Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In defending and supporting the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Democratic Plebiscites) Bill 2007 today I also support the work of local government authorities around my state of Queensland and in particular in south-east Queensland. I wish to shed some light on the conduct of the Beattie government over the past month and in particular focus on their refusal to consult with ordinary Queenslanders about their intentions to reform local government areas, their intentions to punish those who chose to express a view, particularly councillors themselves—elected members of local councils—and of course their use of a hand-picked team to give them the answers that they had already determined they wanted prior to this reform commission being put together.

I will respond to the two speakers from the other side of the chamber who have preceded me. There were charges laid that this is political opportunism, that there was rushed implementation, that this bill is merely a diversion and that it is in some way hypocritical or inconsistent with the way the federal government deals with states. I want to address those straightaway because they really are not terribly strong reasons for not supporting this bill. They are not consistent whatsoever. We need to remember in the end that there has been support for this bill from the other side. I will go into those reasons later.

The accusation of political opportunism in this bill needs to be looked at in the context that the councils themselves had very little say in this. The opportunism was merely initially the Queensland state government acting very quickly and without consultation and not raising the issue of amalgamation at the last state election. The accusation of rushed implementation by the government is in fact a reaction to the rate of progress by the Beattie government itself. I want to highlight a number of dates. The first is 10 August, when the Local Government Reform Implementation Act 2007 was proposed with section 159ZY, which had 15 penalty points for any council or councillor who chose to speak against the idea of amalgamation. Twelve days later that act was repealed, as has been pointed out by opposition speakers. In that 12-day period there was really only one significant public policy event and that of course was the initiation of this bill on 16 August. So let us not talk about opportunism here or rushed implementation. It was the only way that the Beattie government could be stopped. The time line was set not by this government but by the Beattie government in their allowing, from 1 September, only 30 days of consultation prior to this train being set in motion.

The third criticism, of diversion, is simply spurious. Even before the process began, we knew that there would be no say, apart from submission of forms. There were up to 47,000 submissions made to this group, of which only a handful—a few thousand—were actually considered, because the rest of them were deemed to be form letters. What we do know from phone polls, though, is that 90 per cent of people in Stanthorpe, for instance, wanted the Constitution to protect their right to a referendum and 88 per cent of them said that they opposed amalgamation. They are the figures from one jurisdiction.

I come from the Redland shire. I regard the Redland shire as the luckiest council jurisdiction in Queensland to have escaped merger and amalgamation. They did it for a number of reasons. As I mentioned in my own submission, there were not good geographic connections between neighbouring councils, there was a large green zone and there was a lack of public transport to other local jurisdictions with which we could well have been merged. Redland Shire Council was lucky. With it, there was an enormous amount of community and local relief. It meant that that particular part of Queensland was safe.

There are a large number of other council jurisdic-tions. I do not for a moment say that all of them should have remained as they were. I am not saying that all of them were financially viable or that every single council jurisdiction need necessarily be defended; nor do I say, in response to the member for Lingiari, that amalgamations in other parts of Australia should not be considered. There are times when it is completely appropriate. That is not what this bill and this amendment are about. It is a shame that today we have to amend an electoral act passed back in 1918 as it is the only legislative path we can find to block an appalling piece of public policy conduct by the Beattie government. We have had to go back to a 1918 act and amend it.

Of course, all this is based upon fallacious information. It is based upon the fact that the Beattie government wants us to believe that councils are not viable. How do they do that? The old Labor view, of course, is that big is better in bureaucracy and in management and that the centralisation of power means that fewer, larger councils will be easier to deal with.

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