Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As to where I left off last night, I was talking about the issue of climate change during this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008. Clearly, this is one of the main issues that is resonating with mainstream Australia. Through the actions of the Rudd Labor government in its first days of office, we saw a very positive response to the views that were foremost in the minds of electors during the last election.

We saw the Rudd Labor government ratify the Kyoto protocol which, quite frankly, brought Australia back to the international bargaining table on climate change. We have had 11 years where that has just not occurred. We have seen a government that has taken all care and no responsibility when it comes to climate change. On the first opportunity that this government had, it did what it always said it would do—that is, it ratified the Kyoto protocol.

It is time that we started taking responsibility not just for the problem but for actually developing solutions. Being involved in tackling climate change should not simply be the province of doom and gloom. It should be the province of our best minds, working collaboratively together with the support of government, to do something responsible to address the issue of climate change and the level of impact that mankind has on a deteriorating environment. These are things that we do need to apply ourselves to. It is not just Australia—I have always acknowledged that—but for us to be in a position to influence the views and actions of others does mean that, as with any other set of negotiations, we must be at the table, and that is somewhere we have not been when it comes to something so fundamental to people as climate change. As someone who has spent a lot of time prior to coming to this place working in the renewable energy sector, I know the opportunities that currently exist out there, but I can only imagine what those opportunities are going to be like into the future. This is where we do need to commit funds as a form of incentive to commercialise innovation to develop the responses to climate change. This will be the hallmark of this government when it comes to developing responses to and taking leadership in climate change.

Another matter I would like to briefly touch upon is the importance of high-quality investment in our people. As important as it is to invest in our roads, our infrastructure, our high-speed broadband services and the tackling of climate change, the investment we put into our people now and into the future is going to be just as important. That is why I support the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to high-quality education. It has been reported for years that there are problems with a tight labour market and a skills shortage has emerged—mainly the product of a lack of investment in skills development. Madam Deputy Speaker, can I suggest to you that skills training through local high schools, investment in computers in our schools so that kids between years 9 and 12 all have access to computers and computer generated learning and the view of Australia’s national innovation system all point to a future where Australians will not need to choose to compete on a race for the bottom in wages and comparable conditions but can aspire to benefit from the skills and the abilities of this nation’s primary resource—that is, its people. Our ability to compete in future is going to be directly related to the ability of this nation to harness the potential of its own people. It largely rests with us to generate those ideas and also to provide the infrastructure necessary to develop the youth of this country to secure the future of Australia.

In conclusion, I am no longer troubled about the prospects of future generations in this country. After more than a decade of squandered opportunities under the Howard government, I look forward to the coming years of this government. I look forward to a government that actually does focus on developing an education revolution; a government that does focus on developing high-speed internet broadband so people can benefit, whether they be students or in industry; a government that will put the resources into developing national road and rail infrastructure to assist the development and the efficiency of our ports and our communication generally; and a government that will meet its challenges in respect of climate change. (Time expired)

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, and congratulations on your well-earned elevation to the deputy speakership. My comments today go to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2007-2008. Before I make those remarks, I congratulate the member for Werriwa on his re-election but reassure him that he may no longer be troubled, as he put it, about the challenges young people face in the future. I would say to the member for Werriwa, who I value as a friend: you can never be complacent; you must always be vigilant. You may not be troubled today, but the young people of Australia require the best of all of us every day, and new challenges emerge. Remain vigilant, Sir, and that will be in the best interests of your young community. I am pleased you are not troubled at the moment. Many of us are troubled, though, by what we are seeing going on, and some of what we see going on is captured in these bills.

The Labor Party are trying to recreate themselves as fiscal conservatives. We heard it right throughout the election campaign and it proved to be quite an effective appeal—one of those things where if you hear it often enough you might actually believe it. We have heard about targets such as surpluses of two per cent of GDP and the like. I think all bar two budgets brought down during the Howard government were in surplus. They were difficult budgets year on year, but there were nine surpluses. We know the hard work that is involved in that.

We know also, before the Howard government was elected, of the spending bonanza of the Keating government. It could not save itself despite enormous spending and despite reassuring statements in the lead-up to, and even during, that election campaign that the budget was in surplus. We know that to be nonsense: the deficit was over $10½ billion and the incoming government had the difficult fiscal management task ahead of it of how to deliver on its election commitments and maintain the essential works and services the nation required, while ensuring we as a nation were not living off the bankcard, off the Visa card. The task of rebuilding the fiscal strength of the Commonwealth began under the Howard government.

The Rudd government today is basking in the glory of work that others have done for it. It needs to do, frankly, nothing to achieve what it set itself as challenging goals. This seems to be the hallmark of the Rudd government’s early days—lots of spin, lots of theatre, but little substance. Here is another example: setting oneself a fiscal target that has already been delivered and gifted to you is no evidence of fiscal management.

We look into these appropriation bills before the chamber today and we see an interesting story unfold—the claimed savings, the new expenditure, how it has been tough and difficult. In many respects, what Labor is doing is trying to create a budget crisis to justify wiping out things it did not like so much to put in things it wants to put in. That is an incoming government’s prerogative and I do not decry it, but let us be honest about what is actually going on. This is an attack on projects, initiatives and programs valued by many in the Australian public implemented by the former government but not to the liking of the incoming government. They are getting wiped out and replaced with other things. That is what is going on, and to mask it under some poorly created veil of a budget crisis is just utter nonsense. As time goes by, I think the Labor government will fall over itself as its own rhetoric comes back to haunt it.

In these bills, there are a number of funding supplementations for agencies and programs, and many of those are welcome and worth while. However, the programs and initiatives that are not featuring in this document require some attention. You see embedded in these measures calls for additional two per cent efficiency dividends. That is an interesting approach; it does not show any considered or thoughtful review of what agencies and departments are actually doing. The government is just saying, ‘We want a two per cent yield out of all of you.’ That is hardly being fiscally conservative; that is hardly a zero based budgeting approach where one values and evaluates activity. That is an across-the-board impact.

The challenges in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the department for which I used to have responsibility, include the increasing demands being placed on departmental staff. While the number of veterans is diminishing, they are ageing and, therefore, require more care. This required an increase in the coordination of the support that was provided. Anybody who takes a broad-brush look—as the Minister for Finance and Deregulation seems to have done—would not have even apprised themselves of that reality. So I say to those people, particularly the many public servants who probably thought it was a great result for the nation to have the Rudd government elected: be careful about the ham-fisted, clumsy, brutal approach that Labor is already displaying in its budgeting process. Be mindful that important projects, programs and activities can be cut for no other reason than they are disliked by the Labor Party. Be mindful, too, of the attack on rural and regional Australia in these two bills—so many resources are being dragged out of those areas.

Another thing to be mindful of is where we started. Contrast the challenge facing the new government with the contrasts that faced the previous government when it was elected. In 1996 there was an enormous Bankcard bill from the $96 billion debt Labor had accumulated and a budget deficit of $10½ billion on day-to-day outlays. We as a nation were spending $10½ billion more than we were bringing in in revenue. That presented some real budget challenges. Those challenges were addressed and overcome and the fiscal circumstances of the nation were turned around. Now we have an incoming government with a rolled-gold economy, swimming in cash, that is saying there is some kind of budget crisis. It is utter, unsustainable nonsense. I think more Australians will come to reflect on this matter. To scream about a crisis at a time when they are rolling in cash is extraordinary. They set targets which have already been met and then claim credit for meeting them. That gives us another extraordinary insight into the behaviour of the Rudd government even in these early months.

Let us be clear: to cut programs and projects because you do not like them is okay—make that case; and to say that funding should be directed to other priorities is okay—make that case. I note from some of the information provided here that people are getting stuck into rural and regional projects which are creating focal points for activity and enterprise in rural and regional communities—as though that is a bad thing. But if you look into where the money is being directed, you will see a little bit of that character coming through in some of the new funding allocations. Let us be clear: it is just a choice. Knock off things you do not like, even if they are working and making a meaningful contribution. Knock them off and put something else in there. That is okay. Governments can do that. But they should at least be frank about why they are doing that and be open about that being the motivation. They should not invent some kind of bogus fiscal crisis.

The bills touch on a couple of important areas. We have touched on the efficiency dividend and the hairy-chested bravado the minister for finance displays when he says, ‘We’re getting a two per cent efficiency dividend out of everybody, regardless of the impact.’ That is not terribly smart, but that is a decision that has been taken. I have provided one very simple, familiar example about how that can be a very poor approach.

Embedded in Labor’s policies are a number of undertakings which create obligations for agencies. Take the ABC, for instance. Nowhere in the ALP arts policy was there any commitment for additional funding, just some warm words. That is okay; that is the way much of the policy was developed. But embedded in it was a requirement that the ABC meet the Australian drama production standards that the commercial television networks are required to meet. The ABC do not currently have that obligation, but Labor is saying they should. That is also okay. But that will put a $60 million new requirement on the ABC to meet those Australian drama production requirements. It was not previously imposed upon them, but now it is to be imposed upon them. There is no extra funding but, in effect, there is a $60 million obligation jammed into the existing funding envelope of the ABC. What is going to be cut? How are they going to meet that commitment? The creative arts community, understandably, welcomed that commitment. But how will it be funded? The ABC have not received any reassurances from Labor policy that there will be any new funding or anything of that kind, just that Labor policy is to value the ABC—like the vast majority of Australians do. Welcome aboard to the Labor Party!

How is the new $60 million obligation which is being imposed going to be accommodated within a budget that is not growing? These are some of the fiscal management challenges that are being created by the ALP. This is not fiscal conservatism; this is fiscal decreeing by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and then letting everyone else mop up the mess.

I challenge the Labor Party to be clear on where the $60 million is going to come from. What is going to be cut in the ABC to finance this new obligation—an obligation which the ABC currently does not have, which the Labor Party wants to impose upon it, at a time when there are no additional resources to do so? The former government used to say to the ABC: ‘We’d like certain things done. We recognise these things are over and above the charter of responsibilities.’ We have seen the rollout of additional services, activity in rural and regional areas and some effort to ensure there is local content on ABC regional radio. These were all sound measures, but the budget came with them. If you are going to ask for additional effort and activity beyond what has been shaped as the strategic plan and priorities for the ABC from its global budget, you supplement the global budget. More demands on and more requirements of the ABC require more resourcing. It is not a difficult equation, but it is now very difficult for the ABC. The board is faced with this challenge: where is the $60 million going to come from to finance this couple of lines in the ALP arts policy which say that the ABC now needs to meet local drama production requirements, just as the commercial networks need to do?

This legislation also talks about a topic quite close to me—that is, NetAlert. In estimates in the last few days we saw the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, doing a great jawboning down of NetAlert as a program, as a process, as a way of equipping Australian families with tools to help them manage their family’s interaction and access to the internet. Senator Conroy was decrying the take-up rate of NetAlert and the utilisation of the software funded through it. It seemed to be a reverse argument for his poorly conceived clean-feed idea. I do not know too many people who think that is a clever idea, given the dynamism in the internet world and how URLs can change quickly and you can get around some of the clean-feed devices. It emphasises the need for parental supervision—that it is key, supported by tools that help them manage a range of different people in a household using the one unit. Also, ISPs can offer value-added services such as making devices, technology and software part of the service. If parents want to go to whitelisting services and then shape access to those sites designed and specifically selected to be suitable for children of different ages, that would be fine too, but that is a collaborative approach where the parents are at the core of it.

It worries me greatly that the Labor Party’s clean-feed proposal, already ridiculed and shown to be ineffective in the UK, would deny whatever somebody—and this is yet to be determined—thinks is inappropriate content. It would apply consistently right across all age groups and types of computer users, regardless of their circumstances, and we have already seen that it does not have too many fans. So what does Senator Conroy do? He does not address this issue but tries to run down NetAlert. There is further evidence of it in these bills. He is complaining that the take-up rate of NetAlert is not what it should be and, therefore, justifies ending the program.

When you look at these bills, you see that Senator Conroy has sucked out the budget set aside for NetAlert—to communicate its availability, its potential benefits for households, the way in which families can interact with it and update protections in any way they see fit—to stop public education of the communications campaign. What a cunning plan, Senator Conroy. If you want to make sure no-one takes something up, do not tell them about it and, therefore, just suck the very budget out of something designed to inform the Australian public not only about the risks but also about some of the tools and assistance that are available to help people manage their family access to the internet. These are the things in these budget papers that people are less keen to talk about.

Then there is the work around BroadbandNow, which tries to help communities that may be wanting to access broadband services to interact with those providing services and make sure they know what is available at their premises. That consumer help centre with its telephone and web information was a great tool. That BroadbandNow program was an ally to broadband users to access the kinds of services that they were angling for. That is going as well. Is the Labor Party simply setting up these programs to fail to justify its confused, poorly thought through, almost foundering at the first rock proposals for activity in this area? It is something that needs closer examination.

I would also like to touch on a couple of budget issues that are very relevant to my electorate of Dunkley. During the election campaign we put forward a number of proposals for our community. Our local plan was very well endorsed. Our campaign put forward this local plan that took advantage of the momentum and opportunities being nurtured at a national level and translated them into very real and very practical outcomes for our local community. People came up to me and contrasted our campaign with the almost stealth like campaign from the ALP, which did not comment on any of the local issues and did not put forward any local plan—in fact, it simply traded on the cult of Kevin. The cult of Kevin was what was being perpetuated in the electorate. That was their campaign strategy choice, and that was a decision for the Labor Party. The local community did not seem to feature at all in that.

