impacts of climate change.
from 136 petitioners (Petition No. PN0113)
Petition received.
Ten years ago in this place I watched the apology on the TV. We talked about the stolen generation. My parents watched it as people who had worked with Indigenous people in the seventies, when they had little more than a tin shed to live in in Carnarvon and then Onslow in Western Australia. My community is very keen to do more than just say sorry. They're keen to roll up their sleeves and make outcomes happen. If you come to Mildura and walk down the river, you don't see people sitting around drinking cans on the river. You see job opportunities and a community that's very proactive.
Over time, Sunraysia Regional Consulting has got $1.7 million from the federal government to work with people to ensure that they have employment. Also, the MADEC has got $4.4 million from the federal government to work with kids from years 7, 8 and 9 to keep them engaged in education so they can also move onto gainful employment. We see with our Indigenous people in my community that if they can get a qualification, a trade, a university degree or a diploma, they go from having less job opportunities to having more job opportunities. Whilst we commemorate today, 10 years since the apology, our community is doing real work to improve the lives of Indigenous people in our towns and we'll keep working at it.
The reckless conduct of payday lenders has gone on long enough. Families, young people and pensioners are being ripped off by loan sharks who are exploiting an industry which preys upon vulnerable people. As the cost of living dramatically increases under this government, 1.8 million households are now financially distressed and over 650,000 families have turned to payday loans just to get by. In return, families are paying interest rates as high as 884 per cent for household goods like fridges and washing machines, which could normally cost $350 but end up costing almost $4,000 by loan sharks looking to rip off vulnerable Australians. Whilst hundreds of thousands of people across Australia are being taken advantage of, this government sits by and does nothing.
For two years this government has sat on a report that revealed the payday loans industry was out of control. Despite the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services stating the government supported the vast majority of the 24 recommendations contained in the report, we've seen no action. We see TheCourier Mail in my home state of Queensland show that the right wing of this incompetent government is again holding the Prime Minister to ransom over what are sensible and common-sense reforms to protect vulnerable Australians. Time and time again we're seeing people ripped off across my state and across this country. When will this government stop siding with the loan sharks and start standing up for ordinary Australians?
I rise to congratulate the Central Coast's own Matt Graham, who overnight became the first Australian to win a medal at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. In minus 11 degree temperatures, Matt, a 23-year-old from Narara, secured a silver medal in the moguls behind Canadian great, Mikael Kingsbury. I know many of us were up watching his dynamic twists and turns on TV last night as he powered his way to second place, pumping his fists on the way to 82.57 points. It was all over in 25 seconds or so, but it took many, many years of effort to get there.
Four years ago I stood in this place to congratulate Matt on his 7th place finish in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, and since then his journey has all been geared towards this day. To compete at this level, Matt sleeps in his bed at Narara for around 10 weeks a year in a non-Olympic year and he juggles a double degree in civil engineering and business. I know his family and friends will be the proudest people in the world today. As his dad, Stephen, said, 'It's not always easy with limited facilities for winter sports and competing on the biggest stage so far from home.' So perhaps now is the time to see what facilities we ought to invest in locally. But one thing is clear: nothing has gotten in the way of Matt Graham and his team. For example, Stephen has been driving his son from the Central Coast on a 6-hour trip down to Perisher to train. It's a wonderful story. I know all of us join together in congratulating Matt and all the Aussies competing in South Korea for all your achievements.
It's time. That is a great Labor phrase. It's time for this government to start governing in the nation's best interests and to cease serving its own. I sacrifice a lot to come into this place, like most of us who are parents, such as time with family. In fact, I missed a swimming carnival today for my two youngest children. I come in here to make lives better, and I am sad that the population are so fed up with politics and politicians. I can see how they arrive at this conclusion if I too am sick of these distractions.
Today, people who need real action, real help and a decent policy knocked on my door. Collectively, they are trying to get this government to recognise that their workplace, their livelihoods and their families are depending on a decent and thoughtful policy on energy and gas. They are highly skilled workers, producing 60 per cent of this country's glass. They are making ammonia for farmers. They are 50- to 65-year-olds performing their last working duties before retirement. They are making plastic, and they are keeping small towns like Port Kembla alive. Their employers need policy certainty and price certainty and a policy that supports their heavy use of energy and gas.
These men are members of the mighty AWU, the union of which I am proud to be a member. They aren't here for their own conditions. They aren't here for their own wages. They are here on behalf of their communities, their employers and their families, and they are seeking some focus from this weak Prime Minister, who would rather spend his days talking about leadership than doing it. On behalf of them, I ask this Prime Minister to deal with this as a matter of urgency.
I rise today to talk about last Saturday evening, which was abuzz with Greek diaspora in the heart of Melbourne at the 31st Lonsdale Street Greek Festival. Together with the Minister for Finance and Revenue, the Hon. Kelly O'Dwyer, we represented Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the Lonsdale Street Greek Festival. The Lonsdale Street festival is also known as the Antipodes festival. It is the largest celebration of Hellenic culture outside of Greece and is held annually in Melbourne's Greek precinct. The streets of Melbourne were abuzz with Greek diaspora.
For years people from across Melbourne, including from my electorate of Chisholm, have been coming to spend and enjoy this weekend in February as a long-held celebratory tradition. During the official proceedings of the festival, I expressed my extreme pride in my Greek heritage. I'm extremely proud to be chair of the federal parliamentary friends of Greece network. As an Australian with Greek migrant heritage, it is fantastic to see Hellenic culture celebrated so proudly and vibrantly. The work of the Greek community of Melbourne, under the leadership of festival president Bill Papastergiadis and Jorge Menides, director of the Greek centre, ensures that the Greek language and culture remains alive in Melbourne. I thank the operators of the Greek community of Melbourne for continuing to hold this spectacular event in the heart of Melbourne, which is the epicentre of Greek diaspora.
Milang is a small town on the Lower Lakes. As a community, its fortunes have fluctuated with the flows of the Murray. Today it is a community that is still recovering from the millennium drought. The people of Milang have always been resilient and innovative. A prime example of this was the launch on the weekend of the Milang contribution to the Hills Sculpture Trail. Their sculpture, Run Like the Wind, by Gheorghi Filin, was majestic on the shores of Lake Alexandrina.
What is truly magnificent about this project is how the community came together to embrace it. My community of Milang is not wealthy. It's not a large district, either. It is home to 880 residents. But the local residents managed to raise $28,000 in just four months so they could take part. Their enthusiasm has inspired the trail's organising body, the Adelaide Hills International Sculpture Symposium. At the launch, Artistic Director Silvio Apponyi declared that Milang was the best match between artists and community of all of the 26 sculptures created for the trail in the last six years.
I congratulate all 26 communities, including Milang, for embracing the vision of the trail. I echo the words of the South Australian Governor, Hieu Van Le, who at the launch said that the trail has given residents a sense of pride in their towns and encouraged South Australians to rediscover the Adelaide Hills and the Fleurieu with fresh eyes.
I rise to recognise the contribution Dr Margaret Hollands of Orbost has made to the health services of East Gippsland over several decades. At the age of 83, Margaret is now retired but, along with her husband, David, she practised for 40 years in this remote part of the state. The pair performed surgeries and obstetrics and maintained a busy rural general practice while dealing with medical emergencies, including timber mill injuries and motor vehicle accidents. Between them, they provided extraordinary medical support while raising three children and contributing enormously to the East Gippsland community. This was at a time when few women were practising medicine anywhere in Australia, let alone in one of the more rural and remote areas of far East Gippsland. Margaret was actually the first female doctor to practice in Orbost, and subsequently provided additional women's health services, reducing the need to travel to Bairnsdale, almost 100 kilometres away. Along with her professional services, Margaret worked tirelessly for the community by volunteering with the Red Cross and local school councils, and became an active member on the Orbost Regional Health board. In later years, Margaret went on to document the history of the Orbost Hospital and the doctors who have worked in the region. Sadly, Margaret isn't enjoying good health, and is being cared for by her husband, David, and family members. I want to commend Margaret for her tireless endeavours in the community and thank her for her work over so many decades. I know that her contributions far exceed those which could be expected of any person, and as a consequence she has become a respected and much loved member of the Orbost community. She was a pioneer in her field and is an inspiration to women everywhere.
Emelia is seven years old. Emelia suffers from brittle bone syndrome. Emelia has been waiting for the NDIA to approve modifications to her family's home so that she can have some independence and be a regular kid. These are modifications like making the front door wheelchair friendly, permanent ramps and changes to the bathroom so that she can use the shower. According to the NDIA, Emelia's family needs two quotes for these modifications, and there are only two building companies authorised by the NDIA in Canberra that can do those quotes and complete the modifications. Emelia's family got the first quote in August last year and the second quote, from the second company, four months later. The application and two quotes were submitted in December last year. Yesterday, the NDIA advised Emelia's family that their application was declined for those modifications because her broken leg was an acute symptom and that it was ACT Health that was responsible for her care. ACT Health has disagreed. I remind all those listening that Emelia has brittle bone syndrome, and broken bones are, unfortunately, part of her life. Her mother is going to continue to fight this fight, and I am doing everything I can to assist her in fighting this fight— (Time expired)
A new component of the visitor market to North Queensland is criminal tourism. You see, we have unwanted visitors, mostly capital city uni students taking publicly funded holidays to impose their ill-informed ideology on North Queensland as they intend to commit crimes to protest the Carmichael coal project. Galilee blockade strategist Ben Pennings even admitted, 'Things we plan to do are illegal and we plan to get arrested over and over again.' They do so knowing that fundraising will pay any paltry fines. Two weeks ago, five criminal tourists who were engaged with trespassing and interfering with a rail line couldn't be bothered fronting court; instead, they posted in letters to justify their actions. These criminals supported are not only by the Greens—two Greens MPs have actually been fined for protesting—but also by the kinds of people that Labor are climbing into bed with. It was a state Labor government that initially asked the federal government to fund the Adani rail line and shook hands with us on a royalties deal. Now they've blocked federal funding of the same multi-use rail line and want Adani to disappear. When he was within earshot of North Queensland workers, Labor's federal leader once said he supported the mine. Now, with the focus on fighting the Greens in the Melbourne by-election, he has abandoned support for workers, mining and North Queensland. He can't walk away from jobs fast enough. In the Batman battle for peak socialism, the losers are North Queensland workers and future investment in northern Australia.
While most of Australia is transfixed with what's going on with the Deputy Prime Minister, something happened in this chamber yesterday that people should be aware of. Those opposite voted against market testing for jobs. Those opposite said in this place with that vote that there is nothing that they won't do to undermine Australian workers. There is nothing they won't do to undermine the industrial relations system in this country. There is nothing they won't do to undermine fair wages. We are not surprised by this, because, after all, those opposite did nothing while 700,000 Australian workers lost their penalty rates. We see it time and time again in this place. They'll come in—they'll be here again today—and talk big on jobs, but at the same time they'll do everything they can to undermine Australian workers. It seems it was an easy decision for them to take yesterday. They shouldn't have taken that decision. They should have backed the Labor Party. They should have introduced the market testing. It was an easy thing to do. I condemn them for their actions.
This past weekend Frankston hosted the 19th annual Waterfront Festival. The stunning weather complemented the multiple live music stages, market stalls, food trucks, beer garden, rides and amusements, arts and craft, beach and water sports and more, which were bordered by the iconic sand sculptures organised by Sand Sculpting Australia—this year themed 'Aladdin and the Arabian Tales'. On the weekend the Frankston waterfront was the picture of a peninsula summer. I was thrilled to see the festival so well attended.
We were especially fortunate to have the Commonwealth Games Queen's baton relay coincide with the festival, The relay convoy was cheered as it travelled through Frankston's CBD before arriving at the waterfront. Congratulations to the festival organisers and the local participants in the Queen's baton relay. One such participant was Lisa McLeish, a baton bearer from Frankston, who went from not being expected to be able to walk and talk when she was born to representing not only the residents of Frankston City Council but also all people with a disability, especially those who may never get the chance to do something like this in their lives.
Between the Waterfront Festival and the Queen's baton relay, we are so proud of all the wonderful ambassadors who put Frankston and the electorate of Dunkley on show to the whole nation. It's still summer, so I invite anyone to come down to the electorate to visit and enjoy our wonderful beaches, our wonderful environment and our wonderful people.
I recently visited Strathmore Secondary College in my electorate, where I took a tour of the school's facilities, including the very impressive Victorian Space Science Education Centre. I got to visit their 'Manned mission on Mars' work, and I got into a spacesuit as well. It was a fantastic tour. In speaking to the principal, Jill English, I talked about a number of things, particularly the rapid increase in enrolments for 2018. The enrolments continue to grow in line with the population in the neighbourhoods surrounding the school. There were 305 year 7 students in 2017. This has gone up to 370 in 2018.
While the school continues to deliver results for students and parents, I'd like to voice my support for the school's master plan and its bid for funding from the Victorian government so that the school can commence a capital works build that will see the construction of two new three-level teaching blocks to allow the school to continue to do its good work. The continued academic success of the current and future students of Strathmore Secondary College—and it has an excellent academic record—relies on ensuring there is enough space for them to learn and for the 140 teaching staff, who do a fantastic job, to be able to do their job to the best of their ability. That's why I support this funding for a build that is upwards because they are landlocked between the freeway and Pascoe Vale Road. These upgrades are critical for the school to meet the demand into the future.
I rise today to speak about one of the most important cultural festivals in the Cairns and Far North Queensland calendar. Now in its 15th year, thousands of locals, domestic visitors and international tourists from mainland China and Hong Kong will descend on our beautiful city to celebrate Chinese lunar new year. This year will be no different. There will be an estimated 25,000 people saying 'zai jian'—goodbye—to the year of the rooster and welcoming the year of the dog. Our overseas visitors, many on charted flights, will give our local tourism sector a massive boost. This influx of Chinese visitors will be extremely welcome by our tourism and hospitality operators after the debacle last year with the Queensland Palaszczuk government selling out Cairns in favour of direct flights to Brisbane.
Cairns has always had a very rich Chinese heritage and culture, spanning more than a century. Grafton Street precinct will come alive over the coming weeks with Chinese dancers, delicious food and cultural displays. One of the highlights of this year—as it is every year—will be the street festival on 24 February. However, Cairns' Chinese new year wouldn't be the success it is today without the vision and continued support of the Cairns and District Chinese Association, especially under the leadership of the festival director, Nathan Lee Long, and his amazing team of volunteers. Mr Lee Long has been a passionate advocate for his community and a driving force behind the Chinese new year celebrations. It's people like Mr Lee Long who make Cairns a rich and vibrant community and one that I'm proud to call my home. (Time expired)
Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples: 10th A nniversary
It was a remarkable honour this morning to be in the Great Hall of the parliament for this, the 10th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations of Indigenous people. I pay tribute to the survivors of the successive stolen generations, their families and their kin for their grace, their good humour, their thoughtfulness and their forgiveness—the forgiveness they offer to us that we might reconcile our dark history and create a better future for the first peoples of this nation.
I ask members opposite, I ask the cabinet, I ask all those in the ministry, I ask the Prime Minister: where were you? A few members opposite have paid their respects today—Senator Scullion, the member for Hasluck, the member for Grey, and there may have been others. But, for the most part, members of the Liberal and National parties here in this parliament failed to even turn up to a celebration of the most significant days in the history of this parliament and the history of the nation. Where were you all? Where was the Prime Minister? What was so important? What could you not drop to come along to pay your respects to the stolen generation here today? Were you all following the example set by the member for Dickson 10 years ago to this day when he failed to turn up to the apology to the stolen generations? Is that your moral compass these days? This country deserves better than a disrespectful government.
I rise to pay tribute to and say farewell to Mr Bill Roberts who passed away aged 92 on Sunday night. Bill Roberts was chairman and mayor of the Murgon shire for 28 years and earned an OBE for his service to local government. He's better known as 'Mr Murgon', renowned for his dedicated service to the community. Bill was a member of Apex and Rotary, a member and chairman of the Murgon ambulance and fire brigade boards and a member of Fraser Coast Tourism Board and Wide Bay Burnett Area Consultative Committee and many other groups.
Bill started his tax agency in 1967 and retired when he turned 90. He had his finger firmly on the pulse locally and at a state and federal level, reporting his observations and insights in his regular 'Hub Rattles' column in the South Burnett Times for an incredible 58 years, perhaps the longest-running column in the world. I knew Bill only briefly, first meeting him at the Murgon Castra Aged Care Centre, and I saw him at the Murgon's Country Music Festival not so long ago. I always appreciated his reliable and sage advice. His legacy will live on in his local community. I convey my condolences to his wife, Mary, and his children, Scott, Kay and Swain.
The Nick Xenophon Team love doing deals with the Liberal Party. The Nick Xenophon Team did a deal to cut funding to South Australian schools by $210 million. The Nick Xenophon Team did a deal with the Liberals, a sweetheart deal with the Liberals on media regulation. The Xenophon team did a deal with the Liberals on the ABCC and the Road Safety Tribunal.
The Nick Xenophon Team are a bunch of ex-Liberals doing deals with the current Liberals. Nick Xenophon is an ex-Liberal; Senator Stirling Griff is an ex-Liberal; the member for Mayo is an ex-Liberal. That is why we had the member for Mayo telling the House last week about the cashless welfare card. I reiterate that the Nick Xenophon Team cannot support this bill in its current form until it can be conclusively determined with solid evidence that the Cashless Debit Card is actually effective. That's what the member for Mayo said last week.
Then last night in the Senate they voted four times to pass the cashless welfare card in a dirty deal with the government. Whatever they say—no matter how tough they talk, despite all the spin and populism, all the talk about being in the centre of politics—the Nick Xenophon Team are a party of ex-Liberals who are still conservative at heart. That's why a vote for the Nick Xenophon Team and a vote for Nick Xenophon is a vote for the Liberals.
In December last year I was invited to attend Terrey Hills Public School's presentation day to celebrate their students' achievements in 2017. What a fantastic year it was for them. The students lived up to their school's values of respect, responsibility and learning. The Terrey Hills Public School has always had a vibrant community spirit, and this was especially evident over the Christmas period. The entire school community got involved to donate Christmas hampers to the Burdekin association. Year 6 students also went to visit local nursing homes to spread the Christmas cheer. Congratulations to the school's fantastic choir for their performance at the Schools Spectacular in November.
A group of year 5 and year 6 students, cleverly named the Terrey Bites, signed up for the first Lego League competition. The Terrey Bites use Lego to solve problems, innovate, foster teamwork and learn perseverance. Ultimately they placed first in the regional that finals. Their robot Evie was ranked an impressive 15 out of 68 national teams. Congratulations to the principal, Guy McLelland, for leading a school that sets a positive example for their students by getting involved in the local community.
In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded.
Just before I call the Prime Minister, I inform the House that we have present in the gallery today former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his wife, Therese. On behalf of the House, I extend a welcome to you.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yanggu gulanyin ngalawiri, dhunayi, Ngunawal dhawra. Wanggarralijinyin mariny bulan bugarabang. Today we meet on Ngunnawal land and we acknowledge and pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. We pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the chamber today and across Australia, including the Hon. Ken Wyatt, the first Aboriginal man to be elected to the House of Representatives and the first to be appointed a Commonwealth Minister, and Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the House of Representatives, and of course we acknowledge, in the Senate, Senators Pat Dodson and Malarndirri McCarthy.
Acknowledgement requires the humility of acceptance of the truth, and acknowledgement is the seed from which hope and healing grow. Today we remember a period of our history when loss and grief almost consumed whole peoples, our first peoples. We stand in awe of the strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who, despite all the injustices, have survived.
Today marks a decade since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Australia's first peoples. Ten years ago the gallery in this place was a sea of proud but heartbroken Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their eyes telling the story of the trauma they'd lived with for their whole lives. They came to hear the leader of the nation finally acknowledge that their pain, suffering and hurt, and the pain, suffering and hurt of their parents and grandparents, was a deep and irreparable wrong. Hundreds gathered in the Great Hall, and thousands more spilled all the way out onto the lawns in front of the parliament and down Federation Mall. Many watched from afar as Mr Rudd apologised for the laws and policies of successive governments across successive generations, and I reaffirm his apology today.
As I said in this House, when Mr Rudd retired in 2013, that apology to the stolen generation will never be forgotten. It is not just one of those marks in the sand of history to be blown or washed away by time but it is carved into the granite, into the bedrock, of our history.
Most of us will never know—have never known—the heartache of being torn from the arms of your mother, of never knowing your brother and sisters, of being denied the right to have a name and being known only as a number, and, after all that, then having to wait for so long for that simple acknowledgement and apology.
When past governments took children away from their families and denied them their cultures and languages, the policies were brutal and based on ignorance. What Australia failed to understand was that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were proud peoples with an intimate knowledge of these lands, who'd cared for this country for 65,000 years, whose songs and culture date back to time out of mind, who had an intricate knowledge of the seasons and the waters, and who had complex social and kinship structures that guided their lives. We did not see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and peoples as the gift they are—a gift which should have been honoured but which was cast aside, disparaged and ridiculed.
Today, on the 10th anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generations, I extend my respect, I'm sure on behalf of all honourable members, to all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who, despite immeasurable pain, have survived. We are grateful that you accepted our apology with such generosity of spirit. But our research tells us there is still much more we can do. On the 20th anniversary of Sorry Day last year, the Healing Foundation provided me with a copy of Bringing Them Home 20 years on: an action plan for healing. The report recognises that the needs of members of the stolen generations are changing and evolving, and their descendants' needs are changing too. The biggest change, of course, is that many are getting older and face new health and social challenges, including the fear of being reinstitutionalised when they go into aged care. It's important we understand those changes better so we can continue to support them. We're supporting, as I noted yesterday, the Healing Foundation to undertake a needs and demography analysis so we can get a clearer picture of what the stolen generations and their descendants require into the future.
The Closing the gap report I presented to parliament yesterday is a practical embodiment of the original apology and its promise for a better future. Great challenges remain. A person's right to shape their own identity and for that identity to be respected is absolutely central to the wellbeing of all people. The national apology recognised that indigeneity and skin colour had been used to control the lives of Indigenous people and diminish their value in society. But, as I said yesterday, we have the chance to write a new chapter of history where indigeneity is embraced, not divided; where diversity of cultures and language embodies strength; where individuals, families, governments and institutions operate in a relationship based on high expectations. Together we can build a relationship based on mutual respect and, in doing so, we'll honour the resilience and the survival of the stolen generations, who wanted nothing more than what was their right—to be cared for by their own families, brought up in their own culture and respected by their nation as equal citizens in their own country.
I thank the Prime Minister for his words. This morning in the Great Hall we paid tribute to the survivors of the stolen generation. This morning in the Great Hall we paid tribute to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for his courage and his leadership, and he's most welcome here with Therese.
This morning in the Great Hall I shared Paul's story. In 1964, when Paul was 5½ months old, he and his mother both fell ill. His mum took him to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. Paul recovered more quickly than his mother and the authorities recommended to her that she place him at St Gabriel's Babies' Home in Balwyn until she recovered. Soon after, Paul was made a ward of the state and transferred to another institution, so when his mum came to visit him she only found an empty cot. At the age of three, Paul was placed with a family for adoption. Just after seven months, his adoptive mother complained to officials that this boy, barely three years old, was dull, unresponsive and an embarrassment at coffee parties. Paul was then sent to The Gables orphanage in Kew. He remembers being paraded in line-ups when prospective foster parents would view the children. The staff at the orphanage told foster parents not to worry about Paul's dark complexion, explaining that he could easily be mistaken for being southern European.
When he turned six, Paul was taken in by another foster family. He lived with them until he was 18. He was shunned by older siblings as not being their real brother and was bullied at school for his skin colour. Then one day soon after his 18th birthday, Paul was called to the Sunshine welfare offices to be discharged from his wardship. In the space of one 20-minute conversation he was told the following: that he was of Aboriginal descent, and that he had a mother, a father, three brothers and a sister. He was given a file full of letters, photos, and 18 birthday cards from his mother. Paul found his mother working at a hostel for Aboriginal children. She was looking after 20 kids. They had six years together before she died, aged 45. This is just two pages from the Bringing Them Home report.
At Redfern, Prime Minister Keating said that the greatest failing of non-Aboriginal Australians was that we did not stop to ask, 'How would I feel if this was done to me?' Honestly, I don't know I could answer that question. I don't know if any of the members of parliament here could. I do not know if we could imagine ourselves as boys or girls growing up adrift, isolated, bullied, ridiculed, not knowing if anyone loved me, not knowing if anyone cared and not knowing where I came from. And indeed, as a parent, I cannot imagine the horror of visiting my baby only to find an empty cot. I do not know if we would have the strength of Paul's mother to live with years of unanswered letters of desperate pleas for information to break down the faceless rock of bureaucracy. If that had all happened to me, if I'd been a parent or a child subject to these injustices, this shocking cruelty, I do not know if I could have found it in myself to accept the apology. But the survivors did, 10 years ago. They showed us a generosity and a kindness and a humanity that we never showed them. What I do know, what we know today is that saying sorry was the right thing to do, and it was the least we could do. Ten years after saying sorry, we need to know that we mean it with belated compensation for survivors, with support for the healing of their descendants, with national action to tackle the crisis of Aboriginal kids growing up in out-of-home care. We need to show that we mean it by removing the shadow and anxiety from Aboriginal parents and grandparents now that their kids could still just be taken from them. We need to show it by adopting in our hearts the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We need to show that we mean it by not turning a blind eye to those who criticise the black armband view of history, or the paternalism, or the indifference, or who use words like 'Aboriginal industry'. We need to show it by closing the gap so the next generation of Aboriginal children do not get the deal that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have had. This is the challenge for the whole parliament. Not just this day, every day of the year.
Honourable members: Hear, hear.
I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable further statements on indulgence on the 10th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations to be made in the Federation Chamber.
Leave granted.
I thank the House. I move:
That further statements on indulgence on the 10th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations be permitted in the Federation Chamber.
Question agreed to.
My question is to the Prime Minister. In 2015, the Prime Minister and I tasked the Referendum Council with consulting Indigenous Australia on their preferred form of constitutional recognition. Twelve regional dialogues and a national summit later, the Referendum Council unanimously recommended a constitutionally entrenched voice to parliament. As this is now Indigenous Australia's preferred model for constitutional change, will the Prime Minister reconsider his initial opposition to this proposal and join Labor in advancing the design of this proposal?
We honour and respect the work of the delegates to the Uluru conference and the authors of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We honour them by speaking the truth. The honourable member opposite, the Leader of the Opposition, sat with me at a meeting of the referendum advisory council, as did other members in this House, and heard me say to them that I did not believe a national elected representative body available only to Indigenous Australians was a good idea because it was inconsistent with a fundamental principle of our democracy, which is that all of our national representative institutions are open to every Australian. That's the fundamental principle. I won't go into everything else that was said at that meeting, but honourable members here who were with me will remember there was some strong discussion about that. I also said, being frank and honest, that I thought the prospects of such an amendment to the Constitution being successful were absolutely zero. So that was the advice that I gave, and that is the view that I and the government hold today.
If the honourable member wants to campaign at the next election for there to be a constitutionally entrenched national elected representative assembly able to be voted for and occupied by only Indigenous Australians, he is free to do so. But it is not something that this side of the House will respect. We believe that all of our national institutions should be open to every single Australian, regardless of their background.
As to the cry from the heart, we feel it, we respect it and we hear it. We hear that. What we need to do is ensure, as Chris Sarra advised me several years ago, that we work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and not do things to them.
Opposition members interjecting—
I hear the shouts of indignation. This, clearly, will be a big election issue at the next election. We stand for all of our national representative institutions, including the House and the Senate, being open to, filled by and voted for by every Australian citizen.
Mr Snowdon interjecting—
Ms Catherine King interjecting —
Dr Chalmers interjecting —
The level of interjections is too high. The members for Lingiari, Ballarat and Rankin are warned.
Will the Prime Minister update the House on how the government's plan for lower taxes will benefit families and businesses, including in my electorate of Dunkley? Is the Prime Minister aware of any alternative approaches?
I thank the honourable member for his question. Last year there were 403,000 new jobs, more than 1,100 jobs a day, and three-quarters of them full time. A year ago the Leader of the Opposition said 2017 was going to be about 'jobs, jobs, jobs'. Well, you know what? It was! And the jobs were created by the very policies that he opposes. The reality is that our economic leadership is delivering the dividends that Australians deserve in stronger growth and more jobs. We've seen this again today in the latest NAB business survey—confidence is up another two points, now up 12, which is well above the long-run average. Confidence, as all honourable members know, is absolutely critical. It drives investment, and investment leads to more jobs.
The big difference between our side and the Labor side is that we have one policy after another which focus on delivering stronger economic growth, including reducing tax for small and medium family owned businesses, moving on to all businesses. We know—as the Labor Party used to say all the time and as they said at some length after the 2010 budget—if you reduce business tax, you get more investment. If you have more investment, you get more jobs. That seemed to be well understood. We know that we operate in a competitive global environment. With the US going down to 21 per cent company tax and with other countries reducing their business tax, we now find Australia is one of the very highest business-taxing countries in the OECD.
Why do we think that we can effectively compete when we ask people to pay much higher taxes here on business than they do in other comparable locations for investment? We've got those policies, we've got our investment allowance and we've got our infrastructure commitments. Labor does not have one policy which will encourage one company to invest one dollar or hire one employee. What they do offer, however, is higher taxes on businesses, on investments, on individuals and on family businesses. They will have a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target, which they've never bothered to cost and which we know will deliver higher electricity prices, putting more and more pressure on families and businesses. The reality is this: Labor does not have one policy which will create one dollar of investment, one new employee or one job. That is where the gulf between us lies right now. We are for investment. We're for jobs. We're for growth. We're for opportunities. Labor opposes them all.
My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to reports on Sky News that the Prime Minister has been ringing National Party members to gauge support for the Deputy Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister still retain confidence in his Deputy Prime Minister?
I'm touched by the Leader of the Opposition's devotion to Sky News—that must be a new one. The answer to the question at the end of his question is yes.
My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer please update the House on how the government's enterprise tax plan is benefitting small- and medium-sized businesses and their hardworking employees, including in my electorate of Petrie? Is the Treasurer aware of any threats to Australia's small- and medium-sized businesses.
I thank the member for Petrie for his question. The Turnbull government is implementing the plan that we took to the last election to grow the Australian economy, which is seeing hundreds of thousands of Australians get off welfare and get into work. More than 950,000 jobs have been created under the coalition government. What this government is building is a working nation, and what Labor wants to build is a welfare nation. That's the difference between the Labor Party and the Liberal and National Parties. We're about seeing people get into jobs to create and build their own destinies.
We also welcomed today the further news about the increased confidence and conditions that we're seeing in business. But we do know this: if you make businesses, through higher taxes, pay more money to the government, it makes it harder for them to pay higher wages to Australian workers. That's why the Labor Party's opposition to us lowering taxes means that the Labor Party is standing between Australian workers and an increase in their wages. That's who's standing in the way of higher wages in this country for workers working hard: the Labor Party. That's who's standing in the way. Now, a key part of our plan has been to deliver and legislate tax cuts for small- and medium-sized businesses. They have been delivered and we are seeing the benefits of those for those small- and medium-sized businesses.
But it is sad to know that the member for Rankin has told the West Australian today that the Labor Party does not support tax cuts for businesses with turnovers greater than $2 million. He said this very clearly. He told the West Australian that Labor only supports tax cuts for genuinely small businesses with a turnover below $2 million—
Honourable members interjecting—
What that means is that Labor are going to strip away tax cuts for businesses with turnovers between $2 million and $50 million. Now, for a company like East Coast Bullbars, in the electorate of the member for Petrie, which employs 100 Australian workers, that's bad news, because Labor are going to take away the tax cuts for that business that they already have. Last year, I and the member for Gilmore visited Aaron and Val Baker at Flooring Xtra. They have worked hard at their business. They've sold more of their product and they've got their turnover above $2 million now. They have a turnover of around $3 million. It is bad news for them and their 10 workers—hardly Google, hardly a multinational.
Ms Chesters interjecting—
Ms Butler interjecting—
The members for Bendigo and Griffith are warned!
These are the small businesses that are putting sweat equity into their businesses, and they should not have their tax cuts ripped away by the shadow Treasurer, who I note is also the shadow minister for small business. He is the shadow minister for making business smaller. (Time expired)
My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister stand by statements from his office that clause 2.23 of the Statement of Ministerial Standards was not breached with respect to the appointment made last year to the ministerial office of Senator Canavan, the reappointment to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister and, finally, the appointment to the office of the National Party Whip?
Mr Sukkar interjecting—
The member for Deakin will cease interjecting—
Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—
as will the member for McEwen. The Prime Minister has the call.
The honourable member refers to some statements attributed to a spokesman of mine yesterday. Those statements, I'm advised, followed a background discussion. They were not authorised by me, but I will answer the question. As the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed in his statement of Saturday, 10 February, and again in his statement this morning, The Nationals are responsible for decisions relating to staffing the office of Nationals members. He confirmed that the Prime Minister's office has an administrative role in informing the Department of Finance of changes. All ministers are bound by the ministerial standards.
Opposition members interjecting—
The Prime Minister will pause for a second and resume his seat. I'm going to make it very clear: members expect me to listen to the question, to adjudicate on it and to listen to the answer, which often is then the subject of further questions. My level of tolerance for interjections is now very low. Everyone has fair warning. The Prime Minister has the call.
All ministers are bound by the ministerial standards. The Deputy Prime Minister has today explained his circumstances as it relates to the standards, and I refer you to that statement. I would add that whether somebody is a partner of another for the purposes of clause 2.23 is, of course, a question of fact. The facts of the relationship which you're referring to are, of course, known to the Deputy Prime Minister. It is his responsibility to address it and comply with the standards, and he addressed that in his statement today.
I inform the House that we have joining us in the gallery this afternoon the Hon. Gerald McCarthy, a minister in the Northern Territory government, and Mr Gary Higgins, the Leader of the Opposition. On behalf of the House, I extend to you a very warm welcome.
Honourable members: Hear, hear!
Prime Minister, surely there's a disconnect between apologies and realities: Australia's population, two per cent Indigenous; prisons, 27 per cent Indigenous; life expectancy, 82, but 71 for Indigenous; house occupancy, three, but 13 for Indigenous. Why? Whitefellas can drink and blackfellas can't. No blue card, so no job. Indigenous house builders are only 12 per cent blackfellas. Aboriginal lands are 21 per cent of Australia—no title deeds, so can't own land, so can't borrow money and so can't have an economy. Prime Minister: racial laws banned, locals build houses, title deeds issued, gap is closed, surely?
Honourable members interjecting—
Members on both sides! Just before I call the Prime Minister, which I'm being very generous in doing: I've cautioned the member for Kennedy before about this being question time and not statement time. I'm going to be very lenient and say that I did hear a 'why' in there and I'll ask the Prime Minister to address it.
In the words of Tony Jones, I think I should take that as a comment rather than as a question! But let me respond to the honourable member in this way. The gap that we need to close is a very, very substantial one. We know that. We had a Closing the gap report yesterday that shows that three of the targets are on track, but it says something about the challenges we face that having three out of seven on track is the best result we've had since 2011.
We are absolutely committed to ensuring that we work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. In every aspect of our policy we are doing so, I believe, more and more effectively than ever. I thank the honourable member for his observations, and we'll continue our work. I know we have a common commitment, whatever our difference may be on constitutional matters, in respect of the substantive objectives and targets covered by Closing the Gap and the additional targets that will develop out of the Closing the Gap Refresh. I know we're all committed to that, and I look forward to working with the honourable member and all other members towards achieving that goal.
My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. Will the Deputy Prime Minister outline to the House how the coalition government's investment in road and rail infrastructure in Victoria will drive employment opportunities for hardworking Australians? Is he aware of alternative approaches?
I thank the member for his question and note his intense interest in agriculture and how important it is in agriculture to make sure that we have the proper intermodal capacity for the efficient transport of bulk commodities such as wheat, cotton, beef and lamb and also in the mineral provinces for coal and for iron ore. That is why this government has had a substantial investment in rail infrastructure. For $220 million Murray Basin freight rail standardises 1,130 kilometre of rail to Geelong. It upgrades to 21 tonnes the standard gauge axle load, increasing train payloads from 300 tonnes to 400 tonnes. It's a 15 per cent productivity efficiency. Under this there'll be 20,000 fewer trucks on the road. It directly benefits the towns of Ulta, Mildura, Ouyen, Murrayville, Woomelang, Birchip, Donald, Ultima, Quambatook, Boort, Dunolly, Maryborough, Ballarat and Ararat.
This is part of $4.5 billion for road and rail works for Victoria, including the $1.42 billion Victorian Regional Rail Revival Program. With this regional rail revival there is an extra $20.2 million on top of the Murray Basin Rail Project—the Ballarat rail line upgrade, the Gippsland rail line upgrade, the Warrnambool rail line upgrade, the north-east rail upgrade, the Geelong rail upgrade, the Avon River Bridge upgrade and the Bendigo rail line upgrade.
I know that the Labor Party has a great aversion to the upgrade of rail. That's why they have no money on the table for the Inland Rail, apart from saying that it's a useful idea. And of course one of the greatest infrastructure projects of our nation is the Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail. I know that if the member for Grayndler had an absolute belief in it he would come to the dispatch box—
Ms Chesters interjecting—
The member for Bendigo has been warned, and she'll leave under 94(a).
The member for Bendigo then left the chamber.
and commit the Labor Party to its construction with the numbers in the budget to show for it.
Why don't you ask me a question?
The member for Grayndler has just asked me why I don't ask him a question. I know he's a little bit confused about this, but we're the government and he's the opposition. He's actually supposed to ask us a question. I know he'll get to it soon, if the Leader of the Opposition will let him. The member for Grayndler, who wants me to ask him a question—it's obviously so that he can put himself before the Australian people as a better leader than the current Leader of the Opposition.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister satisfied that the Deputy Prime Minister's allocation of a staffing position, first in the ministerial office of Senator Canavan, then in his own office and then in the office of the Nationals whip, meets the high standards expected of his ministers?
I thank the honourable member for his question. As I said earlier, under the coalition arrangements the Nationals have a share of the personal staff pool that is available to the government, and the allocation or distribution of those staff between offices in the National Party, whether it's ministers or others, is a matter for the National Party. My office performs an essentially administrative role in advising that to the Department of Finance. I'm advised that is the way it has operated—
Mr Champion interjecting—
The Prime Minister will pause for a second. I couldn't have been clearer before. The member for Wakefield will leave under 94(a). The member for Gorton is ready to follow him very quickly and a number of others.
The member for W ake field then left the chamber.
That is how it operates, and I'm advised that's how it's operated for many years.
Mr Dreyfus interjecting—
The member for Isaacs will leave under 94(a).
The member for Isaacs then left the chamber.
My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry. Will the minister outline to the House how the government's investment in defence industry projects like the Joint Strike Fighter will generate thousands of jobs for hardworking Australians, create a stronger economy and ensure our national security? How does this compare with other approaches?
I thank the member for Corangamite for her question. I know she has a particular interest in the success of the Joint Strike Fighter program because one of the companies that's had the most success out of it is Marand, which is a company that has a presence both in south-eastern Melbourne and in Geelong, where they employ at least 50 local residents of her seat, working very hard.
Today is a really important day in the Joint Strike Fighter program. It's a red-letter day because we passed over a billion dollars worth of exports because of the Joint Strike Fighter program. It's an incredible result. We'd hoped to pass a billion dollars, but we're there earlier than we'd expected, and by 2023 we should be at over $2 billion worth of exports. The Turnbull government's agenda around defence industry—
Mr Dutton interjecting—
The Minister for Home Affairs will cease interjecting.
around highly advanced technological jobs in defence industry is clearly working. This is a national project that employs around 5,000 Australians, and that number will only grow. We in the Turnbull government have decided that if we're going to have the biggest build-up of our military capability in our peacetime history—$200 billion—while capability will always be number 1, number 2 should be Australian industry content, driving jobs, investment, growth and research. Because we on this side of the House believe in growing the economy and having jobs for the economy, whereas the Labor Party only has policies to try and out-green the Greens in Batman.
This is also a national project, so companies all around Australia are benefitting, companies like AW Bell in Dandenong South, in the member for Isaacs' electorate, who make the chassis for the electrical eyes of the joint strike fighters; Heat Treatment Australia, at Coopers Plains in Moreton, who do testing and product-proving services; Marand at Moorabbin, as I've already talked about, which is in the member for Maribyrnong's electorate, who do the vertical tails for the Joint Strike Fighter; and Ferra Engineering in Bonner, which is a very famous example—they've doubled their size because of our investments in the Joint Strike Fighter; they make the holsters for the missiles.
