Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s opening speech. Whilst I was listening to the Governor-General’s opening speech, I carefully appraised and intently considered his words and explanations of what the new government were intending to do and how they were intending to govern over the next three years until the next election. It had me thinking about many of the issues that I confronted when I came here as a new member of parliament in October 1998. I thought I should look at my maiden speech to see whether this place had changed my views, whether I was staying true to the ideals I had when I, as a very strong advocate for rural and regional issues, first decided it would be a great thing to represent the constituents of the Riverina and whether I had changed my perspective on those issues confronting our rural seats. When I looked at my maiden speech from 1998 I felt that I could easily make that speech today. I feel quite comforted that I have not lost my way and have not lost sight of the things that matter most to people in rural and regional Australia, particularly to people in the Riverina.

In my maiden speech I spoke passionately about health: the long waiting lists that we were experiencing at the time, the shortage of medical practitioners and the closure of services in small rural towns because they did not have the infrastructure, the services and the medical facilities to attract medical practitioners. I am happy to say that, whilst there are still many health issues confronting the Riverina and of course rural Australia, there have been significant gains made. As a representative of that region, I feel proud that I have stayed focused on these issues.

Many solutions have been delivered by the Regional Solutions Program, through our former Deputy Prime Minister, who at the time was the agricultural minister, the Hon. John Anderson, and subsequently through other ministers. The Regional Solutions Program delivered medical centres in rural communities to ensure that we could attract a doctor, a GP, into our communities. The fabulous medical centre in Gundagai came about under Regional Solutions. Dr Paul Mara is such a champion for rural health. I sincerely admire him and his wife, Virginia, for their attention to rural health. They could be off having a better lifestyle in a larger provincial city or maybe in the city itself, but they do stay committed to rural practice and to rural general practice obstetrics. They are the answer to many people’s prayers.

I am very proud of the specialist centres and medical centres that were delivered through Regional Solutions. One was in Coleambally. They have been dotted right across my electorate, and they have contributed to the successful resolution of the shortage of doctors that I spoke passionately about in 1998. In looking through my delivery in regard to those nine years, I could see that each area has been positively influenced by the policies of the former government, and I feel that I have worked to assist in shaping many of those.

Previously in the Riverina, if you had cancer and you were unable to afford to be away from your family for the long and exhaustive treatments in Sydney or you had pressing issues such as family or job commitments et cetera, the only option you had was to accept it and hope for the best. You had to go away many times for 12 months at a time for your treatments to a city that you were unfamiliar with. You had the extraordinary stress of being removed from your family and a comforting environment at a very stressful time.

The former government was able to deliver to the Riverina Cancer Care Centre funding for linear accelerators. The community got behind the push for a cancer care centre, under a former state member, the Hon. Joe Schipp, and with many of our practitioners. In around only 18 months, we were able to raise over $3 million to build the facility. Then the former government came on and gave the HPG funds in order to fund the linear accelerator. At the end of 2006 we were able to fund the second linear accelerator. Now we see people from Canberra and districts far and wide being sent to Wagga Wagga to have their treatment in the Riverina Cancer Care Centre.

We also had a problem in that, if you had a substance abuse addiction, there was nowhere that you could get assistance. There was nowhere that you could get rehab, so you were vulnerable and had to leave the environs to get assistance for your substance abuse. We were able to fund the Peppers through the National Illicit Drug Strategy. That has been ongoing, providing extraordinary support and assistance for families not only in the Riverina but also beyond to enable them to be rehabilitated and to move successfully back into communities and have life mean something, rather than their being sucked into substance abuse.

We had few carer respite centres and programs, and we have been able to have those delivered. We had, and still do have, enormous issues with dental waiting lists. But, thankfully, we have the Charles Sturt University dental school, which was approved and budgeted for by the previous government in their last budget. We will be extraordinarily thankful for that. It will be training dentists in a rural environment. We have proven through Charles Sturt University the benefit of training rural professionals in a rural stream in a rural environment, including pharmacy training. Before Charles Sturt University offered pharmacy training, you might have got two pharmacists out from the city into the rural areas from every graduation. We had an extreme shortage of pharmacists. But since Charles Sturt has been operational we have had the benefit of being able to retain over 90 per cent of those graduates in rural and regional areas.

We are proving in veterinary science that, if you train a vet in heavy animals and in rural areas, they are more likely to stay in those rural areas. Hopefully, the same will be delivered through the dental program that will be run out of Charles Sturt University in both Bathurst and Orange, with three other campuses to be set up for that training program.

We have worked a long time to try to resolve many of the issues that I cited in my 1998 speech. The Practice Incentives Program under our former government saw well over $3 million in payments to GPs and the Riverina division of general practice in the region in order to retain those GPs in that region. Again, I looked at my first speech and asked: ‘Have we made a difference? Have we cut through? Have we delivered on any of the things that I raised then?’ I am very proud to say that we have.

The one thing that I raised that I was specifically involved in was the RAAF base at Forest Hill. It was under threat of closure at the time through the Defence Efficiency Review. That would have seen a loss of around 1,500 jobs in Wagga Wagga alone in my electorate. We had already been reeling from the loss of many hundreds of jobs prior to the 1998 election. We were able to save that RAAF base. Not only did we save those jobs and the base as it was but the building works are almost completed and the extension of the RAAF base commenced in January this year which will see all of these recruits in the Royal Australian Air Force being trained in Wagga Wagga.

There are things that we have achieved since the 1998 election. The one thing that I was very passionate about was the effective competition policy. That is still, I believe, one of the pressing issues confronting my constituents. When I made my maiden speech, I was extraordinarily concerned by what competition policy was doing to rural and regional areas. It was one of those areas that seemed to be delivering more ‘disbenefits’ than benefits. It was something that had been a campaign, almost a crusade, of the then former Keating government. Then competition was equally taken up by the last government. It was pursued equally as aggressively. I am one of those people who stood against competition policy and its effects from the former government that I was a part of, and it appears now that my voice is going to have to continue to be carried in the chamber opposing deregulation, opposing these issues that affect the people whom I represent.

I stand here today not aggressively anti government policies, because I was aggressively anti those policies when I was part of the government. I chose to vote against the sale of Telstra, against my government. I fought against my government at the time on the issue of the deregulation of the wheat industry and the removal of the single desk for wheat. I thought we put up a mighty fight against the deregulation of the wheat industry. I know it seems that I have done this issue to death, but I stand here in genuine despair for those people whom I represent because I am back here now on the opposition benches and I am still fighting the same issue of deregulation and the removal of the single desk.

In my maiden speech, I said:

When asked for their opinion on national competition policy, most people in rural Australia feel that it has accelerated rural decline. It has the enormous potential to cause even further problems for us. Much of this, it could be said, may have been brought about by globalisation. However, the government needs to recognise that there have been obvious effects on rural communities.

The obvious effect is, again, on rural communities where I see the devastation of the removal of the single desk, without certainty for my growers. These growers have been in seven years of drought and they have constantly rallied to the cause. Their resilience is like none other. Unless you live, work and move amongst these people and understand how their lives are dictated by the climate then you could not understand just what resilience they have. But their resilience is sorely being tested by this latest blow—that is, the removal of the single desk for wheat. Till the fat lady has sung, as the old cliche goes, I will fight to have my voice heard, regardless of opposition to my voice. I will continue fighting that policy. It is not a personal vendetta against the new government, against the new minister; it is a vendetta against a policy that I see as wrong. It is a policy that is misunderstood. It is a policy that nobody should have to have imposed upon them.

