Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak in support of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and the cognate bills, as they epitomise the reasons for my signing on to the Rudd Labor team. For 12 long years the Howard government sat idly by while the world left them behind. They chose to fiddle while Rome burned, as climate change, skills shortages, inadequate national infrastructure, regulatory and structural deficiencies and the failure to adequately resource the education and training sector placed us at a grave competitive disadvantage.

For 12 years they relied solely on the benefits of the macroeconomic and industrial reforms of the Hawke-Keating governments and the mining boom. In that time the Howard government only had two ideas, to introduce a new tax—the GST—and Work Choices. That was it. That was the best they could do in 12 years. That was the full scope of their grand nation-building vision and forward thinking for this country. They were like monkeys riding an elephant when it came to the economy. They had no idea where it was going, they were not able to control it and they were just enjoying the ride.

While the Howard government failed miserably when it came to macroeconomic imagination, they were nevertheless quite creative when it came to economic mismanagement. In particular I have been appalled at the mess I have inherited in Eden-Monaro as a consequence of the shambolic pork barrel that was Regional Partnerships under the coalition. I was staggered to find that last year 100 Regional Partnerships promises had been made in Eden-Monaro alone!

If it had merely been that this was a case of indiscriminate and profligate spending that would be bad enough. In so many cases, however, organisations in Eden-Monaro were misled by promises that the ‘money was in the bank’, which was simply not true, and in a number of cases with no application having been submitted. Many of these organisations will now have to submit applications under new Labor schemes. So many of these projects breached the program’s guidelines or lacked required documentation. These were reviewed against the coalition’s own Regional Partnerships program guidelines and mostly found not to conform. Nor were they costed and budgeted with the same rigor that was applied to our election undertakings.

In determining which projects should be approved, the Rudd Labor government has been obliged to take into consideration the scathing Australian National Audit Office report on the program, which found the Howard government responsible for political bias associated with the allocations and process and for the breach of government financial standards which highlighted the failure of a number of projects to achieve defined outcomes. The report specifically stated that the program ‘fell short of acceptable standards of public administration’.

The report also showed that more than $110 million or a third of the program’s funds was pumped into just 10 coalition seats. We now know that around $2 million of Regional Partnerships money was poured into Bondi, the home turf of the member for Wentworth. How on earth Bondi could qualify for Regional Partnerships money is beyond me. That program was intended to assist struggling rural and regional Australia. The only cow you will see in Bondi is a coalition cash cow. How cynical had they become? How symbolic was this of their betrayal of the bush? I welcome the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government’s inquiry into the Regional Partnerships program, as there are aspects of the way it was operated that cry out for further investigation.

This practice was not confined to Regional Partnerships, however. Another glaring example in Eden-Monaro was the election promise that $11 million had been locked away for an upgrade of Gocup Road between Tumut and Gundagai. This road has not even been designated as a state road, and no arrangements had been entered into with the state government to complete the project. When this was revealed, they claimed that they had ‘a wink and a nod’ from the state. This was simply untrue. The final insult was our discovery that the so-called ‘locked away money’ was simply not there. And yet still the member for Riverina tries to perpetuate these Howard government deceptions, adding the false new claim that I ‘stole’ the $11 million for the Gocup Road for use on the Bega bypass. This demonstrates yet again the contempt of the member for Riverina, and the continuing coalition contempt, for rural and regional Australia. Is it any wonder that the bush is abandoning the coalition and the National Party is disappearing?

All this confirms how true the reflections of the former Treasurer, the member for Higgins, were when criticising the former Prime Minister for his short-sighted and irresponsible approach to government spending. What do we see now from the heirs of that pale, stunted and tawdry legacy? What was their dynamic and visionary plan in response to the budget to confront the challenges that face this nation? It was to cut the fuel excise by 5c a litre, to irresponsibly gouge out $22 billion in revenue without any plan to compensate for this. Breathtaking! Through this they have demonstrated that they are worthy heirs of the Howard legacy. What have we heard from them as to how they would tackle the much larger energy security question of how we deal with future oil shocks and dwindling supplies of easily-won resources? What do they say about climate change and how this can be risk and consequence managed? How would they deal with the infrastructure choke points and constraints that have developed over the last 12 years? What measures would they take to lift the dead hand of duplication and conflicting regulation in our federal system? There is a deafening silence from the opposition on all this, but it is a silence that speaks volumes as to the intellectual bankruptcy that is the coalition.

