Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the remarks of the member for Brand, the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia, on Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2008-2009 and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2008-2009. We were partners in crime years ago when I was trying to protect the jobs of forest workers around Australia, particularly in Western Australia, when he and his father-in-law and one-time minister for finance in the Hawke government were of a similar view to me that the then state Gallop government, in pursuit of winning government—as has occurred so often—were prepared to sell out the forest workers of Western Australia and to take their jobs. And for what? So that we could cut more trees down in Indonesia and of course burn the rest, as occurred in Victoria the other day. So I welcome his interest.

Something the parliamentary secretary may be aware of in this debate about the development of the east Kimberley is that the Carpenter-Ripper government were approached by the then Howard government with regard to this development that is now proceeding. The offering of the sort of money that is now being proposed—and which I endorse—was rejected by the Carpenter government. The reason given privately was that, if that area was expanded, the locals were going to grow ‘illegal’ plants—as if there was going to be some great marijuana harvest up there. Do you know what they were talking about? They were talking about GM cotton. They were so hung up on this GM debate—because, again, ‘Got to keep the greenies happy; got to keep myself in a job’. It did not keep them in a job, and that is a lesson to all of us. The fact of life is that they denied earlier development, but possibly not by a great deal—and, to the credit of this government, it has continued.

I think the parliamentary secretary might, in his special responsibility, realise that, while good things are happening in the east Kimberley, his government is still progressing with a World Heritage order on the west Kimberley—which, by any measure, is probably a better prospect. It has enough tidal energy to supply all Australia with energy, and that includes motive power. It has very substantial mineral resources, and it too has some pretty impressive rivers. If cyclical climatic circumstances are to continue, Australia is going to have to move people up there. People constantly talk about piping the water to the south—you would think it could run down hill all the way—but it will in fact be much better to transfer the people to the resources rather than the resources to the people.

Let us hope that other initiatives—or good luck or change—might fix the problems and overcome the present drought in what represents 42 per cent of the agricultural production of Australia, around the Murray-Darling river system. If it does not, Australia is not short of fresh water. We have just had the example of the flooding in half of Queensland after rain up in that country. I lived in Carnarvon and watched the same sorts of events occur in the Gascoyne River over many years. It unfortunately does not have natural dam sites. I might as well shock and horrify everybody in the chamber. Many years ago, as the shire president, I proposed that we introduce the American Program Plowshare and literally make some storages below ground level. I have seen an eight millimetre movie of the Russians doing just that. I remember a state politician saying we might end up with radioactive cabbages. What I am saying is that there is a huge amount of money in these proposals, but they will come to naught if only half of the Kimberley region and its huge resources are being proposed for development while another minister in this government is running around trying to lock up the other half of the Kimberley, which is probably the better prospect for development in the future for our grandchildren and so forth. What is more, it can provide all the renewable energy at a price equivalent to the pre-Christmas cash splash.

Other aspects of these appropriation bills that are of interest to me are the proposals for jobs. As I said, there was a time when the father-in-law of the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia and I were on the same plane because we both believed that, above all, the responsibility of the Labor Party was to generate jobs. A pretty interesting thing happened in question time today, which was referred to by our leader. When asked if the new legislation on industrial relations—and, one might add, the emissions trading scheme and all the other things that are in the legislative pipeline—would create even one job, the Prime Minister said he was not sure about that but he would guarantee all people who lost their jobs a redundancy payment. I am sure they will all go home and have a bottle of champagne tonight on the strength of that—a Prime Minister of Australia saying, ‘The only thing I can guarantee is a redundancy payment when you lose your job.’