We saw the government in their infancy, as they came into power, remove, rightly or wrongly, Australian workplace agreements. Whether you do or do not agree with the removal of AWAs, the very fact is that the government had the right and made the choice to do that. Whether I agree or disagree, the government had that right, as the former government had the right to do many things that they did. But the problem we have at this point is this. AWAs have been removed from the general man or woman on the street, simply because they were seen to be pitting the most vulnerable, those least able to look after themselves, against the strongest and those most able to exploit that weakness in both the general community and the workplace. Yet the government have applied the same AWAs to my wheat growers, those least able to manage when dealing with grain traders of enormous power—with no watchdog; with no Fair Pay Commission; with nobody there to ensure that they have a voice or somebody to look after their interests. There is nowhere for them to go. AWAs have certainly been applied to every wheat grower across Australia. AWAs have now been given to them whereby they will have to negotiate with myriad traders with ultimate power.

If they do not, they have nowhere to sell their commodity. They have to take the lowest price, because there is nowhere to go, where they can say, ‘This is not fair.’ There is no Fair Pay Commission; there is nobody to turn to. You are there standing alone—you, your wife and your children are there at the mercy of the most significant of traders, who, in the past, have proven that their interests are, most certainly, not the interests of the grain growers whom I represent. Their interests are the interests of the shareholders.

What we will now have will be multiple buyers out there competing for grain with farmer against farmer, neighbour against neighbour and cousin against cousin. Those buyers are all going to be selling in a single selling system, so the price will be as low as they can go and it is not going to come out of their pockets; it is going to come out of the growers’ pockets, in particular the pockets of the growers whom I represent. So, as I look at the issues that I raised in 1998, I am happy to see how many of them have been treated. While they have not been resolved entirely, enormous treatment has been given to ensure more equity in the lives of rural Australians. But I am sad to say that competition policy, which reigned during the Keating government and reigned during the Howard government, will now reign during the Rudd government. That disturbs me in the extreme. Again, this is not an attack on the government; I am purely putting a position that I feel my growers would expect me to put on their behalf. I thank the House, and I remind it, in my address-in-reply, that rural Australians should have the same entitlements as to equity— (Time expired)

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It seems a long time since the Governor-General spoke at the opening of parliament and the parliamentary year began. I would like to begin my address-in-reply speech by acknowledging the Ngunawal people, the traditional owners of the land on which this parliament meets, and by paying my respects to the Awabakal and Worimi peoples, the traditional owners and custodians of the land that encompasses the federal seat of Newcastle.

While this is my third address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s speech in the Australian parliament, this is the first time I have had the great privilege of responding from the government benches. It does feel very special. There are a significant number of firsts in this new parliament. The Indigenous welcome to country, which preceded the official opening of the 42nd Parliament of Australia, was an amazing occasion for me, considering the generosity with which that was delivered, the colourful ceremony and the opportunity to engage with people from the Torres Strait Islands and areas of Australia from which we do not often get to meet people. It was a wonderful setting of the tone for this new parliament, and I thank the Indigenous people of Australia for that generous welcome.

It was responded to by the national apology to the stolen generations. There could be no more moving event for any of us than to see our parliament—in this case the House of Representatives chamber—become not just a place of advocacy and debate but a place that certainly reflected the heart and soul of the people of this nation. It was indeed a great honour and privilege. It was such a long overdue apology. I recall watching—this was when I was not a member of parliament—Kim Beazley deliver a speech on the Bringing them home report and seeing how moved he was. I thought of him during that ceremony, because it was something that he was passionate about and truly believed in. So it was a wonderful beginning and it was a watershed moment, and I was certainly proud to be there.

Those events were possible because of the election of our government on 24 November 2007, an election that saw the people put their faith in a new and positive agenda put forward by the Labor team for the future. The people were ready for a change. I think that was very obvious, and having 34 new members is testimony to that. It is wonderful to see them. The people were ready to move away from a very different era of politics, an era of divisiveness in which fear, instead of reason, had been championed. It is certainly for most people a time that they will look back on with some regrets. We do see change now. It is just delightful for people like me who came to parliament after the Tampa election to now see the moves of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, to put some of that right again: to see the Nauru facility closed down, to see people taken off punitive TPVs and to see some compensation for Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau in particular. Those are wonderful moves in respect of issues that the Australian people needed to see settled.

We have had over 1,000 African settlers, humanitarian settlers, come into my electorate. I saw their distress when they were used as political footballs during the election campaign. I think there is a new era, one that we need to embrace—and Australians certainly did at the election. It was also wonderful to see that people did want to move away from Iraq—perhaps the saddest day of my existence in parliament was to be in a parliament that sent its young people to war—to know that our plans to leave Iraq are underway and that there is still a commitment to protect our country, to protect democracy and to fight terrorism where it really does flourish in this world: in Afghanistan. So I think the divisiveness that was encouraged in the past has certainly been put behind us.

I would also say that there was perhaps a real need for change in terms of the movement away from community participation in the delivery of services to people on behalf of the Australian government, and I hope that one of the other things that we will see now is community participation coming back into service delivery, particularly for those sensitive services like the humanitarian settlement service.

We also know that the Australian public wanted to move away from Work Choices. This was a legislative arrangement which fundamentally attempted to change the face of our nation. It was a change that was never going to be accepted by the Australian people, because of their good sense, their honest belief in fairness and their absolute protection of people who are very vulnerable in the workforce. As a mother of young people who have been exploited, who have had very little protection and who have had no safety net, I was particularly proud to see our national apology and our first lot of legislation introduced on the first day of parliament removing the threat of Work Choices from the Australian people and restoring some decency to the workplace again.

I would also like to congratulate the labour movement on the Your Rights at Work campaign. It was a significant grassroots campaign and one that I think was very much needed. I am always proud when the labour movement, the political wing of the Labor Party, the rank-and-file members and the people come together so well to undo some injustices that are prevailing. I congratulate the Australian Council of Trade Unions and Unions New South Wales for their role in the community campaign. I welcome, too, the member for Charlton, Greg Combet, as a new colleague in this place. I acknowledge his role in that campaign prior to his election, as well as the contribution of Jeff Lawrence, Sharan Burrow and John Robertson.

Again, I think what was also rather inspiring to the Australian people was the new-look team and the new-look leadership. To have two wonderful leaders, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, support each other so admirably I think did inspire. The unity was, I think, something that inspired the Australian people. I would like to put on the record my personal thanks to both of them for their support, their counsel and their willingness to always assist the caucus members when they particularly need it. The Prime Minister’s vision is one of inclusiveness and it pursues some long-term challenges that we face. I think that was very attractive to the Australian people.

We know that the 5.4 per cent swing nationally to Labor brought some wonderful new colleagues into this parliament, and I congratulate and welcome them. They will be an asset to us. It is wonderful to see their diverse backgrounds and their talents already assisting the Labor team.

As for my third election campaign in the electorate of Newcastle, it had a wonderful result and many people deserve special thanks for that. A redistribution saw new areas—including Thornton, Woodberry, Beresfield, Tarro, Heatherbrae, Hexam, Tomago, Williamtown, Fullerton Cove and Fern Bay—come into the electorate of Newcastle. The people in those areas had less than 12 months to get to know me and vice versa, but they voted overwhelmingly to support Labor’s positive agenda. Winning new booths like Beresfield, Fern Bay, Tarro, Thornton, Tomago and Woodberry on primary votes was especially satisfying and I do want to thank those constituents in particular for their trust. Winning the seat of Newcastle on primary votes was also a wonderful outcome and certainly places me in a position of great responsibility. The people of Newcastle have retained their trust in federal Labor for the last 107 years and it is a trust I am ever mindful of and always willing to repay through hard work and dedicated representation. So I do thank the voters of Newcastle. Our swing from the redistributed 8.7 per cent to almost 16 per cent was a wonderful one around the nation and one that I am proud to have received, but I am also proud and passionate as a Novocastrian to represent the people of Newcastle here.

