Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We live in a world of ideas. Ideas are the things that drive our modern economies. And exchange of ideas is the thing that is most critical to ensuring that our economy moves forward and grows at a rate that all people can enjoy and take part in. It is incredibly important that the European Union has granted us $2 million to run a dialogue amongst our leaders and emerging leaders about the importance of what will be our future and their future, for there is much that we can learn from the European Union and there is much that we can do together.

Talking, in short, is important. Talking to Europeans is even more important than talking to other nationalities, mostly because so much of what we do in this country actually comes from Europe. Whether it be our legal system, our understanding of the economy or how we interact with our citizens, it is important that we understand that many of the basic concepts that we employ here in Australia originated in Europe. To borrow a line from Monty Python: what have the Romans ever done for us? Whether it be thinking around things like federation, subsidiarity, the role of the state, product integrity or privacy in the digital age, all are lessons that the European Union has been exploring for over 50 to 60 years. All are concepts that we can bring here to Australia to make sure that we create a more perfect nation.

Look at the concept of federation. I understand that the European Union is not a formal federation, but it employs concepts like subsidiarity, where decisions are made at the best level of government you can make them. For example, you should make decisions at a local government level about who picks up your garbage, but at an international level you may want to talk about things like monetary policy, global economics and, indeed, trade policy. This understanding, and the mistakes that the European Union has made, are important ideas that our leaders and emerging leaders can enjoy at these conferences.

It is fantastic that the first workshop is on digital transformation in government. So much of what we are seeing both here and around the world is a sense that people in democracies are feeling that they cannot quite connect to their government. The obvious answer to this is digital transformation—putting more information up on the internet for people not only to receive but also to interact with and make a contribution to. This government has started that process with its open data policy. We have taken 500 datasets that existed before we were elected and turned them into 23,600 datasets. The importance of open data cannot be underestimated. In New South Wales alone, it has helped save tens of millions of dollars in public housing, ensuring that scarce public resources are being directed to those people who need them and to programs that do the most to help people who need housing. This is not something that can be applied only to public housing. In the United Kingdom, for example, open data allowed citizens to find out that the department of defence was spending 175 pounds per mop and that there were better and more cost-effective ways to supply the military with mops.

The EU has been the crucible for the most critical idea of the 19th and 20th centuries, which is that free trade reduces war. The European Union was conceived after two world wars. After the First World War, Europeans said, 'We will never ever have another war like this,' and then they did. Free trade and the European Union were their ways of ensuring that it would never happen again. Thomas Friedman said that in the history of the world no two nations with a McDonald's franchise have ever gone to war. In the European Union, the French and the Germans came together, initially over a steel tariff, to trade openly because it would remove the incentive for war. The idea that France and Germany could go to war today is ludicrous but, of course, that is a new concept, something that has really only been conceived in the 21st century.

One is reminded, though, of some of the things that the EU has done badly, like its subsidies for agricultural production. We can learn both good and bad things from the European Union.

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