We've also won the right to be the regional hub for the Asia-Pacific for the maintenance, repair, overhaul and upgrade of the joint strike fighters. That means companies like BAE in Newcastle, in the member for Paterson's electorate, will be doing the warehousing and HI Fraser, in the member for Mackellar's electorate, will be doing the maintaining of refuelling valves and auxiliary power systems—driving jobs, driving investment and driving high-tech, skilled workers. It's a great outcome today. Congratulations to everyone involved in it. (Time expired)
My question's to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister explain the definition of 'partner' for the purposes of clause 2.23 of the Prime Minister's own Statement of Ministerial Standards?
'Partner' is not defined in the relevant ministerial standards, but the standard definition—for example, the Department of Human Services says:
… a person is considered to be your partner if you and the person are living together, or usually live together, and are:
Centrelink 'considers a person to be in a de facto relationship from the time they commence living with another person as a member of a couple'. There are some definitions for you.
My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Can the minister update the house on the United States resettlement program? Can the minister also inform the House how the government's strong and consistent policies on border control are assisting in this outcome?
I thank the honourable member very much for his question and thank him for his interest. Like all of those on this side of the parliament—those who are interested in cleaning up Labor's mess in relation to border protection—the fact is that under Labor 50,000 people came on 800 boats and, tragically, 1,200 people drowned at sea.
Ms Plibersek interjecting—
The Labor Party can interject all they like. They can show all this indignation, as the member for Sydney's currently showing. The fact is that those people—men, women and children—tragically drowned at sea. Labor can't walk away from that. They were working in concert with the Greens at the time. That is the consequence of having undone the work of the Howard government.
I didn't put people on Manus and Nauru, but it is my job to get them off—and we are getting them off—Manus and Nauru. The most important aspect of this is that we are not replacing the vacancies with new arrivals, which is exactly what would happen if the Labor Party were in government today. This Leader of the Opposition is the weakest Labor leader since Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard messed up John Howard's policy on stopping the boats. When John Howard left office in 2007, there were four people in detention—including no children. The fact is that the numbers ramped up and if the Labor Party is elected at the next election the boats will recommence. Tragically, the deaths at sea will recommence. Labor, as I say, can scoff all they like, but that is the reality of the situation. History demonstrates it and we have no doubt that that's what would be provided for under a Labor government.
I'm very proud of the fact that, under this Prime Minister, we were able to negotiate an arrangement with the United States, bearing in mind that many people on Manus—and on Nauru, for that matter—unless they voluntarily consent to go to a third country, cannot be removed to that country. We've been very clear that if they come to our country—and the intelligence demonstrates this—that is a very prime opportunity for people smugglers to again market Australia as being open for people to arrive on boats. The Prime Minister brokered a deal with President Obama. It has been honoured, to his credit, by President Trump, and I'm pleased to announce that we have now seen the departure of 135 refugees to date, including in the last 72 hours some people who have been lifted from Manus and from Nauru.
This cost us billions and billions of dollars but, frankly, it pales into insignificance compared to the lives that were lost at sea. We have now had almost four years since a successful people smuggling venture. We've gotten 8,000 children out of detention. We've closed 17 detention centres. But the fact that this Leader of the Opposition—for crass political purposes in the seat of Batman, where there's an upcoming by-election—has completely sold out the success of Operation Sovereign Borders says more about him than anything else.
My question is to the Prime Minister. While the allocation of certain staff has been delegated to the National Party, the enforcement of the Prime Minister's Statement of Ministerial Standards is the sole responsibility of the Prime Minister. So I ask: does the Prime Minister have complete confidence that the Deputy Prime Minister's allocation of staffing positions meets the high standards expected of his ministers?
The honourable member has not made any case to support the proposition that the staff movements he's referring to were in breach of the ministerial code. The question of whether the staff member concerned was a partner is a question of fact, as I said in response to the member for Isaacs. The Deputy Prime Minister has set out the facts. Members can form their own conclusion about that, but I've provided the description of 'partner'. It is essentially a cohabitation, a marriage-like relationship, hence the term 'marriage or de facto'. I think the circumstances are clear, but the honourable member has not been able to establish a breach of the ministerial standards or allege one. If he wishes to do so, he obviously, has the opportunity here.
I'm afraid my question's pretty mundane. My question is to the Minister for Small and Family Business, the Work Place and Deregulation. Will the minister update the House on action the coalition government is taking to support businesses, including small and family businesses, so that they have the confidence they need to grow and employ more hardworking Australians? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?
I thank the member for McMillan for his question. It's only mundane on that side of the chamber. On this side of the chamber, the Treasurer was onto something. I'm the minister responsible for making small and family businesses bigger. My shadow, the shadow Treasurer, would be the minister responsible under Labor's plan for making small and family businesses smaller. He has never put his hand in his own pocket and run one; in fact the only way I think you would ever see the member for McMahon run a small business is if he got given a big one to start with.
I thank the member for McMillan for his question, and our plan is simple: 3.2 million small and family businesses are already seeing the benefits from our enterprise tax plan tax cuts. What's happening as a result? A record year of employment. What are businesses doing? What they've always done: reinvesting in themselves, growing and employing people—403,100; 75 per cent of them full-time.
It's not just our economic policies; there are employment policies that run hand in hand with this, such as the Youth Jobs PaTH, coming up to its first anniversary. Those opposite laugh, but the results are in: 63 per cent of the people that have participated in some aspect of PaTH in the past 12 months have received employment; nearly 70 per cent of the young people that have taken internships have found employment. I rang Cheryl this morning from Knowles panelbeating shop in the member for McMillan's electorate. We got the courtesies out of the way—she was very concerned that Stu was okay. Cheryl's run the business for 16 years—six employees. Her most recent is Shenille, an 18-year-old female who has started from a transition to PaTH program and is now employed as a spray painter in that business—an outstanding result.
This is an example of the plan across the board that is being implemented on this side of the House. What do we have opposite? We have a plan that is constructed by Sally McManus, repeated by the member for Gorton and then becomes Labor Party policy under the Leader of the Opposition. If they get elected onto the benches on this side, our economy would fall in a hole. The last year that they were actually in charge of the economy, jobs grew by 89,300 in total. The number of full-time jobs actually fell. We have a plan. We're implementing it. It's working. The results are in across the board, and we won't stop.
Thank you Mr Speaker. My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. I refer to the coalition government's budget papers and the final budget outcome document. Is the infrastructure minister aware that the difference between what was promised in each of the budget papers and what was actually invested in Queensland's infrastructure is $1.0289 billion? How does the minister explain this over one billion dollar cut in real terms just in Queensland's infrastructure; and how many jobs for Queenslanders would have been created had this investment actually occurred and not just been promised?
Mr Buchholz interjecting—
Mr Pyne interjecting—
The member for Wright will cease interjecting, as will the Leader of the House.
I thank the honourable member for his question, and note that, in equity and grant funding, the coalition has spent far more than the Labor Party ever spent in any year. He mentions Queensland, and I'm happy to go through some of the investments that are happening in Queensland. Obviously, there is the Bruce Highway, and the $6.7 billion which we're putting towards that, of a total funding of an $8.5 billion project. We're also noting the M1 Pacific Motorway, where we are putting $225 million towards a total funding of $402 million, and the Gateway Upgrade North, where we are putting in close to a billion dollars, $914.2 million, towards a $1.142 billion project. There is the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing; this is something that is vitally important to the member for Groom and was also fought for by the former member for Groom, Ian Macfarlane. What we're seeing there is about a $1.1 billion investment by the Commonwealth, with close to, I think, a $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion final cost. There is the Warrego Highway upgrade. We were out there the other day with the Prime Minister, seeing $508 million of Commonwealth money going to a $635 million project. The member for Grayndler also—
The Deputy Prime Minister will just resume his seat for a second.
Mr Perrett interjecting—
The member for Moreton will cease interjecting. The member for Grayndler on a point of order?
On direct relevance: my question went very specifically to the billion-dollar cut in real terms that has occurred between what they promised and what they have delivered.
I thank the member for Grayndler; if he could resume his seat.
Mr Howarth interjecting—
The member for Petrie will cease interjecting. I've listened very closely, obviously, to the answer so far. The Deputy Prime Minister might not be answering the question in the way the member for Grayndler would prefer, but he is relevant.
I might just close by saying that, when the member for Grayndler was both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, in his final budget infrastructure spending went down.
My question is to the Minister for Urban Infrastructure and Cities. Would the minister update the House on how the coalition's Infrastructure Investment Program is helping to drive investment in our urban areas and generate more and better-paid jobs for hardworking Australians? Minister, how is this plan benefiting communities in my electorate of Boothby and across South Australia more broadly?
I do thank the member for Boothby, who is a terrific champion for urban infrastructure, including in her electorate. And why wouldn't she be? Thanks to her advocacy, the Oaklands Crossing, a very important project—$174 million; $95 million from the Commonwealth—which had been talked about for decades is, thanks to the member for Boothby, being delivered; in fact, a major contract was awarded in January this year. This is a project which will materially reduce the delays on Morphett Road for the 42,000 vehicles which use that road every day. During peak hours, at the moment, the boom gates are down for 25 per cent of the time, and replacing this with a rail underpass is going to produce terrific productivity benefits and terrific benefits for the people of Adelaide and the people of Boothby. Along with that there is the Flinders Link Project: $43 million from the Turnbull government to connect the Flinders University medical centre to the Adelaide metropolitan rail network.
That is just some of the extraordinary scale of infrastructure investment happening in Adelaide. And the member has been a very strong advocate. One point six billion dollars of Commonwealth money is going into three enormous projects on the north-south corridor, averaging 1,330 jobs a year: $885 million on the northern connector, 80 per cent funded by the Turnbull government; the Darlington project, for $620 million; again, that is 80 per cent funded by the Turnbull government—by the federal coalition.
I'll tell you what: if you had to wait to rely on state Labor to deliver these projects, you'd be waiting a very long time. But, thanks to the Turnbull government, we are delivering in Adelaide, in SA, as part of an infrastructure spend of $9 billion in 2017-18 and $10 billion in 2018-19, and as part of a massive infrastructure spend all around the country. The Deputy Prime Minister has just run through some of the projects, but there is such an enormous list that I can find plenty of others to mention: the M80 Ring Road in Melbourne, the Tullamarine Freeway in Melbourne, NorthLink in Western Australia, the Perth Airport-Forrestfield link, the METRONET project in Perth—$792 million of Commonwealth money—the two projects on the M1 Pacific Motorway in Queensland, and Queensland's Gateway Upgrade North. These are delivering jobs in enormous numbers. Western Sydney Airport will be responsible for 11,000 jobs. At the same time, what does state Labor do in state after state? They cancel projects. They cancelled the East West Link in Victoria and they cancelled the Perth Freight Link in Western Australia, and the member for Grayndler tried to walk away from WestConnex in the 2016 election. (Time expired)
My question is again addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure. I ask the Deputy Prime Minister why, at the very time the national road toll has been increasing, after decades of decline, the budget papers show that, of the $232 million allocated to the heavy vehicle safety program over the last four years, only $125 million, or half, was actually invested? How many additional truck rest stops could have been built if this allocation had actually been invested?
I thank the honourable member for his question. Might I remind the House that, in Labor's last budget, 2013 to 2015-16, the forward estimates, they had $18.9 billion allocated. In MYEFO, in our own budget for the coalition, from 2017-18 to 2020-21 we have $26.5 billion. That is substantially more than the Labor Party, and that's because the Labor Party are great at—
Mr Dutton interjecting—
The Minister for Home Affairs will cease interjecting. The Deputy Prime Minister has the call.
The Labor Party are so good at talking about what they would do, whilst they're in opposition, but they're so hopeless at delivering when they're in government. I understand how important road issues are. We understand absolutely how vitally important it is to reduce the road toll, and we have been successful in reducing the road toll. We need to reduce it by more. We are not meeting our targets, but we are reducing the road toll. We reduce the road toll by building better roads. That's why, from Warren Truss forward, we've invested huge amounts in upgrading—the duplication of the Pacific Motorway, something that was instigated after a tragic bus accident near, I think, Maxwell.
I don't know why you would interrupt that.
The Deputy Prime Minister will resume his seat. The member for Grayndler.
Mr Speaker, on a point of order: this was a very specific question. It went to—
On relevance.
rest stops—the heavy vehicle safety program—
The member for Grayndler will resume his seat. I understand the point he's seeking to make, and others on my left are seeking to make. The question was specific, but it referred to the road toll and the Deputy Prime Minister is referring to the road toll and the government's measures to deal with it. He's in order.
I don't thank him for his interjection but let's address it. We have been working towards making roads safer, whether it's the Bruce Highway, whether it's the Warrego Highway, whether it's the Pacific Highway, whether it's the Princes Highway. We are doing our very best to make our roads safer. And, although they always make fun of it, the construction of things such as the inland rail take a large amount of container traffic off the roads and onto rail and make the roads safer.
In the particular circumstances of how states are working with us and want to reallocate funds, that is a question that has to be addressed not only to the federal government but also to state governments—how they disburse funds. What I can say is that, if you look at the Labor Party's record, especially with owner-operator drivers in the trucking industry, they have absolutely nothing to be proud of.
My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister update the House on the cashless debit card and the government's plans to expand its operation into new regions? How has the government's approach been received by local communities, including in my electorate of O'Connor?
Can I thank the member for his question, and I know that he will welcome the news overnight that the cashless debit card legislation went through the Senate. He'll welcome the support from this side, and he'll welcome the support from the crossbenchers, but I know he'll be disappointed that the Labor Party and the Greens weren't able to support it in the Senate last night. It has to come back to the House—it will probably come back today—so I would ask the Labor Party to reconsider their position, because not only do we want to roll this out in Kalgoorlie but we'd also like to roll it out in Hinkler as well. Their support would be invaluable in that cause.
The reason we want to roll out the cashless debit card is because it is making a difference to people's lives on the ground. Those communities were looking for outcomes; they were sick of being told that policies would work when they weren't working. I quote, from the Senate inquiry into the bill in late 2017, the Shire of Leonora CEO, Mr Jim Epis, who said:
In the last three years, it has been devastating to see the escalation of antisocial behaviour between individuals caused by alcohol and drugs. This has often reached crisis levels.
The Shire of Laverton's president, Mr Patrick Hill, told the committee: 'We are at wit's end. We want to see a safe community. We don't want to see this abuse. We don't want to see kids running around with dirty nappies on for a couple of days and no clothes.' We need to do something. We know that the cashless debit card won't be the panacea for all these social issues, but we know, if we trial it, if we measure it, if we make sure we follow up, if we put the support service around it, it could make a big difference, and that's why we want to trial it.
Can I say to the Attorney-General, can I say to Minister Alan Tudge, can I say to the member for O'Connor, can I say to the member for Hinkler: thank you for your advocacy on behalf of this card, because when we're seeing a reduction in the use of alcohol by nearly 50 per cent, when we're seeing a reduction in drug use of nearly 50 per cent, when we're seeing a reduction in gambling of nearly 40 per cent, we can put our hands on our hearts and say, 'At least we are trying something new.'
My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. Deputy Prime Minister, why do the budget papers show that, of the $80 million allocated to the Northern Australia Beef Roads Program, less than half has actually been invested upgrading the roads the cattle industry rely on? How much of that money was spent in the Northern Territory, and how many kilometres of roads were addressed?
I thank the member for Lingiari for his question and note that the Australian government has committed $1.1 billion from 2013-14 to 2020-21 to fund infrastructure projects in the Northern Territory, including the $177 million in 2017-18. This is 1.9 per cent of national infrastructure investment for the period. The beef roads program has been going ahead with Minister Canavan and one of the key areas we are looking at there is, of course, The Outback Way from Winton to Laverton, to which the beef road package contributed about another $25 million. This program is vitally important. It's great to be part of a government that actually had the initiative to do the beef roads program.
The Deputy Prime Minister will resume his seat. Has the Deputy Prime Minister concluded his answer? Okay, I'll go to the member for Grey.
My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister update the House on how the Turnbull government's investment in South Australia's health care is benefitting patients? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches that undermine the delivery of care for those patients?
I thank the member for Grey, who's been a passionate advocate of rural mental health. He's fought hard for the new Whyalla headspace, which he recently announced and which is shortly about to open. That is in addition to other regional headspaces around the country, including in Katherine, Melton, Grafton and so many other areas. We've seen record bulk-billing rates across Australia of 85.9 per cent, but they are even higher, at 86.4 per cent, across his electorate. South Australian hospitals have also seen, on average, a 26 per cent increase in Commonwealth funding over the course of this government's time in office compared to six per cent from the state Labor government. In his electorate, the figure is even higher. There has been a 31½ per cent increase in Commonwealth hospital funding. So, he's been a great advocate for rural mental health and rural hospital and bulk-billing services—and he's been able to deliver.
However, the member for Grey asked whether or not there are any alternatives. There are in South Australia. What we have seen in South Australia is a government, at the state level, which has been utterly incapable of managing its own hospital service. We've seen the Royal Adelaide Hospital, which was meant to be a great service to the people, become, instead, a catastrophic Taj Mahal. Not even the member for Grayndler would pretend that he built that one! How do we know that? Because this was going to be a $1.7 billion building. It's now over $2.3 billion. That's a $640 million cost blowout. It was 17 months late. It's been a failure on many, many fronts.
We saw yesterday that not only could the South Australian government not keep the lights on at the Flinders Medical Centre, with catastrophic results for the patients involved, not only could they not keep the lights on at the Royal Adelaide Hospital; now we have the example that, while they pledged two years ago to deliver mental health care and spaces within the Royal Adelaide Hospital, last week there was a scandal where a prisoner was shackled to an emergency department bed for 85 hours—85 hours in a brand new public hospital which did not have the beds that they promised repeatedly they would deliver. This is catastrophic hospital mismanagement.
At the same time, we have seen Premier Weatherill walk away from a $1½ billion increase in hospital funding in order to try and make some petty political point on the eve of the South Australian election instead of standing up for patients. Let's be clear: they can't keep the lights on; they couldn't build the hospital on time; they can't keep the patients safe. That is Labor's approach to hospitals. In the end, they are 'medi-frauds' and they are hospital frauds, whether it's at a federal or state level.
My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, today the leader of the National Party has resigned. I understand he's also a New Zealander named Bill English. Would the Prime Minister, perhaps for the first time this week, like to reflect on the legacy of a former leader of the National Party?
Honourable members interjecting—
Members on both sides!
Your patience is an example to us all, Mr Speaker. I thank the honourable member for his question and, while his motives are hardly pure in asking it, I do want to take the opportunity—and I thank him for that—to reflect on Bill English's great career as finance minister, their equivalent of Treasurer and, of course, as Prime Minister of New Zealand.
The John Key/Bill English coalition, leading the Nationals in New Zealand, inherited an economy that was on its knees and a budget that was in deficit. They had many challenges. While we reflect on our challenges in Australia from time to time, New Zealand, which has been described in The Economist as the 'Saudi Arabia of milk', isn't blessed with the same natural resources or population that Australia has. So it was a big challenge, and they did an extraordinary job. They brought the budget back into balance; they delivered stronger economic growth. The so-called brain drain of Kiwis coming across the ditch to Australia started to reverse, and it really has been a terrific performance.
I'm happy to take the opportunity to say that Bill English did an outstanding job as finance minister and Prime Minister. He is a great friend of Australia. The job they did in New Zealand is something that has been an example to us. I just want to remind honourable members that a big part of their economic reform agenda was reducing business taxes. They recognised that, in order to attract investment, they had to increase the return on investment. They did that. New Zealand has got many advantages but it doesn't have all the economic advantages that Australia has—that's for sure. That National government did an outstanding job. Bill English is a great New Zealander, he's a great friend of Australia. I know that all honourable members wish him and his wife, Mary, and their family the very best as they embark on their new adventures. I've been in touch with Bill today; Lucy and I are looking forward to seeing them in Sydney soon.
On that cheerful trans-Tasman note, I'll ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.
I seek leave to make a personal explanation.
Does the member claim to have been misrepresented?
I most certainly do. I seek to correct misrepresentation that has been made by the member for Wakefield in the chamber earlier today. The member stated the Nick Xenophon Team did a number of sweetheart deals, including a deal to cut funding to South Australian schools by $210 million, and I refute these allegations. The member for Wakefield also implied I misrepresented the position of the Nick Xenophon Team with regard to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017. The member was correct when he quoted my words. I reiterate:
The Nick Xenophon team cannot support this bill in its current form until it can be conclusively determined with solid evidence that the Cashless Debit Card is actually effective.
The Nick Xenophon Team did not support the bill in its original form, which would have seen a potential rollout—
The member for Mayo might pause for a second. She needs to go to where she believes she has been misrepresented by the member for Wakefield.
The member for Wakefield said that we made 'a dirty deal with government'. This was different to the words that I used in the debate of the bill. I believe it is incorrect and a misrepresentation of me and the Nick Xenophon Team.
I have received a letter from the honourable member for Ballarat proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:
The Government making healthcare more expensive and less accessible for Australians.
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—
There is no better example of this government's unfair priorities than their defence of big business tax cuts and big insurer profits at the same time as they're making health care more expensive and less accessible for every Australian. Everywhere you turn, this government is making it harder for Australians to get the healthcare that they need: when they visit a GP, when they need to see a specialist, when they pay for private health insurance or when they need to visit an emergency department of a public hospital. In the choice between protecting the profits of big business and protecting the health of Australians, this government always puts Australians last.
And they cannot be trusted when it comes to Medicare. Who could forget the Prime Minister, the day before the last election, promising that no Australian would pay more to see a GP due to their Medicare freeze? I can't say in this place the word that I would like to say about that, but, suffice it to say, it was a gross untruth. In every state and territory, out-of-pocket costs to visit a GP have gone up and up since the election. Since the Liberals were elected in 2013, they have managed to implement their GP tax by stealth. In my home state of Victoria, patients are now paying $7.70 more out of their own pockets to see a GP than in December 2013.
The worst part is that this Prime Minister has yet to lift a single part of his Medicare freeze. The rebates for GPs, for specialists and for allied health services all remain frozen. As of today, every single part of this government's freeze on patient rebates remains—every single part of it—and we know that the freeze won't be fully lifted until 2020. After the election, the Prime Minister pretended to have listened to the people, pretended that he'd learnt his lesson. But Australians will go to the next election with parts of this government's Medicare freeze, which they rejected in 2016, still in place—proof that this government has not learnt a single thing.
Mr Hunt interjecting—
I hear Mr Medi-no-care at the table here. Mr Medi-no-care likes to pretend that he's actually got something to say about policy. He's all politics and no substance, this Minister for Health over here, trying to pretend that he's actually done something about it.
The government has cut $2.2 billion out of Medicare. That is what this government has done. That is on top of the savings and the cuts they had already made. This $2.2 billion cut from Medicare comes out of the pockets of patients every time one of them goes to the GP, every time they visit a specialist and every time they receive Medicare allied health services. This makes health care more expensive and less accessible for all Australians. It creates additional barriers for those who rely on our healthcare system the most and it stretches our hardworking GPs to do more and more with less and less. This is this government's legacy when it comes to health care.
Of course, for many families, the big part of healthcare affordability is the impact of private health insurance. But when we have a government that cares more about protecting the profits of insurers than they do about protecting consumers then family budgets will always lose. Premiums have increased by 27 per cent since the Liberals were elected in 2013, including the rise we're about to see in April. These increases have added an average $1,000 to the annual premium health bill of Australian families and older Australians. What does the health minister do? He wants us to congratulate him for that rise! He tries to get stories up in the local newspapers about what a great job he's done increasing private health insurance premiums yet again.
We know that so many Australians are questioning the value of their private health insurance. That's why, in 2017, private hospital coverage dropped to the lowest level since 2011. At the same time as ordinary families are struggling to make ends meet, the private health insurance industry is raking in $1.8 billion in pre-tax profits. That's what the industry is getting. But, while this government won't stand up to their private health insurance mates, while they continue to put profits before patients, the status quo will not change. As an example, the government gave the insurers more than $1 billion in savings, and they have still hit the Australian public with an increase that is twice CPI—and you think that is good enough.
Labor knows that the status quo is not acceptable. Something must be done to shift the balance back to consumers. That's why we're acting to make private health insurance fairer and more affordable. The minister says, 'We've really got them with us.' We don't want the private health insurers with us on this. We're actually on the side of the consumers. You're making it clear. You're backing the insurers; we're backing the Australian people every single day. That's why we're acting to make private health insurance fairer.
We will deliver cost-of-living relief to 13 million Australians through capping private health insurance premiums to two per cent a year for the first two years after we're elected and task the Productivity Commission with the biggest review of the industry in 20 years. Labor will deliver, to 1.7 million Australian families, an average saving of $340 to the family budget.
For years and years, Australians have seen their private health insurance premiums soar and the value of their private health insurance plummet. Private health insurance is no good if you can't use it when you need it most. However, under this government, we have seen people hit with increased out-of-pocket costs and gap payments. Ten years ago only 8.6 per cent of health insurance policies contained exclusions; today it's 40 per cent. Australians are paying a lot more for their health insurance policies and getting a lot less.
The best examples of the need for action on this come from our constituents, who we know are battling with pressures around the family budget and seeing firsthand the impact of this crisis. Alison, a mum from Mackay, wrote to me saying she'd cancelled her private health insurance, a family policy with Medibank Private, because she no longer sees the value in having private health insurance. She says, 'It's time the Australian government got together with insurance providers to review the whole private health insurance industry and come up with a system that provides more value to Australians.'
We are not apologising at all for our policies, because we have put consumers at the heart of our policies. You have put the private health insurance profits at the heart of yours. Of course, this government's approach of putting health and patients last wouldn't be complete without their appalling treatment of our public hospitals. Last week, we saw the government's secret plan to lock in seven years of public hospital cuts. It is an insult to Australian patients and more proof that this government cares more about defending a big-business tax cut than properly funding this nation's health system.
Elective surgery waiting times under this Prime Minister are the worst since records have been kept. Patients presenting to emergency departments requiring urgent medical attention are being left for longer, with only 66 per cent of urgent emergency department patients in 2016-17 seen within the recommended 30 minutes—another consecutive decline under this government. More than 50 per cent of public hospital doctors are working unsafe hours that put them at significant risk of fatigue, including 75 per cent of intensive care specialists, with the AMA saying the strain and the pressure on our public hospitals is having a detrimental impact on the health of their doctors.
The government is so out of touch that it claims that, by keeping the status quo when it comes to hospital funding and doing the minimal that they have to do in order to skate their way through what is a very, very significant policy area—the funding of our public hospitals—is a very generous offer. Whether it is cutting Medicare, cutting funding to public hospitals or failing to stand up to the big-profit health insurers, wherever you turn, this government cannot be trusted on health. They cannot be trusted.
Out-of-pocket costs to see a GP have never been higher. The Prime Minister has not dropped a single part of their freeze. The fact is that this government does not think that investing in the health of Australians is more important than investing in big business and giving them a tax handout. This government and this minister care nothing about Medicare. (Time expired)
This government has delivered the lowest premium rise in 17 years in private health, lower than every single year under Labor. Labor's average rise is 40 per cent higher than has occurred this year. They know—look at them. They see six per cent, 5.8 per cent, 5.6 per cent, 5.1 per cent, 5.6 per cent and 6.2 per cent as opposed to the 3.95 per cent that we've just delivered. Those are the actual rises, the actual premiums; the realities that consumers faced.
In the last year, we have embarked upon the biggest reform in private health insurance in a decade and it delivers the lowest changes in 17 years. But let us understand this: what they said last time they went into government was that they weren't going to touch private health insurance. They were not going to go near it. The then shadow minister, the member for Gellibrand, said on many occasions, for many months: 'Federal Labor has made it crystal clear that we're committed to retaining all of the private health insurance rebates, including the 30 per cent general rebate.' Then they axed it. Then they cut $4 billion from private health. They lied. They deceived. They told untruths. They misled the Australian public. What did the member for Sydney, the current Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party, say after they left government? 'How did I pay for it? I paid for it by targeting private health insurance.' You won't hear a clearer example of (a) hypocrisy, (b) dishonesty and (c) sheer hatred for private health insurance. They slashed the rebate and this time they will slash the rebate again.
All of this came about because the Leader of the Opposition, trying to be very smart, made a disastrous speech to the Press Club. In that speech, he sort of hinted that the private health insurance rebate might go. He had to walk back from that by breakfast the next morning, appearing on breakfast TV to say, 'We won't abolish it,' but he left open the potential and the plan to slash it. But, more than that, irrespective of what they do to the rebate, as they did last time, they also want to rip away the lowest cost premiums from those who are least capable of affording private health. They would take away what the rest of the industry calls 'basic'. If you've just reconfirmed that you want to get rid of basic policies, you've committed to a 16 per cent increase—
Ms Catherine King interjecting —
He just did. And, no, it's not. It's a 16 per cent increase in private health insurance premiums. Let us understand this: Labor have a plan, a proposal, an intention, a commitment to a 16 per cent increase in private health insurance premiums. That's what they did last time: they took an axe to the rebate. That's what they will do next time: take an axe to the rebate and put in place a 16 per cent rise in private health insurance. You may value private health insurance. Labor have never had a belief in it. They don't support it. They haven't supported it. The member for Sydney made it absolutely clear that she was proud of 'targeting' private health insurance.
There is the current policy—the disaster; the thought bubble. I didn't use those words myself. There is somebody called Mark Fitzgibbon, well known to the member for Hunter as his brother and also the head of NIB. What did he say? He described it as a 'thought bubble'. Most interestingly, the day before the private health insurers were informed of this, the member for Ballarat met with them and she told them there were no secret plans to cap private health. She told them—
Ms Catherine King interjecting—
Yes, I was, effectively—'There are no secret plans to cap private health.' Twenty-four hours later, she had to ring around and apologise, 'I'm sorry. It's not me. I know I said this yesterday.' This is one of the great humiliations for somebody who seeks to be the health minister of this country. Trust with that sector has been eroded. She knows and we know that this was a last-second attempt to fix up a disastrous Press Club speech. What has been the response? Forget us. Forget the major health insurers. This is what the CEO of the Teachers Union Health Fund, only last week, said:
To continue to make the products affordable and so the 2 per cent can be accommodated, insurers might reduce benefits for certain procedures or restrict them ...
Insurers would reduce benefits. In other words, gaps would go up, there would be a reduced number of procedures and choice would go down. Gaps up; choice down. What an assault on the health system in Australia—the very thing that they seek to support; the very thing that they pretend matters to them: lower out-of-pocket costs and better choice for consumers. They would take an axe to both of them.
This isn't just a bad policy; this is a disastrous policy, because it would drive people off private health insurance and therefore drive up public hospital waiting lists. It is very rare that you see the capacity to do damage to everybody with a policy but, on this occasion, the Leader of the Opposition's last-minute thought bubble and last-minute attempt to recover from a disastrous speech to the Press Club is dangerous policy that would have catastrophic impacts on public health, on private health and for patients. The people who would most suffer are the lowest income earners—the pensioners who are struggling to meet their payments. This is why we've embarked on the biggest reform in a decade, and we still have a lot more to do. They are the ones who will be most likely to need private health as they are older and they are the ones who therefore will be most likely to have higher out-of-pocket costs. This is an attack on the health and security of our pensioners and our seniors, and it is an extraordinary moment of policy failure on behalf of the Labor Party.
Then we go on to public hospitals. What we've seen is a $30 billion increase from $98 billion to $128 billion in what's being offered over the new five-year period as opposed to the current five-year period. What we see is an extraordinary increase already signed onto by Western Australian Labor. The Western Australian Labor government has signed onto this. The New South Wales government has signed onto it. After all the criticism, Queensland made it clear, Victoria also opened the door and we know that the ACT and the Northern Territory are on the way. This is what we see, despite those opposite calling around, trying to tell their Labor mates, 'Please, don't sign up.' What sort of parliamentarians are you when you try to stop a national deal by calling around state leaders? What sort of people are you when you do that? Despite that, we've seen that this has landed in an extraordinarily positive place and will deliver $30 billion of additional funding.
Labor, prior to the last election, liked to hint that they were going to add $57 billion. How much did they actually turn up with? They turned up with $2 billion. That represents four per cent of their pledged and promised initiatives—a 96 per cent failure rate. Anywhere else, that's a fail. But, I tell you what, these people don't even stack up in their wildest fantasies to our reality. Since the Prime Minister's agreement, there's been a $7.7 billion increase in public hospital funding under this government, and that's before you get to a $30 billion increase, from $98 billion to $128 billion. Those are the facts. They are the realities. Most significantly, when you go to what it means to patient care, we've also seen record bulk-billing numbers. Bulk-billing represents people being able to go to the doctor without having to pay, without having to put their hand in their pocket. We are up to 85.9 per cent. That is 3.2 per cent higher as a percentage of the population than it was when Labor left government.
What we see is increased hospital funding, record bulk-billing rates and the lowest private health insurance premium rate in 17 years. It is worth recalling Labor's private health insurance cost hikes of 5.8, 5.6, 5.1, 5.6 and 6.2 per cent. At the same time, they slashed the rebate. In the end, we believe in the public hospital system and we believe in Medicare. We've backed it with the reality of Medicare funding going from $23 billion to $24 billion to $26 billion to $28 billion. We've backed it with a $30 billion increase in public hospital funding. We've backed it with record bulk-billing rates, and we've backed it with the once-in-a-decade reforms that have delivered the lowest private health insurance changes in 17 years. We will protect private health from the acts and the price hikes on the other side. (Time expired)
I've just listened listen to the Minister for Health and I'm not surprised at all, after listening to his rebuttal of our MPI today, why people in my community—and, I suspect, across Australia—are simply not convinced by his rhetoric.
When I ask people what matters most to them come election time, inevitably, the first two issues that come front and centre of mind are health and education. On both matters, this government, the Turnbull government, has proven to be shifty time and time again, and voters can see through it. We saw that trickery again last Friday when the government tried to lock in seven years of hospital funding cuts to the states by pretending to offer them a few more dollars on top of the $50 billion that was cut in 2013 to make out that it's doing something. The smart premiers could see straight through it. I'm pleased that the Premier of South Australia is not prepared to accept less money for people in South Australia than was otherwise coming to South Australia had this government honoured the agreement and funding deal that we all expected.
The hospital funding cuts come at a time when hospitals across Australia are struggling to meet the service levels that are imposed upon them—service levels which come onto hospitals and, in particular, the outpatient service because people simply cannot afford to go to their GPs. In turn, because people can't afford to go to their GPs because the costs have increased as a result of this government's policies, they turn up at the outpatient's department and therefore there are waiting lists and queues there for people to get treatment.
I want to talk briefly about private health insurance, because the minister made a strong rebuttal of our claim that he has mismanaged that area of public health policy. Private health insurance has gone up 27 per cent during the time of this government, at a time when the CPI cost of living has been less than 10 per cent. It's almost three times more. The truth of the matter is that the private health insurance industry has been making good profits—$1.8 billion last year, with some of the companies making around 20 per cent on their money. As the member for Ballarat has quite rightly pointed out, when you look at the service that has been provided under those policies, 40 per cent of the policies today have exclusions compared to fewer than nine per cent only 10 years ago. So, consumers are not getting value for money because of this government's very policies.
I want to quote one example of a constituent who wrote to me in the last two weeks. She is a person who has been on a disability pension for 24 years and attends a private dialysis clinic every week. She does that in order to save the public health costs. She is a private health insurance patient on a pension writing to me because the pension increase is in no way keeping up with the increase in the cost of her private health insurance and she is now struggling. This is a person who doesn't have a lot of choice in life.
It goes a lot further than that. Today we acknowledge the 10th anniversary of the national apology. I say that because Indigenous life expectancy across Australia is some 10 years or more less than for most Australians. We know that people in the country, whether or not they're Indigenous, generally suffer from worse health than people in the cities. Given that some 500,000 Indigenous people live in the country, the situation is much more dire. The new president of the Rural Doctors Association of Australia said: 'The Medicare freeze has done some real damage to rural doctors'—this was said by the RDAA president only a couple of hours ago in this place. It highlights how out of touch this government is with respect to the hurt and pain it is inflicting on communities and the profession itself.
The reality is that out-of-pocket costs have gone up, and that in turn has pushed people into the public hospitals or caused people to simply not go to their doctor for themselves or their children when they should. That in turn means that, ultimately, the costs of the illness are going to increase because the illness will only get worse.
This is a government that not only is out of touch because it's got its priorities wrong—giving money to big business when health and education are being pushed to one side—but truly doesn't get that health care in this country is more expensive and less accessible because of its policies.
It's always a pleasure to engage in this 4 pm frolic where Labor desperately tries to get the topic of discussion away from jobs and the economy and back onto health care in the desperate hope that the Medi-flop campaign can be extended into another election term.
Opposition members interjecting—
For those who are barking over on the other side, the great frustration is that none of them have any economic training. When you don't have an understanding of health economics, home-spun wisdoms like capping insurance premiums seem like an awfully good idea. When you're sitting around a table at a Chinese restaurant table, capping insurance premiums at two per cent would be a fabulous idea—except that no-one has ever done it because they know it doesn't work. Of course, there's only one person over there with any economic training, but the Labor Party doesn't listen to the member for Fenner. They don't even listen to the one individual over there with some health experience. They don't listen to the member for Macarthur, who has had a genuine career in health. Actually walking down a hospital corridor is some basic prerequisite for knowing something about the health system—but you don't listen to him. His extension in the building is 2311. Just phone the guy and ask him: 'Is this a great idea?'
Maybe we should cap home insurance. Maybe we should cap car insurance. There is a very good reason that we don't do it—it has unintended second-round affects and it leads to insurers doing really bad things like not properly covering their customer base, cutting back on what they cover and ultimately damaging the people seeking insurance. When you live in the Labor world of insurance, where insurers are enemies, private health providers are enemies and we've got to slice into the premium and do it by capping, that's precisely what happens. What happens is what we have seen before when you allow the market to not be able to set that rate rise and you just pluck two per cent out of the air. Insurers game the system in a desperate way to survive and the poorest and most vulnerable miss out. On the other hand, health inflation—something those on the other side of the chamber do not understand—runs at 7.5 per cent. If you can get your increases down under that, that is in fact a victory. This government has done that—for the first time getting it well under that mark. When you get it down to 3.95 per cent, covering half of Australia's population, that's a victory.
Where does two per cent come from? It's not derived from the market; it's plucked out of thin air. When every insurer in the country tells you that that would be damn stupid, there must be something in it. They actually live in the health sector. They actually walk the corridors. They know how hospitals work. Ladies and gentlemen in the gallery, the most the collective over there know about the health system is when the visiting hours are at the local public hospital. None of these guys over there have ever walked the corridors of a hospital or popped a stethoscope around their neck. They just invented a two per cent PHI increase and wonder why—
Ms Catherine King interjecting—
When you see that big fat attractive button and you're advised to maybe not do it, the Labor Party will just press that button and see what happens—because there's no understanding of community rating and no understanding of lifetime health cover. This is a party that simply doesn't understand exclusions. When they see an exclusion of a primary healthcare product, they go, 'This patient's not getting any value for money'. That's fine, put the cover back on the patients that don't want the cover, push up their premiums and see how they feel. Exclusions are there for a good reason, but those opposite don't understand choice and don't understand why exclusions are there. If you want to exclude an extra, every Australian deserves the right to do that.
The Labor Party is a party that doesn't understand insurance economics at all. You've got the member for Fenner who could explain it and you don't even promote the guy or pay him for his Harvard-level expertise. You have one person with health experience over there, and the phone doesn't ring at 2311. That could have saved you this mortal embarrassment, shadow spokesperson, between now and the next election. The people the Labor Party are trying to lure and seduce, the people they are trying to pick up with their ridiculous health non-economics and language of cuts—when in fact health funding is increasing—do not trust the Labor Party. If it comes to whipping up a union rally, trust those people; they are great at that. Those opposite have zero expertise in health, but they're great with a scare campaign. The very people that the Labor Party are trying to seduce and induce to follow them will not fall for it, because they understand that this is a party with no understanding of private health insurance.
Being lectured to by members from the Medi-no-care team opposite about a lack of understanding or empathy in the Australian healthcare system is extraordinary. It's a little bit rich. I see the member for Bowman is leaving the chamber now. Oh, no; we welcome his return—thank you very much. He had much to say, but his complete lack of understanding for cost-of-living pressures on the Australian people, his lack of understanding for the amount of work and competency levels on this side of the House, when it comes to the Australian healthcare system, is extraordinary. This is the party that created Medicare. It's the only party that protects Medicare in this House. It's the party that will defend Medicare until our dying days. So, thank you, Minister—sorry, you aren't a minister.
I'm a recovering minister.
Why aren't you a minister? That's possibly another question, but I'll come back to that! Members on this side of the House understand clearly why it is that this government can't be trusted with Australia's healthcare system—but so do the Australian people. They are totally onto you guys.
