House debates

Wednesday, 16 August 2017

Bills

Regional Investment Corporation Bill 2017; Second Reading

6:14 pm

Photo of Nick ChampionNick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is an interjection I will take. I have reflected on that from time to time! The point is: chaos is not good for the country, farmers, in particular. I go out to the country, and they ask me, 'What the hell's going on?' They are certainly not impressed with loose accountability in the Commonwealth government. They don't like it under a government of any shade. And that is essentially what we have here. We have decentralisation on the back of an envelope, decentralisation for the National Party, which, of course, represents a sectional interest of farmers—east coast farmers, east coast communities, upriver communities.

I remember vividly that at Balaclava—a great country town, a very conservative place, a lot of good farmers—they had a meeting before the 2007 election, and one of them got up and said, 'I'm voting Labor.' There was a hush in the room. He said, 'I hate the way the Liberal Party always outsources agricultural policy to the National Party.' The reason that point had such power is that it's the truth. There's this outsourcing of agricultural policy, every time, to a section of the rural community—certainly not the whole rural community in the seats they represent, and certainly not the rural community of Australia. We saw that in the wheat bill very many years ago, and we see it here too.

Basically we're opposing this bill because of the serious governance issues. There are governance issues that have been pointed out by the National Farmers' Federation and there are governance issues that have been pointed out by the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA. They're all in the report of the Senate committee inquiry into this bill. So it is a very serious thing.

These are some of the things in the dissenting report, and I don't mind reading them. There is no coherent policy rationale for the establishment of the RIC. There have been mixed messages when enunciating the policy objectives for this. The government's failed to undertake a cost-benefit analysis, to give us some confidence that spending $28 million of taxpayers' money establishing and operating this delivers good value. It goes on:

… the government:

          They've had to use the external affairs power to give this constitutional underpinning, and there are some doubts about that. Also, essentially, ministerial review will be kept secret. We have to remember that this corporation will effectively operate as a bank underwritten by the Commonwealth. Coming from the state of South Australia I can tell you there are some risks in that, if you don't have proper oversight. We have seen those risks over time, and they can be as devastating for rural communities as they are for city communities.

          So this is a very concerning bit of legislation, put up by a minister who, let's face it, has had better weeks and is not really across the details—not quite across the details of the Constitution, for instance! There is a bit of a difficulty there. You can feel those at the table espying a few more opportunities to slide up—

          Mr McCormack interjecting

          You'll have 7½ minutes in your speaking opportunity. I'm sure you can set us right about how you really don't want to be promoted and you are happy where you are! We don't need to talk about the leadership of the National Party—a return to the grey conservatism; no more colourful leaders for the National Party.

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