Election campaigns are very much a team event and we always have many people to thank. Behind every elected member, I know there is always an extraordinary team of supporters. In my case I have, fortunately, a loving family, a close circle of friends, a great campaign team and the support of genuine rank-and-file Labor Party members. I would also thank the Newcastle trade union movement and a strong cross-section of the Newcastle community. I am grateful to them all.

I want to put on the record my appreciation of the rank-and-file members of the Australian Labor Party for their trust and strong endorsement of my candidature. These people embody Labor values and principles and selflessly volunteer their time and energy to promote Labor’s agendas and ensure that Labor delivers—so they are very vocal right now as well, which is wonderful.

Campaigns are tough but a strong campaign team makes all the difference. I want to particularly thank Sharon Claydon, Simonne Pengelly, Ben Farrell and John Dunn, who all played key roles in my campaign; my FEC executive—Morrie Graham, James Marshall, Shirley Schulz-Robinson, Barbara Whitcher, Noel James, Ruth Callcott, Bernie Bernard and Mark Walmsley; Lauren O’Brien and Harry Criticos for their assistance with the preparation of campaign materials; the campaign office volunteers—Cath Claydon, Victoria Phillis, Tommy Lockett, Su Cruickshank, Sue McCormack and the dozens of other people who helped out in the campaign office; the mobile corflute team, including Donovan Harris and John Sherry; and all those people who displayed posters at their home or workplace.

I also thank Ross Coates for coordinating the street stall campaign and the dozens of people who helped out on stalls all around Newcastle. I thank Chris Hepple and the team of volunteers who maintained the prepoll booth rosters; Mary Callcott, James Marshall and John Ellery, who scrutineered the mobile polling booths; the 52 booth captains; and the hundreds of people who volunteered to work on polling booths across the electorate on election day. I thank Pat Martin and Irene Bennett and their able team, who helped prepare and deliver lunch and supplies to booth volunteers, and the dozens of scrutineers who stayed behind at the close of polls for the count, despite the temptation to join us and celebrate a long-awaited federal Labor victory.

I also want to acknowledge the support of the Newcastle Trades Hall Council, particularly the secretary, Gary Kennedy, the Maritime Union of Australia, particularly Len Covell, and the United Mine Workers Association, in particular Ian Murray and Graheme Kelly, for their support throughout the campaign. I welcome the opportunity to work with the wider labour movement. Having not come from the labour movement, I very much appreciate being a part of that wider family.

I also want to thank my federal parliamentary Labor Party colleagues who were so willing to visit Newcastle in their former roles as shadow ministers to ensure that Labor’s policy agenda took account of Newcastle’s needs and aspirations. In that lead-up period they included Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Lindsay Tanner, Nicola Roxon, Brendan O’Connor, Chris Evans, Craig Emerson, Stephen Conroy, Jan McLucas, Annette Hurley, Martin Ferguson and Kate Lundy. To have their support in that very busy year when we were all facing so many challenges was wonderful, and I do thank them very much.

My final and most important thanks go to the people of Newcastle—the local residents and families, community groups, representative organisations, small businesses, manufacturers, educators, health workers, environmentalists, IT workers, scientists, creative artists, and seniors and youth alike—for their ongoing support and for entrusting federal Labor with the responsibility of creating a better and fairer future.

The people of Newcastle are never backward in coming forward. My electorate office, which is a shopfront office, is extremely busy with personal calls, visits, letters, emails and community events. I greatly value the contact, feedback, suggestions, constructive criticism, policy ideas and assistance from the people of Newcastle. I also take great satisfaction in being able to provide them with help, information and advice and to put them together and achieve much more in that way. Never a week goes by in my office when someone does not make the effort to thank me or my staff for the work we do. I am told that that is quite an astounding thing—it does not always happen. The people of Newcastle always take the time to say thank you. For that I am particularly grateful.

We have of course as a new government put forward a very positive agenda. The key themes—economic management and reform, work and family, the education revolution, health, climate change and water, housing, social inclusion, Indigenous policy, national security and international relations, and governance and transparency—are vital to a new direction in this new century. It is a big agenda, tackling the big issues and aiming to make our nation fair, productive and secure. At the election I think the people of Newcastle found it was an agenda that resonated with them very strongly.

We have a very strong industrial and working-class background, but our city has always been in transition and is always having to be resilient. We have been tested over and over again, as recently as last year. In a week or so, it is the 12-month anniversary of the June storms that saw the Pasha Bulker washed up on shore and hundreds and hundreds of people washed out of their homes. I think people know of our history in terms of the earthquake et cetera. They know that Newcastle is a tough place. The people stick together. They believe in a fair go and that a harmonious workplace is a safe and productive workplace. Newcastle has seen too many of its people injured and lost at the workplace.

Novocastrians voted for change and for some of the things they know are important to their future. We are proud of our coalmining heritage and we will never abandon the jobs of those working around that industry, but we know that we do need, and will need, to do it smarter and cleaner. So, on climate change, Newcastle sees great opportunities in the government’s agenda. From the beginning of last year, I have hosted roundtable meetings with stakeholders in the energy sector to talk about becoming a region of energy sustainability and energy solutions. I am very pleased to say that those meetings with the state government continue this week, trying to put together a proposal and submission from our region for the Clean Energy Enterprise Connect Centres announced in the new budget.

I welcome the support of Minister Penny Wong, who visited my electorate just last week to see the outstanding and world-leading research being done into solar thermal, clean coal and energy efficiency technologies at CSIRO Energy Technology Newcastle. It is a wonderful facility. I was very pleased to receive a call from Geoff Garrett, the CEO of CSIRO, last week to say he had been to Newcastle and how much he had enjoyed visiting our Hunter Means Innovation Festival, how much change he had seen in the city of Newcastle over six years and how he was delighted to know the flagship was attracting some of the world’s best young scientists who wish to be part of the energy solutions for the world and were certainly very happy to come to Newcastle to be a part of that activity. Those sorts of agendas are wonderful for us.

The social inclusion agenda is also terribly important for Newcastle. We are a regional capital, so we provide services for people with disabilities and mental illness. We know that homelessness affects people in our city. We know that binge drinking is one of those social problems. To have a social inclusion agenda will be very important for a regional capital like Newcastle because, in many ways, it is a magnet for people seeking support or running perhaps to bigger centres.

We also know that we have been left with the burden of neglected regional infrastructure. Our port of Newcastle is of course the biggest exporter of coal in the world. The regional airport is the fastest growing regional airport in Australia. We do know that there is a need for a new approach that looks more holistically at the value of infrastructure and certainly builds some cooperative approaches with our state colleagues. Those are some of the challenges we want to be a part of.

There are other challenges facing Newcastle, ones that I am very happy to pursue in this parliament. We know that a Federal Court building is earmarked for our city and we know it will support not just the city of Newcastle but a quarter of the state at least, maybe even more. We also know that the Hunter Medical Research Institute needs support from this government and the wonderful health and medical fund announced in our budget will see a way forward for those facilities.  Innovation is what we are about and certainly the HMRI is a successful innovator when it comes to health research.