I think that campaign reminded people of what was said by the last Labor member for Dunkley, back before 1996. At the time of the last Labor federal government, the Labor member for Dunkley quite openly said that our community had been forgotten. There were so many outer metropolitan areas, particularly down in the south-east, that just did not seem to feature on the radar screen. It was an interesting confession by the former member. He is a very decent bloke—perhaps that is what led to that confession. I am pretty certain that it resonated with the local community. It certainly did not help his electoral prospects, but it was true. We are already starting to see that again here.

In appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 there is no funding for the Frankston bypass. The former government made a commitment, if re-elected, to fund that in partnership with the states, because we have got EastLink dumping 25 per cent more traffic onto the Frankston Freeway—a freeway that is already clagged at the end where it intersects with the Frankston-Cranbourne Road—not to mention the extra traffic that is going to be drawn towards it as the area continues to develop. There is no mention of that—nothing.

Then there is the support for our local young people who may be gifted and skilled but who may not be academically engaged in the secondary school community. We reached out to them with a commitment to build a new Australian technical college. That was welcomed with great enthusiasm in the local area as a real priority. In the secondary school where I was a former school council president, Monterey, these were the kinds of initiatives that we were dreaming of just to engage young people who might not necessarily have seen the link between the academic course of study they were exposed to and their future life prospects. These talented young people have skills and a promise for a bright future. We were aiming to give life to that. Young people are looking to pursue a pathway at a technical college designed for year 11 and 12 students and commence their trade qualifications and get a grounding in business management and those workplace competencies that employers are looking for. Employers are telling me that they cannot recruit anybody. This was a very sound and responsive local initiative and there was nothing but silence from the ALP. Sadly, you see none of these things embraced in these appropriation bills.

There has been wonderful progress with the CCTV network in Mornington and a good early start in Frankston. There have been a number of commitments tackling not only hot spots around the taxi rank and linking the railway precinct with the entertainment precinct on the Nepean Highway but also the foreshore and some additional areas, including the Seaford station, where many commuters park their vehicles. The rollout of this technology was extremely well received. These are issues that are not in these appropriation bills. These matters were embraced and valued by the local community. These are things that I think the new government should take into account. I would hate to see our community forgotten again because we have now got another Labor government. (Time expired)

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2007-2008, which seek appropriation authority for the additional expenditure of funds from consolidated revenue in order to meet requirements that have arisen since the budget. The total additional appropriation being sought is $3.3 billion, approximately 4.5 per cent of total appropriations. Many of the items that are not in these bills represent the first stages of our government’s commitment to rein in government spending. Many of the items not in these bills represent the last desperate gasps of the Howard government as it attempted to buy itself another term. During the election campaign we made a promise to the Australian public that we would manage the public purse with diligence. This government made a commitment to the Australian people that we would identify areas where reductions, savings and offsets could be made from the previous government’s spending program. Unlike the previous government, we know we have a battle on our hands. The onus is on us, as a government for all Australians, to manage fiscal policy responsibly.

We are serious about tackling the inflation problem, we are serious about the impact that 11 interest rate increases in a row have had on borrowers and we are serious when we say that it is crucial for all levels of government to manage public finances appropriately and effectively. At present, underlying inflation is at 3.6 per cent—a 16-year high. This rate is now threatening to go even higher. Today is the day to act on the challenge of rising inflation. I acknowledge that the member for Dunkley may feel very passionately about many of the things that he has spoken on. However, the previous government failed to deal with inflation and we have been left to do it for them. Our government is serious about this challenge. Every decision we make on public spending has to be made on a long-term basis.

These proposed bills are merely the start of a long road of thoughtful public spending. This government has already announced a five-point plan to fight inflation. The first point in this plan was to ensure that the government takes pressure off demand by running a strong budget surplus. This government will show fiscal restraint. This government is committed to a budget surplus above 1½ per cent of GDP. To achieve this is not easy. To achieve this, we need to make tough decisions today. During the election we said that we would have a review of spending. We did not attempt to hide it—we said we would have a review of spending. Now our razor gang has been working to cut the waste out of the budget. In the bills that I support today this government has identified $643 million worth of savings over the next four years, including $243 million in 2007-08. We want to put maximum downward pressure on inflation. We want to do everything in our power to ease the financial burden on working families that are impacted by interest rate and inflationary pressures. This is not just some academic exercise that we are engaged in. Everything we do in this place—every spending decision we make—has a direct impact on the capacity of working families to pay their mortgages, to buy groceries or to pay their childcare fees.

There is still more to be done. The Rudd Labor government will continuously look at spending money wisely, and we will continue to review the spending of all departments to show fiscal restraint. These initial savings are just the beginning. More savings will be announced on budget night. The previous government squandered millions of taxpayers’ dollars to buy votes. Public money was pork-barrelled, public money was squandered and the economic opportunities of the mining boom were carelessly fed to the inflation monster that this government now has to fight. Four hundred and fifty-seven million dollars was spent on government advertising in a 16-month period under the Howard government. Three hundred and fifty million dollars was spent in a single year on Work Choices. Both of those initiatives alone represent the savings that we found in this budget. Imagine if the previous government had not spent that money on its profligate advertising campaigns. This bill brought to the parliament once again shows the Rudd government’s firm guarantee to the Australian public that we will follow through with our own election commitments. That is what we were elected to do.

One of the key capacity constraints in the economy today is the skills crisis. Addressing the skills crisis was one of the core planks of our election campaign. This bill sees the implementation of the first part of our government’s agenda to overcome the skills crisis: $242.1 million will be provided to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to enable a number of programs that work to tackle our skills crisis. Of this $242.1 million, $100 million will go towards establishing the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund. These grants will provide up to $1 million for schools to provide new or upgraded ICT equipment for students in years 9 to 12. This is welcome news for the schools and students in my electorate who have already shown a keen interest in taking up this funding.

Thirty-three million dollars will also be provided for the Skilling Australia for the Future program. This program will see 450,000 new training places over the next four years, at a cost of $1.3 billion. This program is set to start in April this year—Labor getting on with the job. In 2007-08 the Skilling Australia for the Future program will deliver 20,000 vocational education and training places that are aimed at people currently outside the workforce. Also, $92.6 million will be provided to the department to meet extra costs associated with the previous government’s Skills for the Future program and to extend the current program until our new program commences in April—all things that will assist in easing capacity constraints within the Australian economy.

This appropriation also sees the implementation of the government’s election promise to establish Infrastructure Australia. Infrastructure Australia will be a statutory authority that will set a clear agenda for this government’s investment in infrastructure: $2.5 million has been allocated within these additional estimates to support Infrastructure Australia’s establishment by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. Once this funding has been allocated and Infrastructure Australia has been established, their first task will be to undertake a national audit of Australia’s infrastructure—something the previous government neglected to do. It was more interested in pork-barrelling infrastructure projects in coalition seats than having a strategic approach to this country’s infrastructure needs. Infrastructure bottlenecks are just another area of economic efficiency that this government is tackling, and this first step is only the beginning.

The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research will also be supplied with $15.2 million to introduce the Enterprise Connect program, replacing the previous government’s Australian Industry Productivity Centres. This program is designed to help Australian businesses become more innovative and to boost productivity, something that we will welcome desperately in regional Australia.

During the election, in terms of the Health and Ageing portfolio, we promised to the people of the Ballarat electorate that a GP super clinic will be provided in the Ballan area. Once again I would like to reiterate this promise. A GP super clinic is needed in the Ballan area to attract doctors and other health professionals to service the needs of a growing community. Labor’s GP superclinic will be a one-stop shop for medical and allied health services. Once completed, the Ballan GP superclinic is expected to include: privately practising GPs; a range of allied health services, such as physiotherapy and podiatry; mental health services, including counselling; and desperately needed dental services. This will result in patients having to travel shorter distances, being less likely to be placed on waiting lists and being assisted in receiving the basic health care that they all deserve. Currently there is a lack of consulting space for GPs and allied health services in Ballan. A GP superclinic in Ballan will provide a great boost to this area and much improved health services for our local community. Today as part of this appropriation $33.1 million will be provided to the Department of Health and Ageing to provide upfront capital grants and recurrent funding for the establishment of 31 GP superclinics around Australia, and to provide incentive payments to GPs and allied health providers to relocate to these clinics. And I am happy to say that the Ballan GP superclinic is one of these 31 that I am supporting today. Additional funding proposed for the Department of Health and Ageing also includes $31.6 million for investing in hospitals and community health under the Better Outcomes for Hospitals and Community Health Program.

You do not need to look too far in the electorate of Ballarat to see the ongoing impact that climate change is having on the world. Just last week, Ballarat’s famous high school rowing regatta was shifted to Geelong. It was shifted because Lake Wendouree in the centre of Ballarat has once again, for the second year in a row, dried up. This was once the home of the Melbourne Olympic Games rowing. The Rudd Labor government has also ratified the Kyoto protocol, demonstrating this government’s commitment to tackling climate change. The Kyoto protocol is considered to be the most far-reaching agreement on the environment and sustainable development ever adopted.

But there are also practical solutions to fighting the effects of climate change that we need in my community. That is why during the election a Rudd Labor government promised the Australian people that we would make all of Australia’s 9,612 private and public schools solar schools within eight years. The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts will be provided with $50.8 million for the National Solar Schools Plan under these additional estimates. Federal Labor’s National Solar Schools Plan will allow all Australian schools to apply for: up to $20,000 to install two-kilowatt solar panels that will provide average greenhouse gas savings of up to 2.8 tonnes per year and up to $30,000 to install efficiency improvements so schools can invest in energy and water measures—a terrific initiative to help our environment.

This plan will encourage improved energy and water efficiency in schools and set a great example to our future generations about what is needed to combat climate change. The sum of $31.8 million will be used to provide rebates to households that join the climate change fight by installing solar hot water heaters to encourage improved energy efficiency in homes.

During the election Labor also announced a National Water Security Plan for Towns and Cities to secure water supplies by repairing water pipes and reducing leaks, wastage and evaporation. Dry conditions have contributed to a 30 per cent increase in the number of water mains bursting around Ballarat alone. Ballarat has over 1,435 kilometres in the underground network of water distribution pipes, some of it well over 100 years old. Labor wants to fix as many leaks in our water system as possible.

There is yet another practical response to the fight against climate change. The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts will also be allocated $15.2 million in these estimates to take early action on the National Plan for Water Security. Within the allocation provided by these bills, $189.8 million will also be provided to the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs to assist people with disabilities, their families and carers. An annual tax-free payment of $1,000 for each child under the age of 16 with a disability will be given to any carer who is receiving a carer allowance (child). This annual payment is a financial acknowledgement of the effort and the challenges that carers face every day. Carers provide a great service to the community and by acknowledging the increases in costs for carers we recognise the economic benefit to Australia as a whole of supporting them. There are many additional costs associated with caring for a person with a disability. Aids such as wheelchairs, communication aids and hearing aids can hit hard on a carer’s hip pocket. And let’s not forget about the hidden opportunity cost of the inability for carers to find substantial employment. This allocation will go some way to assisting those families in the Ballarat electorate who struggle to make ends meet while juggling both their own lives and also caring for their children.

An amount of $9 million has also been allocated to increase the support available to people in disability business services. Also under these bills, funding of $723 million in additional appropriation for non-operating expenses is outlined in Appropriation Bill (No. 4). Of this, a significant contribution of $466.4 million will be provided to AusAID for our nation’s contribution to the International Development Association. This funding will go to assisting some of the poorest countries in the world by helping them address the cost of basic health services, clean water and primary education, just to name a few. It will subsequently improve the long-term living conditions of those most in need.

An amount of $17.6 million will be provided to the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research for the Innovation Investment Fund. An objective of the Innovation Investment Fund is to establish a revolving self-funding scheme, and the $17.6 million represents the profit on the fund’s investment.

Also recognised within appropriations in Appropriation Bill (No.4) are additional payments to the state, territory and local government authorities. Payments to the state, territory and local government authorities of $172 million include such things as: a bring forward of $20 million under the AusLink program to assist the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government with an early initiation of projects; $63.7 million to the Department of Health and Ageing to provide funds to invest in hospitals and community health under the Better Outcomes for Hospitals and Community Health Program; and a $33 million increase for the Commonwealth State Territory Disability Agreement, something that went into decline under the previous government.

The government promised during the election campaign that we would show fiscal restraint, and that is what these bills represent. We promised a number of very important programs during the election campaign that will help bring inflation under control and will ease the capacity constraints that have arisen in the Australia economy. Those matters are important to take pressure off interest rates as well as taking pressure off inflation. Those are the promises that we made during the election campaign.

It is absolutely critical for the Australian government to do everything in its power to ensure that hardworking families enjoy a strong Australian economy. But it is important that we make tough decisions when dealing with the public purse. We cannot go on with business as usual, pretending that nothing has happened. The tough decisions we have made begin with implementing our election commitments and cutting the waste out of the budget to meet our target of 1.5 per cent budget surplus of GDP. We have begun with investing in areas of economic inefficiency, such as the skills crisis and infrastructure bottlenecks. These tough decisions are complemented by transparency in initiatives like Infrastructure Australia, initiatives that will take the pork-barrelling and rorts out of funding and will ensure that this government is one that looks out for all Australians—particularly, I hope, all regional Australians, not just those who live in coalition electorates.