As part of the Medicare task force, the member for Macarthur and I have travelled far and wide across Australia. We've heard from people in Braddon who cannot access affordable health care in their electorate. They can't find a specialist. Talking about out-of-pocket expenses, try being somebody living in Braddon, with no access to specialist care—the closest one is in Melbourne—and being told to fly yourself and your family up to Melbourne, to put yourselves up for the night, to take the family with you, to take days off from your job. These guys here think that's okay. They think that this is an acceptable state of affairs for health care in Australia. There is nothing acceptable about subjecting your citizens to second-rate health care.
It's all right if you're living on the North Shore of Sydney. There are plenty of bulk-billing doctors there. Come over to my electorate in Newcastle. You don't get a bulk-billing doctor there. We have the member for Herbert and the member for Longman—plenty of people on this side of the House—who are fierce advocates for the retention of a universal healthcare system in this country. Their electorates are hurting badly because the guys opposite have not lifted a single component of that Medicare freeze to relieve the burden on Australian consumers.
40,000 people at Caboolture Hospital!
Yes; 40,000 people at Caboolture Hospital. We also visited the electorate of Lindsay—and the member for Macarthur will remember this well—where the Nepean Hospital is crying out for support and assistance. You haven't even begun to assist with the forward planning for a hospital that is in a rapid growth corridor there. It is already stretched to the limit right now. It can barely cope with the ongoing demand now. It's in the middle of a growth corridor, yet there's absolutely no assistance there.
Your lack of vision, your lack of planning, for public hospitals in Australia is astonishing. Nepean Hospital isn't exceptional. That's the sad story. What's going on at that hospital is being repeated across Australia. Our major public hospitals are stretched to the absolute brink. Elective surgery waiting times have skyrocketed. Emergency departments are struggling and, worst of all, patients are suffering. We know that because we are actually out there talking to people who use this healthcare system every day, and for members opposite to suggest otherwise is truly astonishing. What a hide!
When it comes to private health insurance, we can only say that members opposite must live in some other, parallel, universe. If you are not getting the message that the Australian people do not see value for money in private health insurance these days, if you are not hearing the message that they are finding it very difficult to accommodate the almost $1,000 per annum increase in premium fees that has come in under the Abbott-Turnbull government's watch— if you are not getting that message—then you need to see your GP for an ear check, quite frankly. That's what you need. It is only Labor that will defend Medicare. It is only Labor that can be trusted to achieve an Australian healthcare system that is fair and accessible to all.
Order! Before calling the member for Boothby, I might remind the member for Newcastle that she should speak through the chair, and the Deputy Speaker is not responsible for all the healthcare woes of this country.
Today's matter of public importance is yet another example of an attempt by those opposite to mislead the Australian public on health care. But the figures speak for themselves. The Turnbull government's policies are having a real and tangible impact on the cost and accessibility of health care for each and every Australian.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank the Minister for Health for his incredible commitment and hard work in this area, which is making a positive difference for the residents of my electorate of Boothby and for all South Australians—for my home state of South Australia. Under the Turnbull government, we have achieved record bulk-billing rates by GPs of 85.9 per cent. This means that residents in my electorate of Boothby can visit their doctor without any out-of-pocket costs. This is thanks to the introduction of an additional 22,000 GP services in my electorate alone. In addition, the coalition government has added more than 1,500 new and amended medicines, worth $7.5 billion, to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which means greater access to medicines for those who need them most.
We are tackling serious and common health problems in our society. We recognise that one in five Australians experience mental health problems each year, and so we are increasing mental health funding to around $4.3 billion this year. We have also committed more than $685 million over four years to reduce the impact of drug and alcohol abuse, which, unfortunately, has reached epidemic levels in some areas of my home state of South Australia.
Federal funding for public hospital services under the coalition has increased from $13.8 billion in 2013-14, at the end of the failed Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, to a record $22.7 billion in the years 2020-21 under the Turnbull government. This is a 64 per cent increase in funding. This means more doctors, more nurses, more surgeries and less wait times in hospitals across Australia, but particularly in my electorate of Boothby, at Flinders Medical Centre, which is in Bedford Park in the heart of my electorate.
Just last week, the Minister for Health announced record funding for hospital services at COAG. The minister committed to providing an additional $30 billion for public hospitals, which will provide almost $128 billion over the five years from 2020. But apparently this wasn't enough for the Premier of South Australia. So I just want to touch on what the Weatherill state Labor government has done, in contrast to the Turnbull government.
The Weatherill Labor government in South Australia cut funding to the health budget. They cut funding in South Australia by $7.4 million for our hospitals between 2015-16 and 2016-17, and they cut $20 million of funding for hospitals between 2014 and 2016.
We know where some of these cuts came from—and I know all too well, because they shut down the repat hospital in my electorate. This iconic hospital, which was purpose-built for our returned service men and women, which has been a wonderful community hospital as well for so many of my residents and their families, has been shut down by the Weatherill Labor government. It is truly one of the most disgraceful decisions the Weatherill Labor government has made, and it has contributed to the loss of 160 hospital beds in southern Adelaide. This affects each and every one of my residents in Boothby and their families.
In contrast, the coalition government is not just funding bulk-billing and the PBS and hospitals and mental health services; we are also funding medical research and treatment. We're funding the Southern Hemisphere's first proton therapy research centre, with cutting-edge cancer treatment that has the ability to deliver precise radiation to destroy tumour targets and save organs. We're funding 17 separate grants and scholarships worth $21 million in my electorate of Boothby for medical research to address key national health priorities, such as the devastating eye disease glaucoma which affects more than 300,000 Australians.
I'm very proud to have worked with the Minister for Health and the member for Forrest, in Canberra, to recognise and respond to the challenges faced by the one in 10 women who suffer from endometriosis. It's a terrible disease that for too long women have suffered from in silence, and I'm so proud that we're developing a national action plan and funding research into this. It's policies like these that make a real difference to peoples' lives—policies that this government is funding and delivering. (Time expired)
I thank the member on the other side for mentioning my name. I don't know why he's obsessed with me but it's probably just—
We like anyone from the Western suburbs!
Me too. I thank the member for Ballarat for her matter of public importance and it is really something that's very important to me and it's been the basis of my career. The real problem is that the Liberal-National Party does not understand health care. It's a fundamental failing over decades. They have done some good things in health, I don't deny it, but their understanding of the system and what we should be doing in health care in Australia is sadly deficient.
The growing issue of accessibility to care and to our healthcare system and the inability to change what appears, to me, to be a descent into a two-tiered American-style health system is something I see as a great tragedy in Australia and one of the main reasons I came into this place. For many years the gap in health care has been widening between those who can afford it and those who can't afford it. We're entering a system that Medicare was designed to avoid, and now it's really your credit card that determines the quality of health care you can get in Australia. This government doesn't seem to bat an eyelid at this.
We're now seeing the continuation of the Medicare freeze with rebates for GPs, specialists and allied healthcare services all continuing to be frozen. Today we heard from the Rural Doctors Association of Australia that this is having a real effect on the health care that they can provide to rural Australians and their ability to attract doctors and allied health professionals to the bush. Rural doctors are struggling to maintain bulk-billing because of increasing costs, yet this government is doing very little. We're seeing waiting times for elective surgery in my electorate increase—waiting times for things like cataract surgery are now over one year. Someone who's going blind from cataracts has to wait over a year to get proper treatment. People who can afford it can get treatment within a week. It's a shame. This government does not understand that the more money you cut from preventive health care, the more you spend on repairing the long-term damage.
The government is more than happy to allow private healthcare providers to consistently increase their fees without adequate reasons and without adequately understanding the lack of transparency and the poor services offered by private health insurance. Private health insurance costs have increased by 27 per cent in the last five years, and the government is set to increase the costs even further, while delivering tax cuts for big business. We now see people—and I've had personal experiences—put off visits to specialists and subspecialists. To see a cardiologist and get an ECG and a cardiac ultrasound, the gap can be up to $500 for some people, and for many pensioners this is beyond their means. We're now seeing that sickness and lack of healthcare insurance was the primary cause of non-business-related personal insolvency in 2016-17. It's an absolute shame.
This government doesn't seem to worry about the stagnation in personal incomes, yet it allows continued increases in private health insurance. Not only has the wages share fallen to an all-time low, but the profit share of private health insurers has climbed to an all-time high. Yet that doesn't seem to be a problem.
There are a couple of things I'd like to mention quickly. This government does not understand health care. At the beginning of this parliament they sold off Australia's central cancer registry. We know that data in health care is the new gold, and yet the government sold it off without any transparency and without adequately informing the parliament.
I have letters from many people, including one of my colleagues. One colleague has written to me today, saying: 'There's a crisis in accessing allergy treatments in our public hospital system'—a crisis, and yet this government ignores it. The primary problem is that the National-Liberal government does not understand health care. It is a great shame. It is increasing the costs for all Australians. (Time expired)
I sometimes think those opposite are living in a parallel universe. Yesterday I made some comments in this House that upset some people—that if a lie is repeated often enough people start to believe it. That's what is happening from that side of the chamber. It is a fact that the federal government is creating a new record for health spending every year—a new record every year! A new record is not a decrease in funding; it is an increase in funding. The member for Ballarat and the member for Macarthur, who's just leaving the chamber, rattled on about the Medicare freeze. I think it was called the government's Medicare freeze. Those of us who've been around a little while will well remember that it was the opposition's; it was the Labor Party's Medicare freeze. They say that we wouldn't have continued it, but they did not allow for it in their forward estimates in their budgets in 2013. No kind of alteration to the Medicare freeze was to be seen over the next four years. This government has moved to end the Medicare freeze. It'll end on 1 July.
I'll touch on bulk-billing here, because this is related to the Medicare freeze. I took some flak at the last election from some doctors within my electorate who were talking about how the Medicare freeze was affecting them. But the counterargument always is that the bulk-billing rate keeps rising—82.2 per cent when we came into government and 85.9 per cent now. In fact, in my electorate it's 86.4 per cent. So, 86.4 per cent of the consults that GPs are dealing with in my electorate are at no cost to the consumer, because they're bulk-billed. You can't just wash that away. Yes, the government has heard the doctors' calls, and we are lifting the freeze. I think a bit of credit should be given for the way this has been handled.
In South Australia, since this government came to power the coalition has increased hospital funding every year. In fact, in the last Labor budget—the last budget of the member for Lilley—it fell. Commonwealth support for hospitals in South Australia fell by 0.5 per cent. Since then, it has risen by 31.6 per cent through to this year, with another 8.6 per cent to come over the next two years. In total, there has been an increase of a little over 47 per cent since this government came to power. A 47 per cent increase is not a cut. It is not a devaluation. It is well in front of the CPI. It's in front of health CPI. This is a significant increase—a significant increase!—in funding. Strangely enough, it seems that our premier thinks he's awash with money, because he's knocked back another $1½ billion that was offered by the federal government.
We know why. Things get a little bit funny around here when there's a state election. We know why. It's because it has become Premier Weatherill's MO to blame the Commonwealth for everything he has mismanaged within the state, whether it be electricity or whether it be schools funding. We're reaching record levels there, and apparently the Commonwealth has somehow sinned. He goes on to blame the Commonwealth for things he has mismanaged. So he's spoiling for a fight with the Commonwealth right now. He's spoiling for a fight over hospital funding, but he's got no grounds on which to make that fight, because the minister has offered an extra $1½ billion. That's what he's knocking back. It should be exposed for what it is.
We know what they're doing to hospitals on my patch, in the electorate of Grey. I've been to a number of public crisis meetings in Quorn, Yorketown and Jamestown, where the state government is no longer investing in small rural hospitals. They say, 'No, we don't withdraw services,' but they will not invest in their operating theatres and they will not invest in their sterilising equipment. When it's no longer up to scratch, they say, 'Well, we can't continue that service in your hospital, because your equipment is not up to scratch.' It is the long-term plan to disinvest in these rural hospitals so that they can shunt the people out of them—close them down in the communities. They don't believe in rural South Australia. They should be exposed for it.
Like my fellow members who have spoken before me, I am proud to stand in this place as a member of the Labor Party to defend the Australian healthcare system from this Liberal-National government. We are the party of Medicare and we always will be. Unlike the rabble on the other side of the chamber, who attack Medicare and who fail to care for our public health system, you can rest assured that the Labor Party always will care for our public health system. Make no mistake, our healthcare system is under attack. Every day, more and more Australians are feeling the pain as they continue to take out their wallets again and again to cover the increasing costs of keeping themselves healthy, fit and active.
This government, despite the Prime Minister's insistence on using a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, is smashing the institutions that have become the bedrock of the high living standards that we are fortunate enough to enjoy in this country. Let us go through some of the issues the Turnbull government has failed to address. The out-of-pocket costs to see a GP have never been higher. Since the Liberals came to power in 2013, and until last year, Australians have seen out-of-pocket costs soar from over $28 per visit in 2013 to over $35 in 2017. That's a lift of over $7, and that's still rising. In WA alone, costs have increased from nearly $31 in 2013 to nearly $38 in 2017. Some may scoff—'What's $7, anyway?' Tell that to some of the elderly residents in my electorate. They need constant care and check-ups, on a tiny pension that barely covers rent, electricity and all of their medical fees. Tell that to single parents on Newstart or disability support who are trying to care for their sick children at the same time as putting them through school. This government has no plan and it simply cannot be trusted on health and health care.
Australians needing elective surgery have had their waiting list times blown out. Emergency departments and hospitals around the country are bursting at the seams and health professionals are stretched to do more and more with less and less because of the Liberals cuts and their empty promises. If you need more proof, let's take a look at Medicare. The Prime Minister is still yet to remove a single part of his Medicare freeze. Rebates for GPs, specialists and allied health services all remain frozen. We are told that the freeze will be lifted in 2020—well, I certainly wouldn't hold my breath on that. As a result of the continued freeze, the Prime Minister is using a chainsaw to cut $2.2 billion out of Medicare on top of the savings he has already listed. This is a collective $2.2 billion out of the pockets of patients every time they visit a GP, visit a specialist or receive a Medicare allied health service. I, too, heard the rural doctors today tell members, many of us in the House from this side of parliament and from the other, how failing to lift the GP Medicare freeze has greatly affected access to basic healthcare in rural areas—and we have the Nationals here, who pretend to care for those in regional and remote areas.
Let's look at the Liberals' record on private health for a moment. Let's face it, everyone in this place and around the rest of the country knows that this government would rather protect the profits and corporate interests of the private health insurers rather than going in to bat for Australian consumers. They'd rather protect the $1.8 billion of pretax profit for private health insurers than help Australian consumers. The Public Health Association of Australia have said as much:
Scare tactics by the Private Health Insurance industry … should not be surprising. However, they should be rejected out-of-hand. The focus of this industry is on profits and return to shareholders rather than the health of all Australians …
I think that sums up this government's position. Premiums are on the rise. Since the end of 2013, when the Liberals were elected, premiums have risen a whopping 27 per cent, including the rise that's due this year, adding up to an average increase of $1,000 to the private health bill of Australian families.
Just as this government fails to do anything about housing affordability, they are making the same mistakes with private health. I will reflect on health for a moment. We all know that housing is critical to health. At a time when we reflect, all of this week and last week, on our collective failure at closing the gap between our first nation people, and also reflect on the health effects that the stolen generation have suffered, this government has cut funding to the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing.
Shame!
It is a shame. This means that remote communities, Indigenous communities, across the remote parts of this country, in northern Australia, north-west Australia, northern Queensland and the Northern Territory, will be without adequate housing. How can people be healthy when they're homeless? Under Labor, we will keep Medicare and reverse the damage done to it by the government. We'll put money back into the hospital system and keep waiting times down. Labor is the only party you can trust on health care.
I'm pretty easy to get along with most of the time, but the talking points a couple of members on the other side have been given are quite deceptive. One spoke of the increases in doctors' fees, quoting the amounts but forgetting that the rebate is above the quoted fee. So, with bulk-billing, the people actually get their money back. Australians are the beneficiaries of huge investments by our government. How else is it that bulk-billing rates have increased so much, with the rate now at 85.9 per cent, compared with Labor's level of 82.2 per cent? There have been millions of dollars of bulk-billing for GP visits and specialist visits, especially in the regions.
We plan to invest an extra $2.8 billion in Medicare over the next four years. Labor say we're going to reduce the private healthcare costs by putting caps in place. I don't get it. That simply isn't going to happen. If the private healthcare people can't put their fees up, there will be fewer services. It's kind of logical. Labor say they'll save Australian families around $340 a year with such a cap, but most people seem to think that around a dollar a day is worth investing in their own health. They absolutely do. It's not the full amount, of course. It is the difference in the proposed increase to the one Labor suggest. It is really laughable. Labor never managed to keep the increases so low. Each and every year they were in government, the cost increased more than the 26 per cent in total that we're supposed to have had.
One of the incentives to be reviewed by Labor is the rebate, but we really need to get people to seriously consider hospital and extras cover. There is constant criticism of profit making. No matter what it relates to, it is seen as a problem for Labor. But while they whinge about private health insurance company profits, AHPRA has stated this is not a relevant factor. Higher claims costs are the driver of increased premiums, not profit levels. Do we really want longer waiting times in public hospitals while private beds are vacant? It's absolutely ridiculous. In addition, the private health insurers have come to the negotiating table and now there's encouragement for young Australians to take up insurance with a discount for 18- to 29-year-olds of up to 10 per cent on their premiums. That is better cover for mental health. There's provision for travel and accommodation. Comparing one fund against another will be much easier by having standardised definitions of gold, silver, bronze or basic. That will definitely help consumers. Small health insurers do not have massive profits, yet they are determined to provide as much assistance as possible.
The premise of today's question was related to making health care less affordable and accessible. We've increased hospital funding from $13.8 billion back in 2013-14 up to $22.7 billion proposed in the 2020-21 year. That's a huge increase. But, most importantly, ask any of the families who have a child with type 1 diabetes how their lives have changed because of this government's investment in constant glucose monitoring devices. Ask the families of those affected with multiple sclerosis now that Ocrevus is on script, saving them $35,000 a course. Ask those patients suffering multiple myeloma getting carfilzomib on script, saving $38,500. How about those families with leukaemia who can now get Imbruvica on script instead of $180,000 per course? There are 920 such families. Ask the cancer patients who have positive non-small-lung cancer and it metastasises or who have renal cell carcinoma. Each one of those are getting cancer treatments on script. I personally am proud of these financial allocations for these afflicted families.
Finally, some of the Labor representatives are calling out the lack of vision and planning for new hospitals. Last time I read the rules, the state and territory governments were responsible for that—the planning, the siting, the building, the staffing and the maintenance. The contribution of the federal government is determined by the hospital funding agreement reached at COAG, when they all sit around the table and do a bit of argy-bargy about who does what. But they build them; they look after them.
This financial year alone we are increasing funding so much and making such a big difference. Over the next five years we'll be investing more than $103.1 billion. In anybody's book, even if you're not too sure about where billions are sitting amongst millions and trillions, billions are a huge amount of money. We're doing well.
Order! The discussion has concluded.
In accordance with standing order 133, I shall now proceed to put the question on the motion moved earlier today by the honourable member for Fenner on which a division was called for and deferred in accordance with the standing order. No further debate is allowed.
The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Fenner has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. So the question now is that the amendment moved by the member for Fenner be agreed to.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
I move:
That the amendment be agreed to.
The question is that the amendment be agreed to.
On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the committee's report entitled Human rights scrutiny report: report 2 of 2018.
Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).
by leave—The role of the committee is to examine the bills and legislative instruments for compatibility with Australia's obligations under international human rights law. The committee's report provides parliament with credible technical examination of the human rights implications of legislation and other instruments, other than an assessment of the broader policy involved.
The committee members performing a scrutiny function are not bound by the contents or conclusions of scrutiny committee reports and may have different views in relation to the policy merits of the legislation. Of the new bills in the current report, nine were assessed as either promoting human rights, permissibly limiting human rights or not engaging human rights. The committee is seeking further information in relation to one bill, the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017, and has provided an advice-only comment in relation to one legislative instrument.
The report also contains the committee's concluded examination of six bills and instruments. In relation to the ASIC Credit (Flexible Credit Cost Arrangements) Instrument, the initial assessment identified concerns as to whether the civil penalty provisions in the instrument may be considered to be criminal in nature for the purposes of international human rights law. However, following the provision of further information from the assistant minister, it was established that the penalty applied in a specified regulatory context and not to the public in general. The committee has therefore been able to conclude that the penalty is unlikely to be considered criminal for the purposes of international human rights law.
Finally, on behalf of the committee, I would like to welcome Senator Lucy Gichuhi as the new committee member, replacing Senator Linda Reynolds. I would also like to thank Senator Reynolds for her service to the committee in its key functions of undertaking non-partisan technical assessments of legislation under Australia's international human rights obligations. I encourage my fellow members and others to examine the committee's report to better inform their consideration of the proposed legislation. With these comments, I commend the committee's report 2 of 2018 to the House.
I continue the remarks I was making earlier. The Great Barrier Reef is under pressure from every side: from the west, in terms of land clearing in Queensland and the impact of sediment and chemical run-off; from the east, in terms of the protections for the Coral Sea which have been removed; and from above, with respect to the treatment of the atmosphere, whether it be through the impacts of climate change—changing ocean temperatures, coral bleaching and the increased intensity of major weather events—or the mere content of the atmosphere itself, with the increase in carbon dioxide having the impact of acidification in the ocean, with an increase in carbonic acid, which then slows the growth rate of the various species of coral. This bill, though, deals principally with the management of the reef itself. About 33 per cent of the marine park is a marine national park, a highly protected area.
I'd like to pay tribute to some changes made by the Howard government with respect to the Great Barrier Reef. In doing so, I'd like to remind those opposite of the legacy of their own party and simply ask that they bear it in mind when considering where they go on the network of marine parks within Australia's EEZ that are currently under consideration. The marine parks were put in place under the Howard government in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Thirty-three per cent is highly protected—no take at all. In terms of impact on recreational fishing, you are much more likely to be a recreational fisher who goes to the Great Barrier Reef than a recreational fisher who goes to the Coral Sea, for the simple fact that if you take your tinnie out to the Great Barrier Reef you will probably be able to get home again; if you take your tinnie out to the Coral Sea you are probably never going to be able to see home again. You'd need a much more substantial vessel if you were going to go that far out. For recreational fishing, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is the place where you're more likely to want to fish, yet there are significant no-fishing zones—not just commercial but recreational as well—that were put in place by the Howard government. When they were put in place, some people argued that the Howard government shouldn't have been doing it, that it was better simply to have a carefully managed fishery in the Great Barrier Reef. But the Howard government, to its credit, decided: no, we'll have some areas where you can't fish at all.
What's happened in those areas? The scientific research has been in for years now, specifically measuring the difference in size of coral trout species found within those so-called green zones, or no-fishing zones, compared with immediately adjacent areas. The best evidence of the fact that they work is that the recreational fishers now try to get to the boundary because they know they'll get better fish in the areas near where there's no fishing at all. The outcome of having some areas that are completely preserved for nature, where there's no additional extraction, is that you don't just get the stock levels improving; you get the entire habitat improving. If those opposite believe that the Howard government did the right thing—and it's pretty hard to find an environmental argument that says it didn't on this issue—then may I say that, when we were in office, we did the right thing when we created the world's largest network of marine national parks as well. But the protections for those marine parks, including the Coral Sea—the cradle of the Great Barrier Reef—were suspended soon after there was a change of government, and to this day, while the boundaries still exist, no protections exist within them.
I urge the government, regardless of different pressures that might be around, to look carefully at the success of what the Howard government did. There is an opportunity for this government to do the right thing. If it goes down the path it's currently heading down—ignoring the Howard legacy and deciding that it is largely against marine protected areas—then within the next 12 months we will see Australia become the nation which will have engaged in the largest removal of area under conservation of any government in history. That's the gravity of what's before the government right now—a proposal which, if followed, will be the largest removal of area under conservation from any government ever. So, while I would love to urge those opposite to take account of my legacy as a former environment minister, I reckon I have a better chance simply asking for them to have a look at the Howard government legacy with respect to the Great Barrier Reef, because, at the moment, there is a proposal before them that would simply trash that sort of approach.
The zoning is designed to keep the reef healthy, but the reef is under increasing pressure. In 2016, the reef suffered a mass bleaching event, particularly in the northern areas of the reef, and it also suffered a bleaching event in 2017, particularly the area from Townsville to around Cooktown as well as parts of the reef near Princess Charlotte Bay. In 2017, Tropical Cyclone Debbie hit Queensland and added to the pressure to parts of the reef. To protect the reef we need to work on land to stop pollution and sediment entering the reef, take action on climate change and protect the Coral Sea to the east. To make sure that all of this work, if done, is properly measured and is properly accounted for, and the scientific work becomes a measure of steps forward in the reef rather than steps backward, we need to make sure that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is properly governed, well funded and well supported. What we have in front of us today is a step in the right direction to that end.
In supporting this bill, I simply say to those opposite: think about where this goes next. If this bill is as successful as we hope it will be, if it leads to better corporate governance of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park area and if it leads to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority being a more effective agency, then we will also see, as a result of that, better management and better measurement of the health of the Great Barrier Reef. This means that the story is going to become clearer. The opportunity to hide government action in terms of its implications for the reef will become harder than ever. This legislation is good legislation because the more independent and the better this authority is the harder it will be for any government to hide if it's not looking after the Great Barrier Reef. I say to those opposite that the next stage is to make sure that the better managed authority has a good story to tell—and whether it does or not is largely in the hands of those opposite and their policies and of changing direction with respect to marine protection, with respect to climate change action and with respect to land clearing.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Amendment (Authority Governance and Other Matters) Bill 2017 implements a new governance model for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The bill replaces the full-time chairperson with a part-time chairperson and full-time chief executive officer and establishes one additional part-time member position. It will also strengthen the requirements for appointment and termination of members. The bill also makes minor technical amendments to clarify the relationship between the suite of legislation underpinning the functions of the authority. The bill will strengthen the strategic capability and capacity of the authority to respond to challenges facing the marine park.
The Australian government is committed to protecting the Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage site, now and for future generations. Effective operation of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is central to this commitment. I commend the bill to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
by leave—I move:
That this bill be now read a third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.
I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:
That this bill be now read a second time.
The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Radio) Bill 2017 continues the government's commitment to a more streamlined regulatory framework for digital radio. These amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and the Radiocommunications Act 1992 further simplify digital radio processes. This includes efficiencies across the planning, licensing and allocation processes making for a more efficient rollout of digital radio services in regional Australia.
The Turnbull government remains committed to removing unnecessary and outdated regulations that hamper the industry from delivering what audiences want. The reform agenda requires continuous effort. Small improvements such as these, over time, will provide a cumulative benefit to industry and consumers. The bill makes a modest but welcome contribution in this regard.
Digital radio is now recognised as an important component of Australia's broadcasting landscape. In the decade since it was legislated, digital radio is now available in all Australian mainland state capital cities—Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney—and planning is being undertaken for permanent digital radio services in Canberra, Darwin and Hobart.
Digital radio is being introduced to Australia in a staged way. Commercial radio broadcasters are the key driver in providing digital radio services in new areas, by targeting those areas where they are most likely to be commercially viable. Digital radio remains a supplementary part of the many broadcasting services available to Australians and the government does not consider a switchover program to be appropriate. The government also considers it important that the radio broadcasting industry remain the key driver in the rollout of digital radio into regional Australia. Nonetheless, the government recognises that it still has a role to play in ensuring that any legislative or regulatory impediments to introduction of digital radio into regional Australia are removed and that the digital radio regulatory regime is working efficiently.
The government acknowledges the ongoing work of industry members of the Digital Radio Planning Committee for Regional Australia. This committee, which is chaired by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, was established following a recommendation of the Digital radio report tabled by this government in July 2015. Committee members include the Department of Communications and the Arts, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service, Commercial Radio Australia, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The committee has become a critical forum for industry, the regulator and government to plan the future rollout of digital radio in regional Australia. Some of the digital radio issues being addressed in this bill are a direct result of discussions at the planning committee. All the measures in the bill are supported by committee members.
The bill seeks to assist industry to expedite the rollout of digital radio to regional Australia. The bill shortens several legislatively prescribed time frames and removes unnecessary or redundant steps in the digital radio planning and licensing processes. Doing this reduces the overall time and cost for commercial broadcasters who want to roll out digital radio to viable regional markets. These benefits also extend to the community and national broadcasters.
Furthermore, it is important to recognise that radio broadcasters, whether they are located in metropolitan or regional markets, need to be more innovative and responsive to changes in audience demand and listening patterns. While this is a matter for the broadcasters themselves, the government does have a role to play in ensuring the regulatory arrangements reflect the realities of the 21st century broadcasting market.
As part of this role, the government is also introducing a measure in the bill that will implement measures to clarify the calculation of digital radio excess capacity entitlements in the Radiocommunications Act. At present, there is the potential for existing excess capacity entitlements to be extinguished by later excess capacity allocations on foundation multiplexes. The government considers that this is not fair to the digital radio broadcasters who acquired excess capacity by allocation or competitive auction. The proposed measures aim to clarify that existing capacity entitlements allocated to content providers are considered when determining new excess capacity allocations. This will provide certainty to content providers on their existing excess capacity entitlements on foundation digital radio multiplexes, as well as other parties seeking access to excess capacity entitlements.
This bill represents a necessary step in facilitating the rollout of digital radio to regional Australia.
The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Radio) Bill 2017, which is before the House, concerns radio services, digital radio services and the regulation thereof, services which have been providing access to news, sport, music and entertainment in Australia for well over 90 years. In fact, radio is the most ubiquitous medium in the country and will remain so for many years to come—it's in our cars and workplaces. One of the strengths of radio as compared to many of its competing media is that you can be listening to radio while performing many other functions, including driving a car.
The introduction of digital radio was designed, as the minister representing the minister said a moment ago, to supplement rather than replace traditional analog AM and FM transmission services. Australia's transition to digital radio is one of the biggest changes to radio since its inception—in fact, since the widespread introduction of FM services in the seventies and early eighties. There are many benefits to digital radio. It has been said before that it provides superior sound and reception. Digital radio signals are compared to the jump up in quality that one gets when changing from playing an album from a cassette or a record to playing it from a CD. There is a significant jump up in the quality of the sound that is able to be transmitted. There's also a significant improvement in terms of the transmission of that signal because of the lessened geographic interference you get from the transmission of a digital signal. There is more listening choice, quite simply, because you can cram the broadcasting of more radio stations over the same spectrum available. That enables one broadcaster, or many, to be broadcasting specialist services in addition to the legacy services within the same spectrum available. It's easier for listeners to tune because you can tune using a radio station's name as opposed to just its call signal. Many of the modern digital radios have rewind, pause and playback facilities which add and enhance services for listeners as well. In many of the modern digital radios now available on the market there's also a data display, enabling broadcasters to put in additional images and text along with the traditional sound transmission. There are benefits. There are benefits to the government as the residual holder of spectrum. It is able to use that spectrum more efficiently. There are benefits to listeners and, of course, there are, at the end of the day, benefits to many broadcasters as well.
Digital radio services from commercial radio broadcasters and national broadcasters have been operating in metropolitan licence areas—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth—since July 2009. Some designated community radio services also began in these areas a year later, in April 2011. The Australian Communications and Media Authority also authorised trials of DAB+ in Canberra and Darwin, which were being conducted by Commercial Radio Australia. The Canberra trial commenced in July 2010 and the Darwin trial around August 2010. Both trials were extended until 30 June last year, and the authority is now working with industry to facilitate permanent licensing of these trials. The national broadcasting services—ABC and SBS—have been allocated a Foundation Category 3 Digital Radio Multiplex Transmitter Licence for Canberra and Darwin. Those services are expected to be in permanent transmission.
According to ACMA, it's a commercial decision for licensees in regional areas to apply to ACMA to offer digital services. Well, I will have something more to say about this. I'm sure, Deputy Speaker, you have received, as most members in this place have received, many, many representations from constituents who are keen to enjoy the benefits of digital radio in their electorate. If you're not in a metropolitan licence area or Canberra or Darwin, you are not getting that signal, for the most part, and people are keen to get it.
I'll explain what the future looks like. We support the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Radio) Bill 2017. Labor has a proud history in the area of rolling out digital radio in Australia. It was Kim Beazley, the Minister for Transport and Communications back in 1991, who declared that industry should not ignore the potential of the technologies looming on the horizon. He was talking about digital radio as an emerging technology in Europe. At the time, he said that Australia would be more than ready when cheap receivers would allow them to hear CD-quality radio via digital audio broadcasting. Australia and Australians would be more than ready to reap the benefits of that. A few years later, in 1995, the then Minister of Communications and the Arts, Michael Lee, established the digital radio advisory committee and announced that the first station experiments with digital broadcasting would commence in 1996 in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Around the same time, Telstra was involved as a GBE in digital radio broadcasting trials in both Melbourne and Sydney—essentially to test the multiplex technology management. The next 20 years saw a continued process of planning and trials and the development of a policy regulatory framework until finally, in 2009, digital radio commenced in mainland state capitals.
The next step, Labor believes, is to see the benefits of digital radio extended into regional Australia. This involves significant cost and complexity, and it is being planned by the Digital Radio Planning Committee for Regional Australia, which was formed in September 2015 following a federal government review of digital radio. That was a statutory review required under section 215B of the Broadcasting Services Act and section 313B of the Radio Communications Act—a requirement under that act that a review of the digital radio rollout be conducted.
The measures that are before the House today are modest. They enjoy our support. The measures arise from that 2015 report that was published by the government. One of the digital radio report's recommendations was that the government consider a range of minor amendments to the existing digital radio regulatory regime to create a simpler, more flexible process for the planning and licensing of digital radio and associated technology in regional Australia. The measures in the bill attempt to do that. I don't want to overstate the force that the measures in this bill will have on the impact of the digital rollout in regional areas. The bill's measures include removing the requirement that ACMA give written notice of its intention to declare a digital radio start-up day. We agree with that—it's not a significant amendment; we agree with it. It also has a provision which would remove specific requirements under the Broadcasting Services Act that ACMA consult before preparing or varying digital radio channel plans, given that there are already general consultation requirements within the Legislation Act 2003. So we support that.
As to shortening time frames associated with the formation of eligible joint venture companies and clarifying the invitation acceptance processes for the formation of such companies: we support that. As to shortening time frames associated with the formation of digital community radio broadcasting representative companies: again, we support that. Shortening time frames associated with the issuing of a foundation digital radio multiplex transmitter, otherwise known as a DRMT, licence: again, we support that, and shortening time frames associated with the DRMT licensees, giving the ACCC access undertakings. And, finally, we support clarifying how the multiplex capacity on foundation DRMT licences are determined. All of these are modest but sensible reforms and we will be supporting them.
Labor supports the bill, but I do not want to overstate the impact that these measures are going to have on rolling out digital radio in regional Australia. These will be, essentially, commercial decisions that are going to be made by commercial broadcasters in broadcast areas. We encourage these broadcasters to work together to ensure that we can be investing in the multiplex and other technology that is going to be necessary for transmitting these services in regional areas. We encourage them to work together. Government does have a role, and, previously, Labor governments have shown themselves willing to assist industry in the rollout of technologies in this area. But I just want to say quite clearly to everyone in my electorate and to all the Labor members who regularly approach me about their constituents who are calling for the rollout of digital technology in their area: these are sensible moves, but they're not going to move a mountain when it comes to rolling out digital radio in regional Australia. A lot more needs to be done to ensure that that occurs. I commend the bill to the House.
Debate adjourned.
by leave—I move:
That the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Radio) Bill 2017 be referred to the Federation Chamber for further consideration.
Question agreed to.
I move:
That orders of the day Nos 6 and 7, government business, be postponed until a later hour this day.
Question agreed to.
I welcome the opportunity to make some remarks about Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2017-2018, which, as always, are required to ensure the ordinary functions of the government continue for, in this case, the remainder of the 2017-18 financial year and to facilitate a number of the measures from the 2017-18 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. In this case, the package of bills appropriates something like $1.5 billion from consolidated revenue. This is in addition to the appropriation acts passed in June 2017 after the budget, and these amounts are already incorporated into the budget bottom line as presented in the 2017-18 MYEFO. I should say, at the outset, that obviously we're not in the business of standing in the way of supply, although I think there are some very troubling aspects of the government's broader economic management that the House should understand and note.
These bills do go to those broader issues around what I consider to be the mismanagement of the nation's finances. I'd like to begin by quoting not somebody from this side or a well-known critic of the government but the Prime Minister himself. The Prime Minister, when he was opposition leader in 2009, described a gross debt of $200 billion as 'frightening'. He promised that the Liberals wouldn't 'run willy-nilly into debt'. He later described $300 billion in projected gross debt as 'gigantic' and an 'almost inconceivable level of debt'. He had an analogy that he would trot out from time to time—I remember it well—where he'd say: 'There should be no lead weights put in his pockets or heavy backpacks put on his back.' Yet that is what this government is delivering to us with these higher and higher levels of debt.
So he said a debt projected at $300 billion was 'frightening', 'gigantic', 'almost inconceivable'. It shouldn't surprise us, then, given that was his view in opposition, that he's been a bit quieter lately about the total amount of debt on his government's watch. That's because gross debt—remember, at $300 billion it was going to be gigantic and inconceivable—has crashed through half a trillion dollars for the first time in Australian history on the Prime Minister's watch. It's currently about $515 billion with no sign, really, of slowing down. In the government's own budget papers, which we're talking about as we debate these bills, gross debt doesn't even peak over a 10-year horizon. So, for the next 10 years, after all the lectures we got about debt and deficit disasters and gigantic levels of debt at $300 billion, we are talking about $515 billion which goes up and up and up for 10 years and doesn't even peak in the next decade in the government's own budget papers. That's a pretty extraordinary thing. For a government that likes to pretend that they are somehow superior managers of the budget, we've got this record, growing debt which doesn't even peak over the medium term in the government's own budget papers. It is not an opinion; it's a fact. That's in the government's budget.
Similarly, in the same budget papers, we have got a deficit for this year which is eight times higher than the Liberals predicted in their first 2014 budget. Joe Hockey stood at that dispatch box on a Tuesday evening in May and said that the deficit for this year was going to be $2.8 billion. Then the current Treasurer, Treasurer Morrison, stood up in December, the week before Christmas—obviously very proud of his mid-year budget update; he dropped that out a few days before Christmas—and had to admit that the deficit was $23.6 billion, eight times bigger than Joe Hockey predicted in 2014.
We might have a Prime Minister who is a little less keen to talk about gigantic levels of debt but, thankfully—and always thankfully—we've got the Assistant Minister to the Treasurer, the member for Deakin, who always helps us out on this side of the parliament. He's the gift that keeps on giving. He has described the debt under the Turnbull-Morrison's government's watch as, 'A truckload of debt' and 'An extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary, amount of debt.' I couldn't have said it better myself. But what's more extraordinary, and probably something that not a lot of people out there in the community appreciate—probably because of the message that the government and some of their cheerleaders in the media like to send—is that debt is actually increasing. Debt, gross debt and net debt, is increasing faster under this government in good global economic conditions than it was under the former Labor government, despite the fact that we had a global financial crisis.
Again, these are not opinions. I will give you the hard numbers and people can go and check them if they like. Take gross debt, for example. Under this government, gross debt is currently being racked up $1.2 billion a month faster than it was under Labor. It is being racked up $286 million a week quicker and $41 million a day quicker under this government compared to its predecessor. If you prefer to think about net debt: net debt is being racked up $710 million a month quicker—accumulated, $163 million a week quicker and $23 million a day quicker. So both measures are being accumulated much faster than they were under the Labor Party.
Until quite recently, the old excuse from the Treasurer—whether it was Treasurer Morrison or Treasurer Hockey—has been the global conditions. If you want to talk about difficult global conditions, obviously you'd be talking about the period that the former Labor government confronted the global financial crisis, the sharpest synchronised downturn in the global economy since the Great Depression. But there was a period when Joe Hockey or the current Treasurer would talk about global conditions being the reason that they had so substantially overpromised and under delivered on debt and deficit. That excuse has well and truly gone. This is the best global economy we have had for a decade.
If those opposite don't want to take my word for it, they can look at the Reserve Bank's Statement on monetary policy which they put out on Friday. Their statement was very, very up-beat about global conditions. In fact, at the start of the overview, they say:
Global economic conditions picked up further over the course of 2017.
They talk about the strength continuing into 2018. They are talking about the global economy. They talk about growth in a lot of those big economies being above 'estimates of potential'. They talk about favourable commodity prices, 'stronger than expected growth' in advanced economies and 'synchronised improvement in global growth' boosting commodity prices. There are all sorts of indications in the Reserve Bank statement on monetary policy that this global economy that we are in right now—leaving aside, of course, some of the actions and over-reactions to it in the stock market, but just in the real economy of growth and jobs and all of that—the global conditions are quite spectacularly positive. So, there's no excuse for the sorts of budget outcomes that we're getting at the moment. The IMF's most recent world economic outlook—last month, January 2018—says:
Global economic activity continues to firm up. Global output is estimated to have grown by 3.7 percent in 2017, which is 0.1 percentage point faster than projected in the fall and ½ percentage point higher than in 2016.