It smacks of trade union rhetoric. I have said for years that they have paid more attention to making sure that retrenched workers get redundancy payments than to keeping them in a job. Why would you keep them in a job? The answer is pretty simple. People want to keep their job. There is a lot of pride in it for the average citizen and they are better paid. We know how long a redundancy payment lasts and, of course, they cannot get unemployment benefits until they have spent the lot. Why would a Prime Minister say, ‘That’s the best I can promise Australia?’ That is what he did today, and he should be roundly criticised for it, because it shows they are giving in. And there are opportunities. I repeat: the cash splash may have sold a few extra flat screen televisions et cetera, but do you make a stimulus package to improve the statistics or to have a real response in employment? I would go for the real response in employment.

I was recently lent a book about public works in Western Australia. I have been reading that nearly every existing water storage in Western Australia was constructed during the Great Depression. It was pretty tough. People worked for ‘sustenance’, as it was then known, which was not a lot of money. The largest of the dams cost some £300,000. We have had the efforts of Roosevelt in United States held up to us as an example. He, of course, built the Hoover Dam. And Barack Obama, the present oracle of world politics—and I do not say that critically—has been held up in this place day after day. What was his first stimulus initiative? He cut income tax. People talk about cutting payroll tax, but income tax is a payroll tax. If an employee’s income increases through a reduction of $20 per week in income tax, he does not have to go to the boss, who is struggling to find orders in a tough environment, and ask for a raise. It follows. And income tax is across the board, as compared to payroll tax, which does have some thresholds and is not applicable to every employer.

I am saying: where is the strategy? I have made a submission to the Senate inquiry, and I hope shortly to put to it my proposals which, for less than the cost of the pre-Christmas cash splash, could have seen renewable tidal power installed in just the smallest part of the Kimberley, as identified by the World Energy Council. This is not some figment of Wilson Tuckey’s imagination. We could have produced 4.2 gigawatts of electricity—an additional 120 per cent of electricity if all of it were applied to Western Australia. But for $10 billion you could also interconnect that system with all of Australia via Western Australian’s AC transmission system. Instead of knocking off $10 billion—and there is ample evidence that it had a very limited effect on Australia’s economic performance—you could have put the money into such a project and any number of benefits would have flowed to future generations. Why wouldn’t we do that instead of taking the piecemeal approach we have here of ‘just another $2.215 billion’.

We have gone beyond any pretence that the government propose to balance the budget. In fact, they have legislated to give themselves the right to borrow up to $200 billion without any further reference to parliament. I was interested to read in today’s press that the first and, of course, our smallest state government went out to sell bonds for $100 million the other day, and they did not fill that application. I mean, in years gone by, they would have been knocked down in the rush—even Tasmania. Now what is the message from that? They apparently went cap in hand back to those who originally did decide to buy a few bonds and said, ‘Can you buy a few more?’ A state government hawking debt around the countryside! And why? Well, Big Brother is out there and borrowing money at a rate never heard of and the financial institutions are short of money—and they are going to get shorter of it, because Australia has never had a reputation for accumulating large amounts of savings.

There is a lot of criticism of the banks because, in the case of their business lending, they are not lowering rates to reflect the decisions of the Reserve Bank. But the Reserve Bank does not lend them money. It will meet them on an overnight basis, the ‘cash rate’, as it is known. That is, if you are a little bit short for the day, you go and do some sort of deal with the Reserve Bank and they give you some money, but they want it back tomorrow or the next week. They have got to borrow in the open market place, and, if Big Brother—otherwise known as the Australian government—is in there putting out bond issues in the billions virtually weekly, where is the money going to come from? The United Kingdom has apparently made the decision that you just print it, which takes us back to the Whitlam days—when you start printing money that does not exist. It is interesting that it happened then, and I reminded people prior to this election that the last time we changed the government in Australia because ‘It’s time’ we got Whitlam. And boy, are we seeing the similarities build up each day!

This is a serious matter—we are looking at all sorts of appropriations here. We can see agriculture, fisheries and forestry—it only gets $0.7 million. I do not see anything in it for exports. Defence gets a very small amount. Education, employment and workplace relations gets $285 million—what is that for? To advertise the benefits of Fair Work Australia! That is what I told my party room this morning.