We as a government have a responsibility to the Australian people. Australian families are the ones that have worked hard and paid taxes and they are the ones that are hit hardest by interest rates and inflationary pressures. They are the ones bearing the brunt of the previous government’s profligate spending and their inability or unwillingness to tackle the hard issues within the economy. These bills represent a responsible first step in enacting our election promises whilst equally showing fiscal restraint. The Australian people voted for this government on the basis of those promises. I support these bills.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I need to begin my remarks by commenting on and referring to the speech made in the other chamber by the member for Kennedy criticising me in a very vicious and unprovoked way in relation to a whole range of issues. I once admired and respected the member for Kennedy, and I have to say that I just feel sadness at the way in which he has degenerated into a fantasy world. Every paragraph of his vicious assault on me contained factual errors. I will go through those quickly and briefly.

He first criticised me in relation to the import of grapes from California, saying I allowed ‘grapes in from California in the same month that one-tenth of the entire grape production in California was wrecked by pierce’s disease’. That statement is factually wrong, but it also puts aside acknowledgement of the fact that our quarantine system and our import risk assessment is a science based process. The legislation specifically precludes the minister from having a role in making decisions about what products should come into Australia.

The member for Kennedy went on to comment on pork, talking about a case before the High Court which he said produced a ‘scathing indictment of the quarantine services’. The case was actually before the Federal Court and the Federal Court determined that the permits to import pig meat were legal and the analysis to determine the roles associated with imports of pig meat was comprehensive, science based and rational. The member for Kennedy then went on to comment that ‘every single quarantine official said’ that black sigatoka had come in from the Torres Strait. That also is factually inaccurate. There have been previous outbreaks of black sigatoka and, as far as I am aware, no-one is aware of how the disease came into Australia. But, if the Jardine ferry has a role in it, then the member needs to remember that intrastate quarantine is of course the responsibility of state governments.

The member for Kennedy commented that foot-and-mouth disease is endemic in the Indonesian archipelago. That is factually incorrect. He commented on citrus canker and allegations that citrus material was smuggled into Australia. I met the person who made those allegations. I found him credible, but in the end there was no collaboration for the stories that he presented. If the member for Kennedy has evidence that somebody smuggled citrus material into the Emerald district, then he must put that evidence forward. The Crown prosecutors examined the evidence and were not prepared to proceed with any kind of prosecution because they regarded the evidence as insufficient.

The member for Kennedy claimed that I allowed beef to come in from Brazil, a foot-and-mouth disease country. The beef that he was referring to was processed beef. It came from areas where there was no foot-and-mouth disease. It was disposed of when not required in Australia, in accordance with New South Wales law.

He then went on to say that I have made negative comments about ethanol—completely false. The reality is that I was the one who announced the very first commitment by an Australian government to ethanol. In the 2001 election campaign, we committed to having 350 million litres of ethanol in our fuel mix by 2010. I have been a committed and enthusiastic supporter of ethanol and actually delivered results. It is sad that in the bill currently before the House this government is actually cutting assistance to the ethanol industry in a very backward-looking initiative.

He also spoke about an ‘outbreak of white spot which has devastatingly damaged the prawn-farming industry of Australia’. That simply has not happened. He then criticised me for supporting the harvesting of flood waters in Northern Queensland. Of course this is fundamentally a state responsibility, but as minister I funded over $1 million of projects to identify ways of harnessing the waters of Northern Australia in an environmentally friendly way to make better use of the opportunities that are provided in that area.

He criticised my role in the introduction of the mandatory code of conduct for the horticulture sector and in the debate about the managed investment schemes. Frankly, he was never in the cabinet room so he has no idea what I argued in relation to any of those issues, but what he has said in those paragraphs is completely wrong and totally misrepresents my position.

He also criticises me for commenting that we needed to address the issue of woody weeds, particularly the prickly acacia tree. Again, weed management is a state responsibility, but under my term as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry we introduced a range of major new eradication programs for weeds and I put before the parliament a practical way to take those initiatives forward in an environmentally friendly way.

He criticised the assistance packages which the federal government has provided for the fishing industry, the tobacco industry and a number of other industries which have been adversely affected by deregulation. Does he suggest that the government should not have provided assistance to those industries? He accuses me of winding back the tobacco industry and then providing compensation for the farmers. The reality is that the wind-back occurred before my time as minister. The compensation package was after my term as minister, so he has given me credit there where it is not in fact due.

He blamed me for the deregulation of the egg, the sugar and the dairy industries. There were no federal regulations to be eliminated in any of those sectors. It was the states that eliminated the regulation of the egg industry, the sugar industry and the dairy industry. We came in to assist sugar producers and dairy producers because the states would do nothing to mitigate the impact, the appalling impact on those industries as a result of deregulation. So we put in place a $2 billion assistance package at the request of the dairy industry and something like $400 million to support the sugar industry. The egg industry deregulation fundamentally occurred before my time, so his references there to compensation are also inaccurate.

The member for Kennedy then went on to suggest that Ian Causley had resigned within four years because of his dissatisfaction with deregulation of the dairy industry. Ian’s name has been taken in vain. He retired, I think everyone would accept, because he had served a long and faithful time in the parliament—eight years after dairy deregulation.

Then perhaps comes the saddest part of all. At the end, the member for Kennedy made a statement that he has made before: ‘every four days in Australia a dairy farmer commits suicide’—every four days. That would mean 90 a year, 720 since dairy deregulation has occurred. I know there have been suicides in the dairy industry and indeed in a number of other industries, and it grieves me deeply, but it is simply ridiculous to suggest that a dairy farmer is committing suicide every four days. We did put in place programs to try to support farmers through these difficult times. The statement is simply wrong.

And finally he said that a sugar farmer commits suicide every two months. Again the statement is simply factually inaccurate. It is disappointing that the member for Kennedy resorts to these vicious personal attacks. His entire speech, with just one or two lines excepted, was a personal attack on me. I think it was unbecoming of him and certainly it did not reflect well on the processes of the parliament.

The bill that we are dealing with, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008, essentially involves some new government programs, but I want to talk particularly about the savage cuts that are included in this legislation. The venom with which the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and the Labor Party in government are attacking people who live in rural and regional Australia is alarming. The cuts that are being dealt with in this legislation will attack the victims of inflation and higher interest rates, not those who are causing the problems.

The biggest cuts to a range of programs have been in rural and regional areas. Many are targeting the poorest Australians. They will weaken the economy, not strengthen it. Labor said before the election that it would support the needy and the underprivileged, reduce petrol and grocery prices, deal with the skills shortages and plan for the future in areas of infrastructure and the environment. That was in 2007. Just a few months later Labor has cut funding that helped drought-stricken farmers and regional communities. It has speared research into alternative fuels. It has stopped a funding program for broadband internet access. It has smashed an apprenticeships scheme to skill rural workers. It has cut funding for the Bureau of Meteorology. It has abolished a program to help sea-change and tree-change communities deal with rapid growth. It has stripped funding for a program to protect children from internet perverts and it has sliced into one of the most important plans for Australia’s future: the National Plan for Water Security.

Many of these cuts represent broken election commitments. The excuse that the finance minister has made for these cuts is that they will put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates. The reality is that we all know that, even if these $600 million cuts were genuine, their impact on inflation would be negligible, particularly since an underestimation in one government announced program has already taken up $400 million of that money. Labor announced a program to give tax concessions to overseas companies in Australia which they costed at $15 million. We already know that the cost of that program is $400 million. So essentially all of these so-called cuts have already been lost.

But many of the cuts are not real. The minister has gone to great lengths to point out that no farmer will actually lose any of their drought assistance, and yet over $110 million of the $600 million comes from drought assistance. This is because there was a lesser number of applications than expected and so the funds will not be used. So in this instance it is not a real cut at all and its impact on inflation will clearly be nothing. However, there are genuine cuts to drought assistance. The decision to take $10 million off research and development for drought is a real cut and it means that this critical area of research and development will be lost. Once more, it breaks a Labor Party election promise. Labor said they would not cut research and development; within months they have slashed $10 million from important research and development work.

It has also decided to abolish the promotional campaign to make farmers and small business aware of their entitlements under the drought relief program. Labor is not technically cutting the drought assistance—not at this stage, anyhow—but it is not going to tell anybody how you can access it. It is not going to give any information to the very people who may need to access that information. In fact, I heard the Prime Minister say yesterday in question time that he is going to send the drought bus, which was part of the information program, up to Mackay, to the flood victims. The flood victims do need assistance, although Mackay has a fine Centrelink office and staff who have been able to do that work. The drought bus is being taken into the flood areas to keep it active because the government does not see a role for it anymore in telling drought-stricken farmers or businesses about their needs. These are real cuts that are clearly designed to disadvantage those people who need to access this funding.

The government wants to address inflation issues, and that is reasonable—it should do that. Good economic management requires that inflation be kept under control. However, Labor is making much of its five-point plan to deal with inflation and, frankly, none of those five points will do a single thing to put downward pressure on inflation for at least a decade. It is an empty plan. It has no vision at all on how to deal with inflation in the short to medium term.

Let us look at the five-point plan as announced by the minister on 6 February. The first point is: ‘achieve a budget surplus of 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2008-09, provided growth prospects remain as currently anticipated’. If, in fact, growth prospects remain as currently anticipated, we will have a 1.5 per cent budget surplus. The government do not have to do anything to achieve that. That has been delivered to them by the previous government and its sound economic management. So the first point is absolutely empty.

The second point is: ‘examine all options to provide real incentive to encourage private savings’. No plan—just an inquiry. An inquiry into private savings is not going to deliver any downward pressure on inflation, and we all know that. The third point is: ‘tackle chronic skill shortages in the economy’. It is important to deal with the supply of labour and skills to our economy. But, if the only solution to upgrading skills is to build trade colleges, that will take at least a decade, and probably even longer, before it delivers any significant additional numbers of skilled tradesmen into the workforce. It is not a solution for inflation today—or even next year or the following year. It is something that may need to be done, but it is something whose benefits are a decade off.

The fourth point is: ‘provide national leadership to tackle infrastructure bottlenecks’. It is a little unusual to have that claim coming from Labor, since it is the Labor states that failed to invest in the ports, neglected the rail system and ensured that bottlenecks were created in the first place. The previous government had committed huge funding sums to roads and to rail; and yet, in the first round of announcements, we are told that all of the commitments that the previous government made to infrastructure are now going to be sent off to a new bureaucratic organisation to be reviewed. So, in fact, nothing is going to happen to deliver relief from infrastructure bottlenecks for years while this bureaucracy re-examines all of the decisions that have been made previously. Never forget that the choice of priorities was not something that the previous federal government did alone. The state governments—all Labor state governments—were involved in the development of the priorities of the projects.

The other very interesting thing that has come through from Senate estimates is that the promises that Labor has made are not going to be subject to any scrutiny. They are just going to go ahead. But ones made by the previous government are going to be dissected and dealt with again. Labor in the last election campaign promised to spend less money on infrastructure than did the coalition—less money. So how can their current programs do anything to deliver downward pressure on inflation?

The final point is: ‘provide practical ways of helping people re-enter the workforce and remove disincentives to working hard—to lift workforce participation’. That is fine. Why, therefore, did the Labor Party oppose the Welfare to Work reforms, which were designed to increase workforce participation and to provide assistance to people who can enter the workforce to do what they can in the community? The fact is that this five-point plan is economic illiteracy. The government has no plan to address inflation over the medium term. It would be at least a decade before these initiatives could have any effect whatsoever.

I have to say that I really dread the day when the Prime Minister realises that his first choice of Treasurer is not up to the job and he appoints the finance minister to take his place, because the venom and the viciousness with which the finance minister has attacked programs—in his first round of cuts—which are designed to support some of the most disadvantaged people in the community is particularly disappointing.

In the short time that is left to me, I will refer to some of these specific cuts. It is interesting to note that the cuts will be made across quite a range of areas where the incoming government professes a particular interest. For instance, Labor says that it believes in reducing global warming, that it wants to do something about addressing greenhouse emissions, and yet these cuts take $15 million away from the FutureGen project. They take $16 million from the Asia Pacific Forestry Skills and Capacity Building Program and the energy technology network. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority is to lose $45 million from its critical work in trying to address the water issues in the Murray-Darling Basin. The Low Emissions Technology and Abatement program loses $2 million and, in another attack on people who live in country areas, the Renewable Remote Power Generation program is to have $42 million taken away. Does this government believe in renewable energy, or does it believe that is it just city people who should have renewable energy and people who live in remote areas should be denied that support? As I mentioned previously, $16 million is going from the ethanol support program. This government clearly does not believe in alternative fuels, because it is slashing the very program that would have been designed to achieve our objectives in relation to renewable energy.

