Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to be speaking in the grievance debate today. As a parliamentary secretary, I do not get the opportunity to talk on wide-ranging issues in my electorate because I usually only get to speak on legislation before the House. This is one of the very few opportunities that a parliamentary secretary has to comment on matters that pertain directly to their electorates. Today I want to talk about a number of the programs that exist in Sturt that are funded and supported by the Commonwealth government. Often in this place we talk in public discourse about the issues of interest rates, unemployment, the economy, national security, the safety net and so forth. But there are many other government programs—excellent ones—that are being run throughout the country, in your electorate and mine, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, that do not necessarily get the same amount of discussion in the public debate, so I want to touch on a few of those today.

One of those is the Building a Healthy, Active Australia initiative. This is a program across Australia that is worth about $116 million. It is funded by the Commonwealth. It includes campaigns like the Go for 2&5 campaign about promoting the healthy eating of fruit and vegetables on a daily basis, and the Get Moving campaign, which is a TV advertising campaign designed to encourage children, in particular, into physical education and to eat well.

In my electorate, we have 11 schools being funded. Each one has taken full advantage of the $1,500 that is available under Building a Healthy, Active Australia to redo their tuckshops and take other measures. In my electorate, that has ranged from having dietitians come and speak to students to newsletters, themed weeks and remodelling school tuck shops along lines that promote healthy eating among the students at those particular schools. That is coupled with the Active After-school Communities Program of the Australian government. That is designed to promote physical activity after school among students. Schools are less and less these days requiring sport to be compulsory, as it would have been when you were at school, Mr Deputy Speaker, and as it was when I was at school.

I have visited a number of these programs in my electorate. Next week, I am going to St Pius X School, where they have a fencing program. I was at the Highbury Primary School not long ago, where they have a wheelchair sports program. Last week, I was at the Athelstone Primary School, where my football club, the Norwood Redlegs Football Club, run a football program for active after-school care. I was at Thorndon Park Primary School earlier this year looking at their ball skills program. This is a subsidised, structured activity. In many schools, it is designed to replace the school sport that would have been very common in years gone by. It is three times a week after school, and it is a program that is running over four years at a cost to the Commonwealth of $90 million.

Staying with schools in my electorate and Commonwealth programs, we also have the very popular Investing in Our Schools program. Most members of the House would have availed themselves of the opportunity to ask the Commonwealth for funds for sometimes minor and sometimes major infrastructure development in their local schools. The program is designed to enhance the wellbeing and the education of the students, and it is $700 million over three years for largely capital works.

There are 13 schools in my electorate that have taken advantage of the Investing in Our Schools program at a cost of $1.7 million, which in a large number of schools has been mainly for minor projects. At Athelstone Primary, for example, $150,000 has been spent to upgrade playing fields and amenities. At the Magill Junior Primary School $94,000 was provided for air-conditioning. At East Marden $100,000 was provided for a library upgrade and extension. At Burnside Primary, where my twins currently go to school, about $39,000 was provided for verandahs on some of their school buildings. So, Mr Deputy Speaker, you can see the level and the kinds of projects that are funded in Investing in Our Schools. They are not large infrastructure developments, they are not new schools, but they are filling a gap in school infrastructure for which parents, friends or others cannot raise the substantial amount of money needed. The Commonwealth has decided to step in and try to fill the gaps.

There is a very obvious point to be made in all this: why is the Commonwealth running these kinds of programs? Why is the Commonwealth running an Investing in Our Schools program? Why is the Commonwealth investing in active after-school care for physical education of students, which is largely a responsibility of the states? The missing ingredient in this debate is the fact that the states have allowed their schools to get to the point where parents are demanding action and the Commonwealth feels it has to step in and try to make a difference.

We should not have to be investing in state run primary schools. We should not have to be creating after-school active programs. These are the kinds of programs, the kind of infrastructure, which are the responsibility of the states. Yet again we see an example where the states have dropped the ball and failed in their basic responsibilities. Let us not forget that each one of these states is a Labor state and each one of these states is sloshing around in billions of GST revenue—a courageous political decision taken by this government—of which the state governments are the beneficiaries, as it is a state tax. They have no excuse as to why they cannot manage their schools better and why they cannot run the basic programs that you would expect state based education departments to run. Investing in Our Schools is a particular example where they should be doing some of the essential infrastructure upgrades—as simple as putting verandahs on school buildings and as simple as extending and upgrading library works. These are the things that state governments used to take pride in doing. Goodness knows what they are doing with their resources these days.

There are two other areas of Commonwealth responsibility, or Commonwealth action, which I would like to comment on in this short 10 minutes. One is the Community Water Grants funding program. It is a $2 billion Australian government water fund program—it is part of that Australian government water fund—and it is designed to engage people in saving, reusing and improving the health of local water resources in their areas with practical projects such as the installation of rainwater tanks, irrigation and the replacement of valves, taps and cisterns in wet areas of schools, local councils and other community groups across electorates. In my electorate of Sturt alone it is anticipated that the Community Water Grants funding program will save over 23 million litres of water each year. Examples in my electorate are programs run by the City of Norwood, Payneham and St Peters, the City of Burnside in which I live, St Ignatius College, which is my old school, and Trinity Gardens Primary School, which I visited on Friday last week to present certificates indicating that they had won a Community Water grant to do up their ageing cisterns and wet areas in a school that is over 100 years old. It is an excellent program. It is $50,000 for each grant. They are not massive grants but they can make a difference. If you can build community local action and the kind of responsibility that comes with it, and give that kind of example, particularly to school students, the future looks rosy for respect by people for the very scarce resource of water, particularly in a country like Australia.

Finally, I want to talk about Britannia Roundabout in my electorate. There is a group in my electorate called the Britannia Roundabout Action Group, which has been agitating for some years for the state government to take responsibility for the Britannia Roundabout and make it a priority road and a priority project. We have been fighting this battle for a very long time. Coincidentally, the state Labor government announced a redevelopment of the Britannia Roundabout before the last state election in March, at a very miserly cost of about $7 million or $8 million, which was welcomed by many of us in the eastern suburbs. Amazingly, since the state election the project has been cancelled and they have decided not to go ahead with it. It is just another example of state Labor governments—in this case the South Australian state Labor government—giving with one hand and taking with the other.

The Britannia Roundabout Action Group is not resting on its laurels. It had a public meeting recently at Victoria Park Racecourse, where University of South Australia engineers were asked to present on some of the options for the Britannia Roundabout. I would urge the state government to take responsibility for this roundabout, to make it a priority project and to seek federal funding, which can come if they decide that it is a priority project for South Australia. The tragedy for the Britannia Roundabout is that Labor has never cared about the eastern suburbs and that has not changed.