In stark contrast to that sorry tale, I am intensely proud of the first budget of the Rudd Labor government. This budget proves the broader vision and courage of the government to prepare for the longer term economic social and physical security of this country. It is essential for us to avoid the so-called Dutch disease that threatens us at present. Named after the effect of the North Sea oil resource boom on the Dutch economy, this describes the dynamic whereby resource exports cause a country’s currency to rise in value, making non-resource exports—which might be good for technological, or, for that matter, agricultural progress—uncompetitive. Reliance on the resource boom also masks the need for essential reforms to deepen, broaden and strengthen the underlying economy. That is why the Rudd Labor government has adopted measures that will benefit us greatly in the years ahead. At the same time, we recognise that there is a need to maintain our social cohesion and deal with the daily struggles of working families and the disadvantaged. The remarkable thing about this budget is that it manages to balance these competing dynamics.

One of the things that so angered me about the previous government was their betrayal of rural and regional Australia. I was personally delighted, therefore, to be able to win for Eden-Monaro support for a number of critical projects and save others under threat because of the Regional Partnerships fiasco. We also stand to gain from national projects such as the $2.2 billion provided for the Caring for Our Country program. This will generate a new, coordinated approach to environmental management and strengthen the role of farmers in the delivery of environmental services.

Other rural initiatives include $760 million for ongoing support for exceptional circumstance declared areas in 2008-09, $130 million over four years for Australia’s Farming Future initiative and $35 million for the Regional Food Producers Innovation and Productivity Program. There will be $20 million to help Australia’s forest industries, so important to Eden-Monaro, to prepare for the future, including coping with climate change and skills shortages. There is also $15.3 million in new measures to fight the critical weed menace that is seriously threatening our farmers, which I was proud to have gotten on the agenda during the campaign last year. This includes $300,000 for the national eradication of fireweed project and $15 million to set up the Australian Weeds Research Centre. This is in stark contrast to the previous government, which was pulling the plug on funding for the weeds CRC, effectively killing it from the end of June 2008.

Working families and the disadvantaged will see that this budget helps them cope with day-to-day cost of living pressures through our $55 billion Working Families Support Package. Initiatives include cutting income tax, reducing the costs of educating and looking after children, making housing more affordable, providing a Teen Dental Plan and making sure that grocery and petrol prices are competitive.

Older Australians and carers will benefit from $2.4 billion in additional support next year, and a lot of that help will flow into Eden-Monaro.

We are investing $5.9 billion over five years in the education revolution with initiatives in the areas of early childhood education, schools, vocational training and higher education.

We will spend $2.3 billion over five years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This will help our local community group Clean Energy for Eternity achieve its goals. I am at work to complement this by holding discussions with industry and scientists to establish solar, biomass and methane renewable energy projects in Eden-Monaro. Included is the $100,000 I obtained to fund a feasibility study for a solar farm project in the Bega Valley, with a further $1 million to support building the project from our Green Precincts program.

Eden-Monaro will also get its fair share of benefits from the $11 billion Education Investment Fund for improvements in our TAFEs and universities, and the $20 billion Building Australia Fund for ongoing improvements in our roads, ports, railways and telecommunications.

Most pleasing of all, the Rudd Labor government has heard the pleas of the bush to do something about the rural and regional health crisis. With the establishment of the Office of Rural Health we stand to get crucial assistance under the $10 billion Health and Hospitals Fund.

All in all this is a budget that delivers for the future of this country while at the same time tackling the problems of today. Our children will have cause to be grateful that in 2008 there was at last a government that was prepared to make the big decisions.

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