So the IMF is revising up its forecasts. All of this is a way of saying that when it comes to the deterioration in the budget we cannot point to global conditions as being at fault. The global economy is in pretty good nick, certainly the best nick it's been in for the last 10 years or so.
So, if it's not the global economy that's driving some of these horrific debt numbers—record and growing gross debt and record net debt—then we have to look somewhere else for an explanation. I think the explanation is pretty simple. Beyond that, I think the community understands that there's a pretty simple explanation for what's going on here, and that is that those opposite, particularly the Prime Minister, have this obsession with pandering to the top end of town. This is an approach that hurts the budget. It hurts the economy as well, and I'll get to the economy in a moment, beyond the fiscal settings. But it's also unfair, because it comes at the expense of middle Australia and people who work and struggle to provide for their families
I think the latest midyear update gave us a really a perfect window into the way those opposite approach the budget and the economy: higher taxes for 7 million working people, lower taxes for multinationals and millionaires and, as I said before in some detail, record and growing debt. I think it is worth noting, whenever we talk about the budget and certainly since that 2014 horror budget that I mentioned before, that what we see is a pattern of behaviour such that when they do want to repair the budget—or say they want to repair the budget—it's always at the expense of the most vulnerable people in society: students in universities in the midyear update; the $44 billion income tax hike on 7 million low- and middle-income Australians; ditching the energy supplement, leaving pensioners up to $366 a year worse off; or the thing that's still on the books every time, which is increasing the pension age to 70, which is the oldest in the developed world.
A real pattern has emerged. We're up for budget repair on this side, but it has to be fair on that side. They give these big tax cuts to multinationals and millionaires at the same time that they expect the most vulnerable people, the people on modest incomes, to carry the can for the fact we've got that record and growing debt. I think the best example of that, which has been in the news—and I think it's good that it's been in the news the last little while, certainly the last couple of months—are those company tax cuts that those opposite want to impose on the country: a $65 billion tax cut for big multinationals, and I think the big banks as well; I think they get something like $10 billion or $12 billion out of that $65 billion. It is a pretty extraordinary ramraid on the budget when you think about it. We've got this record and growing gross and net debt and we've got a $65 billion handout. It doesn't take a genius to work out that, when you give $65 billion to foreign multinationals and big banks and the like, that's $65 billion that you can't use on budget repair, that you can't use on investing in productivity and that you can't use on investing in human capital, education and health—all of those sorts of things that really matter if we are to grow the economy in this country.
If you look at the economics of the company tax cut it's pretty clear, even according to the Treasury department, that there's just not enough bang for 65 billion bucks. We've got Treasury modelling which shows a one per cent boost to GDP in 20 years time, which is an average of 0.05 per cent a year. If you compare that, for example, with the return on investment in infrastructure, that same Reserve Bank statement on monetary policy that I referred to that was released last week said that a $1 billion increase in public investment would boost GDP by $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion. The multipliers from investing in infrastructure and, I'd also suggest, from investing in people's skills, abilities, productivity and capacity—the multiplier for that kind of public investment is far greater than the return that, according to the Treasury, we get from these tax cuts for big business in this country.
If you don't want to take my word for it, the Grattan Institute warned that national income would be reduced for years by committing to this tax cut for big businesses before fixing the budget. They said that it risked reducing future living standards, which is a pretty important conclusion by the Grattan Institute. They're not associated with either side of politics—a terrific outfit. They've said, 'If we do this company tax cut before we fix the budget and do the other things that we need to do, we actually risk a reduction in future living standards.' Their quote was:
An unfunded company tax cut would add to already-large budget deficits … any cut to the company tax rate should only be implemented as part of a wider tax (and spending) reform package that does not increase budget deficits.
That's quite a stunning observation from the Grattan Institute and one that those opposite would do well to acknowledge, consider and reflect on.
Instead, we get this willingness, this hankering, this obsession with copying the Trump tax cuts in the US, as if you can make some kind of useful comparison between the headline rate over there, where they have state corporate taxes and all the rest of it, and the fact we have dividend imputation here—all of these reasons why you can't make a straight comparison between the headline rate in the US and the headline rate in Australia. But even leaving that aside for a moment, if you want to take the word of the International Monetary Fund, they looked at the Trump tax cuts just last month—after the passage, I believe, of those Trump tax cuts—and concluded:
Due to the temporary nature of some of its provisions, the tax policy package is projected to lower growth for a few years from 2022 onwards.
In America we have this sugar hit of company tax cuts associated with Trump and the Republicans in the Congress, and the IMF is saying even if you get some growth from those in the near term, it will detract from growth in the medium term. It will be like a sugar hit to the economy. The way that it's constructed, it will actually be a problem from 2022 onwards—so only four years of what former opposition leader from this dispatch box John Howard said about five minutes of economic sunshine. All of that outlay in the US, but it will only be four years before it starts to detract from growth.
Here on our own shores, those tax cuts—the company tax cuts proposed by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer—have become a symbol for a lot of ordinary people that this is a government that is out of touch with their daily lives. They don't get the sorts of needs and aspirations that people have in middle Australia. Their obsession is to shower largess on the top end of town. There is heaps of evidence of that. I'm not fond of quoting opinion polling in this place, but every piece of market research that has been published that I've seen shows very clearly that middle Australia does not want these tax cuts inflicted on them, particularly when it comes at the expense of their own living standard. That's an entirely reasonable position for them to adopt.
Unfortunately, that sort of pandering to the top end of town at the expense of middle Australia is not limited to that big business tax cut. It applies to a whole range of other areas as well in the budget and blocked in the midyear update as well. There are also the income tax cuts to those who need them least—$16,400 a year if you make a million dollars a year. So you have these weird, bizarre, out-of-whack priorities where you have a big tax cut for the people earning the most by removing the deficit levy and yet you have seven million workers on low and middle incomes who are being asked to pay more income tax at the same time as all this other stuff is going on with big business tax cuts and the like.
The other area which has received a lot of attention in the last couple of years, really—and I think it is a tribute to the opposition leader, the member for McMahon and the member for Fenner in particular when it comes to our tax reform proposals—is that we've still got this absurd situation where the biggest tax concessions are actually going to those who need them least. Think about things like negative gearing, trusts, capital gains and some of the concessions in super which do so much to advantage people in this country who are already wealthy at the expense of other people. In a perfect world, obviously a lot of people would prefer to pay less tax and they'd like to find ways of doing that. That's an entirely understandable human reaction. But when you've got a budget that is in the condition that it's in, you have priorities that you need to fund. In our case it's human capital, investing in people and making sure people are getting rewarded for their effort, earning, providing for their families, spending in the economy, creating demand with disposable income and all these sorts of things. You have to work out what your priorities are, and our priorities are very different from those opposite. We don't think we can continue to pay the biggest tax concessions to those who need them least.
I think Peter Martin from Fairfax summed it up really well in a recent piece about tax concessions when he said:
… the beneficiaries aren't always as deserving. The biggest superannuation and capital gains tax concessions are directed towards the highest earners, something we wouldn't tolerate if they were delivered as cheques, paid into accounts.
I think that's a really important point. If you explained to the Australian people what a lot of these tax concessions mean in dollar terms for an individual person and asked them, 'Would you support that being just handed to them as a cheque or in cash?' a lot of people would be appalled by it. But because it's in a tax system it's not as obvious to people what's going on and how our budget is so substantially out of whack. I think the members for Maribyrnong, McMahon, Fenner and others who have worked on our tax policy proposals have done the country a real service by making announcements about tax and defending them well in advance of elections and well in advance of people making a judgement on them, saying, 'We've got a problem in the budget: the biggest tax concessions go to those who need them least and we need to have the courage to address those issues.'
That's the fiscal part of the story. That's the budget part of the story in these appropriations bills and in the mid-year update. There's also, of course, the economic story. I've already touched on the global conditions which have disappeared as an excuse for the mismanagement of the budget and the fact that we've got record and growing debt. I think it's also important that we acknowledge that we have had some good headline figures in our economy, too. I think the national accounts showed GDP growth for the year to September was 2.8 per cent. That's not amazing. That's not outstanding. It's not the kind of economic triumph that Australia has become accustomed to, but 2.8 per cent is not terrible. The real issue, though, is underneath that headline. It doesn't really give you a sense of how we're slipping in the global context. We've gone from leader to laggard when it comes to our performance, even on GDP growth, which is the government's preferred measure. Let's think about some comparisons. Between 2008 and 2010, Australia had the fourth-highest GDP growth amongst OECD countries. We had the US, the UK, Japan and Germany all contracting. We had the fourth-highest GDP growth amongst those 30-plus OECD countries. Now in the same group we are 20th. We have slumped to 20th. We are behind Mexico, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and a whole range of countries. So we've gone from leader under the former government to laggard now when you look at the global league table. Again, that's not an opinion; it's a fact that you can easily look up and verify.
I think that headline rate, apart from the way that we are underperforming in good global economic conditions, also masks some enduring and concerning problems and trends in our economy which are disproportionately hurting some people more than others. To summarise the way a lot of people feel, with some justification, about how the economy really is—the economy that they actually experience rather than the economy they are lectured about from that dispatch box—it is that the rules of the economy are written to benefit others. That makes sense when you consider inequality is at a 75-year high or that the gender pay gap is widening—I know that that's something that is deeply concerning to our entire side of the parliament but especially to my friend, the member who's at the table. The gender pay gap should be a source of real shame in a country like ours. We are ranked 42nd out of 144 countries. We were in 12th position—a lot closer to the front of the pack—a decade ago.
This economic disconnect that we talk about between outstanding global conditions, pretty good headline figures and the economy that people experience is most prevalent in the world of work and wages. It's fair to say that a lot of people feel that the link between their work and the reward they receive for that work has been severed. The best example of that is the fact that company profits have gone up 20 per cent in the last year at the same time over the same period that wages grew by two per cent. Whenever those opposite say, 'If only we can shovel some more money in the direction of the biggest companies in this country, they will jack up wages', we say, That's not been the experience.' Profits have gone up in this country in the last year—20 per cent; pretty extraordinary company profit growth. We want our companies to be profitable, but we want to make sure that the growth is inclusive and that people are rewarded for their work. Unfortunately—shamefully, really—in this country over the last year, we've had 20 per cent increase in company profits; two per cent increase in wages. That is a problem that would only be turbocharged if those opposite could implement their full agenda for tax cuts for big foreign multinationals and the big banks.
There are a whole range of reasons: insecure work; the fact that people can't get the hours they want; the underemployment in this country is extraordinarily high—near historic highs; and wages growth of course is at record lows. All of these sorts of figures, when you combine them, paint a picture of the kind of economy that people are actually experiencing in middle Australia.
One of the unfortunate things about the conversation we're having about wages in this country at the moment is that people assume or pretend that it's some sort of ideological thing. We're proud on our side of the parliament, of course, that we have always historically represented working people. However, beyond the usual fault lines of domestic politics, there's a substantial economic problem, objectively, when it comes to low wages in this country. It won't be fixed by company tax cuts for the reasons I've gone through in some detail. It certainly won't be fixed by cutting people's wages for working on the weekends.
The problem can be summed up like this: when millions of working people in this country can't get the wages growth that they need to provide for their families and keep up with the cost of living, they don't have the money to spend in the shops, they don't have the money to invest in the future of their kids and they don't have the disposable income which creates demand—the demand that we need if we are to have enduring and inclusive growth in this country.
If you look at the last national accounts, household consumption growth was very weak—0.1 per cent; the worst quarterly reading since the GFC. Household debt-to-income ratio is the highest it's been since the GFC, and what that shows is that people are feeling the strain. There is a disconnect between those headline growth figures and what people are experiencing. As I said, cutting wages, jacking up taxes on middle Australia—all of these sorts of things—would be a disaster for these trends that we've seen emerge that we should be dealing with.
It was terrific to see Michael Blythe, the CBA economist, in one of his recent economics issues notes—terrific publication, a good piece of economic analysis—talk about a wages recession. He described that weakness in wage growth as 'a significant economic risk' because it impacts on households who defer their spending and focus on balance sheet repair, which is another way of saying: trying to pay off the credit cards. It focuses on businesses who react by cutting capital spending and slowing labour hiring.
Stagnant wages growth in this country is not a problem that should only trouble one side of politics. It's not an ideological thing. It's an economic thing. It's a challenge. It's probably the most substantial threat to growth in this country at the moment that people do not have the income they need to make the economy whirr, and I think that this parliament needs to deal with that as a matter of urgency—at the very least, not by cutting wages, not by taking money out of the pockets of seven million Australian workers.
So, whether it's the budget, whether it's our approach to the broader macroeconomy, I think there are substantial differences between that side of the House and this side. We both want growth, we both want fiscal repair, we both want our businesses to succeed, but we're going about it in very different ways. I think only our way will succeed. I don't think it will succeed with the strategy of hoping that by showering largesse on the top end of town—the strongest in our economy—it will somehow trickle down to everybody else. I don't think that will work; it hasn't worked historically. It hasn't worked here; it hasn't worked overseas. It's a flawed economic model. You don't grow the economy by favouring the top end of town at the expense of middle Australia.
This is a government that thinks big multinational corporations pay too much tax, that seven million working Australians pay too little tax and that people get paid too much to work on the weekends. That tells us everything we need to know about the approach of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and their colleagues in the cabinet. We in the Labor Party take a different approach. We know growth has to be inclusive if you're serious about growing the economy. You have to invest in people and their productivity; you have to make sure people are being rewarded for effort; you have to ensure people have money to spend in the economy and can provide for their families. That also underpins our approach to the budget.
So we will, of course, be supporting the appropriation bills. That's the convention in this place. But that doesn't prevent us from pointing out the facts that we've got record and growing debt, that we've got a government which is spectacularly out of touch with middle Australia. We see that in their big business tax cuts and their tax hikes for ordinary people.
I too would like to speak on the appropriation bills and, in particular, about spending in the electorate of La Trobe. For those who do not know, La Trobe covers from the Dandenong Ranges in the north with suburbs such as Ferny Creek and Olinda and then goes right across to places like Emerald and Cockatoo and further down south, where there is an incredible growth corridor with suburbs such as Narre Warren, Narre Warren South, Beaconsfield, Officer and, of course, Berwick. Up to 250 families are moving each week into the shires of Cardinia and Casey, so it's a very, very fast-growing corridor, even when compared with the rest of Australia.
We've been very much focused on supporting community groups. Why do we do that under the Turnbull government? You find that if you make very strong communities and support—for example, the Men's Shed, woodworkers' clubs, the RSL, the Scouts and Guides and the sporting clubs—that's great for the community and keeps the community engaged. It's good for their health and wellbeing.
In the south of the electorate, as I said, with its huge growth corridor, one of the big issues has been transportation. You can imagine that with so many people moving into this area it does put huge pressure on local roads. One of the biggest roads we have in the electorate—in fact the biggest—is the Monash Freeway. I was greatly concerned and I lobbied back in March 2006 that an extra lane was needed on the Freeway—it could in fact have two lanes. We had the announcement with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that $500 million—which, sadly, was left over from money not spent by the state Labor government on the East-West Link—but we got that for the Monash. The announcement was in March 2016 for an extra lane that went all the way from the Warrigal Road connection to Cardinia Road. I would specifically like to thank Minister Paul Fletcher, who was heavily involved in the concept of where the road would finish. As I said to him, the growth in Officer in the next 10 years will be quite incredible. I think it will be in the vicinity of 50,000 people. You always hear the complaint, 'Governments do not have a vision.' Well, we wanted to make sure we had a vision to ensure that the road would actually meet the growth in that local area.
Also importantly, too, we wanted to improve the traffic movement of local residents. In particular, Clyde Road is a road which each morning is nearly clogged up for local residents. We have so many families in La Trobe. We have mums and dads dropping off kids at school and, when they get to Clyde Road, they try to sneak around to Soldiers Road if they are going to, say, Hillcrest college. It is just an absolute traffic jam, including people trying to get on to the Monash. I was approached by both Casey council and Cardinia council at the same time a number of years back to say: 'As part of this Monash proposal, we really need the Turnbull government to include the extension of O'Shea Road from Soldiers Road right to where we would see the Beaconsfield interchange. It currently has two on-off ramps. It needs to be completed with two more on-off ramps.' That would mean, for example, residents coming through from Pakenham would no longer need to go into Berwick and go down south on Clyde Road. They could go to the Beaconsfield interchange and go straight through O'Shea Road and go down to the southern parts of Victoria if need be—areas like Frankston—by missing Clyde Road. It's of great benefit to local residents.
Also, too, with the opening up of the Beaconsfield interchange and extension of O'Shea Road, there is Minta Farm, which is a large allotment of land. This has been zoned by councils to be used for innovation and advanced manufacturing jobs. It is not industrial but innovation and advanced manufacturing jobs. I speak to so many local businesses that are very keen to go into this area. This will create, once opened, an incredible 10,000 local jobs in that area. The whole purpose is to stop people travelling to the CBD. But there is a disappointing aspect to this. We made the announcement back in March 2016. Here we have an area where we could create 10,000 jobs at Beaconsfield interchange and make the lives of local residents so much better. Sadly, we saw in the May 2017 budget from the state Labor government that out of that $500 million, after spending $2.5 million on the business case, it has decided to spend money on only the sections between South Gippsland Highway and Clyde Road. I acknowledge that that is obviously very important, but it's not going right out to Warrigal Road and Cardinia Road. Most of that funding, I believe, is from Transurban, which means tolls for people in the south-east when they use the Monash Freeway. In particular, from the CBD down to Toorak Road will be hit with tolls for another 10 years. I have numerous times called on Premier Daniel Andrews to get on with the job, to relieve the stress and to get on with building with the money. It just seems quite ridiculous. We have had $500 million in federal funding for nearly two years, coming up in April, which has not been spent on one road, the Monash, which is so vital, especially when we talk about those 10,000 jobs.
We saw some good news with projects which opened recently. There was Bunjil Place. Again, I congratulate Casey council. For anyone in Victoria listening in, it's beside Fountain Gate. It's an incredible $125 million project which the Turnbull government committed $10 million for. I recently had the opening with the former mayor Sam Aziz and the councils down there. The Casey council had an incredible vision to open a performing arts centre. From memory, it's in the vicinity of 800 seats. The architecture of Bunjil Place is quite incredible. The wooden framing outside—and I do it no justice by calling it wooden framing—is a beautiful piece of art. It was constructed in Germany, and the builders who had to reconstruct it had to work within millimetres. It's got an amazing entrance.
Bunjil Place is named after the Aboriginal mythical creature, Bunjil—an eagle. They designed it in the shape of an eagle, and it looks absolutely incredible. I took the Treasurer down there, and he was absolutely blown away by how good this facility was and how much it means to the families of La Trobe, especially those in the south-east. That's what happens when the Turnbull government invests money, in this case $10 million. I also should say that it is in the seat of Holt, and I acknowledge the member for Holt for his interest in and commitment to this project. It's a fantastic local facility.
I also had the great pleasure of going to the opening of the Belgrave South Community Sports Pavilion recently. They had their official opening in November 2017. I previously committed $250,000 as an election commitment, and the entire project was in the vicinity of $2 million. It will benefit 419 people from the local area. What they've done down there just looks great. I'd also like to thank Ian Bakens and his team down there and to say that they had probably the best sporting event I've ever been to: it was a Black Caviar event. It was an incredible event to kick off the project and to get it up and running. When I was a candidate in 2017, I was blown away by how good it was, and that's why we made the election commitment. I'd like to also acknowledge the others from the Belgrave South community and various groups who were involved. It was a very exciting project, and it's now open to the public. We also gave them funding towards their lights.
We committed $250,000 to the Beaconsfield Football Club to upgrade, to seal, their car park. It's now a bitumen car park. The council is also working to get a skateboard centre for the local kids to give them something to do. We're also helping them get some funding for a storage shed. I would like to acknowledge the president of Beaconsfield Football Club, Troy Robinson, the senior coach, Leigh McQuillan, and the head of football operations, Darren Hamilton, for their efforts. Also, very shortly, the Upwey CRASH project will be opening, with the Upwey football and cricket clubs and all the sporting groups locating there. I'd like to thank Andrew Peterson for the work he's done. The old clubrooms were probably there for 40 or 50 years, especially the Upwey one. They've been demolished. It's just so great for the local area and for the community to get involved in those sorts of projects.
Also, up in Mount Dandenong, we committed $10 million at the last election for the Mount Dandenong tourist road upgrade. It's particular focus is on the cyclists. Cadel Evans—it was fantastic to see Evans win the Tour de France—is up there every weekend in the Dandenong Ranges. We have cyclists coming from absolutely everywhere, which is fantastic. The only thing is: it becomes very frustrating for the local residents. So, rather than complain—and we had some people saying we should ban the cyclists, which is something we would never do—we committed funding to look at improving its usage for cyclists and others. I thank VicRoads for the work and also the Shire of Yarra Ranges. We will need more money for it. I believe, after speaking to VicRoads, that the total project will be in the vicinity of over $30 million. We did approach the state Labor government, and they basically came back and said it wasn't a priority. I think it's a big priority and I think we need to work together and have the state Labor government put some funding into this project.
The same goes for Ridge Walk, which is a walk from Montrose right across to Upwey. It is to connect all the townships from Sassafras to Olinda to Mount Dandenong to Kalorama, and actually to really focus on the famous landscape artists of the hills and have an arts focus, because I really want to focus on creating tourism jobs up in the Dandenong Ranges. I'm very excited about that because we have this amazing tradition of artists in the hills, with Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton and Arthur Boyd. Artists have created all these amazing works in the Dandenong Ranges, including Aboriginal artist Lin Onus. So we really want to focus on that, and we have committed $2.5 million to the project. We do need the state Labor government to commit.
This project is not only good for telling or capturing the history of the area but also good for local residents, to walk in and experience the area. The footpaths in the hills aren't that great, but this project should make it a lot easier to walk through the parks. Some of the parks, as we see now in Sherbrooke Forest, are fantastic to walk through. In winter, though, it is pretty boggy, so we will be looking at having boardwalks. I'm very excited about the work we are doing with the council on that.
We have committed $5.5 million for Puffing Billy, for the Emerald discovery centre. That is in the planning phase. We've also committed $1 million to restore an old red rattler train, and I thank all those involved in assisting with that restoration. It will be so amazing and exciting when we have the first restored train come out from the CBD to Belgrave, to connect to Puffing Billy.
Finally, I had another commitment for the 1,000 Steps walk, for drinking taps. I remember people—this is more the media—being critical about having $50,000 for drinking taps at the start of the steps and at the top. Well, can I say: while I've been giving my speech, I reckon there would've been probably 100 people using those drinking taps, so that was money well spent.
Australia's a great country, but we really do face some big challenges, and now more than ever Australia needs a Prime Minister with a vision for this country and a vision for its people. But instead we've got a Prime Minister and a government which have completely run out of ideas. Not only have they run out of ideas; they are distracted and divided, and completely bereft of any vision for this country. They say one thing and they do exactly the opposite.
Their plan for Australian workers is breathtaking. They are supporting pay cuts for Australian workers at the very same time as they are supporting tax cuts for their bosses and the big companies. Their plan for the future of our workforce is to cut funding for our TAFEs at the very same time as they are importing skilled workers from overseas to do the jobs that Australian companies need to be done. The government has cut more than $2.8 billion from our TAFEs, from skills and from training.
As to their plan for universities—now this is going to kill you—we've got a Prime Minister who runs around the country and will talk to anyone with two eyes and a pair of ears about the importance of innovation while at the very same time they've cut $617 million from the very institutions that are training Australians in how to innovate! From my own university, Wollongong University—and I'm a proud graduate of that place—$45 million is being cut. This government has lost the plot.
Their plan to close the gap on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inequality is to pretend that the $500 million that they have cut out of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs over the last four years and their five years of inaction just did not happen. Over the last 24 hours, we've seen the ridiculous thing where they're asking us to give them credit for reopening an antismoking program that they closed down only three years ago. They are going to have another conversation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, while the memory of the Prime Minister closing the door on the Uluru Statement from the Heart is still fresh in the minds of those very same people. He has dithered and dallied on reconciliation while making grand speeches about the need for urgent action. He talks about the importance and the need for Australia to respect women and girls, but we see so few of them on his own front bench. He nobbles regional universities with funding cuts and increased enrolment fees. He says, 'We need to unite as one Australia,' while presiding over ever-growing inequality.
In Australia today, wealth is more concentrated than at any time in the last 60 years. The richest 10 per cent of Australians own 45 per cent of all wealth, and the gap between city Australia and regional Australia is widening. If you're in the top 20 per cent, you probably live in one of our capital cities. If you're in the bottom 20 per cent, you probably live outside one of those capital cities. If you're in one of those regional areas and you're represented by a Labor MP, you'll find somebody coming to Canberra and, with every breath they take, they will fight against the pernicious attacks of the government on the very programs and the very institutions which are driving at reducing inequality in this country. But, if you are unfortunate enough in one of the regional areas to be represented by one of the Liberal-National Party MPs, you'll find an MP who fights like a lion in his own electorate and says the most outrageous things about what he or she will take on when they come to Canberra, but they file in here and vote, day after day, against the very interests of their own electorates.
Let's look at what's going on in some of the regional areas. It doesn't matter which indicator you look at: there is a growing gap. There is a health gap, whether you measure it in access to medical care, whether you measure it in access to the necessary pharmaceuticals or whether you measure it in the prevalence of chronic diseases like diabetes. Diabetes is 3.5 times more common in working adults from the poorer areas, the majority of whom are in regional Australia—a whopping 3.5 times more common. What's the answer from the geniuses opposite? To make it harder for a person in regional Australia to go and see a GP. This is a government bereft of ideas. But it's not just about health. If you look at life expectancy, there is a three-year gap. For the average white Australian—and I'll get to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians—living in regional Australia versus one living in one of the capitals or in one of the metropolitan areas of the country, there is an average three-year life expectancy gap. That blows out to 10 years if you go to rural and remote Australia. We all know, after reading the 10-year Closing the gap report yesterday, what the unacceptably high gap in life expectancy is between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and other Australians in those communities.
Education is the tool that we use to improve the life expectancies and the life opportunities available for people who come from a modest background versus those who are born with every opportunity in life. But, when you look at the data, the gap in the participation rate between the city and the country is also growing. The gap in secondary education between major cities and outer regional areas is a whopping 7.3 per cent. We've got to ask ourselves whether LNP representatives from regional electorates were aware of the 7.3 per cent participation gap in secondary education when they filed into this place and voted in favour of cuts to school education.
The Prime Minister and his government say that they care about rising electricity costs, while rejecting every single sensible plan, including the sensible plans that were commissioned by their own ministers. It takes a special kind of wisdom to get some of the smartest people in the country to prepare a report on how we can have a clean energy future with stable and reliable electricity prices and then send it off to some of the daftest people in your party room and accept the recommendations that come from those very same people. It takes a special kind of genius, a special kind of government, but that's exactly what this mob over here have done. Is it any wonder that electricity bills in the last quarter alone were up by up to 20 per cent? This is the result of their dithering and their do-nothing approach when it comes to energy policy.
Let's talk about housing and housing affordability. The federal government could do something. They could reach across the table and join in a bipartisan effort with the Labor proposals to remove the excessive subsidies that are currently going into the housing sector to support people who are buying their second, third, fourth or fifth house and take some heat out of the housing market at the same time as they do something more productive with that money, but they have rejected Labor's proposal. They are completely bereft of ideas when it comes to housing affordability and, worse than that, when it comes to supporting housing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities—tearing up the national partnership agreement which made such tremendous progress in providing both housing and skills in those communities throughout Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, South Australia and other places.
We had a Treasurer once who said that the answer to housing affordability is to go out and find some rich parents. Well, if that wasn't bad enough, you've got a Deputy Prime Minister who says the answer is to go and move to regional Australia because rent's pretty cheap there. Not everybody has the opportunity of having a rich mate who is going to provide an apartment for them rent free. Most Australians have to struggle hard to put a roof over their head. This government is doing nothing to support them in that. The Prime Minister likes to talk about infrastructure but he has fundamentally failed to fund infrastructure projects in Tasmania, in Victoria and in South Australia—the states which are crying out for massive injections of infrastructure spend.
The great Gough Whitlam once said that Labor governments see election victories as instructions to perform, while Liberal governments see them as a right to preside. Since the last election, we have seen nothing more than the truth of this saying in the performance of this government. There are only two things that unite a divided coalition government: attacking industrial rights and the industrial relations system and providing big business tax cuts. Let's have a look at the decision to support wage reductions through penalty rate cuts throughout the economy. At the same time as you have a Treasurer who is saying the most urgent economic reform that we need in this country is a pay rise, they are cheering on the Fair Work Commission as it reduced and removed penalty rate rights for thousands and thousands of Australian workers. Over 700,000 workers are likely to be affected by that decision. Cutting penalty rates will see a pay cut for low-, middle- and working-class families of up to $77 a week. That's not a very good way to go about increasing wages—by putting them up to $77 a week behind. In my own electorate, there are over 7,000 workers in the retail sector who are affected by this and around 4,200 workers in the accommodation and food sector who are affected by this. But it's not just electorates like mine; it is the same right throughout regional Australia. I happen to have the figures for Capricornia. There are about 13,000 retail workers in the Rockhampton and Gladstone areas and around 8,700 food and accommodation workers. In fact, if you look at the data, around one in seven workers in the electorates of Capricornia and Flynn are affected by direct decisions of this government and their agencies: a pay cut for these workers, supported by members opposite, with not a plan to do anything about it.
I want to say something about trickle-down economics because the Prime Minister is fond of lecturing us on what he calls the fundamental laws of economics, which he says have not changed. He says that if we give corporates and the wealthy more money, it will somehow trickle down in the form of pay rises. He's willing to take a $65 billion gamble on federal finances to give this old chestnut of trickle-down economics a go. He could legislate for it, of course. He could put in the legislation that he has before the Senate a requirement that to receive the tax cut you've got to pass it on to your workers, but he won't do that. He won't do that, because he doesn't even believe his own rhetoric and he knows that this tax cut is not going to lead to a pay rise for ordinary Australians.
Ordinary Australians know that it's not the pay that is going to rise. It's not the pay and the money that are trickling down to households. It's the bills—increases for health insurance costs, increases for school fee costs, paying more money for energy, paying more money for everything. In fact, ordinary Australians know that, when the Prime Minister is talking about trickle-down, they have this vision of him standing on a balcony somewhere and he's pouring scorn down on them. It's certainly not the pay and the money trickling down to them; it's something else indeed.
There is no credibility, and he can't point to a country on earth where massive tax cuts to the biggest and wealthiest corporations in this country are going to lead to a pay increase for workers. If the government want some ideas, they should look to what Labor's doing. We have a vision for this country. This government is bereft of ideas. They are divided. They have not got an idea for the future of the country.
I'm pleased to follow the member for Whitlam, channelling Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn at the dispatch box, ranting on about all those good, hard socialist policies. However, the one thing we see time and time again from Labor spokesmen on the economy and why they always get it wrong is: they think the size of the economy, the size of the economic pie, is fixed. They don't understand that the size of our economic pie, the total wealth created in the economy, can grow and shrink. The problem is, which they don't understand, every time that you step in and try and redistribute the wealth, you destroy the very incentives to create that wealth in the first place. This is why we see policy after policy from the Labor side fail.
The member for Whitlam talks about wage increases from tax cuts. I think the member for Whitlam should actually go and read a few things about what's happening in the USA, because they have reduced their corporate rate of tax. What's happened? Millions upon millions of workers in the USA are receiving pay increases. Many of them are receiving $1,000 cash bonuses from their employees. That is what is happening. That is the evidence of what is happening when you reduce the corporate rate of tax.
If we go back in our nation's history and we look at every single time we have reduced the percentage rate of corporate tax, do you know what's happened? Without fail, we have ended up with not only more tax revenue but more corporate tax as a percentage of GDP at a lower rate of tax. So we've not only grown the pie; we've ended up with a bigger slice of that bigger pie in taxation revenue.
No-one knows and no-one can guarantee that that will be exactly what happens in the future, but we have seen it every time in our nation. We saw it recently in New Zealand, where their conservative government lowered the rate of corporate tax. What happened in New Zealand? Wages rose, revenue rose and the government ended up with more revenue, not less. Everything tells us that the same will happen here in Australia.
We've also heard the member for Whitlam rant on about electricity prices. It's so timely that the member for Port Adelaide is in the chamber at this time. You learn as a young child that if you put your hand in the fire you get burnt and then you don't put your hand in the fire again. The way we progress—whether it's in business, as a society or even as a species—is by a series of small-scale experiments where we try something a little bit different. If it fails, we stop immediately and go down another track. If it works, we duplicate it and we roll it out. There has been a thought that a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target—or should I correctly say a 50 per cent compulsory, forced government mandate for generation of intermittent and unreliable energy—would actually lower the price of electricity. That's what many theorists thought, and that's fair enough. If you're thinking about a new idea, it's good that people put their different views and opinions forward.
We've had this experiment of a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target conducted before our very eyes in South Australia. It has ended in tears. It is probably one of the greatest policy failures in our nation's history at any level. It has delivered that state the most unreliable energy, forcing them to spend half a billion dollars in a state of 1.7 million people in a desperate attempt to keep the lights on by bringing in emergency diesel generators to have on stand-by. Not only that, on top of that it has delivered that state the highest electricity prices anywhere in the world.
Common sense would tell you that if you've tried that experiment and it has been an unmitigated disaster, you'd say, 'Yes, we failed,' you'd pull back and you'd go down another track. That's how we progress. As I said, if you put your hand in the fire and you get burnt, you learn as a young child that you don't do it. Yet we have seen the Labor Party look at South Australia and say, 'Let's copy the 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target and take it nationwide.' This is insane. This is completely nuts. And yet this is the Labor Party's policy on energy—to copy an unmitigated disaster, a failed experiment. It will see pensioners in this nation being unable to heat their homes in winter, it will turn air-conditioning into a luxury good; and businesses will be no longer viable so will be forced to move offshore because of the high cost of energy in this nation. That is what the Labor Party wants to copy.
I call on good members of the Labor Party to speak up in your party room—put aside trying to attract a handful of Greens inner-city votes. Think of the pensioners, the workers and the coalminers that the Labor Party used to stand up for. Ben Chifley would be rolling in his grave if he saw the plans of what they did—a Labor policy that pushed electricity prices up—and how they were selling out the pensioners and workers of this country just to attract a few inner-city Greens votes.
In the time left on this appropriation bill, I'd quickly like to raise the issue of electric cars. There's been quite a bit of debate about this recently in the media. In fact, even the Chief Scientist has chipped into the debate. He's taken the role of chief subsidy seeker in an article he wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald the other week. The Chief Scientist gets it wrong in many respects. The first place he gets it wrong is that the debate is not for or against electric cars. We're not arguing against electric cars. The debate is: should electric cars be subsidised in Australia? That's what the debate is about. Let's take a simple proposition. If electric cars are so great—and they certainly are; they have many wonderful benefits, and I'm the first to acknowledge that—why do they need a subsidy? Why do they need to be subsidised if they are so great?
Our job in government should be to level the playing field between technologies, to let them compete against each other as vigorously as they possibly can, to let them put the best offer they can to the consumer and to let the consumer decide. We shouldn't suppose that we know better down here in Canberra what car the consumer should buy. We should just level the playing field and let the consumer decide. But we already have a substantial range of subsidies for electric cars in this country. We have subsidised finance. We have the fact that electric cars make no contribution to the fuel excise. We have a luxury car tax break. We have subsidised registrations and stamp duty. There's subsidised charging, and we have a tax office ruling that allows very generous deductions.
The argument that's put forward for these subsidies and for more subsidies the electric car industry is asking for is that electric cars will lower emissions—that it's good for the environment. To take the words of the Chief Scientist, we should test this hypothesis with the evidence. And we can look at the evidence, because we can use the science and the maths to make a calculation of the grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kilometre travelled. That is something we can do. In fact, we do that with the Green Vehicle Guide that the government puts out. It is very handy; it does a good job. But it does, unfortunately, leave out a few things. I doesn't make any allowance for the losses for the transmission and distribution of electricity. That should add an extra 10 per cent onto the CO2 emissions of electric cars. It also makes no allowance for the fact that there are substantially higher manufacturing emissions for electric cars. And that's not just my supposition. That's from a study titled 'Comparative environmental life cycle assessment of conventional and electric vehicles' published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, where the authors estimate that emissions from electric vehicles produce between 87 and 95 grams of CO2 per kilometre, compared with 44 grams of CO2 associated with a standard petrol or diesel car engine.
The other thing it fails to look at is that when you charge your car from the grid you'll mostly charge it at night, and the carbon intensity of our grids, especially in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, is substantially higher at night. For example, over the last few nights in New South Wales 99 per cent of the electricity came from coal. We know that our hydro plants and our gas plants in New South Wales are used as peaking plants. And, of course, we have no solar at night. Also, it makes no allowance for the fact that when you turn the heater on in an electric car you use substantially more energy than you do in a petrol car. That is because in a petrol car the heat from your heater comes from the passenger engine, and in an electric car it is an almost purely electric heater. When you factor all those things in, there is simply no case for subsidies for electric cars in this nation.
The CO2 emissions, almost on a like-for-like basis, are higher in almost every circumstance. Even the good old Toyota Corolla, our most popular selling car, has lower emissions than a Tesla. I know the Chief Scientist says in his article, 'Oh, yes, but there's the Renault Zoe, which only emits 121 grams per kilometre.' But what he doesn't say is that Renault has another vehicle called the Megane, which is a petrol/diesel car that has lower CO2 emissions at 115 grams of CO2 per kilometre driven. We're often told that the future will be all electric. Earlier this week, we had the publication of the Annual Energy Outlook for 2018 from the US Energy Information Administration. It makes projections out to 2050, the middle of this century. They predict that plug-in electric vehicles in the US, by 2050, will only make up 14 per cent of the US passenger car fleet. Over 80 per cent of the vehicles—
Who said that?
I hear the member for Port Adelaide. Obviously he is uninformed in this case and I'm happy to send it to him. This is from none other than the US Energy Information Administration. That is their latest projections out to 2050. That is what they project. You may have other projections, you may have other information or you may be making it up, like you've previously done. I notice the member for Grayndler is another culprit in this. The two gentlemen sitting at the table have talked about how thermal coal is in rapid decline. I hope they've looked at the evidence over the last 12 months and seen we've had record exports of coal. Both of you sitting down there have stood up in the media and made ridiculous comments about the decline of exports of thermal coal, and yet we have had the largest increase in coal exports in our nation's history. Everywhere around the world—Japan is importing more thermal coal; China's coal consumption last year was up by 5.2 per cent. I will leave my remarks there. I'd be more than happy at any time to give the two gentlemen at the table a briefing so they don't make so many silly comments in the media and embarrass themselves.
Australians are a reasonable people. With only one exception in our history, Australian voters have given federal governments at least two terms in office. That's enough time to implement their policies and for evidence to emerge as to whether those policies have worked as promised. Voters listen to what we say as parliamentarians. They want proof that the government can actually deliver what it promises. They want a government with a sense of purpose, with a narrative for what it wants to do in office and where it wants to take the country. They want a government that not only anticipates the future but, by its actions, helps to create that future. What is very clear is that for this Prime Minister, in particular, his only objective has been to occupy the Lodge. You can see the lack of foresight and forward thinking when it comes to infrastructure investment, and that is what I want to concentrate on in my contribution to this appropriations debate in the parliament this evening.
The fact is that this government has cut infrastructure investment and it will continue to cut infrastructure investment into the future. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that, based upon the government's own figures, infrastructure investment as a proportion of GDP will fall from 0.4 to 0.2 per cent over the next decade. It will halve.
If you look at the specific budget figures, you can see why that's occurring. The estimate of what the government would invest on infrastructure in the 2016-17 financial year, as announced on budget night, was $9.2 billion. If you look at the actual investment, it was $7.5 billion—or a $1.7 billion underspend—in circumstances when, because of the mining boom moving from the investment to the production phase, we should have been stepping up investment in infrastructure. But over the forward estimates it gets worse. Over the forward estimates, the amount of infrastructure investment will fall off a cliff to $4.2 billion.
We raised these questions this week in parliament with the hapless and helpless infrastructure minister, who happens to be the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. What we've learnt is that the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, does not have a clue about this portfolio, despite the fact that he was appointed to the position last year after a long period of stalking the former minister for infrastructure, the member for Gippsland. We asked the minister why, for example, Victoria, home to one in four Australians, receives only nine per cent of the Commonwealth infrastructure budget. Victoria is Australia's fastest-growing state. Melbourne is Australia's fastest-growing city. Yet this government chooses to allocate under 10 per cent of the budget.