One of the ways we have taken to build on these wonderful agendas was the 2020 Summit. I am pleased to report that the Newcastle 2020 Summit on 5 April facilitated by me and Professor Nick Saunders, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Newcastle, was undertaken in that very great spirit of gathering ideas from over 100 local people, drawn from all sectors. One of the overwhelming themes to emerge was that our region needed to work better at establishing a dialogue across sectors, setting some clear priorities for our region which reflected a shared view. It was agreed that by doing that we could play a greater role in national policy design and its local implementation, taking charge of our destiny and leading the national agenda by local example.

The local summit produced a range of great ideas that were submitted to the national 2020 Summit. I seek leave to table the Newcastle 2020 Summit communique.

Leave granted.

Our ideas were a reflection of the strength of our community and I look forward to working with the Newcastle community to deliver on those ideas.

I am proud to say that two weeks ago the federal Labor government delivered a budget that meets my election commitments to Newcastle. I will be speaking in detail about those during consideration of the budget bills, but in this address-in-reply speech I will finish by once more giving my commitment to the people of Newcastle that I will honestly and passionately represent their views to this parliament and that I will be very proud to be part of creating a more prosperous and fairer future for them. It is an honour to represent them and I will continue to be a strong voice for Newcastle in the new Rudd Labor government. (Time expired)

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, the Service Economy and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak about the way in which the last budget, and indeed the new Rudd Labor government’s agenda, has been one significant fraud on the Australian people. In particular I would like to note that in the lead-up to the 24 November election a couple of statements of fact were made that are worth repeating. The first is that, in many respects, the Australian economy was regarded as the ‘wonder down under’, to use the jargon that many economists around the world were using. Australia had the strongest possible economy following 15 or 16 years of continuous economic growth. Under the coalition, we saw Australia transformed as a country. When we were first elected in 1996, following an awful 13 years of Labor administration, we had a nation that was suffering under the weight of $96 billion of debt. We had an unemployment rate that was over eight per cent. We had a budget deficit that was in excess of $10 billion. That was the legacy that was left to the previous coalition government.

During 11 years of sound, responsible economic management, we were able to turn that situation around and halve the unemployment rate from eight per cent to four per cent. We paid off in full the $96 billion of Labor Party debt so that, in essence, the Rudd Labor government inherited a net asset position of $60 billion, versus the $96 billion debt that the coalition government inherited when we took over after Labor. In addition to that, we turned around the Australian budgetary position so that it was no longer shackled with a $10 billion budget deficit but, rather, was enjoying budget surpluses of around 1½ per cent of GDP, approximately $12 billion to $15 billion. That was the track record in broad terms of the previous coalition government.

I and all coalition members know that in the lead-up to the last federal election the Australian people had very significant concerns that they wanted addressed. These concerns were preyed upon by a populist then opposition leader, in the form of Kevin Rudd, our new Prime Minister. He marched around Australia and said that, under the Labor Party, he would make sure that two significant concerns were addressed immediately. The first promise was that a Rudd Labor government would bring down petrol prices. Day after day, the coalition was faced with questions from the Rudd Labor opposition about why it was not doing more on petrol prices. Indeed, state Labor members and Labor candidates would say to people in my electorate, ‘You know, petrol prices are very high. If the coalition really cared it would do more. Under a Rudd Labor government we will bring down petrol prices because we’ve got a bold new plan.’ That is what the Labor Party said.

In addition to that, I had Labor candidates running around my electorate making claims that, under a Rudd Labor government, they would bring down grocery prices, because, according to the Australian Labor Party, we had apparently taken our eye off the ball. Labor candidates said that if they were elected they had a bold new plan to change grocery pricing so that it would be lower under the Labor Party. They were the two major promises that the Rudd Labor government took to the last election—coupled, of course, with reforms to Work Choices. I will touch on all three in more detail.

At the outset, it is important to understand where Australia was when the Howard government was elected in 1996 and where Australia was left when the Howard government lost office in 2007, and to contrast that with the performance of the Rudd Labor government in the last six months. Given the government said it was very important that the budget, which was handed down recently, be a budget that would lower inflation pressure, it is interesting to have a look at what actually was achieved in the last Rudd budget.

The Rudd Labor government have made a point of going about the place saying that they have inherited the highest inflation rate for 16 years. All members of the coalition concede that point. It is a matter of statistical fact. It is the highest level for 16 years—incidentally, the highest level since Labor were last in power. Inflation did get high from time to time under the coalition, but the key difference is that, each time inflation would start to creep up, the coalition was able to address it and bring it back down. That stands in stark contrast to the situation now that the Labor Party are back in power, when we see inflation sitting up higher than is comfortable for the Reserve Bank of Australia. Rather than doing as the previous coalition government did, making correct policy settings to ensure that they brought the inflation level down, the Rudd Labor government, and particularly the reckless Treasurer, Wayne Swan, have raced about Australia saying that the sky is caving in, that inflation is a crisis and that the budget needed to have some savage cuts. We heard for months that the Labor Party were going to ensure that this budget would contain significant cuts to put downward pressure on prices. We heard they wanted downward pressure on petrol prices and downward pressure on grocery prices and that they would put downward pressure on inflation as a result of this budget.

But what did we actually achieve in the last budget? What was it that the Australian people saw from this new Rudd Labor government? Much to their surprise, what they saw, rather than a budget that would put downward pressure on inflation, was a budget that would put upward pressure on inflation. Rather than being a budget that would put downward pressure on petrol prices, it was a budget that would put upward pressure on petrol prices. Rather than being a budget that will, as was promised by the Labor Party, put downward pressure on grocery prices, it is a budget that does absolutely nothing to make an impact on petrol prices except to increase transport costs so that, if anything, grocery prices are likely to go up under the Rudd Labor government. So much for all the promises of 24 November! So much for the new Labor government’s record and their promises of putting downward pressure on inflation and of lower petrol and grocery prices! The exact opposite has come to pass in a relatively short period of six months under this Labor government.

It brings me no joy to inform the people in my electorate of Moncrieff and the people of the Gold Coast more broadly about what this new Labor government is doing for the people of the Gold Coast, because it is almost worse than doing nothing. I would actually prefer that the Labor government did nothing for the people of the Gold Coast over what the Labor government is doing, which is taking them backwards. In particular, I would like to address one of the key concerns for all Gold Coast residents: health.

The Gold Coast has been Australia’s fastest-growing city for the last 25 years and it is anticipated to be the fastest-growing city for the next 30 years. We have significant strain on our public health system. I would not have minded if the Rudd Labor government had stood by their promise that their policy solution was the rollout of GP superclinics. The coalition previously adopted the stance that one way we could help to ease the burden on the public hospital system would be to ensure that we provided additional funding for after-hours medical care, because we knew that people did not get sick only between nine and five. We rolled out a whole spate of programs to ensure that medical clinics across the Gold Coast were able to offer care outside of regular business hours, including on the weekend.

I understand policy debate. The Rudd Labor government said, ‘That will not be our focus; our focus will be to deliver better health services through GP superclinics.’ So I looked forward eagerly and with some anticipation when recently the Rudd Labor government announced that there would be 31 GP superclinics. Unfortunately, not one of them is on the Gold Coast. A city of 600,000 people has been completely ignored by the Labor Party, who have failed to put a single GP superclinic on the coast. To make matters worse, they have cut funding for the GP after-hours clinics. In fact, the Labor Party have rubbed salt in the wounds of all those people on the Gold Coast, because they do not get a GP superclinic and, thanks to the insight of this Labor government, they have had after-hours medical care cut. It is a city of 600,000 people that now, thanks to this new Labor government, does not have access to after-hours medical care and does not have a GP superclinic. That is the record of the Labor Party, and it is important that all Gold Coasters know where they stand.

