Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be here supporting the Excise Tariff Amendment (Fuel Indexation) Bill 2015 because it really does help local government to get back on track. Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, you would be well aware that the cuts to the Financial Assistance Grants by the Commonwealth has cost local government in Western Australia $147 million. That is a very, very substantial figure for many of our local governments. We even have some local governments who rely on these FAG grants for more than 50 per cent of their income. We certainly have a whole host who rely on the FAG grants for in excess of 25 per cent of their grants.

We have councils such as Halls Creek, Carnarvon, Manjimup, Derby and West Kimberley that really have had the rug cut from under them by the level of these cuts. There is no doubt that there had to be some pretty severe pruning done and unemployment generated as a result of these cuts. This has particularly had a major impact throughout rural Western Australia, where we have lots of small communities for whom local government constitutes a major employer.

We had the CEO of Wagin Shire write to us saying: 'A decision like what has occurred will either increase shire rates and charges or reduce the services to communities. It will also have a long-term impact on programs that local government often undertake from these funds for their communities. Local government use many outside contractors to undertake works and services and, regrettably, these companies do not freeze their prices for three years. Councils will be expected to pay the increased costs that are required to undertake work; however, the freeze being enforced by federal government on all councils will force them to drop programs.'

This has been the theme of local authority after local authority. It has also impacted on many metropolitan shires. We know that the City of Swan, who are here with us in Parliament House today, have had their funds cut and their ability to service their vast network of roads compromised. The City of Bayswater says that these cuts have put them under great pressure as they struggle to meet the needs of a growing and ageing population. This is a blow for local communities. So we were very mindful of the impact that these cuts were having on local governments across Western Australia. That was a major motivator for us to come to a compromise agreement with the government on the indexation of fuel excise. We were not prepared just to pass another new tax, particularly after the Prime Minister had gone to the last election, promising that there would be no new taxes—an absolutely categorical promise that there would be no new taxes—but then reimposed an indexation on the fuel excise which, in our view, really amounted to a new tax.

We do understand that the reintroduction of indexation to fuel excise does have a disproportionate impact on rural communities and on outer suburban areas. Unlike Mr Hockey's projection, they are indeed required to travel more. They need to use their vehicles more and therefore disproportionately bear the burden of this increase in the fuel excise. So we thought that ensuring that we hypothecate part of this for Roads to Recovery to ensure that regional communities right across Australia and throughout Western Australia would actually receive a share of this money would be a way of ensuring that we were able to balance the disproportionate impact that these cuts have had on people from outer metropolitan and regional areas.

We saw this as a great win and a way in which we could start moving forward on this matter. I am very pleased to see that the Australian Local Government Association, as the member for Grayndler has said, has come out very clearly in support of this and come out very clearly recognising that this was an initiative of the Labor Party—an initiative to solve an impasse that was occurring and also at the same time ensure that local government, which we feel very strongly about, is supported. We strongly believe that we need to have a strong and direct relationship with local government, not a relationship that is mediated by state government. For that reason, we strongly support the constitutional recognition of local government, particularly in relation to our financial capacity to deliver to local government. I note that we allegedly had somewhat of a bipartisan position on this before the last election, although we did see many members of the then opposition—not government—systematically white ant what was a bipartisan view. But let's hope that once again we can build that bipartisanship in relation to the constitutional recognition of local government.

We have had some queries today from constituents asking why we did not lock this arrangement into public transport and why we did not put as an alternative to the investment to the investment of money on Roads to Recovery for local government; why wouldn't we do that on a public transport project?

Our response to that is that we have to deal within the art of the possible and we were well aware that it was never going to be possible to get the Abbott government to agree to investment in urban public transport. But there is absolutely no ambiguity that a Labor government will be making a substantial commitment to urban rail across Australia, ensuring that we properly balance the infrastructure spend between road and rail. We accept that we cannot deal with the congestion problems that are currently facing our cities by road expansion alone. It is predicted that seven out of the 10 corridors that are going to be the most congested are in Perth. The Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development used his normal rantings to suggest that somehow or other this was my fault, that I was the one that did not invest in public transport and did not invest in roads. That is a truly extraordinary—

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