In fact, in his answer he raised the $1.5 billion that was forwarded under the East West Link project, determined by the Abbott government in 2014, which the people of Victoria rejected when they elected the Daniel Andrews government. It's not surprising that they rejected it, given it had a benefit-to-cost ratio of just 45c return for every dollar that would have been invested in that project. But, of course, because of the incompetent way in which the government have dealt with infrastructure and their budgetary policies, they'd already forwarded $1.5 billion as an advance payment to Victoria for this project before it had its business case.
This is a government that says that it had a policy of only making milestone payments once something was actually being built. But that $1.5 billion was, of course, reallocated to a range of projects just last year when they realised that it was unsustainable to have that money simply sitting in the bank account of the Victorian government and not building anything, which is what had occurred over the previous couple of years. But the infrastructure minister didn't seem to know that that was the case—just like today, when, in answer to a question from his own side, he then went through and claimed rail projects such as the Regional Rail Link that were funded by the former Labor government and projects like the M80 as well.
We also asked him why he was cutting infrastructure investment in South Australia from $921.4 million in the current year to just $95 million in 2019-20. That represents South Australia receiving just two per cent of the national infrastructure budget in spite of the fact that the government have said they support the upgrading of the entire North-South Corridor road; in spite of the fact that the project between Torrens to Torrens and the South Road Superway is the next one ready to be progressed; in spite of the fact that the Prime Minister says he supports public transport, but the Gawler line electrification is ready to go and is waiting for funding; and in spite of the fact that the South Australian government has developed the AdeLINK light rail expansion to improve mobility and deal with urban congestion in that state. His response was to simply talk about the portfolio of the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel and defence spending rather than infrastructure and transport spending, which is what he's actually responsible for. We asked why the government allocated $100 million to the Northern Australia Roads Program last year but actually spent $12 million, so there was an underspend of 88 per cent in that program at a time when they say they care about northern Australia. I note that the member for Solomon, who is in the chamber, can certainly identify roads that could have been funded in his electorate around Darwin and Palmerston and could have benefitted from that program. What we heard from the infrastructure minister was quite revealing in that he talked about the Nullarbor Plain. He wasn't quite sure where the Northern Territory and northern Australia is. He talked about the Nullarbor, which says it all about his failure in this area.
Perhaps the worst response from the infrastructure minister, who showed that, frankly, he's out of his depth in that portfolio, was his response to a question we raised about infrastructure investment in Tasmania. Since the change of government in 2013, we've seen a funding cut for the Midland Highway upgrade and a funding cut for the rail revitalisation program. Remarkably, for Tasmania, not a single new major infrastructure project funded by the federal government has begun—nothing in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018. The infrastructure minister referred to the Inland Rail project. If you look at a map of Australia, between the north island, where we are now, and the south island of Tasmania is the Bass Strait. I've got news for the minister for infrastructure: inland rail does not cross the Bass Strait. He should know that because, in fact, inland rail goes nowhere near water at all. It doesn't go to the Port of Melbourne and it stops 38 kilometres short of the Port of Brisbane, at Acacia Ridge. It's quite remarkable.
Today we asked why the government had spent $1 billion less than promised in Queensland in the past four years. Again, there was no response. There was no understanding that what we were talking about wasn't what Labor thought should happen in Queensland. What we were talking about were their own budget papers in their first four budgets and what they said they would spend, and matching that up with actual investment. That cut is due to a failure to invest in programs in Queensland and right around the country. Money was allocated for things such as the Mobile Black Spot Program and the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program. At a time when, after decades of a declining road toll, we've had the road toll increase, we have an underspend of half the funds that were allocated for heavy vehicle rest stops. That is a remarkable indictment of the incompetence of this government. That is this government's record on infrastructure.
The total underspend between the 2014-15 budget—its first budget—and 2017-18 has now hit $4.8 billion. Now, occasionally, it may well be that a road project or a rail project has to be deferred slightly because of weather events or because of circumstances beyond the government's control. I accept that that can happen. But this is happening across every state and territory every year, for road and rail projects large and small. That comes down to a simple case of incompetence. The difference between the budget that they announced in May 2017 and the MYEFO that they put out at the end of last year showed a reduction of $914 million—and we're not even there yet. That's what they cut from when they made the big announcements in May, and now we see what's actually happening. On major road projects alone, the underspend is $2.8 billion. That is why Infrastructure Partnerships Australia said, 'The budget confirms the cut to real budgeted capital funding to its lowest level in more than a decade—using a mix of underspend, reprofiling and narrative to cover this substantial drop in real capital expenditure.' There are two ways you can grow an economy: invest in infrastructure or invest in people through education and training. This government is doing neither, which is why it's not creating the conditions for growth in the future economy and for future employment and opportunity for Australians.
I'm very pleased to talk about a very important economic development initiative in my electorate, the Myalup-Wellington project. This is a significant economic development project. It is an industry-led initiative and it will do a number of things in the irrigation space. It is about substantially increasing production capacity. It will create jobs. It will provide economic uplift in what is the underdeveloped Collie River Irrigation District and the Myalup Irrigated Agricultural Precinct.
The project is a major opportunity to help diversify Western Australia's regional economy through irrigated agriculture. Anyone who understands irrigation understands the capabilities of irrigated agriculture. Currently, just 6,557 hectares of the available 34,600 hectares of the Collie River, Harvey and Waroona districts are actually irrigated. The Myalup-Wellington project is an industry-led initiative. It will see saline water that's currently flowing into the Wellington Dam diverted from the Collie River east branch to a mine void, with that water then treated in a new desalination plant. A new, smaller Burekup weir will be built upstream to enable water delivery to be powered by gravity—what a great way to go; environmentally sustainable because it is powered by gravity. The irrigation channels will be replaced with a new, pressurised pipe network. So it is a simple concept. It's about desalination. It's about piping. It's about a delivery network. It will boost horticultural, agricultural and forestry opportunities—what a great combination! It will create jobs and an economic uplift. It will attract even further investment in the region and it will diversify the south-west regional economy.
The old Wellington Dam was built back in 1933 with Commonwealth funding. The salinity in that amazing dam has risen significantly. The Collie River east branch contributes up to 14 per cent of the annual flow and up to 55 per cent of the annual salt load into the Wellington Dam. When you put that in other terms, this means that each year this east branch is delivering between 60,000 and 110,000 tonnes of salt into the Wellington Dam. That's what part of this project is about—the increase in the salinity over the years and how we manage that. There are districts that are choosing, because of this salinity below the Wellington Dam, not to actually irrigate their properties or irrigate as much of them. The productivity isn't there in the same way. That is because of that possibility and risk of soil degradation. So it's important that we deal with the salinity issue as well as the piping process for the delivery of the water ahead.
Existing open channels created in 1960 will be replaced with a closed pipe network. This will save at least 15 gigalitres of water a year currently lost through seepage, leakage or evaporation. The pipe network will replace the open channel system and allow expansion of the amount of land that's currently under irrigation. This will see a piped system from the Collie River Irrigation District to the Myalup Irrigated Agricultural Precinct which will re-inject water from the Wellington Dam into aquifers in the Myalup area to address the issues around volume and salinity concerns in that area.
There's also an idea to re-inject stormwater collected in the Harvey diversion drain. That's also part of the proposal. This is a very sound proposal. It will bring incredible opportunities to the south-west. Around 10 gigalitres a year of potable water from the desal plant will be sold into Water Corp's Great Southern Towns Water Supply Scheme and stored in the Harris dam. There will be ongoing opportunities. It is a fantastic irrigation system, a series of dams in the hills, with water delivered in a gravity-fed pipe-and-channel system. It's simple, it's effective and it delivers. There have been many innovative solutions as part of the sustainable techniques in this multi-awarded delivery system.
I also want to talk about the Bunbury outer ring road. A major development is needed to finish the whole of the Bunbury outer ring road. At the moment, it's like a stranded T-junction. The federal government recently committed $10 million to complete the planning and the project development of the unbuilt sections—the northern and southern sections. This is currently underway. There are new developments in the area proposed. The planning and project development for the bypass will help to reduce congestion, improve safety and—this is the key issue—provide an efficient freight route. It is a major economic driver in the south-west as well.
Of course, we need to deliver on issues around the Forrest Highway, Robertson Drive and Bussell Highway, which are experiencing congestion and safety challenges, mainly with access to the Bunbury Port for road freight. It's currently inefficient, with trucks having to negotiate over and over again several low-speed roundabouts. They compete constantly with local commuter traffic. We need really to reduce the congestion on the existing roads, reduce that dangerous mix of heavy freight and local traffic, and encourage sustainable, economic growth in residential and industrial development so they can get on with what they do around Bunbury and support planning. This is part of the proposal for pedestrian, cycling, public transport and passenger rail and freight solutions and that safe and reliable freight route to the port of Bunbury. We need to seriously improve the efficiencies in the supply chain.
We have a growing population in the south-west. We have the highest population in the state outside of Perth, and we need to make sure that we keep developing in this region. Those freight accesses are really critical. There are around 300 truck movements a day into the port. That tells you about the mix between local and freight traffic. The port traffic needs to get on with what it does, and local people need a safe way of getting to and from where they're going.
The port is of such huge, often underestimated, economic importance to Bunbury, the whole of the south-west and the state of Western Australia. It's existed since the 1800s, and we are now seeing the amazing—I think it's amazing—export of alumina. It is the biggest alumina export port in Australia—in Bunbury, in my electorate. I'm very proud of that. I'm proud of the people who produce it, deliver it and ship it out of the port of Bunbury. There are also woodchips, mineral sands, spodumene, silica sands, grain and bauxite, a new export, out of Bunbury, and I'm hoping we'll see lithium as well.
There are over 10 million tonnes of alumina going out of Bunbury. Every time I see a shipload going out, I think how great it is for our regional economy and the jobs that we are so focused on as a government. Of course, added to that, there are all of the services around the port: the transport services, the maritime services. When the tugs go out, you see how well those men do their job, and the precision of what they do with the vessels that come in is extraordinary to watch.
Of course, part of this is some of the volunteer groups that operate in and around the port. I want to mention the Bunbury Sea Rescue group. They do a fantastic job. They have 35 volunteers and do so many callouts on a regular basis. They are absolutely vital to ensuring the local marine environment is safe. All those people who choose to go out and enjoy themselves need the Bunbury Sea Rescue group of volunteers. The group are very, very proud—and they should be—of their 11-metre Elite Marine aluminium cat. It has twin—which is the bit I like—740 horsepower Volvo Penta diesel engines and, when that vessel starts up, she's got all the power she needs to do the job that sea rescue need her to do.
All of these volunteers dedicate an enormous amount of time and effort to their sea rescue efforts. They work very closely with the Western Australia Police in search-and-rescue operations. They are totally volunteer. We often see these people, but we don't think about the amount of time that goes into their training and their efforts. They also educate people on safe boating and survival at sea. They train volunteers as skippers, crews and radio operators. I want to thank all of those at the Bunbury Sea Rescue group for what they do. It's an incredible commitment you make to the safety not only of people who live in our community but also of those who visit. I saw recently where some of the skippers, particularly Michael Cooper and Brett Ladhams, had been doing some work. Michael received an award recently for the amount of time he's spent as a volunteer and, each time one of these members receive a long service recognition, I cannot believe how much time they've spent volunteering.
The Busselton Volunteer Marine Rescue Group also does a fantastic job. They run out of a state-of-the-art control room, housed in the Busselton Volunteer Marine Rescue Group's headquarters. It is very well located. It has the latest radar, marine radios and weather station and it is also equipped with an AIS—an automatic identifying system tracking device. There is a fabulous group of volunteers. They don't even expect to be thanked for what they do; they're just there. They're absolutely dedicated to safety at sea. It's a simple ambition for these people, but what a wonderful thing to deliver. Their core function is rescuing people. That's what they do: they rescue people; they save lives. And they also help with yachting regattas, outrigger races, the Busselton Jetty swim, the IRONMAN of Western Australia and whale rescues. They are a great group of people. Busselton has 85 volunteers. Of course, there are very active members and others who are not so active. They are such a welcoming group of people that so many others want to be part of this organisation. That's because of the sense of family and the purpose they have in rescuing people and providing what is an invaluable service. They answer approximately 300 callouts a year. These are all volunteers.
I spoke a couple of days ago about our surf lifesavers and the extraordinary service and the thousands and thousands of hours of their own that they give to make sure they are trained and ready to provide these extraordinary emergency services. For all of those who are involved in emergency services, but particularly the Bunbury Sea Rescue Group and the Busselton Volunteer Marine Rescue Group, I want to say a special thankyou to each one of them. You give up your time, and it costs you money to be a volunteer. What you're doing is rescuing good people, but you're saving lives, and it's one of the most important contributions that you can make—whether it is St John Ambulance, with its extraordinary number of volunteers, or whether it is our volunteer Fire and Rescue people. Our volunteers were amazing with the fire at Augusta. They were on the job straightaway and they saved so many homes and so many people. That fire could have been well out of control but for the work of our volunteers. As always, I'm very supportive of the volunteers who do an extraordinary job right around Australia, but particularly in my electorate. Thank you.
I too would like to participate in this debate, but I would like to draw some attention to what I see as shortcomings within this government. One thing I've learnt since viewing the activities of the Turnbull government is that we should pay attention not to what they say but to what they do. And I think there's a clear measure of that when you look at what this government has done. Bear in mind, this is the government of Work Choices—that was their origin; that was their commitment. They wanted to reduce the workers' ability in respect to wage rises; they wanted employers to pay people below award rates of pay. It's in their DNA.
None of this has changed. Work Choices moved to lower the standard of living, and this government continues to do that. They certainly have made a move to cut the standard of living of pensioners, those on disability support, the unemployed, young people. And now they want us to believe that they've changed; that they've turned over a new leaf, as it were. It wasn't that long ago that this mob opposite were banging on about how what we need is budget repair. That's putting it mildly. They talked about a budget emergency or a deficit disaster. They pounded on about that before the last election. But what do we see now? Under this government's watch, the deficit is blowing out and the debt has now crashed through the half-trillion dollar mark.
This is a government of misplaced priorities, with a signature policy of handing out $65 billion to multinationals and big business. This policy is all inspired by the government's misconceived views about trickle-down economics. I'll tell you what: that wasn't one of the terms in any of the economics books I had to read when I was studying. But they have placed all their faith in that—that the more we give the top end of town, the more they'll pass it on. As I said last week, pigs might fly. Yet this is their signature policy with which they want to take the Australian community under their wing, saying, 'Trust us; this'll be all okay.'
Well, as I say, don't listen to what they say; look at what they do. At this time we have unemployment and casualisation at an all-time high. We have stagnant living standards. We have a diminished number of apprenticeships. We have a housing affordability crisis. And the only plan the government has is, quite frankly, to make it hard for families who are battling already. Just a piece of advice for those opposite: if you can't afford to give, straight out, business $65 billion, simply don't do it. But don't do it at the expense of the most vulnerable Australians. That's not what government is about. This is not Robin Hood taking from the rich and giving to the poor. From what they're doing, they misread that book; they're taking from the poor to reward the rich. The government's approach is unfair and ill considered. The type of growth they are targeting is not the right type of growth that this country needs. And it is unaffordable, particularly at a time when this government has the budget in a big mess.
Since this government's economic plan was first introduced, we have talked about the extremely minimal impact that these proposed tax cuts for big business will have. We are talking about giving $65 billion to the top end of town—the top corporates and the multinationals. But the economists have reminded us that it will have negligible economic benefit. As a matter of fact, they have modelled this. It has a benefit of one per cent over the next 20 years—that's to say, in terms of wages, a $2 a day increase in the wages per person in 20 years time. That's what they're basing all this on. No wonder they want to move to cut pensions or make it more difficult for pensions and why they want to move on family tax benefits, and why they are moving on universities and on schools. This is all to pay for this unfunded $65 billion tax cut to big business.
The Treasurer's economic modelling certainly is a one-trick pony. He expects that, if he can give away this money, we are going to see miraculous results within the community. As I say, he believes—as I presume those opposite, if they are shaking their heads, do too—that the more we give the top end of town, the more they're going to feel obliged to expend that in higher wages for their employees. I just don't think the world works that way. This is the same trickle-down approach that has dominated, quite frankly, the last three budgets delivered by the Treasurer.
I've found a comment by a person who I know is friends of people on both sides of this parliament, and I am referring to Father Frank Brennan. He is the CEO of Catholic Social Services. He succinctly summarised this position that the government's wedded to, about their tax cuts. He said:
Our tax and transfer system is critical to ensuring a fairer Australia … Placing the burden of budget repair on those who can least afford it, while providing tax cuts to the wealthy and businesses, is wrong morally and economically.
We agree with that. If Father Frank is making comments like that, he is sure as hell talking to those on the other side and making sure that they understand that.
I am not sure how rusted on those opposite are to this. We would like to think that they will take this to the next election, because those of us who spent a bit of time in our electorates over Christmas know that this is totally unpopular. People get what's occurring here. People get that the government are making cuts that affect families and hardworking people all to further their tax cuts for business. At the same time, the government want to take $17 billion from our schools, $2.2 billion from our universities and almost $650 million from vocational education through our TAFE system—and all of this when we are moving from crisis to crisis in health. In that environment, is it worth giving the top end of town $65 billion? By the way, in the last 12 months, the top end of town has averaged a 20 per cent profit. Does that trickle down anywhere? Wages growth has flatlined, so it hasn't trickled down too far.
I will just highlight some of the ramifications of these cuts. I have spoken a number of times about our schools. I would expect that all members here would, from time to time, visit their schools and their principals to get an idea of how they are going and get an understanding of the practical ramifications of the cuts that the government is now making. In my electorate, under the cuts that the government proposes, our schools will lose $24.8 million in funding. In my discussions with the Western Sydney University last week they told me that the government's proposed cuts, which they are instituting through the freeze on Commonwealth funding grants, in this year alone will amount to $5.7 million. The university told me that they are going to have to take a lot of their focus away from business and, for example, their start-up incubator.
All the things that the Prime Minister once said were essential for growth in Western Sydney are going to be ratcheted back because of these cuts. These cuts are unfair and are painful for communities such as Western Sydney. This just goes to prove that the government can't be trusted when it comes to the most important investments for our nation. An investment in education is an investment in our future. We need to have the best and brightest if we are going to compete in the world. But that is lost on this government. You don't make cuts to institutions that are responsible for developing skills and training and all those things that we are going to need in an advanced economy to be able compete with the rest of the world—but the government is slashing those institutions.
We see this same sentiment reflected in the government's health policy, where the government failed to reverse their unfair 2020 Medicare freeze. They are effectively asking Australians to pay more for their health care than they should be paying. Over the next four years this amounts to a cut of about $2.2 billion from Medicare, and that is in addition to the savings already banked by the government. The Turnbull government has been cutting Medicare and threatening bulk-billing. I would just remind the House that this is the same bunch that, when they had half a chance, wanted to move to privatise parts of Medicare—and now they want us to believe that they've changed their position. The fact is that the Prime Minister cares only about his own political health, not about the health of those in our community.
The government claim that we have an NDIS emergency and, in a rather cynical way, they are now pretending that there is only one way to address this—through a good old-fashioned tax hike for low-income earners. They want to tax the seven million Australians earning less than $87,000. They say, 'This is the only way we can do it, yet we still want to hand out $65 billion to the top end of town.' What does it mean for the real workers out there? The average household income in my electorate is just a tad over $65,000. For a worker on $55,000, it means that they will be paying an extra $270 a year, and someone on $80,000 a year will be paying around $400 extra tax a year. This is all happening when we know that the corporate profit level is running at around 20 per cent—average profits at 20 per cent over the last 12 months. Yet they still want to think that the only way ahead for our economy is to give big business a bigger slice of the pie, a bigger tax cut, in the belief that it will trickle down to everybody else. While they're doing that, as I said earlier, wages growth has largely flatlined. It's at a record low. Currently it's at 1.9 per cent. That's not the environment in which you want to go out and reward big business that's already making big profits. They're not distributing that to their workers; otherwise it wouldn't be running at 1.9 per cent, as it is now.
Our families are facing rising electricity costs and significant unemployment; 1.1 million Australians are experiencing underemployment. And this government has nothing better to offer than a $65 billion corporate tax cut. When you've got stagnant wage growth and rising inequity, on a background that's already felt the wrath of antiworker legislation passed by this government, no wonder this is a government that did not lift a finger to stop the slashing of penalty rates that now affects 700,000 Australian workers. By the way, these are some of the most low-paid Australian workers, and it's going to cost them up to $77 per week.
We need a government that actually understands community and puts community first. Clearly that's not what this government's doing. This government fails to see the real value of people's pay packets going down and electricity and private health care skyrocketing. We are in a housing affordability crisis, with household debt at record levels. We have high unemployment and job insecurity and a government that is wagering our futures on trickle-down economics.
Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-2018 is an appropriation bill, and, while Labor has said that it will not block supply, this debate gives us a chance to talk more broadly about the government's agenda and the impact that the government's agenda is having in regional communities, particularly my own community of Bendigo.
A couple of surprises were in the MYEFO this year that hit regional communities tough. One that I particularly wish to highlight is the way in which funding has been ripped away from universities—the freezing of university places. At the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University, in my electorate, they were very concerned about the impact that this cut in support for students would have on all of their regional campuses. In Bendigo, in Shepparton, in Wodonga they feared that with a freezing of university places people would chose to go to the city first, and once the city was full there'd be no places left for the regions. It is typical of this government: they randomly put out these policies, these blunt instruments, without really consulting with the sector, without really asking what impact this would have. The Bendigo campus was hoping that because they have some flagship courses, like dentistry, and because their rural school of health is world-class then that would help attract people to Bendigo as their first choice.
We also know that freezing university places would make it harder for regional students, people who are re-entering the work force and seeking to upgrade their skills, and mature-aged students—who are a large proportion of our regional campuses—to go to university. The fact is that if you live outside of metro Melbourne you can knock points off your ATAR score; you can knock points off your university entry level score. In Queensland, if you go to school in some regional areas, like on the Sunshine Coast or in Gympie, they say that you knock two points off your OP. If you go to an average school—a state school, not an elite school—you can knock points off of your OP because of the way in which the system has been designed. Kids that are equally as bright, but disadvantaged because of their school marking, could miss out on university places because of this government's freeze—a random arbitrary freeze with no proper consultation with the sector about how it would happen.
The MYEFO also confirmed this government's addiction to their $65 billion in handouts and tax cuts to multinationals. This is at a time when they keep talking about budget repair. Rather than getting the companies that are making the profits—that are making the most money—to actually contribute towards our common wealth, they're making working people on low to middle incomes pay more in the way of tax. The rhetoric of this government—they twist themselves up. Regarding the $65 billion in tax cuts, they actually believe, or they're trying to mislead the Australian people by saying, that, if you give the companies more profits, they'll give it to workers. That is nonsense. It has never happened. The only times that workers actually get a pay rise is when they bargain for it or when it's awarded to them by the Fair Work Commission. It is so rare for a company to say, 'Here is a wage increase just because we like you.'
Talk to the mining workers in Queensland. We found out last week that many of these multinationals who will get a handout under the government's plan have had a massive increase in revenue in the last 12 months. The returns are in and their net export value is up. In coal, it's up 35 per cent. Across all of the mining sectors, including gold from my electorate, it is up 52 per cent. These companies are making mega profits, yet we haven't seen the wages for their workers go up at all. In fact, we've seen the reverse. More and more workers are being told: 'You've lost your job. You have to re-apply for labour hire. It's less money.' I've met coalminers in Central Queensland who've lost 80 per cent of their entitlements—the extra bonuses that they get. They've gone back to the basic-wage structure. I've met people who have been told: 'You no longer work directly for BHP'—or Glencore or Anglo American—'You now work for a labour hire company. It is full-time equivalent, with similar responsibilities, similar expectations of you and the same uniform, but you're getting paid $30,000 to $50,000 a year less.' This is what's happening in Australian workplaces, yet the government wants us to believe that if we give companies money they'll give it to workers. Bring in the instrument. Bring in the legislation to make companies do it, because they won't. We know that they won't, because they never have without us having robust enterprise bargaining rules.
What is also contained in the MYEFO is the government's plan to increase tax on low- and middle-income earners. This comes back to priorities. Rather than asking the companies that are making all of the profits to help contribute towards our common wealth, they're increasing the Medicare levy, which is basically increasing the taxes for low- and middle-income earners, the same group of people that has not had a decent pay rise. Australians need a pay rise. These are the same people that may have had their penalty rates cut. Again, this government—I nearly said 'company', because it acts a bit like a company—did nothing to stop the Fair Work Commission cutting penalty rates. It is this place that sets the rules for the Fair Work Commission. When they make a decision that is not in the best interests of working people, when they make a decision that sees 700,000 Australian workers cop a pay cut, this place should reset the rules to make sure that those workers do keep their penalty rates. These are some of the lowest-paid workers that we have in our community, yet this government did nothing. They stood back, let their penalty rates be cut and then doubled down and said, 'For those of you working full time and earning more than $20,000 a year, we're actually going to hit you with an increased tax by increasing the Medicare levy.'
We also saw in the MYEFO an attack on our pensioners. I guess we shouldn't be surprised, because we had the minister responsible for this area stand up in question time and say, 'The solution to the deeming rates for pensioners, because they're so low, is for them to go out and get a job.' They're now saying to people over the age of 70, over the age of 65, 'The reason why we're not going to look at your pension is we think you should go out there and get a job, and that's the role of government.' They've worked hard enough. It's time that they get a chance to enjoy their retirement. It's already hard for people to keep working to the age of 70, particularly in industries which are labour intensive, whether it be carpentry or nursing. Any job that involves physical movement is very hard to do to the age of 70. It's not like being a politician or working at a desk.
Not to mention it's an equity issue. They've worked hard. They deserve respect in retirement. But what we've seen from this government is not only are they not doing anything about deeming rates but they've also continued their pursuit to ditch the energy supplement. At a time when gas and energy prices are spiralling high and continue to go high, this government wants to ditch the energy supplement, which will leave pensioners $366 a year worse off. They also still want to increase the pension age to 70. It demonstrates again how out of touch they are with older Australians. Despite all of the guarantees of the government, all they've guaranteed are high energy prices. That's all this government has guaranteed.
I met with some pensioners in my electorate during winter. They brought their winter bills in to talk about how they'd gone up. Let's remember the rhetoric of this government when they were in opposition. All their ranting about debt and deficit, all their ranting about the carbon tax, all their promises of '$550 back in your back pocket', all their promises to get debt under control—they've failed on two of their key election campaigns. The pensioners that I met with didn't have an extra $550 in their back pocket because of this government. No. Many of them were saying, 'We're actually paying more than we ever have for our energy bills, and they continue to go up.' I've mentioned the push of the pension age to 70. This again demonstrates that they have very little understanding of what kind of jobs people can do until they're 70. If people want to work until they're 70, we should encourage them, but we shouldn't make it mandatory. It's hard to be a plumber, a carpenter, a nurse or a cleaner until you're 70. We should show older Australians respect and support them.
This government is also failing spectacularly at helping connect jobseekers with the jobs that are available. I was in Tasmania last week talking to some of our berry, apple and fruit industry. Some of their jobs are seasonal. They are concerned about what's going to happen in the peak picking season for them. They need about 2,000 workers in this part of Tasmania. In the north-west, they need about 6,000 workers for harvest, which is eight weeks. But what I did learn by being there is that a lot of their work—their pruning work, their packing work—is ongoing. It is almost full time—11 months, 12 months of continuous work. Yet the job agencies in those areas—jobactive, whatever name you want to give it—had failed to match people looking for work with the jobs that are available.
Another example in my own electorate is a meatworks in Kyneton that is keen to employ locals looking for a job. All the job agencies, the job networks, had failed to connect the jobseekers. The people that they kept bringing out were vegans, vegetarians and the long-term unemployed. It took Bendigo Community Health Services resettlement officers and myself meeting with the company, doing the walkthrough and basically being the matchmaking service to get recently arrived migrants of Karen and Afghani descent working there—and now they are working!
It's a great news story, but it should be something that happens automatically because of the priorities of a government that invests properly in supporting people to work. The job agency, jobactive—whatever fancy name this government gives—aren't working.
The other area where this government is failing is on jobs. They say all these new jobs have been created under their watch, but what jobs? How many insecure jobs are there? How many casual jobs are there? How many jobs are full-time but working for labour hire so people can be sacked at any minute? We have a real crisis going on in our economy when it comes to jobs. Young people can't get entry-level jobs. Companies are now looking overseas, because they can get experienced overseas workers to come here, before investing and training in our own workers.
Just yesterday we had this government push through a bill in this House that stripped labour market testing out of our 457 visa system. Why would you do that? Why would you give companies the opportunity to bring in whoever they want and not do labour market testing? They've taken it out of the legislation and said, 'Don't worry, we'll do it. We're going to create an instrument. Don't worry, trust us.' Not that that instrument is disallowable; we just have to trust them. Australians do not trust this government, and they do not trust them to stand up for jobs, health and education, and to make sure that multinationals pay their fair share of tax and are accountable.
This government is failing on education. We've just gone back to school in central Victoria, and a number of schools wanted to run programs this year that won't run because of this government's funding cuts to schools. I'm talking about senior secondary, which is $1.2 million worse off because this government did not honour the original Gonski funding model. A school like Weeroona College—$800,000 a year worse off. Just imagine the programs they could have had. Just imagine the support and the opportunities they could have given to those students. Meanwhile, Girton Grammar, just up the road, is a very good school. The parents do pay a lot in fees. That school actually got an increase in funding, close to a million dollars extra from this government. Yet the school that has the disadvantaged students, the kids most at risk and the most diverse student population gets a funding cut.
It always comes back to priorities in budgets and budgeting, and all I can say is that this government's priorities are wrong. They're not prioritising our schools. They're not prioritising our hospitals. They're not prioritising Victorian roads and rail. They are not prioritising young jobseekers. They are not prioritising TAFE and university. Instead, what they are prioritising is big tax cuts for multinationals and making sure millionaires pay as little tax as possible.
In the time permitting, this could be the final in my series on the by-election of Bennelong. I have previously spoken about the tenor of the debate and some of the volunteers who stood out. However, there are many more people to thank, and I would like to try to name some more of them today.
As with all campaigns, we would never have been successful without volunteers. Over 700 people came out to help us in this by-election—from making phone calls, handing out leaflets at train stations and standing in the baking heat of the West Ryde pre-poll or the combustible footpath of the Epping pre-poll and, of course, on polling day itself. Our hundreds of volunteers made the difference.
Some of these people have been with us for every election. Some have just joined the Bennelong family, but every one of them raised the bar of this campaign, giving their all and making the difference at the end of the day. I would like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to every one of you.
It's always dangerous to identify individuals as I will most certainly forget some people who deserve special praise. I have already called out Helen Russell, Bob Lawrence and Daryl Maguire MP, for they turned up every single day at the pre-poll and every night to make phone calls rain, hail or shine. Elizabeth Frias was a constant smiling presence at prepoll too, while local stalwart Kevin Pagadinimath was at every station and bus stop every morning. As with every year, the local Young Liberals were the difference. One silver lining of the national spotlight on this campaign was that Young Liberals came from all over the country and I was able to see that our young volunteers—
The member for Bennelong will resume his seat. The member for Bennelong will be able to continue his remarks tomorrow.
I want to talk tonight a little bit about how the Turnbull and Abbott governments and the Hodgman government in Tasmania are really letting our state down. One of the first acts of the federal Liberal government was to cut over a billion dollars from health in Tasmania. That has had a disastrous effect on our state—absolutely disastrous. We have ambulance ramping in our hospitals. We have people waiting ages and ages to get to see a specialist. I am hearing stories all the time of people who are getting bowel test kits back who are waiting way beyond the recommended time frame to see a gastroenterologist. We have some really serious issues in our health system in Tasmania.
But Labor has a plan. State and federal Labor have been working together, and state Labor, under our leader Rebecca White, has made a very comprehensive plan for the future of health in Tasmania. What we saw last weekend was Premier Will Hodgman come out and try and say, 'I'm going to spend more and I've got a better figure,' but when one looks at that figure it says an awful lot, because what Labor is going to do is to actually employ people—paramedics; doctors; nurses—in a first Labor state government term; what the Liberal government is going to do is to spend capital. We've already got a lot of capital works happening in the health system in Tasmania. Our Royal Hobart Hospital reconstruction, that was funded by state and federal Labor, is still underway. It has had delays again under the Hodgman and Turnbull governments. But Labor has a substantive plan, and we want to employ the staff needed to deal with what is happening in our health system in Tasmania—very unlike the Liberal plan.
But it's not just in health where they're letting Tasmanians down very badly. We've heard in this place this week that it's also in infrastructure—roads funding. We've heard about how there has not been one major road or bridge project in Tasmania since the election of the Abbott and Turnbull governments—in all of that time, five years, not one new project has been announced. The only projects underway in Tasmania are those that were already committed to and were going to be invested in by Labor state and federal governments. What we did see was $100 million cut from the Midland Highway. But I was astounded this week—as I'm sure many people in here were—to hear the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, when asked about infrastructure in Tasmania, talk about Inland Rail. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I'm not really sure whether he understands the concept of 'inland', but I don't think that means it crosses the water. I'm also interested in whether or not that means we're getting a bridge to the mainland. I'm sure we're not, but we haven't had any bridge funding either, so perhaps—you never know. We do have a bridge that needs some funding; it's called the Bridgewater Bridge. It is on the Midland Highway—the highway they cut $100 million of funding out of. So it would be quite good if we could actually get a bridge funded in Tasmania—but perhaps not one for the inland rail!
We also need some tourism infrastructure in Tasmania. People would be aware that Tasmania has been very, very successful in growing our tourism numbers. That is a credit to all of the governments, on both sides, for their commitment to tourism. But I am really concerned about the growth in the tourism numbers and the fact that there has been no planning for them. We haven't had a government at the state or federal level that has been willing to plan, with the two tiers of government, for how we're going to deal with this growth. We have iconic national parks that many people in this place will have visited—and if they haven't, they should certainly come on down—places like Freycinet and places like Cradle Mountain, that really need some more care. We need to ensure that the very thing that people are going there to see is not destroyed. If you want to go to Freycinet National Park in mid-season in January and February, you have to turn up before eight o'clock in the morning or you won't get a car park. That is really affecting the whole experience for people coming to Tasmania. At the last federal election, federal Labor had a plan to spend $42 million on tourism infrastructure in Tasmania. It would be great to see a similar commitment from the other side.
The other issue, which has also been raised in this House in the last week or so, is biosecurity. We've seen breaches and we've seen fruit fly in Tasmania for the first time. This comes after the state Liberal government, in its first year, cut a million dollars from biosecurity and cut staff for biosecurity. I've just said we had an increase in tourism. We've had more people coming by plane and boat, and the government's response was to cut biosecurity staff. Now we're seeing the very sad consequences of that. (Time expired)
I'm excited to see the introduction of the NDIS in parts of my electorate this year and in the whole of my electorate by the middle of next year. Last month, I had the pleasure of welcoming to my electorate the Assistant Minister for Social Services and Disability Services, the Hon. Jane Prentice, to get some feedback from disability service providers as Tangney prepares for the arrival of the NDIS.
One organisation we visited was Elba Incorporated, a service provider made up of over 100 care workers who provide services to people with a disability, as well as their families, in their own homes. What delighted me in our discussions with the CEO and the director of operations was a genuine interest in providing people with a service below the suggested price guide. I was pleasantly surprised when asked by those at Elba if they could charge less than the price recommended by the government. This showed me the willingness of service providers to embrace the opportunity of new-found competition under the NDIS. While price limits exist in the NDIS model to protect participants from paying too much for any given service, the market growth and competition tension between suppliers can and will encourage providers to give their customers the best product they possibly can for the cheapest price. For the first time in the disability sector, it will be people power driving the price of the services they receive. Organisations will no longer have absolute power in service availability, pricing and quality. This will truly lead to greater outcomes for people with disability and their families.
We also had the chance to catch up with Barbara, Jody and Paula from WizeTherapy, an organisation that provides physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy to babies, children and young adults. With the introduction of the NDIS in Western Australia, smaller companies such as WizeTherapy will be able to compete against the larger organisations that have previously priced them out of the market. Providing a more local experience, companies like WizeTherapy will be able to be competitive by providing a higher quality, more personal experience. This is a welcome departure from the current system, which locks people with a disability into block funding for services from one provider, a system that only benefits larger organisations. Disability service providers in my electorate are already receiving expressions of interest as people with disabilities and their families begin planning towards a commitment to a better quality of life.
The NDIS will provide people with a disability in my electorate with a greater sense of independence and control over their lives as they make their decisions on what's important to them, whether that be in education, health and wellbeing or community involvement. The people in my electorate who live in the city of Melville can expect to see the NDIS rolled out in their area by 1 July this year. Those in my electorate in the city of Canning can expect to benefit from the scheme on 1 July 2019. By 2019, the NDIS will support about 460,000 Australians with a disability and invest $22 billion a year in services and equipment. This funding is only possible because of the hard work of the Turnbull government. The NDIS is a fantastic initiative, established by the Gillard government. However, as with most of Labor's commitments, they overpromised and underdelivered.
When the Liberal-National government came to power, the NDIS was unfunded and unachievable, but, thanks to the hard work of the Turnbull government, the NDIS is now changing people's lives in the community and giving them a brighter hope for the future. On this side of the House, we believe that decisions are best made by those who are most directly affected. While those opposite often like to see more bureaucrats and more red tape, our NDIS model gives the power to the person who's going to be most directly affected. Individual choice is critical in making sure that people are receiving the best possible service for the best possible price. Empowering people to make their own decisions about their own care for their own lives will ensure not only the highest standard of quality and lowest possible price but also quality of life and dignity.
Thank you to Assistant Minister Prentice for allowing me to showcase enthusiastic support for the incoming scheme in my electorate. Thank you to everyone who has given us valuable feedback so that we can provide the best possible outcomes for all Western Australians with disability.
Power prices are going up and it's no coincidence that it is happening at the same time as the companies that run our electricity network, generate our electricity and sell it to us are making monster profits. According to the ABS, power bills went up 12.4 per cent from December 2016 to December 2017. It's no coincidence that the biggest power company in the country made a profit of $622 million for the six months ended 31 December 2017, an increase of 91 percent on the prior corresponding period.
We have taken a public good, electricity—which was built by the public and should be there as a basic public service—and we've handed it over to big companies, who are making monster profits and, as a result, consumers are getting fleeced. People are being conned. As big power companies make these monster profits it comes at the expense of not only higher power bills; in my state of Victoria, 30,000 Victorian households had their electricity switched off. How is it that a power company can make $622 million in six months while thousands of people had their power disconnected for not being able to afford to heat their homes in winter? Then there are the companies that own the poles and wires that distribute the electricity to us across the country. One of those companies, registered in the Cayman Islands, made $27½ billion profit over four years. That's 'billion' with a 'b'.
Why is this happening? I'll tell you why it's happening. It's happening because, over decades, Liberal and Labor have turned electricity from a public good into a market, and when you turn an essential service into a market and introduce the profit motive, people get fleeced. It's not as though you have a choice as to which sets of poles and wires you are going to use. It's not as though there is any difference between electrons as they flow down and power your home. It's the same product. When we allow big companies to make money out of ordinary people, ordinary people will suffer.
The Greens are standing up to privatisation. Earlier this month, we announced a policy to start bringing the grid back into public hands, to be run in the public interest. Last year, we called for the re-regulation of retail prices, where the price would rise with average wage growth. It is time to stand up to the big companies—and to Labor and Liberal who are backing them—and start to re-regulate electricity prices and start treating electricity as a public good again.
The Adani-Carmichael mine environmental impact statement says that it will produce over 200 million tonnes of CO2 over the 60-year life of the mine. That's from the gases that escape during the mining process and from the emissions created from mining and transporting the coal alone. According to Greenpeace, burning this coal will generate around 130 million tonnes of CO2 every year, equivalent to about one quarter of Australia's total emissions. But we know this. We know this about the Adani mine, too: it's a climate disaster and it will destroy the Great Barrier Reef. Even as the environment minister was forced to admit the other day, climate change is the biggest threat to the reef. Also, the Adani mine will not employ the tens of thousands of people that are referred to; it will employ 1,464, according to Adani's own figures. Why? Adani says that they want to automate it from pit to port. So the question is: if you seriously believe in climate change, how can you possibly back Adani? You can't say. 'I love to eat healthy food,' and then stuff yourself full of fairy floss. You have a choice: either the reef or Adani? We can't have both. Either a safe climate or Adani? We cannot have both. We have to stop Adani.