But the triple whammy has been the decision of the Labor Party to raise the Medicare surcharge. The impact of this we already know. According to the budget papers, approximately 498,000 taxpayers will shift from being privately insured to the public system. When you multiply that across families, not just taxpayers, we know that close to one million Australians will shift from being privately insured and go to the public system. That means, in a city of 600,000 people, thousands of Gold Coasters who previously were enjoying the benefits of private medical insurance will now be lining up in the emergency ward of the public hospital, waiting for six or eight hours, as they do right now, and that problem will only get worse. And it is also going to get worse because people can no longer go after hours to a GP clinic as that funding has been cut. They cannot go to a much-vaunted GP superclinic, because we do not have one. So, thanks to the Australian Labor Party, the Gold Coast now has no superclinic and no after-hours care and thousands of people have been shoved from the private system to the public system. That is the legacy of the Labor Party when it comes to health. That is the bold new reform and the bold new plan from the Rudd Labor government. I say to the people of the Gold Coast that they should look in a very disparaging way at any Labor politician who dares to set foot on the Gold Coast and they should ask them why they are not doing something on health, because Labor’s track record is abysmal. But I am afraid that it just follows on from the record of incompetence that we see from the state Labor government when it comes to Queensland Health.

Some months ago, the state health minister said that the Gold Coast would be receiving a new hospital, and I thought, ‘Great, an investment of several hundred million dollars in a new facility.’ I was pleased when they erected the sign on the block of land that said: ‘This is the site of the new Gold Coast hospital; construction will commence March 2007’. I was very excited as finally we were getting some recognition from the state Labor government. I was there in March 2007 and there was the sign and there were the trees. I went again in April 2007 and there was the sign and there were the trees. I went in May 2007; the sign was still there and the trees were still there, and I thought: ‘Construction must be going to start soon.’ I raised the point in the media, and I said, ‘Well, there’s the sign and there’s the block of land. Why haven’t they started building the new hospital?’ And I am pleased to report that the sign was taken down.

The state Labor government are now engaged in further deliberation and further consultation about where in fact they will put the hospital, but there is no solution whatsoever to the very legitimate health needs of a city of 600,000 people. The Labor Party in Queensland have a big problem, the same problem that exists across virtually every state Labor government in this country: the debt monkey is on their back—$85 billion of state debt. I say to the people of my electorate of Moncrieff and of the Gold Coast more broadly: this Labor Party at a federal level will do what the Keating and the Hawke Labor governments did; it will do what the Labor Party have done in every single state with their $85 billion of debt. It will take a very strong healthy Australian economy and it will destroy it. That will be the legacy of this new Rudd Labor government. I am happy to put my prediction on the table now. We saw from the Rudd Labor budget that, despite all the promises of this budget being one that would put downward pressure on inflation, it was in fact an inflationary budget, because it was a typical old-style Labor budget—big spending and big tax increases. That is what the Labor Party brought about in the most recent budget.

But, importantly, they also, unfortunately, cut spending in a whole host of areas. I have a large number of schools in my electorate which benefited from a coalition initiative called Investing in Our Schools. It was a billion-dollar program that saw all sorts of investments go into a whole range of classrooms. It was a program that I supported when the coalition was in government, because the state Labor government then was dragging its feet on critical infrastructure for schools. So the federal coalition government stepped up to the plate, and we said, ‘We’ll provide funding out of our budget surplus to help school P&Cs,’ because, frankly, if we had waited for the state Labor governments to do it we would still be waiting.

I have a vast array of schools in my electorate and to cite just some: Nerang State High School received $129,000 to refurbish its hall; Nerang state primary school received $125,000 for a shade structure court, a grounds upgrade and oval irrigation; William Duncan State School, $70,000 for a shade structure; Bellevue Park State School, new ICT and computer equipment to the tune of about $20,000; Benowa State High School, $100,000 for reverse cycle air-conditioning; Keebra Park State High School, $109,000 for a sports field and a further $40,000 for air-conditioning; and we saw at Miami State High School $100,000 for a canteen. In each of these areas—and these are just some examples—we were able to see direct investment by the coalition to improve the school facilities for young Gold Coast kids, because we believe in them.

But unfortunately that program has now been axed. It has been axed for the so-called education revolution that we have been hearing so much about from the Labor Party. You do not want to ask too many questions about what the education revolution is, because so far the grand total of it seems to be computers in boxes. The Labor Party like to say ‘computers in classrooms’, but it is very clear that it actually only extends as far as computers in boxes. The boxes with computers in them turn up at schools, with no extra funding to make sure they can be plugged in, no extra funding for security, no extra funding for workstations, no extra funding to make sure that there are power points to plug the computers into. This is the extent of the Labor Party’s forward thinking when it comes to their so-called education revolution.

There are a range of areas where Gold Coast families and older Gold Coasters have also missed out. The coalition was very focused on and paid strong attention to these two constituencies because they are people who make such a difference to the Australian community. These are the men and women and the older Australians who are the backbone of our communities. I was always very proud to be a strong advocate for them in the coalition’s party room when we were in government. It is very clear that the Rudd Labor government has completely ignored them. It is very clear that, despite a record amount of funding in the budget surplus, the Rudd Labor government simply does not have the wherewithal or desire to service the needs of families and older Australians on the Gold Coast. An example of this is its decision to change the eligibility rules for the Commonwealth healthcare card. Previously, thousands of Gold Coasters would have been eligible for the Commonwealth health card. That is no longer the case. Thanks to changes that were announced in this most recent budget, we now see older Gold Coasters no longer eligible, despite the fact that there was no consultation, despite the fact that their very legitimate requirements were completely ignored.

The other key program that had a funding cut in the budget was Regional Partnerships. This was a particularly important program for regional centres like the Gold Coast. The coalition were attempting to address key infrastructure requirements of cities like the Gold Coast, and Regional Partnerships was a crucial way of doing that. Unfortunately, the Labor Party tended to focus on Regional Partnerships and claimed that in some way it was a rort or a pork-barrelling exercise. How ironic that, despite all these unfounded attacks on the Regional Partnerships program, the Labor Party was still happy to accept several hundred thousand dollars for the ‘stump of knowledge’—or, I should say, the Tree of Knowledge—in Barcaldine. In addition to that, we have witnessed today that in government the Labor Party and in particular the member for Grayndler have altered the rules of the Noise Abatement Program so that he can provide $14 million to his local school for abatement of aircraft noise. How extraordinary that the $14 million that has been pork-barrelled into that school has been estimated, according to newspaper reports, as being twice the cost of building a new school. It is quite extraordinary that the Labor Party has the hide to be critical of an important program like Regional Partnerships when it engages in pork-barrelling to the tune of $14 million in its first six months for a school which just happens to be in the electorate of the member for Grayndler.

A very proud moment for me and the member for McPherson was the launch of the Australian Technical College on the Gold Coast. This was one of a series of ATC rollouts across Australia, and it provides very real opportunities for industry to work more closely with local schools to provide the best possible training opportunities for young Gold Coast kids. We heard that, as part of the education revolution, the Rudd Labor government intends to roll out a metal arts shop, a woodwork shop or something like them in each of the high schools. So, despite the fact that we have a purpose-built specialist ATC that is providing for hundreds of Gold Coast kids a first-class education in the vocational arts, specifically tailored to meet the needs of our local community, the Labor Party is going to walk away from that ATC, not fund it in the future and instead engage in some relatively pointless exercise of duplicating all that infrastructure—allegedly—across Gold Coast schools. I say ‘allegedly’ because I will believe it when I see it. I suspect it will be a long time before Gold Coast schools have the infrastructure that has been promised to them by the Rudd Labor government.