The government has slashed the Australia Connected BroadbandNow program, designed to give regional people access to broadband services. And then the Growing Regions program has gone. Labor says it is interested in dealing with infrastructure. This was a program to provide infrastructure for the most needy communities in Australia—the fast-growing areas, the tree-change, sea-change areas, where there is a desperate need to provide infrastructure to support those fast-growing populations. This program was axed altogether. A government that says it is into infrastructure cuts road funding, cuts rail funding and cuts the program that would have provided infrastructure support for the most needy communities in Australia. These cuts are ill-targeted. They will do little or nothing to reduce inflation. The government has no plan to deal effectively with inflation, and these cuts can therefore only be seen as a get-square by a government wanting to attack people who live outside the capital cities. (Time expired)

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a lot of codswallop that was from the Leader of the Nationals, the member for Wide Bay, basically trying to make an argument that the Rudd government is not facing up to inflation pressures which his government left to the incoming government. And then he decided to argue about expenditure cuts that the present government is trying to make to get control of inflation and to keep interest rates under control. That was a very poor effort from the Leader of the Nationals.

I want to take this opportunity, in the second reading debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008, which will ask for money from the parliament for more expenditure on different needs of the country, to speak about health and the challenges facing the nation with regard to health. The new Rudd Labor government has inherited a health scheme that has suffered from 11 years of total neglect. We have had the blame game. It has been detrimental to health services and thus detrimental to the health of communities. It says something when, as a new government, we have had to commit to spending over $2.5 billion to improve hospital waiting lists, increase nurse training positions and develop new infrastructure through GP superclinics, and yet this will barely scratch some of the surfaces. We know that more will need to be done. This is just a start. We are playing catch-up because the previous government had no understanding of health. It had no vision for the future and no plan. We do have a plan—a plan to restore services such as dental health and a plan to build services such as GP superclinics. We have a plan and a vision for the future, to improve health outcomes for everyday Australians, particularly in primary health care and the prevention and management of chronic diseases.

But we need to be careful how we spend the money, we need to make sure we get value for money and we need to bring the people of Australia with us on this journey. We know that it will be a rough journey at times. The previous government did not spend a lot on health in my electorate—and they did not spend much on roads either. So there will be a few rough roads that we have to ride on this journey of reform. Any reforms that we make, any changes that need to occur, must be made in consultation with communities and not forced upon them. Labor has some good policies on health, which like all our policies have been developed through extensive consultation with stakeholders. This needs to continue.

Rural and regional communities feel vulnerable. They have limited services, limited health services and limited opportunities for training and employment. We need to look after regional communities. It is when there is change that regional communities feel most vulnerable. Some communities in my electorate have recently seen health services removed—hospital beds and aged care beds—and 24-hour emergency outpatient services have changed from face-to-face care to a phone call centre service. The state government was forced to make changes after years of neglect in funding by those in the previous federal government.

Those opposite may disagree all they like with this assumption, but I remember the last healthcare agreements, when the states were bludgeoned into signing an all-or-nothing proposal. We all remember the previous health minister’s remarks when he was asked to commence the current round of negotiations. He was not concerned. He was only concerned about the election. He was much more concerned about the election than doing his job. That is the truth and I think everybody in Australia knows it.

It has been upsetting to see how people have played politics with the communities of my electorate that have been affected by the changes. The state government announced the changes in May last year. In September, some three months later, the federal government announced up to $1 million each for the Ouse and Rosebery hospitals to restore services. Why then? Why wait three months? We got the answer on Monday night courtesy of Four Corners, didn’t we? There was a particularly bad poll—that is, bad for the government of the day—in early September, at the time of APEC. So the former health minister scrambled in desperation and threw $1 million to the local councils to use. They did not see the colour of the money. They only got weasel words that built up an expectation in a community desperate to keep services they had become familiar with. It was a hoax. No money came. It was never handed over. This was bad policy, bad politics and bad use of taxpayers’ money. There was no plan, no vision and no outcome because there was no follow-through. It was also thoughtless and thoroughly disturbing for communities who had had their hopes built up by a few feral politicians and then dashed because they were not told the truth.

I am continuing to help people to develop a proposal for Rosebery, just as I have lobbied for and helped the people of Ouse, who have developed a proposal for an MPS. Both the state government and the new federal government have agreed to consider the feasibility of this. We are moving forward at Ouse, working with people to develop their ideas and then seeing if they can work. We will do the same for Rosebery. But there is not a quick fix for either community—certainly not the quick fix that the previous government tried to make out that there was. Care must be taken. We cannot afford to waste money but we cannot afford to neglect the health of rural and regional communities.

One of the keys to good health is access to services—and quality services at that. A report on rural health by the Institute of Medicine in the United States acknowledges the obvious: it is harder to deliver quality services in rural and regional areas. Of course it is. It is also important that we provide those services, but it may mean bringing much more innovation to the service delivery.

The government’s National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission will be asked to explicitly identify a long-term plan for improving rural health services. The government’s other commitments include funding for new clinics, services and health infrastructure in individual rural centres and a new program to improve the health of Indigenous children. Specific rural workforce commitments include $2.5 million to double the number of John Flynn scholarships available to undergraduate medical students to undertake placements in rural and remote medical practices, $6 million to support the Specialist Obstetrician Locum Scheme and expand it to provide support for GP proceduralists, $2.5 million to establish a rural and remote clinical placement scheme for allied health students and $9 million to support specialists delivering outreach services to rural and remote areas through additional funding of the Medical Specialist Outreach Assistance Program. So Labor has promised extra funding for rural placements for medical students, extra university training places for nurses, including some reserved for regional universities, and a $50 million commitment to my state to help repair the neglect.

We must take care now in spending health funds, and regional communities must be the beneficiaries of this funding as well as those in the cities. The future health of communities in my electorate, in my state, in my country depends on responsible planning and administration and not on knee-jerk reactions to bad polls just before an election. It is going to take time, and we are only just beginning, but the plan is there and the will is there, and I think the understanding of the Australian people is there. There are many ways of developing our health care, and now is the time to start exploring those options. What our system tends to do is deal with sick people, and usually when somebody’s illness reaches a critical point we want to relieve symptoms. This is always the expensive end of things. What if health care was more involved with keeping people healthy or, when they have been sick, helping them to recover their health and keep healthy? Where do we go for advice? There is nothing under our current system that allows an individual to go to a one-stop shop to help them set up a health program to remain healthy or become healthy. It is time to deal with current lifestyles, to start looking at those at risk and to try and move the time when they seek help so that they have the opportunity to deal with a problem before it becomes a medical issue. For example, a lifestyle disease such as type 2 diabetes, seen as a major problem across Western nations, could be dealt with earlier.

There are many other potential problems for which, with intervention at an earlier time, critical medical treatment could be circumvented. We have become so reliant on medical expertise and machinery that we seem to have lost the ability to take some responsibility ourselves. We need to be retaught and, in seeking that tuition, to take responsibility for our lives and our health. There needs to be some assistance. It should be part of the overall health care and, therefore, attract Medicare assistance. The National Health Act, which came into being just after the Second World War, has remained geared to deal with communicable diseases, or those that deal with bacteria and viruses, and environmentally based diseases stemming from war deprivation and primitive hygiene conditions.

Today perhaps we should be looking at lifestyle diseases and all those troubles that we in our affluent society bring on ourselves: heart problems, diabetes, stroke, cancer from smoking, alcohol and drug related sicknesses, obesity et cetera. There will still be some traditional medical problems, but even some of those can be caught earlier and dealt with if people know where to go when they have some idea that something is wrong.

Tasmanians have always been innovators. There are some interesting developments there in dealing with lifestyle health issues. I believe this will lead to major changes in the way we view health, and the community will want to learn how to prevent getting sick rather than having to go through treatment because of illness. Hopefully, this will lead to valuing our doctors more and allowing them to delegate some of their less medical activities to other professionals to let them get on with their own crucial task of helping those who are sick.

Lifestyle health is linked to the ability to afford healthy foods and a reasonable roof over one’s head. As we all know, rents and grocery prices are rising and those on fixed incomes will suffer most. Labor has promised to try to help here and understands the link between good health and good fresh food and food preparation. The fast food syndrome has helped busy people both looking after families and in the workforce, but it has more undesirable side effects. We must act smarter and we must involve the community more in dealing with the problems that come from our current lifestyles. They are so different to those of 50 years ago, and we need new ideas to deal with them.

I am really glad to be in a new, fresh government that is forward thinking and is considering the difficulties that all Australians face today. We can work smarter and we can have alternatives to the way things have traditionally been done, whether in health, housing, cost of living, education or any of the major expenses that we face in our lifestyles today.

Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to address the appropriation bills in the context of some of the government’s programs for the country and also my own electorate of Charlton. One of the central challenges for any government is the management of the economy and utilisation of the country’s economic capacity for the social progress of its people. That is the Labor way. We are a forward-looking party that looks, in particular, to use economic progress to achieve social dividends. We are a party keen to make progress on both economic and social fronts to make a better and more just society.

In contrast, since entering this place, I have been struck by the somewhat backward-looking nature of the opposition. They appear unwilling to turn their minds to the future economic and social challenges we will face, intent perhaps on defending a somewhat flawed record on economic management. I come to this place keen to be involved in facing this challenge for the future, which I see as essential not only for our present generation but for future generations.

The bills I am addressing today outline part of the government’s plans for the key economic challenges facing the nation. The bills also address another area of my interest, given my role as the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement—namely, defence matters. I would also like to give an update today on progress that has been made on specific commitments relevant to my electorate of Charlton.

Firstly, though, I turn to the economic challenges that the country currently faces. As I see it, I think there are two key challenges that the government is facing on the economic front. They are the war on inflation, which has resulted from a previous government’s neglect of inflationary pressures that have been building for some time, and the need for strong, sustainable and responsible economic growth in an uncertain international economic environment. These important goals are not always complementary in terms of the policy responses they may evoke. But what is required is a thoughtful and considered approach—and this is not what we received from the previous government.

Instead, their negligent management of the economy has left us with a situation where we have had 11 successive interest rate rises and we are currently experiencing a 16-year high in the underlying inflation rate. Inflationary pressures are still high, as we know. The minutes of the Reserve Bank meeting in February, which were released yesterday, reveal just how much that is playing on the mind of the RBA board. It debated whether the change in the cash rate should be an increase of 25 or 50 basis points, given its concerns. The bank is also predicting that inflation will remain as high as 3½ per cent until around the middle of 2010.

In recognition of the significant challenge that we now face, the new government has released a five-point plan to combat inflation, which also allows for investment in the future growth of the economy. It is a plan that encapsulates both macro- and micro-economic initiatives aimed at addressing demand and supply side inflationary pressures. Firstly, the government will exercise fiscal restraint, as we have heard, to take the pressure off demand. As outlined by the Treasurer and the finance minister, the government will run a strong budget surplus of at least 1.5 per cent of GDP.

Secondly, in the period ahead, the government will be examining all options to provide real incentive to encourage private savings—and that is very important in reducing inflationary pressure. Thirdly, the government will be unfolding our plan for tackling chronic skill shortages in the country—and I will say a little more about that in a moment. Fourthly, the government will provide national leadership to tackle infrastructure bottlenecks. Fifthly, the government will provide practical ways of helping people to re-enter the workforce and to remove disincentives to working—in other words, to lift workforce participation.

For the longer term, the government is determined to deal with the chronic investment deficits on the capacity side of the economy in skills and in infrastructure. As can be seen by the initiatives contained within the appropriation bills, this is more than just an abstract commitment; it is a concrete guide to the way the government will be addressing the challenges we face. But one of the first components and important elements of the bills addresses the need for fiscal responsibility and constraint. It includes the first stage of the government’s Expenditure Review Committee processes. The ERC is essentially fulfilling the government’s commitment to identify reductions, savings and offsets from the previous government’s spending program so that such reductions, savings and offsets may be redirected to better and more effective program priorities. Already the government has been able to identify over $642 million of taxpayers’ money that was being spent unnecessarily by the previous government, generally for its own political purposes.

I want to talk just briefly about one of the types of savings we are talking about, which has been of some interest to me. Within the bills is contained a $30 million saving in 2007-08 due to administrative efficiencies arising from the transition from Australian workplace agreements to collective enterprise agreements and statutory individual contracts. This is just one of the direct costs of the former Howard government’s extreme industrial relations laws and it is evidence too that the system of AWAs was complex and placed excessive burdens and demands on employers and employees. In contrast, Labor’s approach to workplace relations will be far more flexible and, of course, far more fair for employees—and I will be speaking on the government’s transitional Workplace Relations Bill later today. The government’s ERC in a very short time has been able to explode the myth that the previous government was somehow fiscally prudent; of course it was not. There were multiple cases of profligate and pork-barrelling expenditures exacted by the former government that have caused harm to the economy. The fact is that, on economic management, the former government had some serious failures. It was irresponsible and it did contribute to rising inflationary pressures through spending but also because of its failure to address the capacity constraints that are confronting our economy. Notwithstanding a 50 per cent improvement in the terms of trade—a historical increase in the terms of trade for this country and a perhaps once in a generation opportunity to invest in the nation’s future and to address supply-side constraints—the former Howard government failed.

One important area in which it did fail was in relation to skills. The appropriation bills will help to rectify that failure. To give just one example of the inflationary pressure generated by the skills shortages—and the previous government’s failure to address them—I will refer to the labour market in the defence industry, where anecdotal evidence is now demonstrating that wage pressures due to skills shortages are generating potential wage increases in the order of approximately eight to 12 per cent at the higher skill levels. These of course will add to costs in the defence acquisition and sustainment processes.

