Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2023-2024 and cognate bills. The purpose of the three appropriation bills is to release money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the annual services of the government. We don't stand in the way of that. I can tell you that it's very good to be speaking about this today. I wanted to speak on the appropriation bill following the May budget, but I didn't get the chance. There were many speakers lined up who didn't get the chance because the government ended the debate. It was incredibly inappropriate that we members, who are elected and are sent here to speak on behalf of our constituents, didn't get to talk about the most important thing—the appropriation of taxpayer money and the expenditure of such. So it's nice to be able to speak today—although I did reflect on the speech I was going to deliver last May and what I have to say today, and, unfortunately, it's devastating to report that things have got worse and are getting worse. If regional Australia was a dartboard, the walls around it would be full of holes. The government aren't spending less; they're spending a lot more, but they're spending less in regional and rural Australia.

When I go around my wonderful electorate of Nicholls—one of my favourite parts of my job—people will ask, 'Are you enjoying it?' I say: 'Yes. Parts of it are difficult, but there are parts that are enjoyable.' One of the most enjoyable things is talking to schoolchildren, mostly in primary schools, and having a conversation about what it is we do up here and what the Australian democracy is all about. That leads to a fascinating conversation. It boils down to two major things we're here for. Firstly, we're here to enact legislation. I explain that to kids; I say: 'We make rules and we try to balance things. We try to balance the rights of people, the responsibilities of people and the good of society, and we have debates about that.' The people of Nicholls have sent me here, and the people of Bendigo have sent you here, Deputy Speaker Chesters. We are probably from different ideological traditions, but we have debates about what those rules should be. That's a form of democracy that has seen Australia prosper as one of the most successful nations, if not the most successful nation, on the globe.

We also appropriate money in a variety of ways from taxpayers, and we decide how to spend it. That's also a massive responsibility. It's our job to work out what's appropriate to take from people and businesses, and it's our job to make sure we spend that money wisely, efficiently and on things and investments that are going to lead to the advancement of our nation and our economy. At the moment, we're all talking about cost of living because it's the biggest issue for people. When I'm in the chamber, I hear, 'We're giving people money for this, we're giving people money for that, making this cheaper and making that cheaper', which is, essentially, using taxpayer money to hand out money. That's a debate we can have, and I'm not opposed to that in general. We're also talking about tax cuts, which our side sees as redistribution and the other side sees as fairness. But I would remind those opposite that the tax system is designed not as a tool necessarily of redistribution but for providing for Australia's economic future.

We're not talking about the root cause of the cost of living, and I find that really frustrating. We're skirting around the edges. The success of Australia's economy is based on the success of Australia's businesses, and that means the success of Australia's entrepreneurship—people who invest money to try and make something that didn't exist before, whether it be a good or a service, and sell that in a competitive way that improves the lives of Australians and/or makes us internationally competitive. That's what we're here to do. There's a safety net to make sure that people don't suffer. I take the point of the member for Menzies, who said that if you were sitting in the chamber listening to the Labor members you'd think we'd been living in some sort of Dickensian world where everyone is doing absolutely terribly; they're doing worse now than they were under the coalition government! Generally, modern Australia has been a partnership between the employer—so businesses—the capital and the labour. And that partnership is essential. The businesses can't do it without the labour, and the labour won't exist if the businesses aren't successful and profitable. I think, with the policies of this government, we are moving away from that. I think that's regrettable and it will have poor long-term impacts on our nation.

I will give you some examples—firstly, on regional infrastructure. If we're going to take taxpayers' money from them, it can't just be a redistribution exercise: 'You can have some here,' and 'You can have some there.' There's got to be a strategic approach: 'What could we invest in that would make the Australian economy perform better?' If you were in a business, you'd say, 'Okay, we've got a surplus,' or, 'We've got a profit,' or, 'We've got a certain amount of money we can expend.' Smart business people would say: 'How would we spend that money to make our business more competitive and more profitable into the future?' Now, we argue that regional infrastructure can do that, because regional Australia is the engine room of the nation's economic prosperity. Whether it be agriculture, manufacturing or mining, a lot of it happens in regional Australia.

That's not to dismiss the people who live in metropolitan areas of this country; they make a great contribution, too. But, because of the bulk of population being in those areas, we sometimes feel that they get an inordinate voice in this nation through our democracy. That's why we're here, from the regions—to fight for the people who live there and to explain the economic benefit that comes out of those places.