In summary, the first six months of the Rudd Labor government has been a very average six months. Despite the rhetoric that they would bring down petrol prices, it is clear that their only plan is to watch petrol prices and put no downward pressure on at all. Despite their promise to decrease grocery prices, grocery prices continue to skyrocket, with no plan at all. And, despite their promises to put downward pressure on inflation through the budget, it is clear that it is an old-time Labor big-spending, big-taxing budget.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity today to speak from this side of the House in the address-in-reply debate. Even though it is the fourth of these speeches in my career, the fourth time I have been returned to this place, there is something special about speaking this time around as a member of the government, the Rudd Labor government.

In some respects, this speech is a little bit like a first speech. Before the last election in 2007 there was a quite substantial electoral redistribution throughout Queensland, which made some significant changes to the electorate of Capricornia. The downside of such a redistribution is that Capricornia no longer includes a number of communities where I have really enjoyed working with community members on their various projects and helping them address some of the issues and problems that they have. I am thinking of communities like the great mining town of Blackwater. There are also Biloela, Moura and Theodore, among others. These are all communities south-west of the main town in Capricornia, Rockhampton, which have now been included in the new seat of Flynn, which is represented by my colleague Chris Trevor. I know that Chris is already working very hard. He has picked up the reins very quickly and is working hard with those communities and seeing some of the projects that I was working on with those communities come to fruition. I wish him all the best and I can assure those communities that they have a very good representative in this place.

The redistribution gave me some great new communities. The electorate now goes north into the very southern outskirts of Mackay. It includes communities like Sarina and Clairview and communities of the Pioneer Valley like Finch Hatton, Pleystowe, Gargett, Marian and Mirani. I was delighted to see those communities come into the boundaries of Capricornia. I was born and bred in Mackay and I am very familiar with those communities from my childhood up there. It is great to be back on my old home turf and I am honoured that they have supported me to return me here as their representative. I welcome them to the electorate of Capricornia and assure them that I will do my very best to give them good representation in this place.

Those communities have brought a major change to the electorate of Capricornia. People in this chamber have heard me talk many times about Capricornia’s substantial role in both the beef cattle industry and the coalmining industry. The communities to the south and west of Mackay are in one of Australia’s premier sugar-growing regions, so I am quickly finding my way around the sugar industry and I appreciate the assistance that I have had from representatives of both the growing and the milling communities.

It is now six months since the election of the Rudd government, and it is a good time to look back on the commitments that were made during the course of the campaign in Capricornia and measure what progress has been made on those commitments. When we look back at the campaign—not just the five weeks of the election campaign itself but throughout the last two years leading up to the 2007 election—we see that the No. 1 issue that really motivated people in the electorate of Capricornia was Work Choices. It was quite a shock to people in Capricornia, as indeed it was right around Australia, when that was introduced by the Howard government. Of course, there was no opportunity to debate the merits or otherwise of the previous government’s industrial relations plan before the last election; it was kept under wraps until the Senate majority emerged. People reacted very strongly once they had had a look at what Work Choices meant to them: the removal of protection from unfair dismissal and the introduction of AWAs, which we saw very quickly taking away hard-won entitlements and attacking people’s take-home wages.

In Capricornia people took to the streets and their workplaces and got very involved in the Your Rights at Work campaign. They worked very hard in the community, in their workplaces and, thankfully, on my campaign, to do their bit to end Work Choices and to defeat the Howard government. I want to say thank you to all those people who helped me in my campaign—I should more correctly say those who got involved at every level in the Your Rights at Work campaign. It was a tremendous effort throughout Capricornia and I really do appreciate the support that I got. I have to congratulate people for basically sticking up for their rights and for not copping what Work Choices meant to them, to their families, to their workplaces and of course to this nation and what we regard as some pretty core Australian values.

Looking at our very local campaign and some of the commitments that were made at the local level in Capricornia, you cannot go past health as a very important policy area in which people were looking to the Rudd Labor team to address some critical deficiencies from the previous Howard government. One of the most important commitments that we made in Capricornia was to grant a full-time licence for an MRI machine, with that licence being attached to an MRI machine at the Rockhampton Base Hospital. Going back into the history of this matter: at the 2004 election Labor promised that we would grant a licence for a full-time MRI machine at the Rockhampton hospital. It was a priority going back to that time. We were not successful in that election. The Howard government instead granted that full-time licence to a private sector operator, but the private sector operator put the MRI machine into a mobile unit that spends its time between Rockhampton, Gladstone and Bundaberg. In effect, Rockhampton, the major health hub in Central Queensland, only has access to an MRI machine on a part-time basis, and this is completely unacceptable.

Nicola Roxon joined me in making the commitment that, if elected, Labor would provide a full-time MRI licence for a machine to be located at the Rockhampton Base Hospital. The minute I made that announcement and it became public, quite a number of people, in conversation when I bumped into them at the shopping centre or down the street, told me about their own personal experiences. For example, they had been diagnosed with something or they were concerned about a particular health condition and the doctor had suggested that they get an MRI scan to make a correct diagnosis, and there they were, sitting around waiting for one week, two weeks or whatever it might be while this MRI machine made its way back up from Bundaberg or Gladstone. Meanwhile, they were sitting with a lump or something that they could not get identified. It was a very anxious time for people, and it is something that Labor has addressed. Discussions are underway already with Queensland Health about the implementation of this promise, and I am assured by the Commonwealth health department that we are very much ready to go with the issuing of that licence and our commitment to picking up the bill for the MRI services that will be provided when Queensland Health is in a position to get that machine up and going.

The other health initiative was one put forward by the Capricornia Division of General Practice. It is a very innovative project named the Capricornia Primary Health Advanced Community Care initiative. It is very much designed to avoid the need for people to go into hospital. The idea is that someone going to their GP who would otherwise be admitted to hospital as a last resort will be able to contact this organisation, which will be run by the division of GPs. It will involve a database of services that are available out in the community to support those people who would otherwise have no option but to be admitted to hospital. This is really about harnessing the resources that are already in the community to take some of the pressure off our public hospital system. Again, this is already underway. Meetings have been held between the Commonwealth and state health departments and the other stakeholders in this and I am confident that that local initiative for people to avoid going into hospital and to get the care they need in their own homes will get underway soon.

The other big issue that has been a mainstay of my speeches in this place for pretty much the whole time I have been here is of course roads. Anyone in a regional electorate would spend a fair bit of time talking about roads and lobbying for funding for roads. I can see that you endorse my words, Deputy Speaker Sidebottom. Some are more successful than others with funding, you would have to say. Nonetheless, I did welcome the $2.2 billion that was announced for the Bruce Highway in Queensland. Yes, funding does go to places other than Tasmania at times. This $2.2 billion for the Bruce Highway includes a significant proportion for the Central Queensland section between Childers and Sarina. It means things like an extra 40 overtaking lanes between Childers and Sarina, which will be very welcome, and a great deal of widening and strengthening work to increase the safety and efficiency of the road.