So we have demand rising faster than supply. There are two ways to rectify this: firstly, we can increase inputs, capital and labour, to increase output to more approximate demand; and, secondly, we can become more efficient at using our inputs so that we produce more with the same inputs—in other words, increase productivity. Increasing skills formation achieves both of these goals. Regular surveys identified the availability of skilled employees as the No. 1 constraint on business investment. According to the previous government’s own estimates, Australia faces a shortage of more than 200,000 skilled workers over the next five years. By increasing skills formation, we will allow businesses to produce more, thereby relieving inflationary pressure. Secondly, by increasing the skills base of the country, we will increase Australia’s human capital, and this will encourage productivity growth—increasing our international competitiveness and allowing us to produce more with the same quantity of inputs, thereby placing downward pressure on the inflation rate.

I am pleased to say that the appropriation bills that are before the House contain a number of measures to tackle Australia’s current skills deficit. Included in these is the establishment of the National Secondary School Computer Fund. The Australian government has committed $900 million for the National Secondary School Computer Fund, which will be delivered over the four years 2008-2011. The fund will allow all Australian secondary schools to apply for grants of up to $1 million, dependent on enrolment and the need to assist them to provide for new or upgraded information and communications technology for their students in years 9 to 12. All schools providing secondary education will benefit from the fund. Funding can be used to purchase computers, data projectors, interactive whiteboards and other information communications technology equipment and support.

The first $100 million of the fund will be directed to schools with the greatest need from June 2008. These schools will be identified by a preliminary survey to identify the number of computers currently in secondary schools. The survey results will facilitate the commencement of the application process for these schools in early March 2008, with applications closing in April 2008. I am encouraging all of the local secondary schools in my electorate to apply, and I know the Deputy Prime Minister has also written to them. That is an extremely important program in the electorate of Charlton, as I am sure it is in many other electorates around the country. Many schools have few computers, poor access to the internet and little capacity for students to learn all that they possibly can from information and communications technology.

Another program designed to address the skills deficit is the government’s Skilling Australia for the Future Program, which is to start in April 2008. This program will deliver 20,000 vocational education and training places aimed at people currently outside of the workforce, thus lifting our participation rate. As members of my electorate and the Australian public generally well know, the previous government failed completely when it came to vocational education. The funding of 20,000 vocational education and training places by the new government will begin to address this problem, but it is just the start. Our commitment will extend past these initial places to cover 450,000 over the next four years. This will significantly help to address one of the capacity constraints that we are currently facing and that the previous government failed to fix.

Developing additional economic, social and innovation infrastructure is also essential if we are to improve the performance of the economy and our quality of life. It will relieve capacity constraints further, increase productivity and put downward pressure on inflation. We are seeing the impact of infrastructure bottlenecks—whether it is clogged ports preventing resource exports or congested roads preventing efficient transportation of goods and services. The arteries of the national economy are clogging up and the economy is feeling some of the strain.

On the other hand, we have all witnessed the economic vitality engendered by well-planned infrastructure developments. The commitment of the Curtin and the Chifley governments to postwar reconstruction and infrastructure development was a significant factor in the postwar boom. Looking at overseas examples, in a more contemporary environment, massive infrastructure investment, most notably in knowledge infrastructure, helped the Republic of Ireland, for example, and Singapore to develop some of the most advanced economies now in the world. The historical and international examples demonstrate the economic benefits of coordinated infrastructure investment—something which the former Howard government did not believe in.

The bills before us also provide funding for the establishment of Infrastructure Australia, in recognition that there is a great need in this country for a nationally coordinated approach to further infrastructure reform. I have been a long-time advocate for such an approach—and I believe it is critical if we are to enhance Australia’s economic performance and raise national productivity. Infrastructure Australia will help drive investment where it is needed most, ensuring that it fuels the nation’s productivity capacity and not inflation. It will also allow for infrastructure decisions to be made on the basis of need, not on the basis of pork-barrelling marginal seats.

Infrastructure Australia will be charged with identifying and coordinating the provision of national infrastructure. It will also help develop a strategic approach to meet infrastructure demands, including a stocktake of the adequacy and capacity of infrastructure, effective management of the infrastructure and factors influencing user demand, a comprehensive planning framework which identifies further demands and challenges, a regulatory and pricing framework which encourages increasingly efficient use of infrastructure and timely investment in new and updated infrastructure where that is the best option. The members in my electorate clearly understand the need for a coordinated and sensible approach to infrastructure planning, and I am glad to be able to report to them that the government is working hard to implement such an approach.

Another feature of the bills concerns the establishment of the Enterprise Connect program. I am very pleased about this commitment. This model, which draws on the best features of QMI Solutions and the manufacturing advisory service, will become an essential tool for innovative businesses. Businesses will be able to access Enterprise Connect centres to find and adapt the latest research and technology, get help in solving identified problems, work out how new processes can help their business and cut through red tape to identify sources of government support for their activity.

Given my commitment to the manufacturing industry over a long period of time and the importance of that industry to the Hunter region, I am delighted that $100 million of the funding will be devoted to a manufacturing network. This will increase the productive performance of manufacturers, thereby increasing our global competitiveness. I am also very pleased about the $20 million commitment to the establishment of the Clean Energy Enterprise Connect Centre. The centre will help make Australia’s clean energy small- and medium-sized enterprises export ready, with benchmarking of services, practical assistance and access to prototyping and testing facilities. As most of the clean energy technologies will involve significant amounts for manufacturing—for example in photovoltaic cells, wind turbines et cetera—this is an extremely important initiative.

While I might be a little biased, I can think of no better location for this centre than the Hunter Valley. It is an area that has led the country in understanding the challenges and has embraced clean energy technology. It is an area that is suffering from the downturn in traditional heavy industries. It is home to the CSIRO Energy Centre, which sets a new benchmark in ecologically sustainable design by showcasing energy generation initiatives.

GP superclinics are also a feature of the appropriation bills, and I have already outlined a number of things about that elsewhere. This is an extremely important component of the appropriation bills from the standpoint of my electorate of Charlton. There is a real need in my electorate to improve the ratio of GPs to population, which currently runs at one to 2,000. It is extremely difficult for many people to get to see a doctor. Once completed, a GP superclinic in my region is expected to include an after-hours service, a chronic disease management service and a range of allied health services, including physiotherapy and podiatry. I am looking forward to working with other health agencies and representatives in the electorate to get the GP superclinic established in a location identified as soon as possible.

I wish to turn to some of the defence measures contained within the appropriation bills. The bills provide for stage 2 of the Enhanced Land Force initiative. The ELF initiative will see the establishment of two additional infantry battle groups, each comprising an infantry battalion and supporting command and control, combat support and combat service support capabilities. The funding allocated in these bills is for phase 2 of the Enhanced Land Force initiative, which raises the second battalion. This second battalion will be raised by reraising 8/9RAR as the second motorised infantry battalion in south-east Queensland with operational capability by 2010. In my time as Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement, I have gained an appreciation of the increasing importance of our Army in the future strategic environment. So I am very pleased to support this aspect of the bill.

We also, in these bills, provide for two measures that will help our troops currently serving overseas. For our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan the government is providing nearly $70 million to enhance the protective capability of the Bushmaster infantry mobility vehicles that are used to support our operations there. We are also providing $12.4 million to enhance the surveillance capability of the ADF in support of our operations in Iraq. I am very pleased that these are contained in the appropriation bills and to indicate my support for them.

I conclude by saying I am very pleased to see the wide range of initiatives contained within these bills. I am also very pleased about the number of different programs that will benefit the people of my electorate of Charlton. I commend the bills to the House.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the appropriation bills, which cover a number of areas. I wish to address my remarks to one of those areas in particular, and that is the additional funding for the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts of $50.8 million for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park structural adjustment package. This package relates to the major global initiative for coral reef conservation during the past two years, which was passed by the Parliament of Australia in early 2004 with the declaration of ‘highly protected’ status for 33 per cent of the whole province of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area, referred to as ‘no take zones’. This was an increase on the approximately five per cent of the Great Barrier Reef that had been protected since the Great Barrier Reef was first zoned for protection back in 1981.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority took the view that there was increasing scientific evidence that the existing multiple-use zoning was inadequate to conserve the full range of biodiversity for the entire Barrier Reef. For example, dugong populations had declined by 97 per cent since the 1960s, nesting loggerhead turtles had declined by 50 to 80 percent over four decades, commercial and recreational fishing had doubled since 1990 and populations of major target species of fish were reduced and were composed of small individual fish. Furthermore, the annual flow of sediment and nutrients into the Great Barrier Reef had increased fourfold and the reefs had suffered from severe coral bleaching, a series of cyclones and outbreaks of the crown of thorns starfish.

I well remember the debate that occurred at that time. I was shadow minister for the environment at the time. I urged the government to act on the science and, to its credit, the government did act on the science. The action taken was that no-take protection was extended to a minimum of 20 per cent of each of the 70 bioregions of the Great Barrier Reef such that the marine park now includes protection for 33⅓ per cent in the world’s largest network of highly protected areas. The government is providing assistance, which may include licence buyouts for affected parties such as commercial fishers with reduced income earning potential as a result of the new zoning—and an increase in that assistance is, of course, the substance of this bill.

The question that needs to be asked is: has the rezoning and the protection of one-third of the Great Barrier Reef from commercial and recreational fishing worked? This question has been examined by the School of Marine and Tropical Biology, by the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University at Townsville and by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The title of their paper is ‘Rapid response to world’s largest marine reserve network’. They seek to inform the intense scientific and sociopolitical debate about the efficacy of no-fishing areas as tools for biodiversity, conservation and fisheries management. They conclude that a rapid, positive biological response over an unprecedented spatial scale—over 1,000 kilometres—has occurred in response to the recent implementation of the world’s largest network of no-take marine reserves.

The abstract of their paper says that no-take marine reserves offer a means to counter the loss of marine biodiversity, that the world’s largest network of such reserves protecting over 100,000 square kilometres of coral reef was established on the Great Barrier Reef in 2004 and that closing such a large area to all fishing was socially and politically controversial—and, indeed, it was. I well remember the former member for Dawson, the former member for Leichhardt and Queensland coalition senators attacking the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority over this issue. Given that controversy, it is imperative that the effectiveness of the new reserve network be assessed. The researchers have found that there were significant increases in density of the major target species of the reefline fisheries in marine reserves in just two years and that the increases were consistent over an unprecedented scale exceeding 1,000 kilometres.

The team from James Cook University used underwater visual census to survey reef life on coral reefs on three inshore island groups, both before and after—1½ to two years after—the implementation of the no-take marine reserves. At the same time, sites on 28 pairs of no-take and open offshore reefs were surveyed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science. All the offshore survey reefs were initially open to fishing, but one reef per pair became no-take in 2004. The findings were that, after 1½ to two years of protection, the density of the primary target of reefline fisheries, coral trout, increased significantly in the no-take areas at Palm Island and the Whitsunday Islands, by over 60 per cent. There were small and insignificant changes where reefs remained open to fishing. That is good news too because it suggests that the reserve areas are capable of replenishing stocks and of acting as nurseries for the fished areas.

Coral trout density in no-take areas increased relative to the open reefs in all three inshore regions, significantly so in the Whitsunday Islands. Over time, increased adult fish density in the no-take areas, they say, may enhance recruitment both inside and outside the no-take areas. The spatial scale of this positive response is unprecedented, occurring simultaneously over 1,000 kilometres offshore and 700 kilometres inshore. They say:

Although preliminary, our results provide an encouraging message that bold political steps to protect biodiversity can produce rapid positive results for exploited species at ecosystem scales.

This is excellent news indeed, and I want to congratulate the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority on their work in making this zoning system happen and function as well as it has. I also want to congratulate James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science for the work that they have done in examining these issues.

We should be under no illusions about the threats facing both the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs right around the world. I want to draw the attention of the House to the definitive work done by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network back in 2004, the report of which is titled The status of the coral reefs of the world: 2004. It is quite encyclopedic and it is not possible to cover it all but I do want to use the example of the Caribbean to give the parliament something of the flavour of what is occurring in coral reefs around the world. This definitive work concludes that:

Evidence is emerging of a definite, consistent and long-term decline in the status of coral reefs of the Caribbean. These are the conclusions of a group of researchers at the University of East Anglia, England, who analysed monitoring data from 263 sites from 65 separate studies spanning 3 decades ... The regional pattern of decline is alarming; with coral cover decreasing from more than 50% on average in 1977 to approximately 10% in 2001, i.e. a loss of 80% in 25 years.

…            …            …

Virtually all sites showed a decline in coral cover over the study period.

…            …            …

Most of the absolute loss in coral cover occurred in the 1980s, particularly in Jamaica and northern and southern Central America. These losses resulted from 3 major impacts. White-band disease swept through the region and caused massive destruction of ... corals; the mass mortality of the sea urchin ... resulted in sudden and massive overgrowth of algae, and the first major coral bleaching events also reduced coral cover.