There's one way that Adani could be stopped now. We could have a Prime Minister and a government that had the courage to override a rogue Labor state government. But we know that the Liberals are beholden to the coal industry. What could we do instead? We could do what happened during the Franklin Dam campaign and hear a Labor opposition stand up once and for all and say, 'We will not allow the Adani mine to go ahead.' If Labor stood up now from the opposition benches and said that, the project would be killed stone-dead. But, so far, Labor has failed this test and is attempting to have a bet each way.
People will soon be able to pass judgement on that, because in Batman people have a choice. People have a choice between a party that has led the campaign in this parliament against this ticking climate time bomb and a party that is trying to have a bet both ways. Labor, it is time to get off the fence. Voting for the Greens and Alex Bhathal in the seat of Batman is the best way to send a message and stop the Adani coalmine.
It takes something special to make me dance in public, yet that's what I found myself doing recently when I visited Sunshine Butterflies disability support service at Cooroibah to announce more than $16,000 through the Stronger Communities Program. Organisations like Sunshine Butterflies are so important and valuable to their clients, families, volunteers, staff and the broader community. After a tour of their backyard, their beautiful hobby farm and where the new family central facility will be built, with federal government assistance, I saw the joy that Sunshine Butterflies brings, with an all-singing, all-dancing welcome from clients that had me busting out my best moves for a special rendition of 'Greased Lightning'! The visit demonstrated the very real, concrete difference that the Stronger Communities Program can make to people's lives. People are at the very heart of the program—the people who use the services, the people who volunteer for them, the people whose lives are made measurably better by the support and the programs. Stronger Communities funding has the power to not only change lives but save them as well.
The Sunshine Beach Surf Life Saving Club received just over $10,000 towards buying a new all-terrain vehicle for mobile patrols, allowing them to travel farther, travel faster and get to people sooner when they most need help. It has already been put to good use and is making a big difference to the safety of beachgoers. Almost $3,200 was given to the QF5 Noosa Coast Guard for computer equipment and software to help them train volunteers in essential skills—including first aid, seamanship and safety at sea—ensuring the coast guard can continue keeping people safe in the water.
One of the best things about living in beautiful Wide Bay is that people look out for each other in the community. That's how the Cooloola Coast Medical Transport came about. It was a community initiative to help people get to and from their medical appointments safely. I was delighted to deliver more than $16,300 to enable them to upgrade their vehicles and ensure their group can continue to help people access medical care. I would also like to acknowledge the dedicated staff and volunteers of Little Haven Palliative Care in Gympie, who have for decades delivered in-home care, comfort and support to people with terminal illnesses or chronic conditions. Little Haven received almost $15,000 to upgrade their patient lounge and meeting room, which will help them continue to provide quality care for people at the end of their lives and for their families as well. Murgon Lions Club received $13,600 to fit out a food van, allowing Lions to support community events, provide a Driver Reviver service and assist the community during disaster recovery.
The beauty of the Stronger Communities Program is that it doesn't just tackle essential services such as these; the program was created with the understanding that a diverse community is a strong and resilient one and acknowledges the important social benefit that all types of community groups can have. This is shown in the $13,600 given to renovate the Bauple band hall in recognition of the hall's role as a meeting place, in the more than $16,000 given to the Goomeri and District Show Society to upgrade their kitchens and in the more than $16,000 for a men's shed to help bring the Kilkivan community together.
Murgon's Graham House Community Centre will receive almost $10,000 to purchase a new computer server to continue its work assisting families affected by domestic violence and delivering family support services for the South Burnett. The Stronger Communities Program encourages the broader use of existing assets and boosting social interaction. It also supports recreation and tourism opportunities, with $2,500 for the Queensland Dairy and Heritage Museum in Murgon to weatherproof its barn and more than $16,300 to help the Wide Bay Motor Complex purchase equipment to maintain its grounds, ensuring both places live up to their potential to become significant regional tourism assets. With the diverse projects found through the Stronger Regional Communities Plan, Wide Bay will be safer, happier and more connected. (Time expired)
There's been much reflection in this place in the last week about morality and ethics. It's been on the front page of the papers for the last week. I want to use my time today to say that I think one of the most fundamental parts of morality—an obligation that all of us have—is to leave this planet a better place than we found it, whether you're a Christian, an atheist, a Jew, a Muslim or whatever. The fundamental tenet of most ethical teaching is to improve your world and leave the world a better place for your children and grandchildren, if you're lucky enough to have a family.
That brings me to climate change, which I think is the greatest example of that obligation now. Today, I had the honour and privilege of meeting with a delegation of teachers and activists from Kiribati. Kiribati is a small network of islands in the Pacific. It has 120,000 people, so it's roughly the size of one of our electorates. It is two to three metres above sea level and less than 100 metres wide in most places. The delegation of brave and passionate people pleaded with politicians in this place to help save their nation, which is at the forefront of the impact of climate change. I talked with Claire, a teacher, about water salinity issues and the fact that, because of the rising sea level, which is due to climate change, the wells that they get their drinking water from are being poisoned by salt water. She talked about how access to drinking water is a fundamental human right. I talked to another teacher about schools being washed away, flood damage and the drastic damage to taro crops, which is their staple diet in Kiribati. I talked to Debbie, who works for their sporting commission, about sporting fields being lost and the loss of potential sporting champions. I talked to Maria, who made the point that this is one of the poorest nations on earth and yet they are suffering from, quite frankly, the outcome of industrialisation around the world—industrialisation that's lifted billions of people out of poverty but, at the same time, has spewed carbon dioxide into the air, causing the greenhouse gas warming that we're seeing right now.
It is within this context that I talk about the existential threat to Kiribati and other islands in the Pacific and how we have a moral obligation to do our part. We are the 12th-largest polluter in absolute terms, but we're the highest in terms of per capita in the developed world. Let me repeat that: we emit the most greenhouse gas emissions per person in the developed world. We have a moral obligation to do our part in this global challenge to combat climate change and save nations like Kiribati. And it's in this context that I rail against our woeful emissions reductions target of 26 per cent by 2030. The government's official target is woefully inadequate. What's worse is that we have no hope, with current policies, of meeting it. The government's own emissions projections say they will not meet that woefully inadequate target, and it's the people of Kiribati who will be suffering because of that result.
The Labor Party has a much stronger contribution—an emissions reduction target of 45 per cent by 2030, with net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which is in line with the Climate Change Authority's recommendations and in line with what other developed nations in the world, such as the UK and Germany, are doing. We have a concrete plan to achieve it. I don't talk about our policy as a way of playing us versus them. This issue should unite this parliament. It's united the parliament in Germany and it's united the parliament in the United Kingdom, where it is not a political issue. So, this week, when issues of morality and ethics will no doubt dominate the headlines and will no doubt dominate question time every day, I urge everyone to reflect on our obligation to leave this planet a better place than we found it; an obligation to hand to our kids and grandkids a better situation than we inherited. I think our generation could be the first one that doesn't leave it a better place. I urge everyone to play their part and be passionate and campaign for concrete action on climate change. We owe it to our brothers and sisters in Kiribati, we owe it to our kids and grandkids and we owe it to every human being on this planet to do just that.
There is no greater responsibility in this world than that of parenthood, and the ultimate of all is motherhood. One may well ask: what do I know about motherhood? Well, as a 43-year-old man, not much. I don't know what it's like to be a mother and I never will. But I stand in this chamber today to speak about motherhood because, frankly, I'm in complete awe of it. As a society, there is no more important institution than that of family, and, within the family, there is no more important role than that of the mother.
My own mother, Bernice, had nine children, and I'm fortunate to be the youngest of them. My wife, Sophia, is now less than two weeks away from giving birth to our second child, and it's this impending event that has sharpened my mind and my focus on the miracle that is motherhood and the sanctity of life that it delivers. That's why I stand in the House today to pay tribute to all mothers, in particular, my wife, who has only a couple of weeks to go. A cynic would think I'm saying this because tomorrow is Valentine's Day—I just wish I was that smooth!
As a father, I know what it's like to absolutely love a child, to look into the eyes of my daughter—and, please God, soon also my son—and to feel that extraordinary connectedness and depth of love which is hard to put into words. But it blows my mind, my head spins, at the thought of how a mother must feel—the extent of connectedness, the depth of love that a mother must feel for her child. A mother who carries a child inside her, living as an extension of her—this is such a physical expression of their bond. Is it any wonder that mothers are so typically selfless when it comes to their children. It reminds me of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, Mother o' Mine:
If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
Now, as we know, mothers aren't renowned in Australia for banging down the door of their local parliamentarians. Mothers don't seem to form national mother lobby groups across our nation. How they would ever have the time to do so beats me! So it begs the question, therefore: who is the voice of mothers? Well, we all are—each and every one of us in this parliament. If we truly believe, hand on heart, that there is no more important institution than that of family and that it's mothers who lie at the heart of that institution, if we truly believe that parenthood is the greatest responsibility and motherhood the ultimate of all, then in all our deliberations of public policy in this House, across every portfolio, we must have mothers at the forefront of our minds. Today I pay tribute to all mothers.
It being 8 pm, the House stands adjourned.
House adjourned at 20:00
Over January, I had the great opportunity to go around and visit some of the community organisations in my electorate that have been funded under the Stronger Communities Program. I think that all members in this place will agree that the commitment from local community organisations is remarkable. They are mostly volunteers, who put in so much time, energy and effort to make a success of these local organisations for their communities. The first one that I visited was Anzac Park at Lindisfarne. They are receiving just $5,742.50, but this will allow them to upgrade their kitchen facilities so that they are able to host functions and events to generate more income for the sporting clubs that use that facility. The cricket, junior football and football clubs of Lindisfarne all use that one facility. It is owned and managed by council and council also puts a lot into that facility, but this very small grant will make a very big difference to the clubs and the events and functions that they're able to hold for members and for the public to raise revenue. So I was really pleased to be able to do that and I know that the grant will be used really well by the local community.
Another grant was made to the iconic Wooden Boat Centre, in Franklin, in my electorate. Franklin is a very small town, a village, on the Huon River in the south of my electorate. The Working Waterfront Association is the body that has applied for the grant for $13,220. This is for much-needed repairs of the roof. This is a master craft place, very unique in Australia, where master craftsmen teach people how to make wooden boats in ancient Huon pine and celery top pine—actually handcrafting vessels in my electorate. It is remarkable to go and see the work that is being done, the number of volunteers and the number of people who are using this facility in my electorate, and I know that it has great support from all parties in Tasmania because it is such a unique facility. It has so many community members coming through. The grant will repair the original workshop's rusty and leaking roof and ensure that the centre is able to go on and be useful for some time. At the moment, they've got all sorts of things trying to catch the water coming through the roof. It is a very old building and this well mean a lot to them. They've already opened up the facility to allow tourists to come through. They're a getting a large number of visitors now to the Wooden Boat Centre. There are also people coming from all over the country and all over the world, including some doctors on sabbatical, to learn how to build a craft boat, by hand, with Tasmania's ancient timbers. It's a remarkable organisation in a remarkable part of my electorate and I'm very pleased to have supported these grants.
Today I pay tribute to three members of the Bundaberg community who all, sadly, passed away last month. Bryan Conquest was a boy from the bush and a pillar of the Bundaberg community. Bryan passed away on 2 January at the age of 87. He's survived by his wife, Beverly, and three children, Trevor, Darryl and Susan. Bryan became the inaugural federal member for the newly created seat of Hinkler in 1984, serving for one term as a Nationals MP. Prior to that, he was elected in 1970 as an alderman at the Bundaberg City Council, a position he held for 15 years. Before his entry into politics, Bryan was a local businessman. He began working at Glovers Printing Works in Bundaberg in 1955, where he first met Beverley, the boss's daughter. They were married in December 1958 and were married for 59 years. Bryan later ran the family business with long-time friend and business partner Graham Evans. He served on many community committees and community clubs throughout the region. He had a passion for sport, playing rugby league in Gladstone before being lured to Bundaberg to play for Past Brothers.
Tom McLucas OAM was born on 30 August 1925 and died on 15 January 2018. He was a businessman, a sportsman and a war veteran. Although he never spoke about his experiences during the Second World War, he knew he was lucky to survive and involved himself in the RSL and Legacy to help improve conditions for veterans and widows of deceased veterans.
Of the many community groups and organisations Tom was involved with, there are several that stand out. He was the chief parade marshal on Anzac Day in Bundaberg for 50 years. For half a century he organised, led and inspired. For as long as I remember, if you went to the dawn service, Tom was guaranteed to be there. He and his wife, Estelle, were involved with the Bundaberg East State School, sharing their knowledge with students for its Anzac Day services and helping preserve the school's wartime history. As well as competing in cycling, tennis and golf, Tom was a torch baton bearer in 1956 and in 2006 was involved with the drum corps of the Caledonian Pipe Band, the Bundaberg federal band, the Sandgate brass band, the Rockhampton brass band, the Mackay brass band and was on the executive committee of the national bands competition.
Richard 'Dick' Bitcon was born on 9 January 1929 and passed away 6 January 2018. Originally from Victoria, Dick moved to Bundaberg in 1968, becoming well known among political circles. He was a Wide Bay zone vice-president for the National Party for many years, was a life member of the Liberal-National Party and was a dedicated campaigner. He was a behind-the-scenes man for many elections in and around Bundaberg. Dick owned Produce Traders, now Boylans Produce, was a past president of the Bundaberg amateur turf club, patron of the current Bundaberg Race Club and was involved with the AFL.
These three men were stalwarts of our community. They each made a difference in their own way. Vale Brian, Tom and Dick, may they rest in peace. My commiserations to their families.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is thousands of hardworking Canberrans may soon have a quick and easy way to get to work. But the bad news is the coalition is trying to stop it. I'm afraid Liberal Senator Zed Seselja is trying his best to hold up investment in public transport and light rail in Canberra. We know a majority of Canberrans don't agree with it. In fact, the people of this city went to an election on this issue; actually, they went to two elections on this issue. It's been decided and, if anybody should know, it's Zed Seselja, who lost the last two ACT elections in which he led his party. But just like when he abstained from the vote on marriage equality in the other place, Senator Seselja is ignoring the clear and unambiguous wishes of voters. They voted yes three to one; he stayed AWOL.
Now he is trying again to declare the Woden extension of the network, announced well before the 2016 ACT election, to be needlessly referred to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories in an attempt to slow down the project and bring its progress to a stop. The National Capital Authority and the ACT government have worked closely together over many years on this project, particularly on the expansion across the lake through the parliamentary triangle to Woden. Everyone involved is well aware of the work and consultation required. It would be within the spirit of the Prime Minister's support for public transport to encourage rather than to hold up light rail.
I was pleased to be at the opening of the Majura Parkway two years ago, a project that started under the last Labor federal government. That was the last time the federal government contributed in any significant way to investment in Canberra transport. There is no need for further delays in the project. Canberrans have waited for two terms of Liberal federal governments in vain for investment in their transportation networks. Now the Canberra Liberals are attempting to delay light rail even further.
Let's not forget it was Senator Seselja who previously argued for the Commonwealth to have less influence on local infrastructure, saying to TheCanberra Times, 'Why is it that a Commonwealth minister needs to be involved in planning decisions that, in other parts of Australia, are ordinarily the domain of state and local governments? Ultimately it is the people who live in this city who know how best to develop this city.' Well, Senator, if you believe in that, you should be supporting light rail going ahead. Just like the decisive ACT result on marriage equality, the people of Canberra do know what's best for our city. They went to the ballot box; they voted twice for light rail. We don't want to see the Canberra Liberals taking a wrecking ball to transport. Light rail is ready to leave the station. It is time Senator Zed Seselja got onboard.
After a long hard-fought campaign, the Australian Senate last night approved legislation which allows the trial of a cashless debit card to go ahead in the Goldfields. Months of uncertainty have ended and, with the endorsement of both houses of parliament, I believe we'll see the rollout of this card start within a matter of weeks. We are going to see some real change in the Goldfields, change that will help break the cycle of welfare dependency, alcohol abuse and decades of generational disadvantage. This card will result in a community where welfare payments are spent on the essentials of life: food, clothing, shelter and transport.
I'd like to start by thanking the former Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, and his team, who worked so hard to get us to this juncture. I thank the current Minister for Social Services, Dan Tehan, who kept the momentum going to pass this through the lower house and now the Senate. I thank the departmental team working on the ground in the Goldfields and the community implementation groups who are poised to start transitioning participants onto the card as soon as possible.
I'm grateful for the support of the entire Goldfields community, but I'd like to make special mention of Indigenous leaders like Leonora's Nana Gaye Harris, who started the ball rolling in 2015 when she spoke to me after a spate of youth suicides. I thank Laverton's Bruce Smith and Janice Scott, who moved an entire room to tears with their heart-wrenching account of children living on the streets of Laverton, abandoned by parents on the grog. I acknowledge the powerful words of respected Ngadju woman, Betty Logan, and her niece, Amanda Bennell, who I am privileged to have with us here in the chamber. They challenged the naysayers to look into the eyes of a child suffering the effects of foetal alcohol syndrome, to look into the faces of kids who are begging for food on the street late at night—children not safe in their homes—and not feel compassion. I thank our Goldfields police, who work under the most difficult of circumstances on the frontline when alcohol fuelled violence erupts or when lives are tragically cut short. I thank the civic leaders of the Goldfields: Laverton Shire's president, Patrick Hill; Leonora's Jim Epis and Peter Craig; Jill Dwyer and Ian Tucker from the shire of Menzies; Coolgardie's Mal Cullen and James Traill; and Mayor John Bowler and CEO John Walker from the City of Kalgoorlie. All have fought hard for this card to help the communities they know and love. I thank my Goldfields residents who supported this card by signing my petitions or responding to my community survey. Your support—all of the above—was my inspiration when the knockers spoke louder than those who supported the card.
This card trial will be a new approach, because persisting with a system that has failed an entire generation of people is madness. I've spoken to hundreds of people in the Goldfields over the last two years, but the words of a young Aboriginal man from Leonora, who asked not to be named, have resonated with me. He quoted Albert Einstein, who once said, 'The definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect to see a different result.' The people who are against this card are just afraid of change, and we need this change.
I thank the member for O'Connor. It's great to have your guests here today.
The National Broadband Network, if it had been done right, had the capacity to be the most amazing piece of infrastructure, to change lives and to build livelihoods. But, instead, we've got a national failure. The rollout has blown out, the cost has blown out, it's unreliable, it's slow and, in some cases, it's life threatening.
If you live on Bribie Island and wear an emergency response alarm, it doesn't work when the NBN goes down. If you live in Beachmere and have an emergency response alarm it's even worse if your NBN drops out, because you live in a black spot area, so your mobile phone doesn't work. If you live in Wamuran your livelihood is stopped from growing, because of constant dropouts.
But it's even better if you live in Narangba—you're stuck. The NBN's not reliable there. It's not slow there, because—guess what?—it doesn't even exist. Take the story of Jason from Narangba, who contacted me. He is currently connected to ADSL2. He was of the understanding he'd be switched over to the NBN in May 2017. He made inquiries with Telstra in May to switch over to the NBN. Telstra then contacted the NBN to help support them through this. But the last time he contacted Telstra, while he was waiting and waiting and waiting—at least on four occasions—he was told to go back and check the map because it will be 2020 before he can get connected. For your information though, there is a node just down the street—he can nearly touch it—but he can't get it till 2020. Jason said, 'It's disappointing that so much money has been spent on the rollout. We're not seeing any benefits to our community. What would be interesting to know from an environmental and cost point of view is how much power is being used by these nodes that aren't functioning.'
Jason's not alone. I have Facebook posts saying, 'NBN sucks,' and, 'Someone decided copper is the future.' 'Good luck with the whole thing,' they say. Someone from a neighbouring suburb offered this. She said, 'The NBN sucks because someone decided,' like I said, 'that copper is the future.' There are also posts on my Facebook page that I can't read out, Mr Deputy Speaker Howarth, because that would require me to use some unparliamentary language and I don't think you'd want me to use that—and you know I wouldn't use that, of course.
But what does the minister say? The minister says that there's nothing he can do. That's what he's told us. NBN say they're sorry. My message to the minister is: fix this problem for the people of Narangba. Stop saying sorry. We're over your 'sorry'. We just want this fixed.
Last Friday, I attended the annual Rotary Club of Berri Riverland and Mallee Vocational Awards night. How we work and the jobs we do are significantly changing, and it's vitally important that we have the ability to rapidly adapt to the disruption and provide skills when needed. Vocational education and training will play a crucial role as Australia's economy undergoes rapid change and as technology alters the way we work. Apprenticeships and traineeships are a highly effective way to skill Australians to be part of the modern, rapidly changing workplace.
A division having been called in the House of Representatives
Sitting suspended from 16:16 to 16:39
The Riverland and Mallee Vocational Awards are the largest of their kind in regional Australia, underscoring not only the hard work of the apprentices, trainees and students but also the dedication of the Rotary Club at Berri and the quality of the training experience offered by employers in the region. Congratulations to all the nominees in all the award categories. They are excellent examples of the dedication and hard work those apprentices and trainees give to their chosen professions. They represent tomorrow's leaders of industry.
Today I want to pay particular tribute to the winners announced on Friday evening: Apprentice of the Year, Chloe Rudd, from Print DNA; Trainee of the Year, Nicholas Svetec, from SMGT Big River Toyota; School Based Apprentice of the Year, Blake Guppy, from SMGT GJ Gardner Homes; School Based Trainee of the Year, Kelsey Wade, from Berri Plaza Newsagent and Photographics; and, finally, VET Student of the Year, Zack Wagenknecht, from Loxton High School. I wish you all the very best for your careers.
Those in this place on both sides of the chamber will be sick of me banging on about the Penola bypass. But I'm going to do it anyway. The Penola bypass is known as a half-finished road to nowhere. It is an absolute embarrassment for the state Labor government of South Australia, who have refused to accept federal government funding to complete this vital piece of infrastructure. The federal government has committed $9 million and put it on the table, but the state Labor government simply won't touch it. That is $9 million of federal government funding that the state will not accept because of apparent GST implications, GST implications that apply to other infrastructure projects in the state—indeed, all state road infrastructure. For example, $95 million of federal money at Oaklands Crossing in Adelaide suffers the same GST implications.
It is clear that the state Labor government only cares about marginal seats in the city. Penola bypass is not worth completing because it won't win them any votes out where I live. Shame on the state Labor government. Shame! I congratulate the state Liberal Party for their interest in this. Not only did opposition leader Steve Marshall come to the Penola bypass and look at it for himself, but he committed to completing it. And well done to Nick McBride—a passionate community advocate who has ensured this road to nowhere will have a happy ending.
It was my pleasure to be part of a delegation to the Australia India Youth Dialogue in Delhi and Mumbai earlier this year. I was joined by 14 Australian delegates and 15 Indian delegates who came together to discuss economic and cultural ties, civic engagement and digital disruption and its impact on the Australia-India relationship.
India has the world's second-largest population, with over a billion people and the world's third-largest economy. It is projected to expand over the next two to three decades and even eclipse China as the world's most populous nation. This highlights the very important relationship for Australia, and more specifically my home state of Western Australia, which of course borders the Indian Ocean. Western Australia's Indian population has also had strong growth. In 2015 approximately 20,000 Indian visitors came to Western Australia, and we had over 6,000 Indian students studying at WA universities. In fact, at the last census around five per cent of my constituents in the electorate of Burt were born in India. There is no doubt we are close partners, each with vibrant democracies and a shared commitment to the development and stability of our region.
The Australia India Youth Dialogue was born out of the 2009 attacks on Indian students in Melbourne. The proposition of the founders was that there was no existing mechanism to bring young leaders together to discuss in a proactive and constructive way issues that were misconstrued in the media. Today the AIYD has a broader function, serving as an important forum to bring young leaders together and inform government, business, community and cultural groups on both sides of how to best shape policy and create opportunities for both nations going forward.
To leverage those opportunities, it is important that we build on existing relationships. We have strong economic links, with India being Australia's ninth-largest trading partner, representing two-way trade of over $20 billion. But we can, of course, do more. India and Australia also share a history of British colonisation. Today we continue to share key components of our political and legal frameworks. A key area of our discussion focused on these sorts of cultural ties. Both countries have a strong history of Indigenous art, but those who create that art aren't always fairly compensated for the work they put in. There are other challenges that Indigenous artists face, including the fact you can't always identify and verify the identity of the original artist, making fraud a common issue. An outcome of the dialogue is work now happening to implement a blockchain system to validate and authenticate pieces of Indigenous art in both countries so you can trace who the original artist is.
During the forum, we also explored the idea of holding a cultural intelligence exchange program with high-school-aged participants from both countries coming together to share culture and enhance English skills. Second-track processes like the Australia India Youth Dialogue can build on our already strong relationship and realise the full potential of future social, cultural and economic opportunities. I look forward to continued involvement with the dialogue in the future.
I rise to speak about the latest noise and headlines concerning shark numbers in Western Australia. We Western Australians love the beach. We have some of the best surf in the world, the best beaches in the world and one of the best lifestyles in the world. We're really proud of this fact. But one of the greatest challenges our state faces is how we balance our love of the ocean with the reality of shark management. Following the CSIRO report released last week, we now know that western and southern Australia are home to some 1,500 adult great white sharks. When you include the juvenile sharks, that number climbs substantially higher. This makes our great white shark population significantly larger than anywhere else in Australia and is possibly why we have had 15 fatal shark attacks in the last 17 years.
It is clear that we need to have a reasoned, intelligent, thoughtful discussion about shark management in my state. We need to look at what other states have done in this policy area and see if there are more efficient, more effective preventive measures that can be adopted. I'm not advocating for the culling of sharks or for the lethal drum lines on the beach but I do want do see our state wake up and do something regarding shark management given the high number that have been recorded in the south-west.
Our approach could be to follow the New South Wales model, where smart drum lines are employed for different beaches in different locations. Smart drum lines are being trialled in New South Wales and are a humane alternative to the lethal drum line approach that has been adopted previously in Western Australia. Smart drum lines are not designed to kill but they are designed to relocate the sharks. Technology placed off beaches alerts authorities to the presence of a shark caught in the system. Those considered dangerous are then tagged for research purposes, which is important, monitored and relocated further offshore when safe to do so.
On behalf of my regional Liberal colleagues Andrew Hastie, Nola Marino and Rick Wilson and their constituents, I call on our state fisheries minister, Dave Kelly, to expand our shark mitigation strategies. Currently our state government's bandaid solution has been to give $200 to 1,000 surfers and divers to purchase shark deterrent devices. Western Australia's government must rethink its sharks policy. We need a policy which protects human life, gives Western Australians confidence to enjoy our ocean, but at the same time minimises the impact on the marine life.
I would like to acknowledge today as the 10th anniversary of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generations on behalf of the Australian government. In doing so, I want to talk about a site in Parramatta which was incredibly important in the history of this very dark time in Australian life. I am going to talk about the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct and call on the minister to urgently work to list this precinct as a World Heritage site.
The precinct contains a number of buildings. The oldest is the Parramatta Female Factory designed by Francis Greenway and established in 1821 to house female convicts and to serve as a workhouse for those women. It produced the country's first export—linen; it was the first factory; and we had our first industrial action there as well. The children of the convicts that worked there were housed next door in the former Roman Catholic orphanage site. That building became the Parramatta Girls Industrial School in 1887 and, eventually, what was known as the home for wayward girls and renamed the Norma Parker Centre, where it remained as a place for the incarceration of women until 2010.
An estimated 30,000 women and children passed through these institutions, including many of the New South Wales stolen generation. In one of the great ironies, those young girls were essentially imprisoned in what was, before white settlement, a sacred women's site. The place of 200 years of incarceration of women was built on top of a sacred site for women of the Dharug nation.
Bonney Djuric and the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project have recently had the collection of heritage buildings on Fleet Street, North Parramatta, listed as a site of conscience to memorialise the memories of the women and children who passed through the doors and ensure the injustices they faced never happen again. Bonney also put through the first applications to get the precinct placed on the National Heritage List, which it was, late last year, and I thank the minister for that. The listing acknowledges the female factory as a site which demonstrates Australia's social welfare history and the institutionalisation of women and children. It's estimated that one in seven Australians are descendants of the women of the female factory. It has been a place of incarceration of women and girls, with some appalling stories, for over 200 years.
However, despite the National Heritage listing, the New South Wales state government and its development arm plan to build a minimum of 2,700 units in the direct vicinity of and between these heritage buildings. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends have been advocating for World Heritage listing for years. They have 4,000 signatures calling for the same, and I add my voice to theirs in calling on the minister to immediately take action to protect this incredibly important site by working towards its inclusion on the World Heritage List.
Water infrastructure is just as essential to the agricultural industry and life in regional centres as it is to big cities. Without affordable water, our nation comes to a grinding halt. Water means life. Water means jobs. Water means economic security for the future, both on the land and in the cities.
At the 2016 election, the Turnbull government committed to $130 million funding towards the construction of the Rookwood weir—a project which would not only deliver water but deliver jobs, exports and prosperity to Central Queensland. Last week the Queensland state government and the opposition finally realised the significance of this project and agreed to fully fund 50 per cent of the project. The federal government has previously committed to funding this project fifty-fifty. Two years ago, the cost of the project was $260 million. It has now jumped to $350 million. Where the extra $90 million came from, I do not know. But it's up to the state government to wear the extra cost of building this weir. Taking a similarly considered approach in the light of the release of the business case is not unreasonable, so we must investigate that. But the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten, was in the Gladstone region last week, and he has committed federal government funding if he was to win government at the next election.
The Rookwood weir project and other water infrastructure projects are about delivering economic opportunities for Central Queensland. The economic boost from this single project is forecast to be $1 billion for the region. For example, in 1968, the Fairbairn Dam was built at a cost of $30 million. It's now valued at somewhere between half a billion and a billion dollars, and the Emerald region produces $5.5 billion in exports. That just goes to show the good that water can do for a region. I know the importance of affordable water to the agricultural producers in our nation, so this will not be the only infrastructure project that I will be fighting for for Flynn.
The Turnbull government is committed to building 100 dams across the nation, knowing water means life, water means jobs, water means security for the future. Farmers along the several rivers that make up the Fitzroy Basin— (Time expired)
In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded.
This is another reform from the government that was aimed at avoiding a royal commission into the banking and financial services sector in Australia. Nonetheless, Labor is supporting the establishment of an Australian Financial Complaints Authority, despite the shortcomings of this proposal, which I will go through in some detail in my address.
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Putting Consumers First—Establishment of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority) Bill makes changes to the external dispute resolution framework for the financial services sector. It implements the recommendations of the Ramsay review into external dispute resolution, which reported in April 2017. The central change in the bill is the new one-stop shop ombudsman, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. The AFCA will replace three existing complaints bodies: the two ombudsman schemes—the Financial Ombudsman Service and the small Credit and Investments Ombudsman—and the statutory Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, which operates with respect to superannuation disputes in Australia. The new AFCA will follow the model of the existing ombudsman schemes and will be in the form of a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. The minister will approve a scheme which will become the AFCA. All financial firms and superannuation trustees will be required to be members of the AFCA. As with the FOS and the CIO at the moment, the operational aspects of the AFCA scheme will be based on private-law contractual obligations between the AFCA and the financial firms who are members of the scheme. At the moment, there are three external dispute resolution schemes: the ombudsman schemes and the statutory SCT.
On closer inspection of the government's plans for the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Credit and Investments Ombudsman, this is simply a merging and a rebadging of the two existing ombudsman services into the one scheme, with a different threshold—and we do welcome the higher monetary thresholds for the disputes that can be heard—but with no new additional powers that the existing dispute resolution bodies don't already have.
The bill also purports to copy and paste the powers of the statutory Superannuation Complaints Tribunal into the new Australian Financial Complaints Authority, which will be a private company listed by guarantee, as I said. However, in doing this, the bill will result in reduced consumer protections for superannuation disputes, and that's the issue Labor has with the government's proposal. The SCT was a specialised tribunal with specialised members who were able to hear complaints regarding superannuation issues from members and others who work in this area, in a timely fashion with expert advice, ensuring that resolutions could be reached. We believe it's disingenuous for the government to try and shut down this SCT scheme because of delays in the resolution of its complaints when we know that the government has cut funding and has cut staff to the SCT, leaving it in a precarious position in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency of its work. These changes risk losing some of that expertise that currently exists in the SCT.
While many of the SCT's powers are replicated in the new one-stop shop, there are changes between the powers of the SCT and the powers of the AFCA that stakeholders say result in a reduction in consumer protections. These include the fact that the bill retains appeal rights for superannuation determinations but does not include the current appeal rights for administrative decisions of the SCT. The SCT has the power to require information required or shared at the initial review stage to be kept confidential at the moment. According to the SCT, information collected during superannuation dispute resolutions can be highly personal, sensitive, inflammatory and identifiable—for example, family members fighting over who is entitled to a death benefit under superannuation life insurance policies. Currently, the SCT has an explicit statutory power to cancel the membership of a life policy fund if it finds that the conduct relating to the selling of that fund was unfair or unreasonable. And there's no limit on the value of the claim that the SCT is allowed to hear. This is important in disputes about life insurance policies held through super funds. The bill seeks to retain this unlimited jurisdiction for superannuation disputes. However, the SCT states that it's unclear that all disputes involving life insurance in super would receive the benefit of the unlimited jurisdiction. The final issue includes the fact that, as a private body, the new AFCA is not subject to freedom of information as currently exists for the SCT.
These reforms were supported by the House of Representatives Economics Committee, and Labor more generally. It's because of the government's strong desire to hold the banks to account that they're doing this, but is it also because of the government's intention to stand up for financial victims of the bank rip-offs and scandals over recent years? I don't believe it is. This body exists because it's one element of the government's attempts to prevent a royal commission into the banks. That's the point that I made earlier: this is another limb of this government's argument to stop a royal commission into the banking sector in this country. It was only when the banks gave the green light to the Prime Minister by writing to him and saying, 'It's okay to hold a royal commission now,' that the government eventually rolled over and held the commission, which commenced its proceedings yesterday.
The key issue that I've raised time and time again is: how is this going to work? The bill and the information provided to the industry, and to everybody with an interest in this, is scant at best. We've held several meetings with stakeholders who work in this industry. They have expressed the reservations that I outlined earlier about the operation of this new one-stop stop—in particular the folding into this body of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal.
Since 2016, and in response to anger from his backbench about the behaviour of the banks, the Prime Minister has been promising that we will get a low-cost, speedy tribunal to deal with these types of consumer complaints—customer complaints against banks—and that this will be real action. But then the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services had to walk back from this guarantee and argue that the Prime Minister really meant only a 'little T' tribunal, not a 'big T' tribunal. The budget announced a new body, to be called the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, but let's be clear: this reform was designed to take pressure off the banks for that royal commission, a royal commission that the Prime Minister only called when the banks wrote to him and told him that it was okay to do so.
We all know in this place there have been far too many examples of poor behaviour in the banking and financial services sector, going right back to the scandals involving Storm Financial and Trio Capital through to the CBA wealth management scandals, the CommInsure scandals, the bank bill swap-rate scandals and, more recently, the problems that the Commonwealth Bank is having with alleged contraventions of anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorism financing laws. The scandals keep on coming, and it's only through a royal commission that we will be able to get to the bottom of what's going on in this industry for a fair dinkum, independent assessment of the problems in the banking and financial services sector in Australia and with a set of recommendations that all sides of government, including the opposition and the Greens, can have confidence in. Hopefully, we can restore confidence, strength and stability to Australia's financial services industry.
It's a pleasure to stand in this place and speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Putting Consumers First—Establishment of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority) Bill 2017, which the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services has put before the House.
I am pleased to say that the particular framework that has been created through this bill is something that I've had a number of discussions with the minister about. I think it's an enormous step in the right direction in terms of providing a robust complaints resolution system for when there are problems. Sadly, the current system has shown its failings, or its shortcomings, in dealing with some of the more egregious examples of bank misbehaviour over the past few years. I think this bill is a practical and much-needed improvement for consumers. An important addition is small business, and providing access to free, fast and binding financial dispute resolution. I think that that is a key component of this bill—that the decisions coming out of this body will be binding resolutions to matters.
The bill enacts the government's commitment to deliver on the recommendations of the independent review of external dispute resolutions, commonly known as the Ramsay review. I want to give the minister due credit for pursuing this course of action to establish this tribunal to deal with these issues. As I said, I had a number of discussions with the minister on this particular type of model, and I fully support, therefore, what this bill is trying to achieve, because I think it creates a one-stop shop, to resolve these issues where there are these complaints. We've seen, for example, the situation where the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal had taken an average of almost 800 days to resolve consumer complaints. That is nowhere near good enough, in anybody's book—that somebody has to wait nearly 800 days, on average, to have a complaint resolved. The bill addresses these issues with the creation of this new one-stop external dispute resolution body called the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. It will replace FOS, the CIO and the SCT and bring them all into one organisation. It will commence from 1 July 2018, from which time all new complaints will be dealt with by the new body.
The new Australian Financial Complaints Authority, as I've touched on already, will reduce confusion as it will handle all financial complaints. One of the things we heard frequently was that when people had an issue with financial services it wasn't clear who they should go to, to make a complaint and try to have that complaint resolved. That's what this body will do. By having a one-stop-stop that includes superannuation complaints, managing the complaints will be a smoother and more professional process.
Importantly, this is about creating a body that will provide resolution for consumers of their concerns. It is true that the banks and the financial services organisations over the years have let themselves down, and they do need to be held accountable for their shortfalls, but this is where people will have the opportunity to raise those complaints and those concerns. Importantly, the new authority will also be able to hear higher value complaints and award higher amounts of compensation, increasing access to redress for consumers and small business.
The key element of the new one-stop shop is that it is a single new external dispute resolution body to handle all financial disputes, authorised by the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services. The scheme will be industry funded, which will allow flexibility to increase funding in response to unforeseen increases in complaint volumes. The authority will be governed by a board, comprising an independent chair and an equal number of directors with consumer and industry backgrounds. At the establishment of the authority, the minister will appoint the chair and a minority of board members. The authority will be able to hear disputes of up to $1 million and be able to award compensation of up to $500,000. Consumers and small business will be able to bring a complaint about a credit facility where the facility is for an amount of up to $5 million, and they may be awarded compensation of up to $1 million. There is an unlimited monetary jurisdiction being maintained for all superannuation disputes.
I think it is worth looking at the history of how we got to the point of needing to change current arrangements. I've probably touched on some of that already, but it's worth looking at a broader review. The Ramsay review found that the current dispute resolution framework was the product of history rather than design. It found that having multiple schemes with overlapping jurisdictions means it's difficult to achieve comparable outcomes for consumers with similar complaints, and more difficult for consumers to progress disputes involving firms that are members of different schemes. This, as I touched on earlier, increases the risk of confusion for consumers.
Also, we've seen that the current monetary limits for FOS and the CIO are no longer fit for purpose and are preventing access for many individuals and small business to the complaints resolution processes of FOS and the CIO. The current monetary limit of $500,000 and the compensation cap of $309,000 bear little relationship to the value of most financial products—for example, residential mortgages, a range of insurance policies and even some investments. There are fundamental problems with dispute resolution arrangements for superannuation, which I've touched upon before, with the enormous backlog at the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal.
There has been support from the industry for the creation of this authority. Gerard Brody, the CEO of the Consumer Law Action Centre, stated:
Australians need one, high quality service to resolve their disputes against financial institutions quickly and fairly. The one-stop shop … is a sensible move that can help Australians get justice.
Choice has also welcomed the announcement, which will provide consumers with this single, one-stop shop. The authority will also assist with small business. The Council of Small Business of Australia noted:
… this new Authority will provide business owners with a clear mechanism to seek redress where they have been unfairly done by.
Consumers will benefit from the new framework through the ability of the authority to have flexibility in dealing with complaints in a timely manner and to have direct control over its funding and processes. This is envisaged to deliver practical improvements to consumers and small business. At the end of the day, that's what we're interested in. We're interested in seeking a model that is going to assist consumers and small businesses to have their disputes resolved in a timely and efficient manner. Consumers will be able to approach the authority to resolve all financial complaints, eliminating, as I touched on before, the uncertainty and the confusion. Where complaints cover multiple providers within the financial system, these complaints will now be able to be handled by the one authority.
The bill also introduces a new internal dispute resolution reporting regime to provide firms with an incentive to have best practice for internal dispute resolution. It is disappointing that, at a time when our financial services organisations are well aware of their corporate responsibility, their internal dispute resolution systems are not able to resolve these complaints and we need to proceed to an external dispute resolution process. But this new internal dispute resolution reporting regime is designed to ensure that financial systems firms do have first-class internal dispute resolution processes. I would hope, through that process, and improving their internal dispute resolution process, that the need for complaints to be referred to the authority and to an external dispute resolution process is minimised.