There are three main projects that I will be pushing very hard to be given some priority. One is a significant upgrade of the main street of Sarina. The Bruce Highway actually goes right through the main part of the town and there was $10 million announced to straighten up that road and make that southern approach to Sarina a bit safer and for it to work better as a main street. Another important one, which I think work is already underway on to implement, is the duplication of the road between Bakers Creek, just south of Mackay, and Farrelly’s Lane, which is the entrance to the fast-growing industrial area at Paget. That is going to be a really important one because the traffic on that road between Sarina and Mackay and out to the mining towns is growing exponentially.

The other important one is a $5 million commitment to fund a major scoping study looking at how you take road and rail traffic over the Yeppen flood plain at the southern entrance to Rockhampton. That is something that has really needed to be looked at for many years, and the increased activity in the mining towns to the west of Rockhampton and right through the Central Queensland region has meant that it is becoming even more pressing. I was very pleased to get those commitments.

Some other local promises picked up in the budget last week were for three sporting facilities: two in Rockhampton and one in the mining town of Dysart. One of those commitments is for the redevelopment of the Hegvold Stadium, which is the home of basketball in Rockhampton. The stadium has already been given great support by the state government and also by Rockhampton Basketball, and the federal government will be kicking in to help that project on its way. Similarly, we will be providing some funding for an upgrade of the Kele Park softball facility in Rockhampton. The other great project is a multipurpose sport and recreation centre in the mining town of Dysart. This is a great project, bringing together support from the state and federal governments and also from BMA, which is the main mining company operating out at Dysart. That facility is seen as a really important part of increasing the attractiveness of Dysart as a place for people to live. The mining companies, like everyone, are finding it harder and harder to fill their workforce needs. The things that help attract and retain staff in communities like Dysart are very important.

Speaking of coal, one of the other things that was announced during the election by the Labor side was the $500 million Clean Coal Fund. I notice the former Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources sitting in the chamber. I know he joins me in being a very keen supporter of the coal industry as a representative of a major proportion of the coal industry in Queensland. Of course, the future of that industry is very near and dear to my heart and to the people of Capricornia, who understand the importance of its contribution to our economic base in Central Queensland. Labor’s $500 million Clean Coal Fund is very much about securing the future of the industry. The aim of the fund is also to leverage funds from industry as we look towards developing and implementing technologies that will allow us to continue using coal for our energy needs in a carbon constrained future.

Finally, I want to talk about Labor’s commitment to building a national broadband network. Apart from Work Choices, I would say the next most commonly raised issue in my electorate over the last couple of years has been the question of people’s access to broadband and its affordability. It is not something that is confined to rural communities. In fact, the issue was most prevalent in fast-growing urban areas of my electorate like Rockhampton and the Capricorn Coast—more so even than in the rural and more remote parts of the electorate. I am very pleased to know that with the election of the Rudd Labor government there is a commitment to the rollout of a national broadband network so that people can have that access, particularly in the areas of education and its applications in health and in business. This issue is something that has held us back. Australia has a dreadful record if you look at international comparisons on speed of broadband and access to broadband, so this is an important step in overcoming that shortfall.

As I said, I went to the election with those quite specific local promises and I was very pleased to see in the budget two weeks ago that those commitments have been honoured. I can go back to my electorate and assure people that the things that we said we would do—the abolition of AWAs, the abolition of Work Choices, the MRI machine, the primary healthcare initiative and the sporting facilities I mentioned—are all there in the budget and that we are delivering on our promises for the people of Central Queensland and Capricornia.

In conclusion, I want to again say thank you to the people who have once again given me their support. I will be working hard to represent them and will be enjoying my time in government after all these years in opposition. I intend to make that work for the people who put me here.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, like the member for Capricornia, joined this parliament in 1988 and it is certainly a delight to again be part of this parliament and to represent the electorate of Groom for a fourth term. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the many hardworking supporters and volunteers for their commitment during last year’s election campaign in Groom, which saw a very good outcome, if I may say so—certainly the right choice by the good voters of that electorate. In particular, I would like to thank my campaign manager, Phillip Blain, and the treasurer of my campaign, Dallas Kelly, both of whom put in an inordinate amount of effort and time.

I guess no-one does this job alone and I would also take the opportunity to thank my staff, both ministerial and electorate, who have supported me not only in the last term but in some cases for my whole time in parliament, and of course my family, who are the only ones who really know the sacrifices that people make—and they did make sacrifices. I thank my wife, Karen, and my two daughters, Kate and Laura, for their support over the nine years I have been a member of this House. It is the dedication, through their time and energy, of both my family and my supporters that has helped return me to this place to continue my role representing the people of Toowoomba and the Darling Downs.

To all the people in my electorate, regardless of their voting preferences, I give my word that I will continue to be a determined and unrelenting advocate as to the needs of our region and will represent all voters in my electorate, not just those who voted for me. I note that that was a pledge that the Prime Minister made but, having seen the budget that has been handed down for regional Australia, I start to wonder if he is as committed to that as he says he is.

In March in my electorate the political landscape underwent a fundamental change. Along with the rest of Queensland, people in Toowoomba voted for a new local government representative body, a body that encompasses eight local government authorities, and the Toowoomba Regional Council has been formed in a process forced upon the region by the state government and resisted by many people in the region to no avail. We should not underestimate the challenges ahead for this new group in ensuring fair representation for residents of regional Queensland. As a local member, I have always sought to be accessible to the local shire councils in my region and, despite the significant transformation, that will not change.

I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate former Jondaryan mayor Peter Taylor, who has been overwhelmingly elected. Peter is a man of great capability. I think he will make an enormous contribution with his council of 10, whom I also congratulate. I look forward to working with the newly elected representatives of my region to ensure that the Toowoomba Regional Council, which covers all of my electorate—in fact, it covers an area almost twice the size of my electorate—achieves the things that it sets out to achieve.

It has been a privilege to be the federal member for Groom during a time that has seen the electorate consolidate its position as one of the most vibrant inland regions in Australia. Toowoomba plays an integral role for people right across Australia, as it is at the heart of one of the country’s busiest and biggest freight corridors. However, the people in my electorate have had to pay a high price for their position in this vital supply chain, sharing their city with a steady stream of heavy transport 24 hours a day, or around the clock. For many years, the people of Toowoomba and the Darling Downs have been working hard to make their case for a Toowoomba bypass, a second range crossing, a road around a city of 100,000 people in which we currently see trucks traversing the main street of Toowoomba, carrying livestock and every imaginable good.

I was determined to join their fight. Dating back to my maiden speech in this place, I made it clear that delivering this road was a priority. There are several reasons why this alternative road would be so important to the Toowoomba and Darling Downs region. The first is that it would take heavy vehicles out of the city, off the same streets that school children cross every morning and afternoon on their way to and from school. No longer would drivers in Toowoomba’s busiest streets have to share the road with B-double trucks and other assorted vehicles. Along with enhancing the safety of and amenity for local residents, this would also eliminate the associated concerns of pollution and rapidly deteriorating roads.

Equally as important, the Toowoomba Bypass would enhance the safety of families, business people, holiday-makers and, most importantly, truck drivers who travel up and down the current range crossing each day. The people in this region did see our hard work come to fruition, when the previous coalition government announced that the road would be built. An initial allocation of $700 million to begin construction was made, with more funding guaranteed to follow. So you can imagine the crushing disappointment of the hardworking men and women, and families of my community who feel they have been brushed aside by the Prime Minister, the member for Grayndler and the Labor cabinet.