There was also the Reefs at Risk project in the Caribbean in 2004, which assessed coastal development, watershed based sediment and pollution, marine based pollution and damage, and overfishing threats throughout the wider Caribbean. Their findings were:

• That 64% of Caribbean coral reefs are threatened by high levels of human activities, especially the Eastern and Southern Caribbean ... Florida Keys, Yucatan ...
• Coastal development threatens 33% of the region’s reefs. The threat is greatest in the Lesser and Greater Antilles, Bay Islands of Honduras, Florida Keys, Yucatan and Southern Caribbean.
• Land-based sources of pollution and sediments threaten 35% of Caribbean coral reefs, most notably Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico ... Pollution and damage from ships threatens 15% of coral reefs, especially around large ports and cruise tourism centres.
• Over-fishing threatens more than 60% of Caribbean coral reefs, particularly on narrow coastal shelves near human population centres.
• Diseases and rising sea surface temperatures threaten reefs across the Caribbean.

The underlying theme of the 2004 report is that coral reefs are under threat around the world. There have been more recent estimates. According to a 2006 report, Coral reef conservation:

... approximately 20% of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed and show no immediate prospect of recovery. Of those remaining, one-quarter are under imminent risk of collapse and another quarter face long-term threat of collapse.

A survey of the Caribbean has established that, since 1977, live coral across this region has decreased by between 10 and 50 per cent, exceeding the rate of decline for tropical forests. Coral cover lost in the Indian Ocean as a result of the 1998 coral bleaching event has also shown little recovery in many of the sites affected.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina, in a report released in August 2007, have found that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific, an area stretching from Indonesia’s Sumatra island to French Polynesia, dropped 20 per cent in the past two decades. The Indo-Pacific contains 75 per cent of the world’s coral reefs and has played an important economic and cultural role in the region for hundreds of years. Their continued decline could mean the loss of millions of dollars in fisheries and tourism. The study showed that those reefs that were better managed to prevent overfishing were doing better in terms of fish population, but in terms of coral cover there was little difference between protected and unprotected reefs. The obvious conclusion from this is that warming seas as a result of climate change are likely to be driving the rapid decline in coral cover. The implications of this are that local measures aimed at conservation may mean little unless there is a global commitment to reduce greenhouse gases.

In an article in the magazine Science in May last year, Terence Hughes, who is director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville, indicated that if carbon dioxide emissions are not curtailed ‘we will eventually see reefs dominated by sea anemones and algae’—in other words, the coral will be gone. The biggest danger for reefs is bleaching and, despite the merits of various conservation initiatives, unless climate change is addressed these gains from local measures and local initiatives will be erased. It is clear that the key causes of coral reef degradation originate from human activities. They include overfishing, pollution and sedimentation due to coastal development, run-off from deforested lands and the impact of global warming. With projections of future rises in sea temperatures, a concerted global effort is required to tackle this problem.

The 2004 coral reefs report to which I previously referred went to the issue of identifying threats and stresses to coral reefs in some detail. Clearly, in order to deal with the problems we need to understand what they are. The report identified: global change rates—coral bleaching, caused by elevated sea surface temperatures due to global climate change; rising levels of carbon dioxide—increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in seawater decreasing the calcification rates in coral reef organisms; and diseases, plagues and invasives—increases in diseases and plagues of coral predators that are increasingly linked to human disturbances in the environment. Then there are direct human pressures from overfishing—the harvesting of fishes and invertebrates beyond sustainable yields, including the use of damaging practices such as bomb and cyanide fishing; sediments from poor land use, deforestation and dredging; nutrients and chemical pollution; and both organic and inorganic chemicals carried with sediments in untreated sewage, waste from agriculture, animal husbandry and industry. Then there is the development of coastal areas—modification of coral reefs for urban, industrial, transport and tourism developments, including reclamation and the mining of coral reef rock and sand beyond sustainable limits.

The report pointed to the human dimension issues of governance, awareness and political will. It noted rising poverty and increasing populations. It said that increasing populations put increasing pressures on coral reef resources beyond sustainable limits. It observed poor capacity for management and lack of resources. Most coral reef countries lack trained personnel for coral reef management, raising awareness, enforcement and monitoring. There is also a lack of adequate funding and logistic resources to implement effective conservation. Then there is the lack of political will and oceans governance. Most problems facing coral reefs can be solved if there is political will and effective and non-corrupt governance of resources. But interventions by, and inertia in, global and regional organisations can impede national action to conserve coral reefs.

I think it is impossible to overemphasise the importance of the responsibility that we have, the duty that we have, to protect the Great Barrier Reef and to use our influence internationally to tackle the problems afflicting both the Great Barrier Reef and the other great reef marvels of the world. What is happening to the coral reefs around the world is nothing short of tragic. We simply cannot sit idly by and allow this to continue. I remember years ago being able to go snorkelling on a coral reef. I am not a great swimmer, but it was a fabulous experience. I thought to myself, ‘How long has this been going on for?’ They are wonderful places. The Great Barrier Reef is described as one of the natural wonders of the world, and with good reason. We have an obligation to protect the Great Barrier Reef. We have an obligation to do everything we can internationally to protect other reefs—the Caribbean and all the other great reefs of the world—which are suffering even greater declines than the Great Barrier Reef is, to do everything we can to tackle those problems and to ensure that we hand on to future generations the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs in the kind of condition that they were handed down to us.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Saffin, I would like to commence my contribution by congratulating you on your election as member for Page and for your elevation to the Speaker’s panel. I look forward to seeing you in that chair on a number of occasions, and I really look forward to working with you over the life of this parliament. Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2007-2008 are about delivering on the Rudd government’s election commitments. This legislation signals a very different approach to government. Gone is the mean-spirited, divisive, narrow approach of the Howard government—an approach that lacked any sort of vision, an approach that led from behind. We have moved to a new approach, an inclusive approach, a visionary approach—an approach that was signalled at the very start of this parliament with an apology to the Indigenous people of Australia.

Whilst the Rudd government will be a reformist government and a government of great leadership, it will also be a very fiscally responsible government. That is why the Prime Minister has signalled our fiscal responsibility with his 10-point plan. The 10-point plan includes investing in an education revolution to lift the skills and know-how of the Australian workforce. The previous government ignored the skills crisis that existed in Australia. It chose to bury its head in the sand. It chose to let Australia enter the state that we are in at the moment, simply because it would not acknowledge the fact that we had a skills crisis. It was more about doing the workers over. It was more about giving it really hard to the hardworking men and women of Australia. The second part of the Prime Minister’s plan is to accelerate the digital transformation of the Australian economy through a high-speed national broadband network. Within the electorate I represent in this parliament, Shortland, which is a metropolitan electorate, there are many residents who in the time of the Howard government just could not access basic broadband. The Rudd Labor government is going to get around this and make sure that the people of Australia are delivered high-speed broadband.

The third point of the Prime Minister’s plan is to reform regulatory arrangements to minimise the compliance burdens on individuals and businesses. Members on this side of the House have seen, on occasions, how businesses are absolutely stifled and strangled by the regulatory compliances that were put upon them by the Howard government. Similarly, individuals—constituents who I represent in this House—find that these restrictions, these requirements for them to jump through hoops just to get the most basic services, work against them. They work against them being able to develop the skills that they need to and work against them being able to access the knowledge that they need. These restrictions even work against their being able to access work.

The fourth point of the Prime Minister’s plan is to take decisive action on the long-term challenges of climate change and the water shortages which threaten the viability of many Australian regions and industry sectors. The previous government ignored, for 11 long years, the fact that climate change even existed. It refused to sign Kyoto. I have never been more pleased with the action of any Australian government than I was with the action of the Rudd government in signing the Kyoto protocol, which it did right at the beginning of its term.

The other point of this plan is to widen Australia’s economic engagement with key economies in the Asia-Pacific region. You can see by the actions of the Rudd government already that it has acted to see that this happens. The future of Australia is in our interaction with that region. The future of Australia is not the Howard way but rather the Rudd way.

One of the issues that I would like to raise is the way that the Howard government chose to allocate funds. Those of us on this side of the parliament were constantly faced with the rorts of the Howard government, where funds were directed not based on merit but rather based on which National Party seat or marginal government seat that particular project happened to be in. The Regional Partnerships program was one of the vehicles for that. In my own area on the Central Coast we saw the Tumbi Creek fiasco. We on this side of the House will be adopting a very different approach to those projects in regional Australia and throughout the whole of Australia. We will have a very transparent approach, an approach that delivers to people in an open way, so that people can understand why that money has been allocated.

The parliamentary secretary has undertaken an audit of all those projects that were previously promised money under the Regional Partnerships program. One of those projects was a project in my electorate, the Fernleigh Track, which was allocated $750,000 as part of a commitment made by the Rudd government in the lead-up to the last election. I would like to say today that that commitment will be delivered on. The parliamentary secretary has assured me that that will be the case. And I would like to assure the people of Shortland electorate that the money for the Fernleigh Track will be delivered. It is a wonderful initiative, and one that is of regional importance. It is not only of importance within Shortland electorate; it has the support of both Newcastle and Lake Macquarie councils. A working group has been working on it for many years. That $750,000 will be coming the way of the Fernleigh Track.

But I have to express my extreme disappointment at the Lake Macquarie City Council. When they heard about the audit, Lake Macquarie City Council did not come and see me. Rather, they ran to the media, I understand. I was contacted by the media. I learnt about the media’s concerns in relation to the Fernleigh Track not through the media but through a third party. It is my understanding that their concerns were tabled at a council meeting on Monday last week. I was contacted by a journalist the next day, and then some time during the day there was a message for me that an employee of the council wished to talk to me. What causes me even more concern is that Councillor Coghlan of Lake Macquarie City Council, despite assurances and despite my communication with the council, has been running around part of the Shortland electorate saying that the funding for the track is in doubt. His actions stand condemned, and I am sure that the community will judge him on his actions at the next local government election.

Another Rudd government commitment to the people of the Shortland electorate was the reopening of the Belmont Medicare office, an office that was closed by the Howard government in 1998, despite the fact that it was a high-volume office, despite the fact that it serviced a very elderly community and despite the fact that its need was well and truly established. I would like to put on the record here today my appreciation of the Minister for Health and Ageing for her commitment to open that Medicare office and I know that the people of Belmont, Swansea and surrounding areas will be extremely happy about its reopening. It will be reopened because it is needed.

Health has been a very big issue within the Shortland electorate. There is a chronic doctor shortage. I have been speaking to the Minister for Health and Ageing. With our different approach to health, I am sure that we will be delivering to the people of the Shortland electorate on health. There is also a crisis in dental care, with pensioners waiting very long times to access dental treatment. Once again, the Rudd government will deliver on its commitment to the people of Shortland and Australia to make sure that they do not have to live in pain and agony and have their whole physical wellbeing undermined by poor dental health. The Rudd government’s approach to health is very different from that of the Howard government. Gone is the blame game and we now have a new era of cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states. Under the Rudd government, many of the recommendations of The blame game report, which was brought down in the last parliament, will be implemented in contrast to the approach that was adopted by the previous government.

I notice that in the appropriation bills mention is made of immigration and citizenship. I hate to return to the theme of Lake Macquarie City Council, but on Australia Day the Mayor of Lake Macquarie refused to allow the representative of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Greg Combet, the honourable member for Charlton, to deliver his message at the citizenship ceremony. In the time that I have been attending citizenship ceremonies I have never seen that done by a mayor or a general manager. I understand the general manager was in agreement. I attend citizenship ceremonies in the Wyong Shire Council and Lake Macquarie City Council areas. I have written to the minister asking him to give me a ruling on the breach of the code of practice for citizenship ceremonies by the Mayor of the Lake Macquarie City Council—Councillor Greg Piper, who is an Independent—in his refusal to allow the honourable member for Charlton to deliver the minister’s address.

One of the first instructions the Prime Minister gave to his members was to visit schools in their electorate. I have a very strong relationship with schools in my electorate. The schools in my electorate gave me a pretty strong message about the types of things that they need. For a very long period of time they felt marginalised by the previous government’s approach to education. Even the Investing in Our Schools Program chose to communicate with the P&Cs as opposed to the schools themselves. They raised with me issues such as teachers having access to computers, wireless networks and software licences—all things that need to be looked at; a revelation in learning management; a professional approach; school security; environmental concerns; and how within their schools they had to combat quite adverse conditions when creating an atmosphere for their students to learn.

I give an undertaking to the schools in the Shortland electorate that, along with the government’s promise to deliver computers to students and to work with the schools, on a personal level I will work each and every day to ensure that their voices are heard down here and to ensure that the students in the Shortland electorate get a quality education—and that quality education means that they have access to the latest learning technologies.

Given that I have been asked to finish a little earlier so that the minister can sum up the debate, I will finish my contribution here. I thank the minister for introducing this legislation and for the content of this legislation and I thank the Prime Minister for delivering on the commitments that he has made to the Australian people and to the people of the Shortland electorate.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on some of the first appropriation bills of the new government: Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2007-2008. I look back to the night of the election when it was becoming clear that Labor would win the election and Kevin Rudd’s remark that we could all have an Iced Vo Vo and then go back to work. I thought at the time that he might be referring to the length of the break but I realise now, having watched the Prime Minister in government for a few months, that he was talking about the amount of sugar we would need to keep up the pace of legislation and action in rolling out the election commitments. In these bills today we have delivery of quite a few more election commitments: the beginning of the rebuilding of infrastructure and skills of the nation, reinstating fairness and restraining government spending—all themes through the long election campaign that are being delivered very early in the first term of this new government.