Why is it that Pacific Brands has decided to leave the Australian workplace in a very significant way and go overseas? Why is it that the Boeing company, who were employing 400 people here on very important work, packed up and went? I might remind you that for two years they were under attack by the trade union movement because about a quarter of their workforce wanted to be different and they wanted to have a collective agreement for the other three-quarters. Fisher and Paykel—almost an iconic name in whitegoods for Australia and New Zealand—has also gone. And BP Solar, on leaving, said, ‘We need to consolidate our activities, so we are taking all the expertise we have learned in Australia to one of our other manufacturing facilities.’ But, if consolidation was the only issue, they could have brought that other plant, located somewhere else in the world, to Australia.

I have just given you four big examples. Day after day, as I correspond with or talk to my small business people, they are all going through their workforce and deciding who should go before this legislation is enacted—they are not going to cop another round of so-called unfair dismissal, which they knew as ‘go-away money’. I could spend the rest of my speech giving examples of the abuse and rorts which were applicable in that area and condoned by the trade union movement and which the trade union movement wants back. Why would you do that? Why would you get into a position where you have got to create a circumstance where people, in preparation, are getting out of it? I come back to those four big names that I just mentioned—I do not know what was said in their boardrooms, but none of them can blame the economic crisis, because they are not restricting their business; they have just taken it somewhere else. These are the problems—we have a government now legislating, to my mind, for a depression, because it is just going to be too difficult to employ people in Australia in any industry other than in the service industries like McDonald’s or others who, it appears, will be well looked after.

I want to talk for a moment more about the Kimberley region. If there are some components of that region—apparently the whales cavort up there—that need some protection, why do we need to go to Geneva to have it? I know the Kimberley, and I think it was a Labor minister—I think we knew him as ‘Biggles’—who once said of Kakadu that it was ‘beaten-up buffalo country’. Well, I think there are some better parts than that, although I also take this opportunity to repeat the remarks made, I think, in the Australian newspaper about ‘Kakadu or Kakadon’t’—and, if any government wants to start shaving their expenditures and promoting the Australian economy, they might go to all their ‘Kakadon’t’ departments, because I reckon about 50 per cent of the workforce today employed in the public service is in some sort of activity to tell you what you cannot do.

That is just so different to my experience of the North West when Sir Charles Court, as we knew him in later years—Charlie Court, as we knew him then—was the Minister for the North-West and drove development at an amazing rate. In half an hour, I, as a local government practitioner, got a deal with him and two other ministers standing on the ground to develop, as a council, 500 blocks of land—and two ministers were sent back to Perth to deliver the approvals to my council within a week. Imagine any council in Australia today just trying to develop some blocks of land at the right price! I might add that when we developed them, including levee banks, we sold them for $2,000 a block—could you imagine it! The reality is that ‘Kakadon’t’ has got to the point where people are denied low-cost housing blocks, if only because of the interest the developer has to pay while he jumps all the preliminary hurdles of approval.

So there are all sorts of things this funding might do. We are going to look after apprentices after they have lost their jobs. That is pretty good but, with other initiatives, they might have kept their jobs. I do not know how many might be employed on the proposal that I have put before the parliament, but it would have been a lot. And it would have been high-tech stuff and it would have been in an arena of renewable energy, where Australia could take a technological lead. We are told that there will be so many jobs in renewable energy. But in what—wind power? But wait a minute—the Scandinavians and others have done that. They have learnt that it does not even work as well as they would have liked, but they are happy to flog it to us. And it is the same with solar power. BP Solar were here, but they have gone. They were driven out because of their concerns about other initiatives of this government. They could have brought more of their technology here—we are not short of sunlight. By the way, the transmission system I proposed could accommodate a lot of that sort of development—even wind, which is a very questionable grid servicing arrangement.

But the whole thing about it is that this is just asking this parliament to approve more money. It will be borrowed— (Time expired)

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