Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

The last 12 months have been a shameful chapter in the governance of this country's affairs. It has been a period punctuated by stuff-ups, complete incomp­etence and contempt for the Aust­ralian people. Tomorrow's first anniversary of the Prime Minister's reign is bathed in the blood of her predecessor, a stain that lingers with the Labor Party as well as the consciousness of all Australians. The litany of abuses since the Prime Minister seized power, most profoundly abuses against the trust of Australian voters, mark this occasion and are forever etched in the psyche of Australians.

It is regional Australia that has been dudded the most. Labor does not care about people who live outside the capital cities. The Prime Minister is a city girl and she has made little effort to acquaint herself with the hopes and aspirations of regional Australians—so much so that at the last election we had the 'new paradigm' touted by the Independents that handed government to Labor. But it has failed abysmally. Labor has not even honoured the promises that they made to the Independents—so much so that the Independent member for Kennedy has declared publicly that the Independents have failed to deliver anything for regional Australians. And he is absolutely right: they, like all people in regional Australia, have been dudded. The Gillard government record, sadly, speaks for itself.

The mining tax hangs like a sword over the heads of entire regional communities. The uncertainty and the confusion caused by the government's chopping and changing has already deterred investment and circ­umvented sound business decision making. Jobs in regional areas will go. Our international competitiveness will be diminished. It is a kick in the teeth for reg­ional Australia. And the funding announced for the regional projects that are supposed to come from the 2011-12 federal budget is conditional on the revenue from the proposed mining tax. So the deal done with the Independents to provide them with an $800 million regional fund is conditional on passing a tax. That is a lose-lose situation for the regions. If the tax does not pass through the parliament, the regional projects will not proceed. If it does, regional communities will lose jobs and economic prosperity created by mining developments and mineral processing. It is a sell-out.

A further example of the sell-out was the incredible announcement that, of the $800 million to be provided over the forward estimates for regional Australia, $450 million is allocated to the roads around Perth Airport—hardly what I would call regional Australia. Indeed, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government confirmed last week that it was the government's intention to spend the majority of the regional fund on this Perth road project, and once more he said that they will be spending more money in the cities. So the Independents are backing a government on the basis of an $800 million commitment for regional projects, most of which is going to be spent in the cities. It is completely dishonest.

When we look at the carbon tax, we are forever reminded of its impact on regional Australia. For example, research by the Australian Farm Institute exposes that an average grain farm in Western Australia will be up to $37,000 a year worse off under a carbon price of $36 a tonne—and that is even if agriculture is excluded from the carbon regime. This research confirms what farmers and their communities have instinctively known: that even the indirect costs will make many farms unviable. Farmers and regional people will have to pay a bigger share of this carbon tax than those who live in the cities, because they have to travel further and their costs will therefore be compounded by this additional imposition.

Farmers drive $155 billion a year in production and $32 billion in annual exports and support 1.6 million jobs. That is a lot to sacrifice on the altar of a carbon tax. And the Prime Minister said she would not have one. 'There'll be no carbon tax under a government I lead. I rule out a carbon tax,' she said. Those words will live in infamy and will haunt this government to its electoral grave.

Labor's NBN is another fiasco and setback for regional Australians—$50 billion spent with no cost-benefit analysis and taxpayers now forced to foot the bill so Telstra can scrap its copper network. The government is boasting today that it is going to pay $12 billion to Optus and Telstra to close down their network. How is that a good investment in infrastructure in this country? Ironically, if there had not been a Labor government elected, most regional Australians would now have access to high-speed broadband through the Opel contract—and, once more, at speeds greater than those Labor is offering. Bear in mind that Labor has specifically excluded people who live in regional areas from its commitment to high-speed broadband. Seven per cent of the population is going to have to depend on wireless or in some cases satellite. This is Labor again developing a two-speed economy: one speed for their mates in the city but, for people who live in regional Australia, a second-class service.

I now want to turn to the live export trade, another example of policy failure by this government. The bungling of the live cattle export issue is simply another example of Labor's incompetence. It ignored the warnings and then was panicked into a decision without any plan for the future. This is ironically a case where the minister originally made the right decision—to ban exports to abattoirs that do not meet appropriate standards. But then the Prime Minister and others came over the top and introduced a total ban, including a ban on world-class abattoirs, abattoirs that exceed world standards. Indeed, I have referred on a number of occasions to the classic example of the 1,937 cattle that were, at that time, being held in an AQIS certified holding yard in Port Hedland. They are all NLIS tagged. They are Australian cattle, owned by an Australian company. They are ready to be transported on an Australian owned and operated livestock carrier with full AMSA accreditation. They are to be delivered to an Australian owned and operated feedlot. There is a full set of quality assurance procedures that are independently audited by an international company. The cattle will then be sent, after 80 to 100 days in the feedlot, to an Australian owned and operated abattoir and processing facility. There are many Australian staff in this facility. It has HACCP and ISO 9001 accreditation. You may be interested to know that the Indonesian version of MasterChef is currently being filmed in that very abattoir. That abattoir is being shown to all the Indonesian people, with MasterChef being filmed in that facility, but it is not good enough for Australian cattle. It is good enough for the television crews but it is not good enough for Australian cattle.

Why has the government banned good practice? Why has it destroyed the incentive to do the right thing? It should be making sure that this trade begins as immediately as it can. There are tagged cattle. There are closed loops that would enable cattle to get moving quite quickly. It is absolutely urgent that the Prime Minister send the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Rudd, to Indonesia to try and patch up some of the diplomatic damage that has been done as a result of the government's bungling of this issue. This has turned into a diplomatic gaffe, and it is standing in the way of this trade re-commencing.

There are thousands of Australian jobs at risk. The Indonesians are not going to simply stand by; they are already searching for other countries to deliver them live animals so that they can provide the food that their people need. The minister's visit to Indonesia was a debacle. He failed to achieve anything worth while. Indeed, the poisonous nature of the current relationship simply needs to be addressed. It is time that the Prime Minister was prepared to admit that the government got it wrong, eat a bit of humble pie and send the foreign minister to Indonesia to try and mend some of the bridges. Let us hope that somehow or other our friendship with Indonesia, which is very important to our country, can be restored.

Then we need to have a comprehensive program of upgrading animal welfare practices in countries like Indonesia. If it matters to Australians that their own cattle are cared for humanely, surely that is important also for Indonesian cattle and the cattle from other countries that are going to take our place in that market. This is another example of policy failure. The cattlemen of Northern Australia are in great distress, and this government has no plan whatsoever to help them through this crisis. This is an example of a government that has failed all Australians and particularly has failed regional Australians. (Time expired)

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