In Australia I think we have gotten used to assuming that promises made by politicians, particularly during election campaigns, are not to be believed, are not promises at all. During the campaign and shortly after it a number of people did say to me, ‘But how much of this are you really going to deliver?’ I repeated to them the words that Kevin Rudd had said both publicly and behind closed doors several times, ‘Everything we promise we will deliver.’ I do not think there would have been many people who expected action to come so quickly. These bills are another illustration of promises made over the last year and promises being met.

These bills will make a real difference to the lives of people around the country and in my electorate of Parramatta. They demonstrate the government’s approach to growing the economy while keeping a rein on inflation and to reinstating fairness—both themes that have been there through the last year and are demonstrated on a daily basis by this government through the policies that it implements and the bills it introduces into this parliament. There is a very real commitment in these bills to restrain government expenditure through delivery of some of the promised cuts made in the election campaign and some identified since. There is a real commitment in these bills to investing in the productive capacity of the nation—in skills, in infrastructure and in innovation. And there is a real commitment in these bills to reinstating fairness—one of the most important values that underpin this nation—through immediate assistance to some of the most disadvantaged in our communities, those people living good lives under difficult circumstances while they care for the wellbeing of others.

The government is hitting the ground running. It is delivering on commitments every day and getting on with the business of government. We can do this because the policies that we announced well before the election were real policies, developed through listening to many, many people and underpinned by sound principles of economic management and fairness. Also underpinning the approach by this government is the fundamental fact that we do not stand here spending our own money. When a government has been in power for a long time, this is something that it risks forgetting. I hope that it is something that we do not ever forget. We do not spend our own money here. Not one dollar belongs to us. It is given to us by the taxpayers—individuals, families and businesses—and is spent on their behalf for their benefit. One of the ways that we show that respect today is by reining in government spending.

With all the talk of boom times in recent years, it occurred to me late last year that one of the real beneficiaries of the boom was government itself, with more advertising, more staff, more legal advice and more consultancies—generally, more, more and more. It was a boom time for the re-election prospects of the government but not for the vulnerable or for those with the least bargaining power and certainly not for the many hardworking Australians. In the last 16 months of office, the previous government spent $470 million of taxpayers’ money on advertising alone, promoting policies such as the flawed Work Choices. In the last few days, we have seen in this parliament the amount of propaganda material, which was stored for many months, now finally being destroyed. We have also seen many grant programs that were more about photo opportunities than for the benefit of the local communities.

One of the real illustrations of the boom in government has been the boom in staff. This bill begins to roll that back by bringing in a 30 per cent reduction in ministerial and opposition staff numbers. There are some, I would suspect, who would think it odd that one of the first things a government does in office is reduce its staff numbers. But staff numbers had grown well and truly out of control in the last years of the Howard government. The promise made by Labor in the election campaign is delivered in these bills. While there were already real indications that inflation was beginning to move beyond the recommended band of the Reserve Bank, spending under the previous government had grown out of control, with growth rates as high as 4.5 per cent in real terms in the later years.

These bills also begin to roll back some of the extraordinary growth in costs from the flawed Work Choices legislation. Administrative efficiencies arising from the transition from Australian workplace agreements to collective enterprise agreements and statutory individual contracts will reduce the funding required by the Workplace Authority by $30 million in 2007-08 alone. We would all remember during the last years of the Howard government how the administration of Work Choices grew so dramatically, with hundreds of additional members of the Public Service employed to implement the so-called fairness test. This is a reduction of $30 million in 2007-08 alone.

The bills also deliver on a number of other promises made during the campaign but they also seek appropriation from parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the consolidated revenue fund to meet the requirements of a number of initiatives, most of which were promised during the election campaign. These appropriation bills, in delivering on those promises, will make real differences and deliver real things for a diverse range of stakeholders.

Appropriation Bill (No. 3) seeks a total appropriation of $2.4 billion, including a number of election commitments and changes in the estimates of existing program expenditure. It includes $242.1 million to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to tackle Australia’s skills deficit. We all know that the skills shortage in Australia is one of the issues which impact so seriously on inflation in this nation. The bill delivers $100 million to establish the National Secondary School Computer Fund. This is part of a much bigger project, but this initial $100 million moves very quickly to provide schools that have the capacity with computers and computer access for years 9 to 12. I visited several schools in my electorate at the end of last year and early this year and talked to them about this issue. It is, of course, a much bigger issue that involves not just the computers themselves but the infrastructure that supports the use of those computers—power supply, cabling and skills of teachers. Improving the capacity of our schools to deliver the kind of education our children will need over the next decade and beyond is a major undertaking for this government—one not undertaken by the previous government. We can safely say that the deficit of equipment, infrastructure and skills at our schools at the moment is a result of neglect over the last decade. This $100 million is a significant first step which will give results where results can be delivered most quickly. Long-term solutions will, of course, require more time and much more consultation with our state counterparts.

These bills also deliver $33.3 million for the government’s Skilling Australia for the Future program, funding which in 2007-08 alone will deliver 20,000 vocational education and training places that are aimed at people currently outside the workforce. Again, that is a very speedy delivery of 20,000 vocational education and training places, in stark contrast to the previous government, which was denying that we even had a skills shortage right up until the election.

This program will commence at the beginning of April 2008. That is next month. And this is just the start. During the election campaign, we announced that our Skilling Australia for the Future policy will deliver 450,000 training places over four years, including 65,000 apprenticeships, and will cost $1.3 billion. This first instalment of $33.3 million is a rapid delivery of the first 20,000 of those vocational education and training places. This demonstrates once again the government’s absolute commitment to reining in inflation through developing the productive capacity of the economy through delivery of skills and infrastructure.

The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government will be provided with $2.5 million to establish Infrastructure Australia. When in opposition, we on this side of the House talked about the need for infrastructure development for several years, again against silence from the then government. Infrastructure Australia will allow us as a nation to independently determine the needs of the country—no more rorts; no pork-barrelling. It will consider long-term needs to fuel the productive capacity of the nation and not just the short-term political needs of local members in marginal seats. The building of a nation’s infrastructure is incredibly important. It is something that we used to do very well but failed to do over the last decade. It is incredibly important because only governments can do this. Only governments can drive the major infrastructure that links the nation, that strengthens our ports and that provides transport for people and goods. The $2.5 million to establish Infrastructure Australia begins the setting up of a system for the independent planning of that process.

The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research will be provided with $15.2 million to introduce the Enterprise Connect program, replacing the previous government’s Australian industry productivity centres. Innovation is a key driver of productivity and growth, again an area neglected over the last 10 years. In fact, it is very sad that so much of the work done by the previous Hawke and Keating governments was left to degrade over the last decade. This government aims to foster a culture of innovation by strengthening investment in creativity and knowledge—something that this country has historically been very good at. As a nation, we punch well above our weight when it comes to new ideas. We are a nation which really only requires the incentive to do so and we go forth and create in the most profound way. The Enterprise Connect network will link businesses with new ideas and technology and provide incentives for business research and development to focus on lifting investment and competitiveness.

There is also something for health—again, as promised during the election campaign. Additional funding is proposed for the Department of Health and Ageing, including $33.1 million to provide upfront capital grants and recurrent funding for the establishment of 31 GP superclinics around Australia and to provide incentive payments to GPs and allied health providers to relocate to these clinics. This was a policy announced during the election campaign which perhaps will not have an immediate impact in my electorate. We have a major hospital, Westmead Hospital, in the electorate and, perhaps because of that, there are extensive health services in the electorate and our bulk-billing rates are very high. But this is a policy which impacts generally on the capacity of our hospitals to serve communities, and that certainly does impact on my electorate in a real way.

Over the past decade we have seen increasing blame-shifting between state and federal governments on health, with various aspects funded by the federal government and hospitals essentially funded by the state governments. It is certainly true that hospitals bear the brunt of any failure in the surrounding services. If we do not have enough aged-care beds, the hospitals bear the brunt. If we do not have enough community nurses, the hospitals bear the brunt. If we do not have enough GPs in the area, or enough GPs bulk-billing, then emergency departments bear the brunt. If we do not have 24-hour GP services, then emergency departments bear the brunt. And if we do not invest enough in keeping people healthy in the first place, in preventative health, then our hospitals bear the brunt. So any policy which begins to develop the services around hospitals that deal with the early stages of illness and provide real benefits to preventative health—anything that reduces the impact on our hospitals—must be applauded. For many communities around Australia, the introduction of these GP superclinics will provide real services in the local community and significantly lessen the demand in our emergency departments. We have also committed $31.6 billion for investing in hospitals and community health under the Better Outcomes for Hospitals and Community Health program.

The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts will receive additional funding as well, with $50.8 million in additional funding for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park structural adjustment package and an additional $31.8 million to deliver on the election commitment to provide rebates to households for installing solar hot-water heaters to encourage improved energy efficiency in homes.

The environment is also an area which was neglected over 10 years of the preceding government and an area, like so many others, in which the community was well ahead of the government in its thinking. I believe that even in 2004 the people in my electorate were already rating the environment as a major issue, but the level of debate on the environment in the government was so low at that point that they did not really have the language to express that view. But in the 2004 door-knocking experience of mine the issue of water in particular was raised perhaps more often than any other—even, at that stage, ahead of health and education. In the election of November last year, of course, it was a major issue, with the community expressing quite sophisticated views and in many ways pulling the government along—not fast enough, unfortunately. But we on this side of the House, we in government now, do recognise that the environment is one of the most significant economic and social issues facing this country and needs immediate action. In our second week of government, here is the beginning of the delivery of those election commitments.

We have also committed an additional $50.8 million for the National Solar Schools program to encourage improved energy and water efficiency in schools. Government cannot expect private householders and businesses to lead the way. It really needs to lead the way itself. All levels need to do it. We as individuals need to do it. Our businesses need to do it. But also our governments need to ensure that our government assets—our schools, our hospitals, our community centres, our local council buildings and our state government offices—lead the way in improving energy and water efficiency, and this $50.8 million begins the process of ensuring that our schools, our state assets, are leaders in this area.

We have also committed an additional $15.2 million to take early action on the National Plan for Water Security, which will accelerate investment in water savings infrastructure and the purchase of water allocations by bringing forward spending from 2011-12. That is three years away, of course, and the environment is an urgent issue.

The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs will be provided with $189.8 million to assist people with disabilities, their families and carers. This includes an annual tax-free payment of $1,000 for each child under the age of 16 with a disability for whom the carer is receiving carer allowance. It also includes $9 million to increase the support available to people in disability business services. This is something that I am particularly pleased about. I know there are many, many people in my electorate of Parramatta who are struggling on a daily basis to provide care for people in their families who suffer from a disability or illness. This $1,000 for each child under the age of 16 will provide very real and immediate assistance. Of course, that is not the end of the story. We have much more work to do to provide support for these people who fill one of the most important roles in our community—that of caring for people who are unable to care for themselves and providing lives with dignity for them in their own homes. (Time expired)

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

May I start, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, by congratulating you on your elevation to Deputy Speaker. That is a great honour for you and your constituents, and I wish you well. I also take the opportunity to congratulate my colleague and friend the member for Herbert on his re-election in a very difficult election for those members on the other side in Queensland. I also congratulate him on his parliamentary secretary position and wish him well too.

In debating Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2007-2008, it is difficult to ignore the former government’s mixed economic performance and its fundamental failure to address many matters of substance, including climate change—which the member for Parramatta has just been speaking about—the skills crisis, innovation and Australia’s crumbling infrastructure. I think it is fair to say that it was true that the government had run out of ideas for the future by 24 November last year. There can be no doubt that the policy lethargy of the past did contribute to the overwhelming support for a change in government, a change in direction and a change in the heart of our country. That is why Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard have been elected with a mandate to implement this exciting agenda for change.

The Rudd government has certainly hit the ground running. It has taken weeks, not years, for the Prime Minister to begin implementing good climate change policy. It has taken weeks, not years, for the Prime Minister to advance the cause of reconciliation. These are exciting reforms and do not begin and end with matters typically pigeonholed as relating to social justice—though ignoring these matters would ultimately come at a major cost to the economy. The Prime Minister, Treasurer, Assistant Treasurer, finance minister and minister for small business have all outlined practical reforms to strengthen Australia’s economy, particularly in relation to the war on inflation. With very few exceptions, it will become even more apparent that the former government’s legacy was one of reactive, not proactive, economic reform.

The corollary of this is that, over the past 11 years, there has been a failure to anticipate and act on future challenges, a failure to act on rising levels of inflation, a failure to act on skilled labour and infrastructure shortages and a failure to act on the increasingly dysfunctional nature of federal-state relations—and I applaud the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, for making it quite clear in December 2006, when he was Leader of the Opposition, that he would promote cooperative federalism, which is what is happening now. These were the challenges that the former government would not touch and these were the challenges to which it had no answer.

While these challenges would appear at first sight to be a minor irritant for the government of any given day, their impacts are more widely felt by families. The rising cost of living faced by many families in my electorate of Lowe is one challenge the former government refused to face. As we now know, the Howard government regularly informed Australian families that they had ‘never been better off’. However, my office was and still is receiving calls regularly from constituents that are battling to pay increasing grocery bills and petrol prices. It is not enough to spruik one’s economic management by indefatigably pointing to budget surpluses delivered through a once in a generation commodities boom. Surely economic management should also be measured by whether families are able to balance their own budget over the kitchen table. It is aimless to advertise every cent of government debt that is paid off, while ignoring family credit card debts that are spiralling out of control.

