Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Labor Party in this place represent the group of people in Australia who want to live off the efforts of the past—people who have come to this place from trade union backgrounds; people whose greatest contribution to Australian public life was to work their way through the trade union movement, effect their own particular promotion and slowly but surely cement themselves into a position where they were selected for this place. So it is understandable that, if a majority of members in this place have those influences in their decision making, after the next election we are going to very much see the trade union bosses—a very small but powerful elite—back in control of this country.

The Australian Labor Party have forgotten the roots of their party—that is, the representation of workers. In debates in recent times there has been a lot of talk about trade union power and the rights of trade union officials but nothing has been said about the rights of workers. I suggested in the parliament recently that the Labor Party no longer represent workers; that they are in fact representing the non-productive culture of Australia. I have had a number of cards and letters from people who have supported those remarks, and I am grateful for those. The point has been made to me by ordinary Australians that they are angry and disappointed that this party that had a fine tradition, of 100 years or more—when the struggle of others produced an organisation that was meant to represent the ordinary, everyday man and woman and their family—now is a party that does not want to do anything.

The Labor Party would prefer to send taxpayers’ dollars to consultants and committees to discuss the way something might be done; they would prefer to bring in a team of academics and professionals to discuss the way forward and constantly put out glossy reports explaining that ‘progress is underway because discussions are underway’. They would prefer committees to inquire and consultants to create the perception of activity rather than to actually get things done.

There is a perfect example of that in my own electorate. Back in 2000, the then Minister for Transport and Regional Services, John Anderson, announced through the budget process the decision of the Commonwealth to build, at the Queensland government’s request, sound barriers along Riawena Road at Salisbury. Residents in this part of my electorate have a national highway—gazetted by the Queensland government as a national highway in 1991-92—going past their homes. It was not wanted by local residents as a national highway, but, nevertheless, it has been that for all that time. Residents in my electorate have been putting up with heavy truck traffic noise all through the night. At my intervention, we responded. Minister Anderson, the member for Gwydir, put forward the money in the budget process. More money has followed from there. Has the Queensland government built anything? The answer is no. The state member for Yeerongpilly, Simon Finn, is not a bad bloke. He means well, but he is poorly advised by his senior people in the Queensland government, who keep saying, ‘This is now on the priority list.’ It has been on and off the priority list for seven years, and the people of Salisbury continue to put up with the truck traffic noise along Riawena Road.

If you look at the way the Persse Road tollbooth impacts on road transport around my electorate, you see yet again a state government that likes to form committees, likes to form shelf companies—like Queensland Motorways, which is wholly owned by the Queensland government through the Queensland Treasury Corporation. Its major shareholders are the Queensland Department of Main Roads and Queensland Transport, which operates the only toll road in the whole state of Queensland. What it does is to drive interstate trucks onto local suburban streets in my electorate.

When it comes time to vote, the people of Australia will see through the radical, trade union dominated government that is being offered by those opposite. As the Treasurer has made very clear in the parliament in recent days, the state governments of Australia are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on committees, hiring their mates in highly paid consultancies, putting the states into $58 billion worth of debt at the same time as the Commonwealth government has retired Commonwealth debt and will create an asset for the people of Australia of $50 billion over the forward estimates. While Labor goes into a debt of $58 billion through the states and we go $50 billion up at the Commonwealth level, things are perhaps a little more balanced. It is not hard to imagine the sort of mess that would be created for this country, with the largesse of taxpayers’ dollars directed to consultants, if there were a Labor government in this place.