The establishment of this authority—the powers it has, the opportunities it will provide, the flexibility it has, the increased financial limits that will apply, and consumers and small businesses knowing they can go to one place to have their concerns heard and dealt with—will be of tremendous benefit to consumers and small business. I would like to thank the minister for her willingness to discuss this over the past 12 months or so and to be open to discussing various ideas. I commend this bill to this House.
It is disappointing that the Treasury Laws Amendment (Putting Consumers First—Establishment of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority) Bill 2017 is coming forward in this form, and without additional promises of resourcing. I think anyone who has looked at the complaints-handling systems in this area would probably agree that some things could be done better. But, when you ask the people who actually work in those bodies that exist at the moment, 'What could be done to better improve complaints, say, around superannuation?', one of the loud responses that comes back is, 'Properly resource us.' In the context where this government regularly takes the axe to the Public Service and where it sees public servants not as people who work for the benefit of the community but instead simply as a cost to be cut, it's not surprising that people find themselves facing, potentially, long waiting times to get their various disputes resolved.
One of the things we've seen with the royal commission that the government was dragged kicking and screaming to support was that of course it couldn't let pass by an opportunity to attack industry superannuation funds, even though those funds often return much better returns than other funds. I say this as someone with a foot in both camps. I have an industry fund but also a private fossil fuel-free fund in Future Fund. I say this not being on one side of the chamber that feels they have a vested interest to either defend or attack, but it is very, very clear the government will use every opportunity it can to attack what it perceived to be funds that have union links, and so it is with this bill.
The government comes along and says, 'Well, here's a couple of complaints-handling authorities where we could make a difference'. Then it looks at the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal and, for reasons that are not really made out, asserts that there is a problem that can't be fixed with better resourcing and so decides that the tribunal needs to be abolished and rolled into a new organisation. One of the things that concern me about that is that this is all being done without any promise of additional resourcing. It is not at all clear from all the things we've heard from members of the government—concerns about trying to get their disputes resolved—that this not necessarily going to fix that at all. At the end of the day this is as much about ideology and responding to political pressures as it is about making a sensible decision about dealing with the governance of superannuation funds. You look at every other area with superannuation funds—changes to directorships and the like—and it is making these changes on an evidence-free basis, purely on the basis of ideology. I worry that is the case with this bill as well.
There have been some suggestions made that the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal has been far too legalistic. One of the things the people who work there have impressed on me in my discussions with them is that many of the complaints are resolved informally, without the need to proceed through the formal complaints process. Whether or not they're counted in the statistics that government members rely on, I don't know, but it has certainly been the case that, although they're called a tribunal, in many respects they've actually operated almost like an ombudsman: they've helped take complaints and resolve them, often without having to initiate formal processes with funds, as one might expect and one might hope. It is not at all clear that that process is going to continue or, at least, that there'll be a separate, dedicated level of resources given to that industry.
It is also concerning in that respect that we see this slow privatisation of complaints handling mechanisms and of government authorities, because—putting aside the principal position, the ideology of that—one of the things that does, for example, is remove the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, to the extent that it's covered by FOI and AAT, from that process, removes it from that oversight. I'm not saying that every decision of the complaints tribunal could be taken to one of those bodies but, certainly, the internal processes were governed by that. The more that governments take bodies that make decisions out of the public realm, slot them over and say, 'We're going to create a new private company now,' the less oversight there is over the way these organisations do business. We've got laws that demand that people get paid superannuation. It's not an option now: if you're an employer you have to pay it for your employee. So, we have a federal law that says we have to funnel huge amounts of money into these schemes. Given that they're federally regulated, you'd expect that when complaints arise there should also be some federal oversight of those complaints. But taking away AAT and taking away FOI in the way that I'm advised will happen as a result of this is not right.
The previous member said: 'Oh, well, this is all good. It's got the support of the industry.' Again, that's not right. Industry Super—again, an organisation that I don't have any particular ties to; I'm not here to bat for them politically, one way or the other—have come out and said: 'No, we don't support this change. We think there's a better way of dealing with complaints within superannuation.'
So I was hopeful that some of the good elements of this bill might have been able to prevail in the amendments that were moved in the Senate—I believe by the opposition—around the issue of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal. Sadly, they didn't succeed. There were some other amendments that we proposed that I understand did succeed, and that's good. They made the bill slightly better. But without some further attention being paid to and the further case being made out as to why the SCT should be rolled in together with all of these other bodies then that aspect of the bill can't be supported, because it will make a change for which no case has been made and which could be fixed through other means—if the government wanted to stop attacking the Public Service and instead support it. And it has the potential for a number of deleterious consequences, including less oversight.
I imagine that this bill is going to sail through this place in the way that it sailed through the Senate, but I think opposition to that point, in particular, needs to be made, because it's an issue that was raised with the government when this bill was being progressed. They've steadfastly—I think perhaps for ideological reasons—refused to countenance any change to deal with that issue. As a result, opposition to that part of the bill has to be placed on record.
I am very pleased to be able to speak to the issues arising from the Treasury Laws Amendment (Putting Consumers First—Establishment of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority) Bill 2017, currently before this chamber. I speak to the bill in the context of a 30-year career as a legal practitioner, primarily as a commercial practitioner, but also in the latter part of my career as a litigation practitioner, addressing a lot of work within the financial services industry but also dealing with people as customers who were attempting to deal with, I might say, the pointy end of the financial services industry.
It's important for this place to understand that there is significant anxiety generated, particularly when a financial organisation seeks to take possession of real estate that's been pledged to secure a customer's obligations under a loan. In other words, the foreclosure process brings the customer and the bank into conflict. And, up to now, that conflict has really only been softened or ameliorated by the intervention of the Financial Ombudsman Service and the alternative dispute resolution services that are made available by the financial institutions.
We also need to be mindful of the fact that there has been significant disquiet in the community about financial institutions and the banking industry, and that that disquiet has led to significant pressure being placed upon the government to inquire into the conduct of financial institutions. Hence, Labor announced at the last election that it would support the establishment of a royal commission to inquire into misconduct in the financial services sector.
What we have before us today is very much the government's initial response to that political pressure that it was necessary and appropriate to inquire into misconduct within the financial services industry. Unfortunately, as is the case with the government's response with respect to the rolling out of infrastructure, there is a very significant gap between announcement and deliverable, particularly when you look at what's being proposed in this legislation.
Let me be perfectly clear. Labor moved amendments to this legislation in the Senate so as to retain the existing tribunal which addressed statutory superannuation complaints. That was undertaken in order to protect the quality of superannuation dispute resolution and the integrity of the compulsory superannuation system. The central reason for that was that Labor felt that it was necessary to keep this new authority out of regulation of or inquiry into complaints dealing with superannuation. We moved those amendments in good faith because we believed that the changes that we proposed would have significantly improved this legislation. We are disappointed that the amendments were not accepted by the Senate. We are also concerned that the government has not been able to give satisfactory answers to questions about how the transition process that will apply to the new financial complaints body in this bill would work—because we're not talking about something which is trivial in execution. We're talking about the consolidation of a number of different organisations, including a statutory Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, into one body. We know, nevertheless, that this will pass the House, and Labor will support the passage of this bill through the House of Representatives.
It is appropriate that we consider some of the history leading to the introduction of this bill and why we're here today. As I said earlier, in April 2016 the opposition announced that a Labor government would establish a royal commission into misconduct within the financial services sector. It might be fairly put that the government's response was somewhat lacklustre. It concentrated on reforming the powers of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and implementing the Ramsay review into the financial system external dispute resolution processes. An expert panel conducted a review to ensure that the Australian system of external dispute resolution was effectively meeting the needs of users of the financial system. As I indicated in my opening, I've seen this in operation. I've seen it in operation while acting for the banks, but I've also seen this at the pointy end when individual customers are endeavouring to deal with external dispute resolution. I've seen where litigation has been stayed as a consequence of a complaint made under the Financial Ombudsman Service and the other schemes.
Whilst there might be a case built for the establishment of a consolidated one-stop shop as described by the government, I do still have significant concerns as to the incorporation of the separate and distinct area of superannuation into that one-stop shop. The bill combines three existing external dispute resolution schemes—that is, the Financial Ombudsman Service, the Credit and Investments Ombudsman and the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal. The new body, as everybody is aware, will be known as the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. What needs to be emphasised is that this bill actually abolishes an existing tribunal under what might be described as a 'rebranding' exercise.
Of course, the context for this is vitally important to understand because this was in the context of Labor's calls for a royal commission. In late 2016 the Prime Minister promised a low-cost speedy tribunal to deal with financial sector complaints. He said this would constitute real action against the banks. Rather than real action, what we have with this bill is a merging of the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Credit and Investments Ombudsman rebadged as the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. The body has no new or additional powers other than accruing some additional jurisdiction—that is, monetary jurisdiction—in that the new authority can hear disputes with higher monetary thresholds than its predecessors. That is a good thing in the sense that it opens up the jurisdiction to more disputes.
If you were cynical, you would think that the implementation of this complaints authority was simply another delaying tactic from this government intended to stave off increasing public pressure for a banking royal commission. Before now, most disputes with financial service providers in Australia were resolved through internal dispute resolution processes between the customer and the relevant bank or other providers. I know the protocols that apply with particular complaints. I know the banks are required to investigate certain complaints, escalate particular complaints, but it doesn't remove, in my view, the general concerns that we have regarding financial misconduct, particularly in the area of sales of financial instruments and financial advice.
There have been far too many examples of poor conduct on the part of the banks and the financial service providers, including illegal activity, misconduct, inappropriate financial advice, insurance claims unfairly declined, fraudulent activity, the targeting of whistleblowers and irresponsible lending. Many of those complaints of particularly egregious behaviour have been seen by me in the course of my legal practice. And, of course, it is true that if you needed to articulate that argument in a court, it would be very difficult to do that with the resources that are available to a financial institution like a major bank and the resources available to an individual customer. That is, after all, why Labor remain committed to the establishment of a royal commission into the financial sector that would extend to banks, insurance providers and superannuation funds.
It must be emphasised that the word 'authority' in this particular authority's name is a misnomer. This is just another ombudsman scheme, according to the minister, as confirmed in the Senate, in this case in the form of a private company limited by a guarantee. There are already two of these organisations in existence for financial services disputes, which, as I've said earlier, are the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Credit and Investments Ombudsman. The bill abolishes the three existing complaints-handling bodies and, in many respects, represents a merger and rebranding of the work of three separate authorities. There is some overlap between the work of the two previous bodies. Indeed, I've seen some financial firms choose one or other of the ombudsman services and, in practical operation, they seem to me to be indistinguishable. At the moment, a customer who has a dispute with a bank, an insurer, a payday lender or a mortgage broker can go to an ombudsman scheme to have their dispute resolved. Once this bill passes, the customers will be able to go to an ombudsman scheme to have the dispute resolved.
We have some concerns as to the transitional arrangements that are proposed. The government has said that AFCA will start from 1 July 2018 for new complaints and so we're hoping that the government has given proper consideration to make sure the transition process works.
There has been a Senate inquiry, and it has raised concerns about this. A commentator, Mike Taylor, summarised in Super Review some of the concerns about this process in light of evidence given to the Senate:
There is much to suggest that the creation of AFCA represents a bureaucratic slow-motion train crash with the Treasury officials confirming that the financial services industry will have to deal with four different external dispute resolution schemes for at least a year after the necessary legislation is passed and that the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal will still be clearing its workload as late as 2022.
Labor has questioned the government in the Senate about the transition plans and how they would make sure that the transition to the AFCA would work. The lack of detail in the answers has been very concerning. It seems that since the bill passed the Senate the government has announced additional funding in MYEFO, which of course is welcome, to help the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal work through its existing workload. It was very concerning that the government did not appear to properly plan for this when announcing AFCA in the budget.
As I said earlier, these sorts of external dispute resolution schemes are very important. They are important to give the voice to consumers, sometimes in situations which are really riven by conflict. The situations that I've seen are those where customers are the subject of foreclosure proceedings, and in those circumstances it's certainly appropriate for external dispute resolution to be promoted by any responsible regulator or government. However, as I've said in my remarks this afternoon, it's vitally important that the government understands that there is an existing effective complaint scheme with the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal. The effectiveness of the transitional arrangements needs to be monitored and they need to be properly resourced. We'll have a situation where, if the government takes its eye off the ball, there will be significant distress occasioned to people that are already exposed to the stress of foreclosure or dispute with a financial institution.
Firstly, I'd like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate. Today the government is delivering on its commitment to overhaul the financial dispute resolution framework as announced in the 2017 budget in response to the Ramsay review. There is a clear need to improve the dispute resolution framework, which is a product of history rather than design. Currently, there are three external dispute resolution bodies: the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Credit and Investments Ombudsman.
The existence of multiple external dispute resolution schemes with overlapping jurisdictions means it is more difficult to achieve similar outcomes for consumers with similar complaints. It is also difficult for consumers to know which scheme to approach, leading to duplicative costs within the system. The monetary limits and compensation caps that apply under the existing schemes are manifestly too low and are not working to ensure access to justice for consumers and small businesses. FOS' and the CIO's current monetary limit of $500,000 and compensation caps of $309,000 bear little relationship to the value of most financial products and are no longer fit for purpose. Similarly, the monetary limit of $2 million for credit disputes and a compensation cap of $309,000 is precluding too many small businesses from accessing justice under the existing schemes.
Further, the dispute resolution arrangements for superannuation are in drastic need of improvement. The inflexible tribunal model has meant that the SCT has been unable to resolve disputes in a timely manner, and the body now has a significant backlog of legacy claims. At the time of the Ramsay review, the SCT was taking an average of 796 days to resolve a dispute that reached determination stage. This is clearly unacceptable.
In April 2016, the government commissioned an independent comprehensive review of the dispute resolution framework, led by an expert panel comprising Professor Ian Ramsay, Julie Abramson and Alan Kirkland. The review made 11 recommendations to strengthen and futureproof the dispute resolution framework, and the government accepted all of these recommendations.
The flagship recommendation was for the establishment of a new one-stop shop industry funded dispute resolution scheme to hear and determine all financial disputes, including superannuation disputes. The new scheme would replace the SCT, FOS and CIO. The reforms in this bill to establish the Australian Financial Complaints Authority will radically overhaul how financial disputes are dealt with in Australia and will ensure that significantly more consumers and small businesses have access to free, fast and binding dispute resolution.
All financial firms, including superannuation funds, that deal with consumers will be required by law to be members of AFCA, and decisions of AFCA will be binding on financial firms. AFCA will be based on an industry ombudsman model, which will provide it with the flexibility to adapt to changes in the financial system and user expectations. By not restricting how AFCA deals with complaints, the framework enables AFCA to be flexible and innovative and to take advantage of new technologies and techniques in the resolution disputes.
AFCA will be a not-for-profit company governed by a board comprising an independent chair and equal numbers of directors with industry and consumer backgrounds. The bill introduces a legislative framework which sets out the standards that AFCA must adhere to, ensuring that AFCA is accountable to its all users: consumers, small businesses and members of financial firms. Under the legislative framework, AFCA will be accessible to consumers and small businesses which would be able to have their disputes heard by AFCA for free, and will be funded by industry. AFCA will have a range of statutory powers to effectively manage superannuation complaints, such as the ability to join third parties to a dispute, to require parties to attend conciliation, and to require the production of information.
As the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, I will authorise the new AFCA scheme and I will have the ability to set conditions on authorisation. Until I am satisfied the scheme will have robust systems and processes, I will not authorise AFCA. I will also appoint the independent chair and a minority of the initial AFCA board to ensure that it has an appropriate mix of skills and experience.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission will be responsible for overseeing AFCA to ensure that it meets the standards set out in the legislation. So that ASIC can fulfil this role, the legislation will provide ASIC with the ability to set regulatory requirements that AFCA must adhere to and will also provide ASIC with a general directions power to compel AFCA to comply with the standards set out in the legislation. In addition, ASIC will have a specific directions power that can be used to require AFCA to increase funding in the event that it is insufficiently financed.
The bill was examined by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee. In response to the committee's report, the government moved a number of amendments to provide additional certainty and clarity around aspects of AFCA's operations, to ensure it will operate as effectively as possible. Additionally, the government will commission an independent review of the new external dispute resolution arrangements 18 months after AFCA commences operations. This review will take into account feedback from consumers and small businesses regarding whether AFCA resolved their complaint in a way that was fair, efficient, timely and independent. The review will also specifically examine the appropriateness of the monetary limits applying to complaints relating to credit facilities provided to primary production businesses. The Legislative and Governance Forum for Corporations was consulted in relation to the bill and to these amendments, and has approved them as required under the Corporations Agreement 2002.
While overhauling the dispute resolution framework, the government also looked to strengthen the internal dispute resolution processes within firms. The legislation also introduces a new IDR reporting regime. Under the regime, ASIC will be provided with the power to collect and publish IDR data at both the aggregate and firm level.
Being such a significant reform, the government understands the importance of having a smooth transition from the existing dispute resolution bodies to AFCA. That is why the government has created a transition team, led by Dr Malcolm Edey, a former assistant governor of the Reserve Bank, to drive the establishment of AFCA. The transition team has undertaken consultation with key stakeholders, and feedback from that consultation process will inform its advice to government on AFCA's terms of reference, governance and funding arrangements. It will also advise government on the transitional arrangements required to appropriately resolve legacy disputes of the three existing schemes.
Once the legislation is passed by the parliament, I will be seeking an application for authorisation. Following an assessment of that application, I will be authorising AFCA and making my formal appointments to the board. It is my intention to do this as swiftly as possible, to ensure that the AFCA board has the maximum time available to put in place the required operational arrangements, including securing membership and funding, and to undertake consultation on its terms of reference and funding arrangements ahead of AFCA's commencement. In line with advice received by Dr Edey and the transition team and in order to facilitate an orderly transition to AFCA, it is my intention that AFCA will commence accepting disputes no later than 1 November 2018.
The change to IDR and the establishment of AFCA will ensure that consumers have free, fast and binding resolutions of complaints regarding financial services, ensuring confidence in our financial system. I commend the bill to the House.
Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.
Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Andrews, for the privilege and opportunity to speak on this matter in the Chamber today. I don't intend to give a long speech but simply to acknowledge, as many other members have done, the progress that has been made and also the sadness that comes with an agenda unfulfilled and one that continues to need to be supported by all members in this place.
As the Closing the gap report outlines, there is still significant disadvantage experienced by people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage compared to much of the rest of the Australian population. The purpose of Closing the Gap is self-evident, but improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders so they can live to their full potential is always in our interests. We must remind everybody that this is in the national interest as well as, of course, in the interest of the people affected, because, when you look at everything that our great country has achieved and everything that is before it into the future, you realise the full potential of the individual, you respect their humanity and their dignity, and what they can contribute to enhancing a greater Australia. That is why this agenda is so critical to Australia today—to address the wrongs of the past but also to build the type of country that we want to be into the future.
As the Closing the gap report outlines, three of the seven targets in the Closing the Gap strategy are on track to be met. But it is with sadness that we also acknowledge that four out of seven are not on track to be achieved at the current rate, and we must redouble our efforts and refocus our energy to make sure they are.
Let's go with the good news. The target to halve the gap in child mortality by 2018 is on track. As the report outlines, over the long term, between 1998 and 2016, the Indigenous child mortality rate declined by 35 per cent. There has been a narrowing of the gap by 32 per cent. Improvements in the key drivers of child and maternal health over the past few years suggest there are further gains to be made. We know the continuing problem of fetal alcohol syndrome in Indigenous communities and remote communities, and these are important issues which continue to need to be addressed. It isn't enough to focus on mortality; it has to be coupled with improved healthcare outcomes throughout all stages of life.
The second target on track is to have 95 per cent of all Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025. In 2016, around 14,700 Indigenous children, which is 91 per cent, were enrolled in early childhood programs. As we know, that target isn't just about making sure that children are engaged in the discipline of school; it is actually about the important role that education can play in building young minds and in expanding their opportunities beyond the immediacy of their lived experience. We must continue to make sure that we focus on that, because it comes at the heart of the potential for many young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to go on and live as fulfilled a life as they would seek for themselves, and to know the world beyond them and their immediate surrounds, so they can make their choice about their future.
The target to halve the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020 is also on track. Nationally, the proportion of Indigenous 20- to 24-year-olds who have achieved year 12 or equivalent has increased from 47.4 per cent in 2006 to 65.3 per cent in 2016. While the attainment rates for non-Indigenous Australians also improved at the same time, the gap has narrowed by 12.6 per cent over the past decade, which is a very good achievement as well. It follows on strongly from the sentiments I made about the previous target and the potential and what it can do to improve human lives.
Sadly, though, there is bad news—or news that leaves room for opportunity for us all to struggle together to do better. Unfortunately, the target to close the gap in school attendance by 2018 is not on track. In 2017 the overall attendance rate for Indigenous students nationally was 83.2 per cent, compared with 93 per cent for non-Indigenous students. So there is a need to continue to focus energy on that as well. The target to halve the gap in reading and numeracy by 2018 is also not on track. In 2017 the proportion of Indigenous students achieving national minimum standards in NAPLAN was on track in only one area—year 9 numeracy—of the eight areas, including reading and numeracy across different levels. However, the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students has narrowed since 2008, across all NAPLAN areas, particularly reading in years 3 and 5, and numeracy in years 5 and 9.
Similarly, the target to halve the gap in employment by 2018 is not on track, with Indigenous employment rates falling slightly over the past decade; however, progress is being masked by a change in remote employment programs during this period. The employment rate has improved by 4.2 per cent over the past 10 years. In 2016 the Indigenous employment rate was 46.6 per cent, compared with 71.8 per cent for non-Indigenous Australians.
The final target not to have been met, the one that, I think, always brings the most sadness to every Australian, is the gap in life expectancy, that by 2031 we may see a significant reduction in the gap of life expectancy. Instead, between the periods 2005 and 2007 and between 2010 and 2012 there's been a small reduction in the gap of less than a year for males and 0.1 years for females, so almost no significant shift, tragically, for women. The report states:
Over the longer term, Indigenous mortality rates have declined by 14 per cent since 1998.
This report gives all of us pause for thought. I know that many people have remarked already about the disappointment of what has not been achieved in the past decade, but we also need to recognise what has been achieved as well. We have seen a shift and improvement and a proper focus on many of the issues to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, but, as part of the continuing pursuit of justice for our entire country, we need to continue to focus on and address many of these gaps.
It doesn't sit, of course, in isolation. The targets that are very important to provide the foundations for people to be able to go on and live healthy, happy and successful lives have to be matched with other policy priorities that advance the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to be full members and full participants in the Australian community. In my previous capacity as Human Rights Commissioner, one of the bits of work I was very proud to work on was realising the potential of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders over their native title lands to increase the potential for that land to be used to its full extent in the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders under the control of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to pursue the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as part of the fulfilment of the destiny of this great nation.
My hope is that out of this report people will focus on what we need to do next and will make sure that there is proper recognition of the challenges that continue to remain for our Indigenous Australians. It isn't just a responsibility of the state or federal governments. Every Australian needs to take an active interest, because these are our fellow country men and women—people who have experienced many difficult times in the past and the legacy and trauma that continues to be inflicted upon them culturally and socially. It's time that we all took a greater interest and had more sense of obligation about trying to improve the circumstances of every Australian, because that is the only way we will get to the point of developing and building a more inclusive, more harmonious and more respectful nation.
Of course, not having firsthand lived experience of the challenges in many of the areas that this report seeks to address, can sometimes make it challenging for a lot of people, including myself, to understand that lived experience and to participate successfully with full empathy. But I think that most people would see that the situation being faced today by so many other Australians is beyond anything that this nation should tolerate, particularly at this point in our history, with our position of wealth and opportunity. Now is the time for us to take even greater responsibility, to make sure that it does not continue into the future.
I rise to join with my parliamentary colleagues in making further comments in relation to the Closing the gap report for 2018. This week in the parliament has been monumental so far. On Monday we saw the Closing the gap report delivered and this morning in the Great Hall we had the breakfast and the coming together of many people from the stolen generations for the 10th anniversary of Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generations.
The apology was a truly remarkable and historic moment for our nation. It acknowledged the painful truth and injustice of the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and the destruction of our families, communities and cultures. It also recognised that while these injustices happened in the past the impact is still with us. Intergenerational trauma is becoming more and more understood, and it is very much a part of this discussion.
At the breakfast this morning there were stories, as there are with every gathering of the stolen generations, on painful display, stories about the indignity and the humiliation that members of the stolen generations were made to feel but also stories about their incredible strength and resilience and the amazing generosity of that generation. I think that is a lesson that we can all well take on board. People were taught to be ashamed of their Aboriginality, and they were often lied to about their family and family circumstances. We heard that today. We heard about how separation affected people—not only individuals and families but whole communities—and how, as I said, the vicious cycle of intergenerational pain and humiliation has impacted young people today.
We can see this in the overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in incarceration or out-of-home care. In fact, my side of the parliament argues that there should be two new additional targets: one in relation to incarceration and the other in relation to out-of-home care. The gap that alarmed me most was the gap that still exists in literacy and numeracy, and the fact that it's not going to be met. I think that that and the school attendance gaps are the real story out of this particular report. And when you start to unpack how the numbers were arrived at and the way in which the calculations were made as to what was on track and what wasn't, you start to get even more questions about the accuracy of the report.
The apology 10 years ago was a great national effort to close the gap but it is also everyone's business. It was also part of the journey towards healing and part of the journey towards reconciliation. I have always maintained that reconciliation is not a destination; in fact, it's a journey. This is about the acknowledgement of this journey and how long it will continue for, and what the tangible, practical and meaningful steps towards closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians actually require.
The report the Prime Minister delivered on Monday clearly said that there is so much more to do. I find it rather galling at times when we say we've made such big efforts; we've made such big gains. Well, let's remind ourselves just how low the bar is. Of course, the progress for year 12 completion, early childhood participation and mortality rate improvements are welcomed, but they are still way below those of the broader Australian community. It is also disappointing to still see that the progress in life expectancy, employment, school attendance, and literacy and numeracy outcomes are not going to be met. It is almost incredulous when I speak to people from other countries and say that my life expectancy as a first-nation woman is much less than it is for my non-Aboriginal sisters. It is difficult to understand in a First World nation like ours, a wealthy nation like ours, how this situation can still exist.
We also know that we need to listen and we need leadership. The Labor Party have said to the government, in a very, very real way, that we will work with you but we will not wait with you. We have made the point, although it has been denied, that there has been half a billion dollars cut out of the Indigenous Affairs program, and there are consequences of that that many of us see in our daily lives as members of parliament.
I do want to emphasise in the little bit of time I have left the proposed cuts to the remote housing program. If these funds are cut, if this effort is not renewed with the states and territories, then we may as well not even print a Closing the Gap report next year, because it will make a mockery of the whole idea of closing the gap. One of the important things is this notion of self-determination, which was clearly one of the recommendations in the Bringing them home report. Self-determination is at the heart of closing the gap; self-determination is at the heart of much of the rhetoric of both sides of parliament in this place. Self-determination can be realised by way of an Indigenous voice to this parliament. We want to work with the government on this, and I was very disappointed to hear the Prime Minister's statements in the House today in light of this.
Last night, I attended the screening of a film about the alarming rates of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. It is just incredulous, and I know each side of politics agrees wholeheartedly with this. It is difficult to accept. We understand that the states are the jurisdictions that basically look after child protection, but the number of children in out-of-home care has doubled in the last 10 years. One of the women last night said there is not a new Stolen Generation but that the Stolen Generation has never finished.
I have spoken about many things today and I'm not going to be able to speak about everything that I wanted to, but I did want to say that I am very proud of Labor's story when it comes to Indigenous policy. We will never forget that image of Gough Whitlam pouring sand into the hands of Vincent Lingiari at the handover of Uluru, of the Whitlam government's abolishment of discriminatory practices perpetrated against Aboriginal Australians. We also know that we look at the Keating government's passage of native title and also the Mabo decision. Keating's Redfern statement is something that will sear into the heart of this country forever. I know some of you were here at the time, but I was in the gallery, actually, when Kevin Rudd made the apology to the Stolen Generations. We, today, make an ongoing commitment to the Stolen Generations by way of a $10 million fund and also reparations when it comes to the ACT, the Northern Territory and other federal jurisdictions. We will also have a first-nations children's summit within the first 100 days of forming government if Labor is elected.
I will finish my comments today to this chamber by saying that it is critical that there be a mechanism put in place. We're not talking about a third chamber; we are talking about an advisory committee to this parliament, made up of first nations peoples from across the country, to make sure that the decisions that we make within this parliament will truly contribute to the realisation of closing the gap and the aspirations in the Bringing them home report. As I said, we are prepared to work with the government in a very real way, and Labor, as a first step to ultimately recognising the first nations voice, will do some preliminary work around what that voice might look like.
I finish by saying we are confident that, in the fullness of time, the Australian public will see that this is an important mechanism within the parliament and something that we can all embrace. This, too, will not be easy, but Labor has listened and Labor now stands ready to lead. We ask the Prime Minister and the government to do the same thing.
I rise to respond to the 10th Closing the gap report, tabled yesterday by the Prime Minister. I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are meeting on Ngunawal country, and I acknowledge and pay respects to their elders past, present and future. Reflecting on the past 10 years of the Closing the Gap framework, there's been a lot of progress, but I think we can all recognise that there's a lot more work to be done. As I look around this parliament, I see a resolve and a commitment to close the gap on all sides of the chamber. I see it when I'm part of events such as as the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of the Close the Gap Campaign and I see it as a member of the backbench policy committee on Indigenous affairs in the government. I see it in the hard work and the commitment of the Prime Minister, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and the Minister for Indigenous Health, including through this government's commitment to continuing this work with the involvement of First Australians as well as all states and territories. And I see it in the heartbeat of our Indigenous people on the Central Coast through their passion and their care for one another and our community.
In particular, on a day like today, I'd like to pay tribute to the Barang organisation, which includes the NAISDA Dance College, led by the talented and indefatigable Kim Walker; Yerin Aboriginal Health Services, led by Central Coast local Belinda Field; and, of course, the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council, led by our respected community leader Sean Gordon. To each of you, thank you for the extraordinary work that you do in our community.
I'd also like to place on the parliamentary record the resolve and commitment demonstrated on a daily basis by the selfless advocates at The Glen. The Glen is the largest Aboriginal drug and alcohol residential rehabilitation centre in New South Wales. It's based at Chittaway Point and it's assisting our Indigenous community right across the Central Coast and, indeed, beyond. Under the leadership of CEO Joseph Coyte, The Glen is a great example of how the Closing the Gap process is more than just a piece of paper, it's more than just a symbol and it's more than just a process. For people like Joe, there are people coming to The Glen who need help, rehabilitation and support that I'd venture to say extend well beyond what those of us in this place would have to deal with in our everyday lives. At The Glen, opportunity is more than a mission statement. It's a life-changing shift that can save lives and open doors to a brighter future. But to get there we first need the framework that's enabled by initiatives like the Indigenous Procurement Policy, or IPP. Joe has told me that The Glen has responded to the IPP by starting numerous social enterprises, including setting up a separate company to make profits that help fund the running of the rehabilitation program. Joe said:
This is a space that we have strategically identified as a possible avenue for us to help create employment opportunities for Indigenous people.
Joe also told me that the IPP will allow The Glen to become self-reliant, moving away from a reliance on government funding and, thus, allowing them to drive the future direction of the organisation. It's a practical example of what is being achieved. The IPP target was achieved three years ahead of schedule and has now eclipsed $1 billion in contracts to Indigenous business since it was launched 2½ years ago, up from just $6.2 million in 2012-13. The success of the IPP shows what we can achieve together when we set targets for which we have responsibility.
Importantly, this is not the only item that's now on track. As we heard in the House, for the first time since 2011, three of the Closing the Gap targets are on track. I acknowledge that this may not, for many, be seen as a significant step forward, but it is progress nonetheless. This year, the Closing the gap report found that the target to halve child mortality is back on track, with significant improvements in health care. Between 1998 and 2016 we've seen a decline of 35 per cent in the Indigenous child mortality rate and a closing of the gap by 32 per cent. The report also indicates outcomes in education are improving, with the early childhood education and year 12 attainment targets on track. Today there around 14,700 or 91 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled in early childhood education in the crucial year before starting school. This improvement means the target to have 95 per cent of Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025 is set to be realised. There are also more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students staying on until year 12, with over 65 per cent of Indigenous young adults aged 20 to 24 achieving year 12 or equivalent—well up from around 47 per cent in 2006.
I know, in concluding, that there is a thirst and desire for this common ground to be more than just a statement, particularly when it comes to our young people. This is true on the Central Coast, for example, with the advocacy of locals like Lisa Wriley in Kariong, who for many years has been involved in activities that have drawn together people from across our region to tackle issues around closing the gap and much more. Lisa told me about the initiatives of people like Dr Beryl Collier, Reverend Penny Jones, Phil Bligh and many others who hosted film screenings and barbecues for Indigenous young people. In fact, at the wonderful Kariong Eco Garden, there is a truly inspiring welcome mural and display, including a panel painted by Aunty Joyce Dukes. I'd love to know that this local committee and its initiatives have a future, and I commit to finding out.
I also know that it's another example of my community's desire to do their bit in helping to close the gap. It echoes the sentiments expressed by the Prime Minister, who spoke about how the solution to closing the gap rests within the imagination, the ingenuity, the passion and the drive of Indigenous people themselves, with government the enabler of their success. We must also seek common ground, the Prime Minister said, guided by the values that make us all Australians—values of mutual respect, equality and equal treatment under the law. I commend the latest Closing the gap report and I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to it.
Last year, I put together a video for Harmony Day and I asked locals from various multicultural backgrounds to deliver a message of peace and unity in their native language. We had representatives from the Chinese, the Greek, the Bangladeshi, the Indian and the Muslim communities, who delivered a message in their native language for Harmony Day. But I wanted the video to begin with the oldest language of our area—the language of the local Aboriginal population at La Perouse, the Bidjigal people. When I made inquiries with the local community about finding someone to begin the video in that local language, I was stunned to learn that there was no-one left in that community that could speak the language. In fact, when many of those now elders were children at the La Perouse primary school they were actively discouraged from speaking their native language by the teachers at the school. They relayed stories to me of talking in their native language at school earning them a rap over the knuckles from the teacher. As a result, that language is now lost to Australia. In the wake of that, I thought to myself, 'What a waste.' Here we have the oldest continuing culture in the world, and a language that passes on and tells the stories of that culture—that history, that connection those people have with the lands and the waters around Kamay, or Botany Bay as it's more commonly known—is lost to generations. That is a symbol of the disrespect that white Australians have shown to Aboriginal Australians over the last 200 years.
There has been a lot of talk in this place and in Australian commentary over the course of the last couple of years about our approach to Aboriginal reconciliation and what we need to do as a nation to close the gap, to reconcile with Aboriginal people and, ultimately, to provide them with a better quality of life and higher living standards. A common theme that we've heard is, 'Do things with us, not to us.' That can be summarised in one word, in my view: respect. The Aboriginal people are only asking for respect, the respect that hasn't been there for the last 200 years. That is evident in the fact that they were not represented under our Constitution as citizens of our country until 1967. We thought we knew what was best for them when we took their babies away from them, despite the fact that parents were capable of raising their own children in a loving family environment as part of a community. We believed that they shouldn't have access to proper education and to places of public importance in our nation—most notably, pubs—where, in the past, we asked people to be segregated. Unfortunately, young Aboriginal men are well over-represented in our jails throughout the country, through their rates of incarceration.
I don't believe that present-day Australia, particularly with this Turnbull government, is adhering to that motto of, 'Do things with us, not to us.' That is evident in the Turnbull government's approach to the Uluru Statement from the Heart from the Aboriginal people. That was their voice. It was their recommendation to the leaders of this nation of that view, 'Do things with us, not to us.' It was their recommendation to ensure that that can occur in Australian politics. It was dismissed out of hand by this Prime Minister. In fact, it was done in a disrespectful way in that it was leaked from cabinet before it was even announced publicly that the government were rejecting those recommendations. It was a blanket dismissal of the wishes and the will of the Aboriginal people. It was disrespect continuing, unfortunately.
Now we've released the ninth Closing the gap report and it makes damning reading, once again. We are only making progress in actually closing the gap with three of the seven goals. And we're not going to close that gap—we are not going to make progress in these identifiable areas that the parliament has assigned as areas of proof of closing the gap—while we continue to show disrespect to Aboriginal people. At the heart of the problem is the fact that we continue to disrespect Aboriginal people in the approach that this government takes to Aboriginal affairs.
That's why, when it comes to life expectancy, there's a huge gap between Aboriginal Australia and white Australia, and why we're not on track to meet the goal of closing the gap on life expectancy by 2031. When it comes to school attendance, there's still a gap and we're not on track. When it comes to halving the gap in teaching reading and numeracy for Indigenous students, we are not on track. And we are not on track when it comes to halving the gap in employment by 2018. Thankfully, we are on track in three of the areas: child mortality, early education and halving the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020.
Bill Shorten has announced, quite properly, that if elected at the next election Labor will add a justice target, where we will work to reduce the shocking rates of incarceration of young Indigenous men. Each year in NAIDOC Week, I visit Long Bay jail and attend a function with Aboriginal inmates. Unfortunately, there are too many of them in Long Bay jail. You see in their eyes the lost hope, the feeling of despair from being away from country and from community and the plight of Aboriginal people over the course of the last 200 years.
For me, it all begins with respect. That gap is not going to halve and we're not going to make progress on Aboriginal affairs until we begin to show respect to Aboriginal people. We haven't done that in the past, and it's time that we started to do that. Thankfully, Bill Shorten has said that, if we are elected, we will introduce this justice target. More importantly, we will offer compensation for the victims of the stolen generations. We'll set up a $10 million healing fund to work with those people, and we'll launch an inquiry into the shocking rates of out-of-home care for Aboriginal children. Importantly, we'll also show respect to the Aboriginal people by working with them on the recommendations of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, rather than dismissing them out of hand, because we believe that respect means actually doing things with Aboriginal people, not doing things to them. That means action, not just hollow words. Labor, led by Bill Shorten, is committed to doing that.
Today marks the 10th anniversary since the former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised unreservedly to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia. This was a watershed moment for our country. It was a step in the right direction towards achieving reconciliation and an opportunity to begin genuine truth-telling and healing that would benefit our whole nation. This was the day when we said 'sorry' for the mistreatment, injustices and hurts that the stolen generations experienced. They carry the scars to this very day. It was a day when all Australians embraced one another and a day when we committed to working together to genuinely create equal opportunities. To use Senator McCarthy's words, the day of the apology was a day where our nation's heart beat as one.
Ten years ago today, we aspired to do better for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters in communities across the nation. We set out what were perceived to be ambitious targets to close the gap, to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. These targets included closing the gap in life expectancy within a generation; halving the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade; having 95 per cent of all Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025; closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous school attendance in five years, by 2018; halving the gap for Indigenous children in reading, writing and numeracy achievements within a decade, by 2018; halving the gap for Indigenous Australians aged 20 to 24 in year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment rates by 2020; and halving the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade, by 2018.
The 2018 Closing the gap report finds that, for the first time since 2011, three of the seven closing the gap targets are on track to be met. Sadly, however, this demonstrates that we are behind on four of the seven targets that we aim to achieve. This then begs the question: are we succeeding in achieving our objectives to close the gap? Are our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters getting better lives in rural and remote communities?
Today especially I reflect on whether the lives of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been made better since the apology. We must read the Closing the gap report in its entirety and acknowledge the fact that we have not succeeded and that we can, and must, do better. If the lives of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had improved, then we would not see the life expectancy for Aboriginal people at approximately 10 years less than that of non-Indigenous people. The suicide rate for Aboriginal people is six times higher than that of the non-Aboriginal population. Countrywide, rates of imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are worse per capita than they were for coloured people in South Africa during apartheid! Clearly, governments aren't doing anywhere near enough.
I am proud to be the member for Herbert, which includes the largest discrete Aboriginal community in Australia, on Palm Island. Against all odds, the Palm Island people have survived and launched their centenary anniversary this year. The men came to this island in chains. The dormitories have left a lasting impact on the people of Palm Island. Palm Island has a rich history, but it is a history rich in pain. But they are a resilient community, with some unique challenges that the Turnbull government is completely ignoring.
Palm Island's unemployment rate is almost 27 per cent. The Palm Island Shire Council, led by Mayor Alf Lacey, are doing remarkable work to address these issues, and I will continue to work with them to secure recognition, equality and a better life. The biggest threat that the Palm Island community has now is the Turnbull government's cuts to the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing. Instead of working with the community to address unemployment, the Turnbull government is cutting the national partnership on remote Indigenous housing, a 10-year, $5.4 billion program which expires on 30 June this year. For the Palm Island community this means job losses. Let me reiterate: it has a 27 per cent unemployment rate. Because of the Turnbull government's cuts, seven apprentices on Palm Island will lose their jobs. Last week during question time I asked the Prime Minister why he was cutting the program. He couldn't answer the question and instead referred the question to the Minister for Indigenous Health, the member for Hasluck, the Hon. Ken Wyatt.