Now, regional infrastructure is a real passion of mine. In my previous job, I worked for an organisation called the Committee for Greater Shepparton, and we tried to advocate regional infrastructure being built. I must say, not coming from a particularly partisan background as a young person, I had a lot of admiration for the Hawke and Keating governments; they made me impressed with Labor for a while, but that was cured a bit later on. When I was the CEO of the Committee for Greater Shepparton, I found the coalition government really responsive on building and funding regional infrastructure.

The Echuca-Moama Bridge was a fantastic bridge project. That bridge over the Murray River, linking those twin towns, improved the connectivity from southern New South Wales to that part of the west of my electorate. That has made a huge difference. That was funded by the coalition—really pushed, particularly, by then Minister Chester, who I want to congratulate on that. I spoke in this place the other day of many of my opponents at the last election—not the Labor Party; other opponents, at my last election—whose platform was 'We need to kick out the Nats because they don't do anything for our electorate.' And what was the platform—the literal platform—that they used for that? They stood on top of the Echuca-Moama Bridge—$360 million for which had been delivered by the National Party.

Be that as it may, there's been some significant rail infrastructure, which is moving more professional people to Shepparton because not only have we got better trains between Shepparton and Melbourne but we're going to have extra services. That was delivered by my friend the member for Riverina when he was in his portfolio in the previous government.

There are other building blocks of the economy that people in metropolitan areas might not appreciate. I come back to the agricultural production of the Murray-Darling Basin and what that has meant for the Australian nation for over 100 years: the construction of channels which take water from the Murray and Goulburn Rivers in my electorate, through a network of farms, and deliver that water, so that areas that once grew very little now grow pastures, lucerne crops and corn crops, that all feed the dairy industry, and fruit crops—peaches, apples and pears. I'm so proud that that's a part of Australia that I represent. But, for those people to continue doing that, they need a government that says, 'Okay; we're going to spend money and make rules,' as I say to those grade 6 kids, 'that increases your ability to do that, because it's good for Australia, it's good for our own people here and it's also good because we export a lot of that produce to China, to South-East Asia, to South Asia and to the Middle East.' That provides sustainable jobs for people and it provides economic income for this nation.

So what do the Labor Party do about it when they come to government? Based on ideological tangents, the Minister for the Environment and Water has decided to rip up what was an agreement under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and basically make it much harder for our horticulturalists and dairy farmers to grow the food that sustains Australia and provides export dollars for this nation. It threatens small communities that have sprung up because of hard work, because of the combination between capital and labour. Someone put their own money into a farm or a factory. People from all over the world came to work on that farm or in that factory and create something really special. There are communities across my electorate—Numurkah, Nathalia, Stanhope, Echuca, Cobram, Shepparton—where that Australian miracle has happened. Capital has been invested, labour has turned up and everyone's done well out of it. The people who invested the capital have done well because these are profitable businesses because this was back in a time when government said, 'Our responsibility is to make sure we've got the building blocks for you to be profitable.' The people who worked in those industries were winners because they moved to a beautiful part of regional Australia, bought their own houses, raised their families in caring and nurturing communities and have been part of something really special. Those people are proud to have worked in places like SPC, Bega and Kagome.

That's all threatened by this government's attitude towards agriculture policy and water policy in the new, brutal Murray-Darling Basin Plan regime. It's also threatened by the IR laws. What I was talking about just a few moments ago in relation to the success that I've seen growing up in the seat of Nicholls—and this is the case anywhere in Australia—is that it's the partnership between capital and labour. 'I do well if you work hard and throw yourself into this job.' That's what capital says. Labour says, 'I've still got a job if you're profitable.' That partnership is what it's all about, and it's worked so well in the Goulburn Valley and other parts of Australia. But what we're seeing now is bringing the conflict back—the mean, nasty employer is trying to screw over the poor little worker. The modern Australia that we were moving towards where it's a partnership and the employer wants to keep good workers, so they give flexibility but say, 'I might need to give you a phone call on the weekend if something happens and I don't know what's going on'—all of those arrangements and agreements are being torn apart by this conflict that's being created out of nothing. I think that's regrettable and I think our economy will suffer for it. I hope we can rejig our direction as a nation and get back to productivity when we're talking about the economy.

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