Australia’s national economic performance has come on the back of spiralling household debt—and this does not look like abating in light of the increasing cost of living pressures. The Household Expenditure Survey from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the cost of living outpaced inflation by eight per cent between 1999 and 2004. We have all seen the cost of petrol, bread, fruit and vegetables skyrocket in recent years. Plainly, a dollar does not have the purchasing strength today that it had years ago. That is why it is important to implement practical proposals that may relieve some of the pressure rather than arrogantly dismiss the problem by proclaiming that working families have ‘never been better off’.

It is time for some focus to be placed on the economy at home, not just on the national economy. The Prime Minister has already shown a commitment to keeping prices and interest rates low by investing in education, skills and key economic infrastructure. Indeed, as I said earlier, it has taken weeks, not years, for the Rudd government to begin the process of auditing Australia’s infrastructure.

Another way we can keep sustained downward pressure on prices is by resuscitating the Trade Practices Act, protecting small businesses and encouraging competition. There is no better friend for families doing their weekly round of grocery shopping than healthy competition between retailers. With that in mind, it is illuminating that a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggests that Australia’s two biggest retailers, Coles and Woolworths, hold 79 per cent of the market despite mum and dad grocers making up 50 per cent of the sector’s workforce. While the ACCC has powers with respect to cartels, predatory pricing and misuse of market power, those powers could be strengthened for small business and for families saddled with increasing cost of living pressures.

As the Assistant Treasurer has previously indicated, more can be done to protect small business and foster competition in Australian markets. More can be done to achieve the objectives of the Trade Practices Act to ‘enhance the welfare of Australians through the promotion of competition’. In a document published in 2004 titled ‘Committed to small business’, the former Prime Minister rightly extolled the virtues of small business and the important contribution small business makes to Australia’s economy. The former Prime Minister said:

The Government’s commitment to small business is undiminished. That is why we remain attuned to their needs and why we continue to respond to their concerns with practical measures.

Despite 11 years in power, those measures never really eventuated. There are many obvious failings with the Trade Practices Act for small businesses and consumers alike. However, the former Treasurer refused time and time again to tackle those challenges. Cost of living pressures and methods of keeping costs down just did not seem to raise a mention.

With respect to competitive markets and consumer protection, the Howard government certainly promised plenty, delivered little and created a false impression that it was doing everything it could. But it was not. One area crying out for reform is the misuse of market power provisions within the Trade Practices Act. Since the High Court’s decision in Boral, big business will not have substantial market power unless they have the power to raise prices without losing any custom to their rivals. This notion of having absolute freedom of constraint to raise prices before one is considered to have a substantial degree of market power has rendered section 46 useless.

I ask: how can section 46 purport to foster competition when one can only resort to the provision when the market is already a monopoly or close to it? The ACCC has found it close to impossible to launch a misuse of market power case since the Boral decision. Many examples of anticompetitive conduct have no doubt escaped scrutiny as a result, to the detriment of consumers. The paucity of section 46 cases is not necessarily a glowing endorsement of corporate conduct in Australia. As I have said previously, not having misuse of market power cases through the courts is analogous to having no penalties in a football match. While the teams may generally have been well behaved, surely the referee cannot be saying that both teams have been absolutely perfect for the duration of the match.

Observations from the ACCC would suggest that the competition and consumer referee is saying anything but. This referee wants to act on behalf of consumers and small business but the rules will not allow it to. The Assistant Treasurer has rightly observed that there has already been enough debate about the ACCC’s desired changes to the misuse of market power protections. He has clearly stated his intention to put the teeth back into section 46—and I note that the Minister for Finance and Deregulation has just arrived in this place. I am sure he would support what I have been saying in relation to section 46.

While the fruits of any misuse of market power may be attractive for consumers in the short term, the manipulation of the market in this manner will result in fewer competitors, fewer options and higher prices in the long term. Genuine competition is the best way of exerting downward pressure on prices for consumers burdened with cost of living pressures. It is true that the aim of competition is to beat competition. However, no business should be permitted to reduce their prices enough for a short period of time to drive competitors out, then charge whatever they wish for the same goods. Expecting vigorous competition is not inconsistent with the proposition that there must be firm laws against unfair, anticompetitive conduct. No government should hide behind the cloak of so-called healthy competition if conduct is in fact strategically engaged in to undermine the competitive process.

Families in my electorate of Lowe, as well as the countless small business operators in my electorate, would be breathing a collective sigh of relief that there is now a government willing to confront the macroeconomic challenges ahead of it. Another such challenge is effectively outlawing serious cartel conduct in Australia.

The former Treasurer would remember well that the Dawson review—which reported in 2003—into the Trade Practices Act recommended the imposition of prison terms for individuals found to have engaged in serious cartel behaviour. It has taken the Rudd government weeks to initiate an important reform that the Howard government did not achieve in four years. Wise heads, including the chairman of the ACCC and Professor Frank Zumbo, have on countless occasions identified the risk that mere financial penalties allow cartel operators to weigh up those penalties against the millions that can be earned from a cartel. Recent cases demonstrate that cartel operators are continuing to weigh up the small deterrent of financial penalties against the millions in ill-gotten gains from cartel behaviour. Again, it is consumers who suffer. The Rudd government is rightly making this cost-benefit analysis harder for cartel operators by introducing jail terms for serious cartel conduct. I applaud the government on this initiative.

It is astonishing that Australia is one of the few countries in the OECD that does not have jail terms for serious cartel conduct. The Assistant Treasurer has released the exposure draft of the Trade Practices Amendment (Cartel Conduct and Other Measures) Bill 2008 for public comment. I encourage everyone to contribute to that. The exposure draft proposes five-year jail terms for those found guilty of serious cartel conduct. Again, I applaud this initiative.

Finally, a very clear message is being sent to businesspeople that cartel behaviour is tantamount to stealing from consumers and will not be tolerated. There is no doubt that the threat of time behind bars will force dishonest businessmen and businesswomen to pause and take stock of the situation. Far from talking tough, looking tough and then running away from the real battles confronting Australian families, the Prime Minister is tackling these challenges head-on. The Prime Minister has already delivered on numerous commitments, including, most recently, the appointment of a petrol price commissioner to monitor and investigate price gouging by oil companies. We will be keeping a close eye on that in the Easter break.

Rather than reacting to challenges when it is too late, the government is committed to proactive reform and to investment in the long-term drivers of growth, including infrastructure, education, skills, innovation and a high-speed broadband network. There can be no doubt that another of the Howard government’s legacies is its failure to consolidate Australia’s financial position during this once in a generation commodities boom. Despite the commodities boom delivering record prices, Australia outrageously had a balance of trade deficit of $12 billion in the 2006-07 financial year.

I am certainly looking forward to the opportunity as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Trade to do whatever I can to address the trade deficit that we encounter every month in Australia. Clearly we have to turn that around, and it is not easy in an environment where our dollar is relatively high and a lot of the goods and services that we export are value added overseas where the cost of labour is so much lower than in Australia. That is a big challenge for the government, the minister and me personally, but I will be doing everything I can to bring revenue into this country rather than continuing the sucking in of imports that has happened over the past five or six years particularly.

In the face of ideal conditions for export success, sadly Australia’s export volumes are down. Growth in service exports, goods exports and manufacturing exports have slumped. A strong export base is vital for Australia’s long-term prosperity, but little has been done in the past 11 years to redress the dreadful trade imbalance. Rather than ignoring the challenges and being content with five consecutive years of trade deficit, as was the norm with the previous government, the Minister for Trade is acting swiftly to initiate a comprehensive review of Australia’s trade policies and programs.

Acting quickly rather than reacting late is a premise that the Rudd government subscribes to. Australia can no longer afford a government that recklessly wastes large sums of money on advertising to get themselves re-elected and programs that, in most cases, delivered very few long-term benefits to my constituents specifically and the nation broadly. Finally, that is why many constituents in my electorate of Lowe sought and have received a government with fresh ideas for Australia’s future, which offers much hope.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I rise to bring the debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2007-2008 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2007-2008 to a close. I thank those members who have made a contribution, particularly the member for Lowe. The additional estimates bills seek appropriation authority from parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund in order to meet requirements that have arisen since the last budget. The total additional appropriation being sought through the additional estimates bills Nos 3 and 4 this year is nearly $3.3 billion. This proposed appropriation arises from changes in the estimates of program expenditure due to variations in the timing of payments, forecasted increases in program take-up, the reclassification of certain appropriations and policy decisions taken by the government since the last budget. The government has promised to apply sensible fiscal restraint to put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates and to boost investment in the productive capacity of the Australian economy. The additional estimates appropriation bills deliver a modest first instalment on these objectives.

The appropriations proposed in these bills include the effect of part-year savings in estimates resulting from the government’s election promise to identify savings in budget outlays. The savings reflected in these bills include requiring further efficiencies in public sector administration through the application of an additional two per cent efficiency dividend; the transition to collective enterprise agreements and statutory individual contracts, producing a saving of $30 million from simplified administration; abolishing the access card project to produce a saving this year of $250.6 million; not proceeding with measures announced by the previous government, such as contributing to the Rugby League Hall of Fame and the Australian rugby academy, producing a cash saving to the budget this year of $35 million; and a review of current programs, such as the Renewable Remote Power Generation Program, which has identified a saving this year of $33 million. These modest savings, which are a harbinger of more substantial savings to come, have served to contain the additional appropriation sought in these bills.

I now take the opportunity to outline the more significant measures contained in the bills. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations will be provided with additional funding, including $100 million to establish the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund, which will provide grants of up to $1 million for schools to assist them to provide for new or upgraded information and communications technology for secondary school students in years 9 to 12, and $33.3 million for the government’s Skilling Australia for the Future program, which will provide a total of 450,000 additional training places over four years at a cost of $1.3 billion. Funding in 2007-08 will deliver 20,000 vocational education and training places that are aimed at people currently outside the workforce. The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government will be provided with $2.5 million to establish Infrastructure Australia to ensure genuine rigor and accountability in infrastructure spending.

Additional funding is proposed for the Department of Health and Ageing for investing in hospitals and community health under the Better Outcomes for Hospitals and Community Health program. This includes funds for specific commitments announced during the election, such as $10 million for the Flinders Medical Centre clinical teaching facilities upgrade and $15 million for the Launceston integrated cancer care centre. The Department of Health and Ageing will also be provided with $33.1 million to provide upfront capital grants and recurrent funding for the establishment of 31 GP superclinics around Australia and to provide incentive payments to GPs and allied health providers to relocate to these clinics. The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs will be provided with additional funds, including an amount of $189.8 million, from which will be provided annual tax-free payments of $1,000 for each child under the age of 16 with a disability for whom their carer is receiving childcare allowance and an increase of $30 million for the Commonwealth State Territory Disability Agreement to allow grants to the states for people with disabilities and their carers.

These bills are important pieces of legislation which underpin the government’s new direction in both spending priorities and fiscal restraint and deserve widespread support. I am not convinced, after listening to members of the opposition both in this place and in Senate estimates hearings yesterday, that they actually appreciate the importance of this new direction. Their questions both in the parliament and in estimates hearings suggest that opposition members not only have failed to grasp the seriousness of the inflation challenge—a headline inflation rate running at a level not seen in 16 years—but also are in denial about their own responsibility for delivering this risk to the Australia economy and the Australian people. This is after 10 interest rate increases and 20 warnings from the Reserve Bank about critical capacity constraints in our economy.

In government, the coalition had little regard for the budget process and no regard for the ERC and was about as familiar with budget savings processes as it was with fair AWAs. It showed no fiscal restraint during its 11 years in government, and during election campaigns this record blew out even further. There is no clearer picture of the coalition’s fiscal record than the former Prime Minister spending a record $9 billion in the campaign launch, literally within weeks of the Reserve Bank raising rates during an election campaign for the first time. There is no clearer record of the coalition’s fiscal record than its legacy of big government, with the cost of running government almost doubling over the 10 years to 2007-08. The supposed party of small government was responsible for delivering the most regulated and expensive industrial relations system this country has ever known; the biggest spending on government advertising the country has ever seen by a long way; the biggest spending on consultants over that period, even though Public Service employment had grown much faster than overall employment in the economy since 2000; an increase in the number of senior public servants, or SES-level public servants, of 44 percent; and an increase in the number of ministerial staff over the time of the government’s period in office by 30 per cent.

The government must now confront the serious task of refocusing government fiscal policy. We cannot rely on monetary policy alone to protect the Australian economy and its households from the inflation challenge. The government will confront the inflation legacy of the previous government by delivering a budget surplus of at least 1½ per cent of GDP. To meet this task, spending will need to be cut substantially, in addition to savings announced during the election campaign by the then opposition, now the government.

Fiscal restraint and tough decisions on spending are required to ensure that the government does all it can to combat inflation. Choices have to be made to ensure that downward pressure is placed on inflation. This means that lower order priorities or priorities of the previous government that are not shared by the incoming government will be subject to very close scrutiny.

This task has already commenced in these additional estimates bills. We stand by the difficult decisions we have had to make to start delivering on our promise to rein in inflation. We do not falter in the face of questions from opposition senators, particularly those who were on the staff of the former Treasurer or those who were former sports ministers and accustomed to taking the easy options and living a ‘the cheque is in the mail’ culture. I commend the additional estimates bills to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.