In fact, I wrote to both the Prime Minister and the member for Grayndler in December last year calling on them to let the people of Groom know whether Labor intends to complete the road. But the government’s only response has been to dismiss the need for a new bypass. And guess what we are getting instead—to add to that list of already 100 reviews, another review. Another review, on top of all those other reviews to see whether we need a Toowoomba range crossing. The Prime Minister does not need a review to decide the future of a second range crossing. It is obvious that this road needs to be built. That response is simply not good enough for the people living in one of the fastest-growing inland cities in Australia.

I have invited the member for Grayndler to come to regional Queensland—in fact, to my electorate—to have the courtesy of visiting the people whom he has so disadvantaged and to explain the justice of the argument: if they want access to the best quality national highway under a Rudd Labor government, they will have to pack up and move to a bigger city. Luckily, that does not apply in Tasmania, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom. The residents of Toowoomba and the Darling Downs deserve better than a Labor government which make themselves invisible. At a time when excuses are running out, I urge the Rudd Labor government to take action on this important infrastructure item for my electorate.

On the area of health, Toowoomba not only stands as one of the largest inland cities in Australia but has matured in its role as a central health hub for the people of south-west Queensland. One of the great successes, and I believe an example for other communities—and I have raised this matter with the current Minister for Health and Ageing—is the project which I was honoured to be part of and which I officially opened last year: the St Andrews Cancer Care Centre. This is a world-standard facility, providing lifesaving cancer treatment that serves not only Toowoomba but places as far afield as Tenterfield, Goondiwindi, St George, Roma, Kingaroy, Gatton and the Lockyer Valley. After the Darling Downs was identified as an area in need of radiation oncology services in 2003, St Andrews was awarded the tender in 2005 and, in 2007, a world-standard facility was opened. To add credence to that claim of world-standard, that cancer centre has in fact, in recent weeks, announced that it is currently leading Australia, if not the world, in a new form of prostate radiation treatment, which shows that things that happen in regional Queensland can be the best in the world.

We want to show more than ever that this is an outstanding example of cooperation between the former Commonwealth government and a local service provider to deliver in a vital area the level of care required. We want to continue to ensure that people of regional and rural Australia do not have to sacrifice access to the highest standard of health care simply because of their postcode. It is an obligation for the new Labor government to ensure the health needs of regional and rural Australia are met.

Toowoomba is a city with a proud education pedigree. Once again, it proves to be a focal point for surrounding rural areas. But many of the schools in my electorate have fallen victim to the Rudd Labor government’s budget committee, which has axed the immensely popular Investing in Our Schools Program to pay for its promises to give students in years 9 to 12 a laptop computer. What a shame they did not give any money to actually install them—let alone run them or provide the people to train the students on how to use them. Primary schools in Toowoomba and across the Darling Downs will be worse off because of this decision.

In my electorate, more than $8 million was provided for projects that local schools and parent communities decided were a priority and the state Labor government refused to fund. I was able to witness firsthand how these diverse projects were being put to use in local schools ranging from an all-access playground designed especially for children in wheelchairs with disabilities all the way to sports courts and air conditioning for small schools. Some of these items are basic comfort for school students, while others clearly enhance the learning and social experience. I ask on behalf of my electorate why these students would be forced to go without because of Labor’s poorly thought out laptop policy that is being conducted under a veil of secrecy. Primary schools have every right to feel they have been doubly done over, with the Labor promise taking on more cracks on a daily basis. Schools now find their promise to receive computers greatly cheapened by revelations that there is a list of schools that have been chosen to receive the first computers but that that list is being kept under lock and key.

We also have learned that school communities and parents will have to foot the bill for the extra costs associated with the Prime Minister’s policies such as power costs, teacher training, buildings, insurance, power points et cetera required for these extra computers. Not once did the Prime Minister give any indication to local parents that his education revolution would mean scrapping the Investing in Our Schools Program.

As a member of parliament whose electorate is based around one of Australia’s largest regional cities and extends to one of Queensland’s rural heartlands, I certainly know the value of communication services to people in regional Australia. As someone who as little as 15 years ago had a phone number which was 7H and that was the lot, which required a long-short-long ring to alert you to the need of it, I can assure you we have seen regional communications come a long way in a short space of time. The Labor government should be warned that the people of regional and rural Australia also know well the value of communication services and will not have the wool pulled over their eyes by Mr Rudd’s smoke and mirrors policy agenda. Unfortunately, there is good reason to be concerned about the impact of the Rudd government’s broadband policy—and I heard the member for Capricornia talking about it. Shame we are not seeing anything delivered. Shame the project mooted by the federal government prior to this government is not being put in place because it would be delivering broadband communications now. I think—and I could be corrected—we are having another review on that, and so the list of reviews grows.

Labor’s broadband policy runs a very real risk of isolating some of the more remote parts of my rural electorate. Not only will it slug Australian families more than $100 and will not be switched on until 2013 but one in four Australians will not even be able to access it. Labor’s broadband policy will work only if you live within 1.5 kilometres of the local exchange or node. It may shock some on the other side, but there are people who in fact live 10, 100, perhaps even 1,000 times that distance from their local exchange.

This contrasts with the coalition’s election commitment to deliver a new, high-speed broadband network that would deliver affordable, fast broadband to 99 per cent of all Australians. Not content with leaving rural and regional Australia out in the cold by ignoring crucial road projects and slashing school funding, the government now wants to further exaggerate the digital divide. Why should the people of Toowoomba or Pittsworth be forced to live with a second-class communications system compared to those in Brisbane, Sydney or, indeed, the Prime Minister’s electorate of Griffith or the Treasurer’s electorate of Lilley, where I am sure they have good broadband services?

As the shadow minister for trade, I also have the opportunity to work in an area which is of great significance to the people in my electorate. Toowoomba and the Darling Downs boast their fair share of exporters, and not only in agricultural products. It would surprise many here to learn that in fact manufacturing is the most significant earner of domestic product in my area. Some good examples of that are Russell Mineral Equipment and Wagner’s Fibre Composite Technologies, both of which export product, and, Russell Mineral Equipment in particular, lead the world in technology in mill relining machines. The experiences of these businesses are the story, reflected across the country in cities smaller and larger than Toowoomba, of hardworking and enterprising men and women who have found new opportunities abroad. Our exporters add more than $210 billion to Australia’s economy each year and that begs the question of why the trade minister and Prime Minister are continuing to be so erratic in their approach to trade policy. In my next speech, on the EMDG Scheme, I will highlight that position further. But suffice it to say that they ebb and flow between a desire to have FTAs—free trade agreements—and the multilateral Doha Round conclusion, with complete confusion being sown amongst the exporters in Australia. At the same time they have cut a huge amount of resources out of Australia’s ability both to attract investment here and to earn export dollars. I must say that, with some reason, the exporters of this country are really asking where the Rudd Labor government is going, heightened by the fact that a pledge to local exporters about the EMDG Scheme funding again seems to fall well short of what is being proposed.

The people who populate the electorate of Groom are some of the most wonderful people in Australia. I would assume that that would attract an argument from all members of parliament, who are obviously intensely proud of their own regions. Having lived in regional Australia all my life and having seen the ebb and flow of climate and the ebb and flow of different governments, I can say that overall my community looks forward to the decade ahead. We look forward to playing our part in contributing to the economy of Australia. We are a region blessed with natural assets. We are a region, thanks to the last government, which has an unemployment figure of 2.8 per cent. We are a region which, if the Rudd government gives us any attention at all, will do very well in the time ahead. I look forward to representing my constituents. I look forward to seeing some common-sense decisions handed down by the Rudd government. I still await the opportunity to see one, but I am looking forward to it happening and I certainly look forward to a change of heart in regard to the building of the Toowoomba range crossing.

Debate adjourned.