Labor is prepared to work with the government, but rest assured that we will not wait for them when it comes to bettering the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, announced a few policies that Labor will take to the next election. A Labor government will provide $10 million to programs that assist with the healing of stolen generation members and their descendants nationwide. These are to be administered by the Healing Foundation. It will implement a program that will look at intergenerational healing, family reunion and return to country. Labor will work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to set justice targets, reduce incarceration rates and improve community safety. In its first 100 days, a new Labor government will convene a national summit for first nation children.
Further to this, Labor has already started working on legislating an Indigenous voice to parliament, without government support, because bipartisan issues of constitutional change do not mean doing nothing. Labor will work to enshrine a voice in the Constitution; a declaration to be passed by all parliaments—Commonwealth and state—acknowledging the unique place of the first nations people in our history, and of their culture and their connection. There will also be a makarrata commission to oversee a process of agreement-making and truth-telling.
Serious action needs to be taken to address closing the gap, and it needs to start today. It's a national shame that must be addressed urgently, and it certainly doesn't start with the Turnbull government cutting seven apprenticeship jobs on Palm Island. My message to the Turnbull government is simple: falling short of our targets does not mean that we should begin lowering those targets. We need to identify why the targets are not being met.
We do have to have the courage to acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all solution is totally unacceptable. We have to accept that we do not have the answers ourselves. We need the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have self-determination, and when we see that happen we will see the gap closed. If governments are failing to meet the current targets then we must ask why, and continue to ask why. This is about doing what is right. Labor will work with the government on Indigenous affairs, but we certainly will not wait for them.
It being approximately 6.30 pm, the debate is interrupted under standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.
There are two matters I would like to talk to the House about tonight on behalf of local constituents. The first one is in relation to Australian disability enterprises.
In January I had the opportunity to host the shadow minister for disability and carers, Senator Carol Brown, in Wollongong. I was specifically keen to have her there and she was very happy to come along at the invitation of some of our local enterprises, particularly Greenacres disability enterprises and the Flagstaff group, who were keen for her to meet with workplace representatives, with carers and, very importantly, with the employees of those organisations. They have been concerned for many months about the forthcoming modern award review and the issues arising from the transition to the NDIS. They have been running as part of a campaign called My Job Counts. I have to say I have been very proud and pleased to be able to support them.
I'm regularly at these organisations for particular graduations. Or, indeed, one of the greatest pleasures is to go along to their functions for retirements of people who have worked in some cases for 50 years with these organisations. Just the simple pride and joy that these people take in their work should be a stark reminder to all of us that, indeed, their job counts. So I have been very happy. We have had rallies in Wollongong with several hundred turning up to support their campaign. Of course, they are worried about their job security and they want to work.
I just wanted to share—at one of the rallies—one of the Greenacres workers, Sharon Kennedy, was so worried about her job that she wrote a poem. I said if I could get the chance to share it I would, so I will share it with the nation through this chamber. This is Sharon's poem:
My job at Greenacres Disability Services means so much to me.
Making lots of friends and happy memories.
As I'm sure you will agree, it's not about the money that I receive, it's about the life skills that I can learn and achieve.
Coming to work and feeling proud each day I know that I have done an important job today.
That's why the Fair Work Commission of Australia should listen to us all as a nation.
We stand strong because we are not failures.
Please listen to us, the federal government of today
Because we are telling you that my job counts in so many different ways.
This is a shout-out to one and all.
Please accept our pay system for us all so the future will be bright for one and all.
We will keep fighting till the end. So we can stand tall.
So we can just all live happily after all.
Thank you, Sharon, for the opportunity to share that poem with the nation.
Labor supports Australian disability enterprises, and we recognise their vital role as employers of people with disabilities. We also acknowledge and value the training, the life skills and the social opportunities that people with disabilities access through their employment with ADEs. In addition, we strongly support ADEs providing pathways for so many people to open employment. We believe they should receive real and practical support from government to maintain their viability in this complex and changing employment and workplace environment, and in the context of the NDIS.
We will continue to support them. I will continue to support them, along with my colleague the member for Whitlam—our local ADEs, and more importantly than anything, those workers at those organisations and their families. You can tell from that poem how much meaning and purpose and pride those workers have in the work they do.
The other issue I would like to raise to the House tonight on behalf of my community is to do with home care. Many, I'm sure, colleagues across all sides of the chamber would be having significant numbers of representations into their office about issues with significant delays around the allocation of home care packages. Last November, figures in the Home Care Packages Program data report revealed approximately 950 older Australians in the Illawarra were waiting for home care. That included 321 patients who are requiring high care or level 4 packages. Across the country, of course, more than 100,000 people are waiting for this care. They have—particularly those with high needs, including many with dementia—the need for those packages to be delivered as quickly as can be the case.
In December last year, I visited Prabhunath Mukherjee, a man who had been approved for a high level—a level 4—package. But he couldn't get anyone to tell him how long he would have to wait for this additional assistance, which was critical to him being able to remain in his home. Prab has suffered two strokes and has numerous other medical problems. His mobility is very limited. He has no family living close by so he's been forced to pay for transport to shopping and doctors' appointments from his disability pension and, not surprisingly, he's finding this to be a struggle. I wrote to the Minister for Aged Care two months ago and I'm still awaiting a response regarding Prab's upgrade for his package.
I have to report to the House today my office contacted the parliamentary liaison hotline to see if there was any progress and I was very disappointed that they refused to discuss the matter with my staff, saying that they had to get a verbal approval from Prab over the phone to be able to discuss a constituent's case with their local member. This is a very frustrating thing. I'm sure members across the House have come across this on occasion. I wrote to the minister on behalf of two other constituents who contacted my office in relation to home care package problems. I was disappointed to receive a response from the minister which provided me with a list of phone numbers that the constituents could ring. Well, as many would appreciate—I'm sure the minister himself has had this in his electorate office—people come to you when they have tried all those standard departmental phone lines. They are coming to you because they are frustrated and have a problem they can't progress. I think that was fair enough to include the numbers because often ministers do that, but usually they outline where the policy issue is at and how that particular constituent's case could either be resolved or suggest some direct line to get some assistance, not just the general phone lines, and also to then give me the MP liaison line and suggest that my office ring that line. I mean, we have been doing this; this is why we wrote to the minister.
I can only assume that colleagues across the chamber are all having the same problem, because this extensive delay in these home care packages being allocated, I know, is a problem in other electorates, and I would be surprised if it wasn't right across the nation. I understand the minister may be under pressure on this matter, but I would suggest that when MPs, from whatever part of the parliament they come, are writing to the minister, it's an indication we are looking for a higher level of responsiveness than just to tell us what the phone numbers are. It was quite disappointing.
People are suffering while they wait. Families are suffering and are stressed, worried about their loved ones who need these home care packages. I have talked to families where the family carers had to give up work because of their caring responsibility to their relative, which they may not have had to do if the higher care package was delivered and enabled that support to happen in the home.
I'm aware that the minister has indicated that he's become aware of the pressing problem. In February last year, he said he hadn't been aware of how many people were waiting for care. We've had 12 months now for the government to respond effectively to this crisis. I would suggest that it needs to really give its full attention to this matter because there are people across all our communities who deserve to know when they will get access to these services. And there are service providers who quite often are carrying the additional cost, which they cannot afford to do forever and a day. Because these people have been allocated a lower care package, the service provider is delivering that, but they need and have been assessed for a higher care one, and service providers don't want to leave them out on a limb by providing higher services so often they are carrying the cost of that themselves to keep it up. This is happening in all our communities. It is urgent, and the government must give urgent attention to this matter.
Deep down, even the Greens understand that solar and wind are not the answer for lowering emissions if you want reliable power. When unreliable power blacks out vast parts of the country, or a whole state in the case of South Australia, even the Greens, huddled around their little candles, weaving hemp baskets and singing Kumbaya in the dark, would lament the intermittency of their solar and wind power. But they also unequivocally rule out the mature industry power source that offers both reliability and zero emissions. They have a morbid fear of nuclear power, even though it's a mainstay of energy in many developed countries, and they want to shut down coal-fired power as well. In time, another alternative will be developed—no doubt. That's if we don't cripple the economy first and rob the private funding that goes to scientists in the resources and energy sector—the money they need to conduct research and innovation into new and developing energy forms.
The reality is that an efficient and more reliable form of energy with fewer or zero emissions may well overtake coal one day. But that day is not here yet. And it won't arrive any quicker by taxing something you don't like or throwing tantrums or conducting criminal protests against coal and the workers in the coalmining industry. Ironically, it is coal technology that currently provides the best combination of baseload power, baseload reliability and lower emissions. It is clean coal technology—in the words of President Trump, 'beautiful clean coal technology'—that will keep business costs down, grow the economy and enable the research and innovation that will develop the next big thing in energy. It is clean coal technology that we desperately need in North Queensland right now to create jobs and to drive down the cost of energy.
Businesses in North Queensland are forced to pay more for their electricity than their competitors in Brisbane. That's because electricity is lost through transmission. The further electricity has to be pushed down the line, the more of that power is lost. North Queensland businesses have to pay for what they receive and also for what was lost along the way in transmission. The further away from a power generator that your business is located, the more you pay for power. That's why there's been a push for an affordable and reliable baseload power generator in the north. At this point, even the Greens should be in agreement. They would insist on putting up some solar panels on their lean-to or a windmill on their Kombi van. What they can't seem to get their head around is the fact that putting a solar panel on a roof won't provide the power that an industrial business actually needs. I know that, because even putting a million solar panels on a roof won't power industrial business. We have one major industrial business in North Queensland, Sun Metals, a zinc refinery, which is spending $200 million to install its own solar farm, covering 120 hectares of land with a million solar panels. And, for all the money, all the land and all time and energy it is going to take, it will supply just 30 per cent of the refinery's power needs. The problem now is trying to find a balance at an affordable price. That won't be easy, because Queensland's power prices are rising roughly in line with the increased dependence on renewables—or unreliables.
The cost of electricity in Queensland did not rise for 26 years. From 1980-81 to 2006-07 there was no significant rise. That is according to the Queensland Productivity Commission, which released a report on that back in 2016. But in the nine years from 2007 to 2016 the cost of electricity increased by 87 per cent. Why? Think of the billions of dollars thrown at clean energy programs: the large-scale RET; the small-scale RET; the feed-in tariffs of 44c per kilowatt hour, which is more than double the domestic use tariff of 21.3c per kilowatt hour; a billion dollars of free money through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency; solar panel rebates; $1.6 billion on the Solar Flagships Program; the Clean Energy Initiative; the Clean Energy Trade and Investment Strategy, the Solar Homes and Communities Plan; and, for too long, the carbon tax. It's time we stopped placing all of these burdens on consumers and taxpayers, because it forces power costs up.
In Central and North Queensland affordability of energy supply is already a threat to industry and it's killing jobs. The largest aluminium smelter in Australia—Rio Tinto's Boyne smelter in Gladstone—was forced to slash more than 100 jobs and about 80,000 tonnes of annual production worth about $200 million because it could not source affordable power from state providers. The inner-city greenies were patting themselves on the back for pulling off this trifecta in Gladstone, Central Queensland: cutting down a big business, reducing industry and killing productive jobs in a place where it doesn't affect them. Imagine how stoked they would be if they got their wish and actually closed down the Queensland coal industry.
In North Queensland and Central Queensland, we are blessed with many natural resources, including coal, beautiful clean coal, in the Bowen Basin and the Galilee Basin. The coal industry directly employs 44,000 people and it pays more than $5.7 billion in real wages. Even more people would be employed, more wages would go into the economy and electricity would be cheaper for industry in North Queensland if a coal-fired generator was built somewhere in the Bowen Basin or in the Galilee Basin. If we want power to be cheap and emissions to be lower, we would build a high-efficiency, low-emissions generator. Around the world there are 780 supercritical plants and 235 ultra-supercritical plants already in operation, mostly in China, Japan and India. There are a further 781 supercritical and a further 450 ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants—planned or under construction—around the world. Clean coal delivers reliable and affordable power, with up to 50 per cent lower emissions than some of the outdated technology currently used for base-load generation. So, if we want to meet emission reduction targets without killing jobs or crippling the economy, this clean coal technology would be a logical answer.
I visited one of these power stations when I went to the port of Mundra in India. I saw firsthand the large number of people that were employed at that site—by the largest coal-importing port in the world, the nearby generators and the surrounding support infrastructure. More importantly, the reliable and affordable base-load electricity that's being generated is bringing the Indian people out of energy poverty and creating industries that generate employment—ongoing employment.
Central and North Queensland are home to some of the largest and best-quality coal reserves in the world. That coal is currently being exported to other countries around the world for making steel and also for generating electricity with this HELE technology. North Queensland is a perfect location for our nation to build its first ultra-supercritical power plant, and, if it were built at the mouth of a coalmine, it would cut transport costs for the generator and reduce losses from the long-distance transmission that I mentioned earlier. It would also deliver jobs in construction and even more jobs in the industries that flourish as a result, with affordable and reliable power in the north.
Some years ago, Townsville Enterprise Limited commissioned a report called Base Load Power in North Queensland and the Dalrymple Agricultural Scheme, and it noted the need for additional capacity. It found that a major coal-fired power station would put downward pressure on electricity prices, with a potential $838 million social cost benefit gain. That was commissioned by the Labor Party, a previous Labor government. Support for such a power station is high—certainly in North Queensland and the regions affected by high electricity costs and the need for jobs. The Townsville Bulletin, a newspaper up there, conducted a small informal poll last year. It showed that 79 per cent of respondents supported the idea of building a high-efficiency, low-emissions power plant in North Queensland. This was backed up by a similar poll conducted by the New South Wales Minerals Council, which found that 64 per cent of 1,000 respondents were in favour of Australia building a HELE coal-fired station.
I started my own Power to the North campaign last year, laying out the facts about clean coal power generation—what it would mean for jobs and industry and asking people to show their support. We've had thousands of North Queenslanders responding through signing a petition, providing positive feedback. That strong support indicates that North Queenslanders understand the importance of industry and jobs. They also understand the need to keep electricity prices down, both for households and for businesses and farms. Job creators in the north want to know they can pay the bills to keep the lights on, keep the air con running and keep business and industry doors open—open for jobs. People in North Queensland are more interested in 'affordables' than renewables. That's why I've been fighting for a clean coal fired power station in the north for more than a year. And, I tell you, I will continue to fight for one until government listens and takes note of what the people want. More jobs, clean coal—get it going.
As we gear up for the state election in a little over two weeks in Tasmania, both Liberal and Labor are talking big about mental health. But in fact it's being overlooked once again. Yes, both the Liberal government and the Labor opposition have promised they will boost mental health funding and open more beds. While these are steps in the right direction, they simply don't go far enough, because it's an undeniable fact that mental health services in Tasmania are in crisis, and the Royal Hobart Hospital is bearing the brunt. A dramatic intervention is needed and it's needed now.
Let's look at the big picture. The Royal Hobart Hospital has had a chronic shortage of mental health beds for years. To add insult to injury, they've recently lost another 10 acute mental health beds. Tragically, this lack of beds was highlighted in a suicide examined recently by the Tasmanian Coroners Court. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists has also withdrawn its accreditation status from the Royal Hobart Hospital, which puts at risk the hospital's ability to maintain staff and to care for patients. Indeed, psychiatric staff have described the situation at the Royal as unbearable and warned of adverse outcomes for patients if the state government continues to ignore their warnings.
Just last week, psychiatrist and Australian Medical Association spokesman Dr Richard Benjamin said that staff at the Royal were struggling due to the lack of beds and that morale at the hospital is the lowest in 23 years. Surely these are the people we should be listening to—the experts and professionals who are at the coalface every day and who see firsthand the impact that bed shortages have on patients.
The state government would have us believe that we just need to wait for the new mental health facility in the new K-Block at the Royal and then all will be okay, but that's just not true. Not only is action needed now and not in a couple of years but psychiatrists in Tasmania are already warning that the new facility will be overcrowded and lacking open space. They've rejected a proposed temporary short-stay mental health observation unit for the same reasons.
We need only look at the constant media reporting to see the scale of the problem—for instance, the reports of people with mental health issues stranded for days in the Royal Hobart Hospital emergency department. Just last week, leaked figures revealed that the number of patients spending more than 24 hours in the emergency department has more than doubled in just a year, increasing from 437 in 2016 to 1,014 in 2017. That's between two and three patients every day waiting more than 24 hours in the ED, and many of those presentations we know to be mental health related. No wonder the Mental Health Council of Tasmania has spoken of an unprecedented increase in the last year in mental health related emergency department presentations.
It's important to consider Tasmania in context here, because it's a fact that Tasmania does have unique challenges when it comes to mental health care. For example, Tasmania has the second-highest suicide rate in Australia, second only to that of the Northern Territory. Indeed the 17 deaths per 100,000 people in Tasmania is staggeringly higher than the national average of 11.7 deaths per 100,000 people. Moreover, we have the highest rate of people with long-term mental health and behavioural conditions, with 20.8 per cent compared to the national average of 17.5 per cent.
It's also a fact that Tasmania's mental health services are lagging behind the rest of the country's. For example, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data reveals just 19 mental health hospital beds per 100,000 people in Tasmania, which is almost half the 36 beds per 100,000 people in New South Wales. And Tasmania's psychiatric workforce, at 10.5 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, is also well below the national average of 12.7 psychiatrists per 100,000 people. In other words, Tasmania has a higher than average number of people who need mental health care and a lower than average number of services to provide it.
The consequences of this imbalance are dire. For example, giving evidence to a Tasmanian parliamentary inquiry late last year, the Mental Health Council testified that people often feel they have no option but to threaten to harm themselves or others in order to expedite care. Moreover, the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation have warned about the risk of prematurely discharging patients and the fact that this can have fatal consequences. The AMA, as well as other expert groups, have also expressed alarm.
The facts tell us some of the story, but I would also like to talk briefly about a case study of one young woman in my electorate, who I will call Simone. Simone is articulate, intelligent and has firsthand experience of trying to get help during a mental health crisis. She should be listened to. Among the things Simone recounts is how she has called the state government's 24-hour mental health helpline on a number of occasions, only to be told almost every time to go to the Royal Hobart Hospital. In fact, only once has a crisis assessment and treatment team visited her at home. No wonder Simone questions the point of funding this expensive service.
Moreover, once at the Royal, Simone tells me show she sits for hours in the crowded and sometimes chaotic waiting room before she's attended to. She has then faced as much as a three-day wait in the emergency department for a bed in the high-dependency psychiatric ward. Sometimes the screams of other patients keep her awake. When Simone finally reaches the psychiatric ward, there is no natural light or facilities for exercise. She says it's basically sit inside in bed and watch TV while you wait for the doctor. She once spent months in this environment. It's a depressing journey and, sadly, it's not unusual. Simone also recounts how she's never had a caseworker, as the wait for one is years. She laments that the Royal Hobart Hospital is her only option, as the two private psychiatric facilities in Hobart won't take people feeling suicidal. Surely, we can do better for people like Simone?
So where do we go from here? We often talk about money; that's warranted, because mental health remains chronically underfunded. Surely, it's self-evident that mental illness needs the same level of funding as other areas of medicine? But it only receives about half in relative terms. Obviously, both major parties need to do better when it comes to funding mental health services.
But better mental health care is also about how we plan for the future. Obviously, we also need to plan well beyond the new K block that is slowly emerging in Campbell Street, because it is only stage 1 of the RHH master plan. The real improvement to mental health services is in stage 2, which will knock down E block, on the corner of Campbell and Collins streets, and F block, fronting Collins Street. In the place of F block, a new purpose-built mental health facility will overlook the Hobart Rivulet. There will also be new units for pathology, pharmacy and hyperbaric medicine.
This is the kind of visionary forward planning Tasmania's mental health system desperately needs. Unfortunately, while I was pleased to secure $340 million from the federal government for stage 1 of the rebuild, stage 2 is not yet funded. As we approach the state election, I'm calling on all state political parties to pledge funding to fast-track this stage of the redevelopment—or, at the very least, the Premier could pick up the phone to his Liberal Party colleagues in Canberra and convince them of the need to fund this project. Frankly, until this new facility is open and adequately staffed all other solutions will be bandaids.
We also need increased support in the community, like more crisis assessment and treatment teams and better access to supported accommodation. If we can relieve pressure on the hospitals and emergency departments by offering support to people experiencing mental health issues in their own home and in their communities, then the benefits are obvious. Frankly, the appalling state of mental health care in Tasmania cannot be allowed to continue.
So as we approach the state election, all politicians and candidates must demonstrate their commitment to ending this crisis. This includes the repair of services at the Royal Hobart Hospital, with extra acute mental health beds, and increased support in the community, like more CAT teams and better access to supported accommodation. They must also commit to fast-tracking stage 2 of the Royal Hobart Hospital master plan, with its new mental health facility. Anything less will see this crisis continue for decades. Tasmanians deserve much, much better.
Many of my previous speeches in this place have focused on the importance of infrastructure in my peri-urban electorate of Dunkley. I came into the election with an ambitious infrastructure vision, and I have consistently fought for several major projects since to further our intercity connectivity; our importance as a regional hub for health, education and business; and to protect and foster our stunning natural environment.
When I was first elected, in my maiden speech I said that I believe that we should govern for the outer suburbs and the country not just the inner city, and that by bringing infrastructure and services to the country and outer suburbs we can ensure people are not disadvantaged because of where they live. Investment in infrastructure helps promote equality of opportunity, a key Liberal value and an objective that is ever-present in my representation for the people of Dunkley. Investment in infrastructure brings jobs, income and resources to communities and invites people to live, study, work, build relationships and start families in the area. Its importance to a region which is the gateway to the Mornington Peninsula—in fact, I would say the hub of the Mornington Peninsula—cannot be understated. People want the best for their kids, their grandkids and their families. Such investment helps them to achieve their dreams.
In Dunkley, there are a number of opportunities that I have worked to see developed and that I would love to see developed and capitalised on for the benefit of the greater Frankston and Mornington Peninsula area. Improving transport infrastructure, for instance, and growing our education, health and service facilities would attract research and expertise that would benefit all of our community. This is important both locally and nationally, which is one reason I joined the coalition's infrastructure and regional development backbench committee.
One thing I recently announced—just last Friday—is the commencement of the long-awaited Oliver's Hill safe boat refuge, with a contribution from the federal government of $500,000. Stage 1 facilitates hydrological environmental studies, followed by planning and design. Stage 2 is constructing the safe boat refuge. The scope put forward by the Frankston City Council and recently signed off by the minister includes a breakwater with access on top for emergency vehicles, lighting and CCTV. This safe boat refuge will provide safety for small recreational craft and police boats in heavy weather and a secure, permanent mooring in two- to three-metres depth for the Frankston Volunteer Coast Guard rescue vessel. It will also benefit the water police, lifesavers, users of the Peninsula Flyboard, local fishers, boat users, tourists and local residents.
Currently the coastguard launch their vessels from Patterson River, resulting in a much slower response time for vessels in distress, with potentially drastic outcomes for users of Port Phillip and the southern area of the Peninsula. Not only is this a safety issue, but, if the coastguard and water police take up residence in Frankston, additional recreational boaters, fishers and others will follow. This is a project that has been undertaken with all due diligence with regard to the greater Frankston coastline as well as environmental preservation. The Frankston foreshore is a major attraction which receives nearly a million visitors a year and the work in planning and constructing the Oliver's Hill safe boat refuge would cater to the needs of all beach and bay users in Dunkley and beyond.
Another project, which is quite different but is very crucial to jobs, employment and opportunities in my electorate, is the Dunkley rail plan. The coalition federal government has contributed $4 million towards the business case of this plan. Several of my colleagues will be no doubt familiar with the extensive difficulties we've had in encouraging the state government to acknowledge the federal funding that is on the table, to engage in our process and to submit a scope. But I am pleased to now report that a revised scope for the business case was submitted by the state government, and this has now been signed off by the federal minister. We now await the important next step of the state government putting this business case out for tender, and I call on the state government to undertake this process as soon as possible. This will result in extending metro rail services from Frankston to Baxter. This will include a new Frankston Hospital station, as well as a new station upgrade at Leawarra Station at Monash University, which is predicted to increase enrolments there by up to 20 per cent. It will also involve a new station at Langwarrin and an upgraded station at Baxter. The extent of this investment is significant because, once the business case costs and plans the different options, there is the potential for the state and the federal government to co-invest in this project. This will potentially result in a potential one per cent increase in job opportunities in my area.
Another area that I've been focusing on is the interlink between the Frankston Hospital and the university, which will benefit from the rail upgrades at Frankston Hospital and the university. There's huge potential with the Berwick campus of Monash University being closed and the business courses coming across to the Peninsula campus, as well as the fact we're a health hub and a business hub in our region. We have a lot of opportunity for collaboration between Frankston Hospital and the university, including with a medical degree, research and collaboration to commercialise health and medicine projects and so forth.
Some other things that I've been working on locally include helping young people in my electorate. I'm the youngest MP in the House of Representatives, and I'm very passionate about engaging with young people and giving young people the opportunity to participate in our community so they have opportunities for education, employment, activities and connectivity in our community. That's why I've specifically focused on investing in local sporting infrastructure in my electorate. One example is investment in the Karingal Bulls football club, who are getting $300,000 of federal funding to urgently upgrade their facilities, which were in much need of an upgrade. Another thing I have been working on locally is investment in Green Army projects, which enhance the significant environmental positives around our electorate. Things need to be cleaned and enhanced, not only for tourists but for local residents.
I'm looking to the future, too. I've talked about the Baxter rail line before, but a long-term investment in rail could be the potential tri-hub connection between Frankston, Cranbourne and Dandenong. It is not only a connection between Frankston and the CBD that is important. The interhub connection between those major centres, to connect a place where people are living with the multiple places where people work, is also important. I'm interested in working with the state government on rail connections further down the Peninsula, including to places like Mornington.
There are also significant opportunities around a range of different modes of transport, including an intermodal hub—for example, the Western Port container port; a south-east Melbourne airport for cargo and passengers; a rail link and improved road links to Western Port; as well as fast ferry services on Port Phillip, including Mornington and Frankston. I think places like Hobart, with their fast service to Mona, do very well.
There is also the opportunity for a large-scale convention centre for Frankston. I think it is a missing element, when we have a beautiful natural beach, a hospital and a university there. We have an opportunity to bring in lots of people who currently go elsewhere to come for conventions, conferences and so forth. Potentially, there is an opportunity for a swimming complex for Mornington as well, with no key swimming complex currently existing between Frankston and Rosebud. Having Mornington as a key hub for that is also important. I am also looking towards investment for the upgrade of beach infrastructure from Mornington to Seaford, whether it's signage, connecting trails, paths, access and so forth.
It is important to look to the future because the young people in our electorate, in particular, are our future. We need to invest in them to give them the best chance in life—and not only for young people but for everyone in my electorate. People want to be connected to their families. People want the opportunity for education and employment. That's particularly important.
I emphasised earlier the benefits of investment in infrastructure. The cycle in investment in infrastructure, the boost to the economy, the increase in the participation of the population and the consequential advances in infrastructure are very important to promoting our status as a hub for many different sectors. That's why I'm also advocating for the decentralisation of a federal department or agency to my area, much as we've achieved at the state level with the South East Water building.
I just wanted to raise some of the things that have been achieved in infrastructure and also some of the things that I want to achieve in my electorate. These are important things to advocate for in Dunkley and beyond. Thank you for the time to speak on this today.
In the grievance debate this evening I want to draw the attention of the House to concerns my constituents have raised with me about the impact of the NDIS as it's rolled out across the country to the hundreds of thousands of Australians with disabilities.
The NDIS, as envisaged and designed by Labor, was meant to be people centred and focused entirely on the individual needs of people with disability. Unfortunately, the coalition government's attitude to the NDIS was different to that of Labor's and this was obvious from the onset. We well remember the dragging of the feet in signing the agreement with the states and territories in order to fully roll out the NDIS.
I think it is always best to put people's names and their personal circumstances in order to better illustrate the impact that government policies have on the individual daily lives of our constituents—in this case, my constituents. So, today, I want to speak about Lauren Winbanks and her very dynamic mum, Dianne. Both came to see me recently to raise their concerns about the possible impact of the Turnbull government's version of the NDIS on Lauren's care plan, as well as the impact on Lauren of the coalition government's changes to the employer contributions for lower-paid workers.
Lauren has an intellectual disability and an estimated IQ of 65. She has autism, face blindness, which means she doesn't recognise family members, and she has kneecap misalignment affecting all the muscles in her legs. She is 22 years old and has a twin brother, who does not have any diagnosed disabilities. When Lauren first started school at Greenvale Primary, she was told she should be in a special school. Despite that, she has completed her education, including VCE. Her parents have invested an enormous amount of time and money focusing on what Lauren can do, not what she cannot do or should not be doing.
Lauren is currently on a disability support pension and has been deemed by Centrelink as having zero capacity for work. However, despite this, Lauren has a job one day a week at Toybricks, a toy shop in Bayswater, on a supported wage scheme. She spends two days a week in training for the Special Olympics in dressage, a sport in which she has represented her state in national competition. She is also practising for her grade 5 exam in piano and she plans to volunteer as a pianist in aged-care homes.
Lauren also has an ability with building in LEGO. She exhibits her building creations in Adelaide, Sydney and Canberra. In fact, she'll be exhibiting in Canberra at the Hellenic Club in the second week of August this year. When she's building and displaying her LEGO, it is the only time that Lauren actually speaks or talks to anyone. Lauren, with the help of her mother Dianne, has built a grand piano out of LEGO, combining her love of music and building in bricks. The grand piano is currently one of the projects on the LEGO ideas site, which people can vote for as a future official LEGO package for sale.
Lauren currently receives a range of support on an individual support plan through the Victorian Department of Human Services. In March, next month, she will have her assessment taken over by the NDIS and they will be responsible with providing her support. Lauren's mother is deeply concerned, based on her acknowledge of other people's experiences with the NDIS, that a lot of these services which are fundamental to Lauren's functioning and wellbeing will be deemed ineligible for funding under what appears to be a hugely compromised and inflexible NDIS system. When first introduced by Labor, as I've already said, NDIS was, to quote Dianne, 'A fantastic idea that was driven by social justice goals. Under the current government it has been reduced to simply trying to save money.' This of course means that the staff who are involved in the NDIS assessments are constantly trying to rule things out as ineligible and are not interested in finding ways to support people's individual needs.
When it was first introduced, the NDIS was meant to be people-centred, and nobody was expected to lose any of the support they were already receiving. Now that does not appear to be at the case at this point. For example, Lauren currently has singing lessons. They have done more for her ability to speak than years of speech therapy ever did. Although the decision has not yet been made for Lauren, her mother fears that the NDIS will rule that singing is not an eligible service that should be funded. They would instead insist on funding speech therapy, which is much more expensive than singing lessons and, in Lauren's case, has proven to be a far less effective proposition. As far as Dianne is concerned—and we all should be concerned—that sort of attitude is not really saving money; rather, it is wasting money on the wrong sort of support.
Lauren also has a monthly full-body massage. She enjoys it and actually has come to need it. The change in her mood and behaviour after a massage is dramatic. It is feared that this too will be deemed a health service, not a disability service, and hence will not be funded under the NDIS the way it currently is under the ISP. It has been funded for Lauren since she was four years old. Lauren is also currently funded for support people to be with her at the LEGO exhibitions and during other activities, such as swimming. Overall she's supported to around $48,000 per year. These activities are not a wish list but essential to Lauren's ability to live a full life and participate in the local community, including in work and volunteering.
Many other people who have already been through the NDIS assessments have been knocked back for a range of supports essential to their lives. Lauren's mother, Dianne, who works as an educational consultant, is in a position to hear many of these stories firsthand and has shared those stories with me. For example, anyone with autism levels 1 and 2 has already been advised not to bother applying, as they will not be eligible for NDIS support.
A further concern is that the NDIS is being rolled out too quickly, and staff can't manage the workload. This means that many people are being forced to conduct their assessment interviews over the phone rather than in a face-to-face meeting where they could explain the nuances of their individual needs. The assessments are being completed as a checklist operation and, according to Dianne, it's a case of 'not eligible', 'not eligible', 'not eligible'. Everything has to be proven to work, documented et cetera. Now, there's no problem with that, but there is no room for explaining how certain therapies or activities work better for some people than more conventional services. For example, chiropractic is not supported, while physiotherapy is. Acupuncture will be knocked back, even if it has worked wonders for someone for years. One parent that Dianne knows was asked by NDIS staff, 'How do you know your son has cerebral palsy?' when this is a condition diagnosed at birth that never changes. People are feeling considerably distressed by such needless questioning.
All in all, there is no flexibility in the allocation of funding either. Under the current ISP system, if you underspend in one area, you can overspend a bit on another item that is needed or beneficial. You can't do that under the NDIS. There is no flexibility. If a particular service can be defined as 'health care' rather than 'disability', it is immediately ruled out for NDIS funding. According to Dianne's experiences of the staff, they seem to constantly be trying to limit the support that can be offered, as if they have to rule out as much as they possibly can.
Lauren has also been in supported employment for three years. At the end of her most recent job, she had a superannuation balance of zero. In 2013, the government got rid of the requirement for employers to make a super contribution for workers who earn below a minimum threshold. This has detrimentally affected supported workers such as Lauren. Even where employers do make a contribution, this small amount is cancelled out by super fund fees. As a response, perhaps people in this situation, according to Diane—and I'd like to put this on the record—should be allowed to have a regular bank account that employer contributions can be paid into so that whatever they get in that account is not completely eaten up by fees. The current situation means that low-paid workers like Lauren are unable to save any money at all and are effectively treated as second-class citizens or a subclass of workers.
Everyone is entitled to superannuation. Perhaps there needs to be a low-fee or no-fee super scheme dedicated to workers with disabilities who are in supported employment, people such as Lauren who are also on disability support. In the case of my own electorate, a huge number of people are on low wages and have no capacity to pay into their superannuation scheme, and that in fact is an enormous problem for them.
Far North Queensland is sick and tired of being treated as a cash cow when it comes to paying for electricity. The Queensland Competition Authority has warned the state-owned regional electricity retailer, Ergon Energy, that it must be forced to compete against new retailers. There is no competition out there. The equation is simple: increased competition would result in lower prices for Far North Queenslanders. Far North Queensland householders and businesses, especially those in my electorate, are absolutely screaming out for power relief, but it is a message that has fallen on deaf ears with the Queensland Labor government.
Why, you might ask. I'll tell you why. The state Labor government is addicted to the revenue that state-owned generators and retailers provide it. In essence, they are unashamedly gouging family households, businesses and manufacturers in my electorate and taxing them by stealth. Not only does Far North Queensland need immediate power relief, it also needs a reliable and secure base-load power. It is utterly preposterous that Far North Queensland imports more than 90 per cent of its power needs from Central Queensland through transmission lines that lose up to 40 per cent of the power on the way through. Where is the sense in that? Far North Queensland is forced to import its power from more than a thousand kilometres away, and my constituents are forced to pay for electricity that is exported to Victoria and South Australia because of the ideologically driven agendas in those states.
One of the biggest issues facing Far North Queensland consumers craving lower power prices is state-owned vertically integrated behemoths that dominate the market. The Queensland Labor government proudly spruik that they own the generators, the distribution networks and the retailers, but they have repeatedly demonstrated that they have no interest in creating competition in the market. Why would they? By having control over these vertically integrated behemoths, they have unlimited access to an ATM called the Queensland taxpayer. They can load up these companies with billions of dollars worth of debt, as they did in 2015, and still demand 100 per cent dividends. This is where the problem lies. Last year the state-owned power generators were accused of using the market to drive up power prices to meet the state Labor government's demands for higher dividends. They were caught red-handed gaming the system and mums and dads across my electorate were picking up the tab. In fact, an analysis last year of the state's energy market found the wholesale price is 30 per cent higher in Queensland than in other states and territories. Other very telling figures in wholesale pricing are that in 2012 the wholesale price was $29.07 per megawatt hour; moving forward to 2017, the average price was $93.12 per megawatt hour. Essentially, the cash-hungry state government is addicted to the big dividends it has been receiving from the generating companies and it's been ripping off far North Queensland families in the process.
I was fortunate enough to sit on the Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy, inquiry into modernising Australia's electricity grid. The cross-party committee, which handed down its report last week—it was a consensus report—delivered 23 recommendations. While most related broadly to the national grid, there were two recommendation that were very relevant to my region. Recommendation No. 22 stated:
… the Australian Energy Regulator review the issue of vertical integration in the generation sector and market concentration in the generation sector, with a view to considering ways to ensure that standalone retailers have sufficient access to risk management products and fairly priced wholesale electricity.
The key phrase in this is 'fairly priced wholesale electricity'. How is this possible in my area, where the generators of Stanwell are gaming systems in order to line the Labor government's pockets? It needs to be looked at. Recommendation No.12 stated:
… the Australian Energy Market Commission review any rules preventing users at the edge of the grid from being serviced via alternative means, whilst safeguarding reliability requirements and associated customer protections.
This recommendation is very relevant in Far North Queensland, particularly in my area. Cooktown, in my electorate, is sitting right on the very tail end of the grid. How is it that Queensland, with its abundance of coal, gas, sunshine and wind, is amongst the poorest when it comes to power generation and soaring power bills?
Unfortunately, the energy debate in Queensland has been hijacked by the renewable energy zealots and inner-city types, and Far North Queenslanders are paying the price. This is no more evident than in the state government's headlong rush to 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030, announced in Cairns last year. This ideologically driven pipedream is unachievable and will result in business closures, job losses and soaring power bills. Putting Far North Queensland livelihoods and businesses at risk simply to garner south-east corner inner-city green votes is certainly not the answer.
We as politicians must plan for future generations, not just for the three-year election cycle. I fear that, if we don't start planning and acting now, electricity will be a luxury afforded only by a select few in North Queensland in the years to come. That's why we must investigate and explore options to ensure that Far North Queensland has access to secure base-load power for generations to come, given we are right up there at the top end of the grid. We know that the state Labor government are vehemently opposed to anything that will lose them green votes in the south-east corner, but what we need in Queensland is a mature debate by mature people who are willing to put politics aside and put the interests of Queenslanders first.
A new year brings some new opportunities. I firmly believe that a reduction in power prices can only be achieved for Far North Queenslanders through a high-efficiency, low-emissions, gas-fired base-load power station located somewhere near Townsville. In fact, a report commissioned by the Palaszczuk Labor government in February last year found that a high-efficiency, low-emissions power station near Townsville would be viable, reduce emissions and lower energy transmission losses. The report also found that Far North Queensland risked effectively being stranded because it's stuck to a single line. It also concluded that a new power station would halve the current cost of a megawatt hour and deliver more reliable and secure base-load power to North and Far North Queensland.
While we're talking about it, let's not forget about the debacle that is the Daintree power supply situation. We have a community of well over 800 living in Far North Queensland in the Daintree coast area, and each year those locals must burn millions of litres of diesel to generate electricity because they are not connected to the electricity grid. In fact, the state government actually legislated to prevent them from being connected to mains power. In 2018, it's ridiculous. Once again, it comes as no surprise that they weren't interested in doing anything about this—again, they are afraid of their inner-city green puppetmasters. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency will very shortly hand down its long-awaited report that was commissioned by our minister, Minister Frydenberg, to examine ways in which we can get the situation in the Daintree resolved. I ask the state government to come on board. These communities have been denied basic services for far too long.
I also think that we should be investigating whether the Tully-Millstream hydro scheme would be a viable option moving forward. I have no doubt that the south-east corner types will be crying blue murder, for purely ideological reasons, but let's take the responsibility as elected members to at least investigate the feasibility of the project. In saying that, the feasibility study must be conducted independently to remove political bias and agendas. If it stacks up, then it must be seriously considered.
How can you have a mature debate and explore options when you're dealing with the government that we have in Queensland at the moment? I call on the Queensland government to immediately release the federally funded Nullinga Dam business study to see whether options there can be explored further. It's ridiculous that we've been waiting so long for that report to be released. You only have to look at the recent decision to demolish the Springvale dam at Lakeland. Labor wasted no time in calling for tenders on this massive body of water that would certainly provide opportunities in the region. They called for tenders on 24 January for the decommissioning of this dam. It's just an absolute waste of a magnificent resource there. The green tinge has well and truly descended onto our great state and, unfortunately, every single Far North Queenslander will be paying the price for generations to come.
The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next setting.
Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:30.