House debates

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

Governor-General’S Speech

Address-in-Reply

Debate resumed on the proposed address-in-reply to the speech of Her Excellency the Governor-General—

May it please Your Excellency:

We, the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia, in Parliament assembled, express our loyalty to the Sovereign, and thank Your Excellency for the speech which you have been pleased to address to the Parliament—

on motion by Ms O’Neill:

That the Address be agreed to.

10:23 am

Photo of Alby SchultzAlby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

The 2010 federal election was the fifth occasion on which I have contested the federal seat of Hume. At the outset, I wish to thank the constituents of the Hume electorate for their generosity in electing me once again to be their representative in the historical federal seat of Hume. I would particularly like to acknowledge the significant single contribution made by those people who worked on polling booths and scrutineered in what can only be described as the most atrocious and physically trying conditions I can remember.

Cold piercing wind, rain and low temperatures tested these loyal people who stoically stood their ground and worked to ensure the Liberal vote was maximised. Redistribution leading up to a federal election invariably creates difficulties for candidates in marshalling sufficient numbers of people to work for them in the new areas inherited through the redistribution process. In my case, despite not having represented the Weddin, Cowra and Cootamundra shires since 2001, people rallied to my call for support, and I once again thank them all for it.

During the campaign, there were many issues of concern raised by many people from all walks of life who were concerned about the direction in which the current government was taking this country and how it was impacting on their lives. Escalating electricity and gas costs were impacting on the ability of pensioners and low-income families to maintain their household budgets and were so bad in some areas they were cutting back on daily food consumption or restricting the time they were using their heating and cooking appliances within their homes.

Small business is also being dramatically affected by the increase in energy costs, rent increases and Fair Work Australia IR laws to the extent they advised me they are facing three options: (a) downsizing their workforce, with casual workers being the first to go, (b) downsizing their workforce and restructuring their business so they can absorb increased operating costs and maintain a viable business, and (c) counting their financial losses and shutting down their business.

Introducing a carbon tax, which the experts say will increase the cost of electricity by a further 19 per cent to 26 per cent, will further compound the problems centred around the ability of pensioners, low-income earners and small business people to live within the tight budgetary constraints forced on them by the ever-increasing cost of living. It does not stop there for small business. They are now starting to feel the pressures bearing down on them from the Julia Gillard Fair Work Australia industrial award, more specifically the retail industry award.

These pressures can be best described by reading correspondence forwarded by a constituent to Senator Ursula Stephens following on from a letter of response from the then Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. Julia Gillard, as a result of representations made by Senator Stephens to the Deputy Prime Minister on my constituents’ behalf. I now quote the correspondence in total in the interests of highlighting the indifference shown by the Labor government via its current Prime Minister, in her previous role as the former Deputy Prime Minister, to small business and the contribution it delivers to our nation’s economy and employment. This letter contains a significant and compelling message:

Good Morning Senator Stephens,

Thank you for forwarding the response by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, to my and my bakery team’s concerns regarding the commencement of the new General Retail Industry Award (2010).

Firstly, she contends that there was “wide consultation” and “extensive input” into the award modernisation. Well please let me know how many small businesses, corner stores, coffee shops, hardware stores, etc. were involved. These little business people are unrepresented because, unlike big business or trade unions, we do not have people on our payroll to look out for all these “opportunities” to make submissions nor do we have the time or people to prepare them.

I note in Ms Gillard’s response she advises that it is Government Policy that those who work “unsociable hours” should be compensated with extra reward in the form of penalty rates for late nights and weekends, etc.

In these modern days, surely it is up to the employee to decide whether work hours are “unsociable” and for them to decide whether they wish to work those hours or not. Some don’t want to work weekends or public holidays. That’s fine. But many do want to work—and without penalty rates.

We have employees who now have a proper job in their home town, who now do not have to spend 2 hours a day travelling in their own vehicles (no public transport in the bush) at a cost to them of over $100 a week. They are happy not to have to rely on Centrelink payments. Many have said they are not interested in penalty rates—they are just so happy to have a job in great business, and, in their town. No-one is compelled to work at all and often when no one wants to work on a public holiday, the proprietors fill the spots. No penalty rates for them. What makes employees better, more valuable people than their employers?

Just for your information a person over the age of 21 working on a public holiday costs our business over $50 per hour now. With the recent increase in the national wage and the introduction of this new award regime that cost will rise over $60 per hour, so you can see why most small businesses are just crumbling under the pressure and closing on weekends and public holidays and some (and a growing number) closing altogether. Employing people in small business is now mostly seen as pure stupidity and a recipe for financial and industrial disaster. We have to add a surcharge to our prices on weekends and public holidays and we cop substantial flack from the public for that.

The sentiment in business (the “small” business industry—not the big companies) is that it is just too hard. Any business that has employees is poison and is becoming pretty much unsaleable.

And interestingly enough, talking to government funded employment organisations as I was recently, they confirm that (in their words) they feel “very sorry for the owners of any small business that employs people “because” all the odds are against them.

By the same token as responsible employers, in order to retain the services of our employees we must look after them, ensure their workplace is safe and that they (in their minds - not ours) are fairly rewarded for the work they do.

That surely is the employee’s decision—not a decision to be made by someone stuck in a small office in a capital city who is well aware that the small business just cannot afford to close as they would suffer great losses and possibly lose their mortgaged home.

Secondly, the Federal Labor Government and the Trade Union movement happily go about lifting wage rates and penalty rates when, in our business, we have had no requests from any employee for such adjustments. The trade union may have members who are employed in the large industry companies who may be members of the Baking Manufacturers Industry Association of Australia (BMIAA) but very few, if any at all, of the small country bakeries/coffee outlets are members of that association. So what about consulting with us? Get out and visit (not orchestrated promo visits) some small businesses and get the message.

The Federal Labor Government and the Trade Union Movement really need to be aware that the big manufacturers don’t really care about wage adjustments because “nobody pays”. The CEO doesn’t pay the wages, the Directors don’t pay the wages. It just comes out of the bank account. And maybe the shareholders get 1 cent less in their dividend or more likely—the manufacturer just lifts their price to their customer and the price of bread in the supermarket rises by 5 cents.

But in my little businesses (and all the others) the extra costs come out of MY pocket and these award changes will cost ME $80,000 pa. That is, it adds 20% to my wage costs. And we have explained this to our employees and they are aghast and agree that it is not fair or workable as, in order to get some return on investment, jobs will go and/or prices will rise.

So we have had no information or warning about this catastrophic financial free kick against small business.

The Award system merely reduces all employees to mediocrity. The hard working employee gets the award, the slack one who takes smoke breaks and gets in 10 minutes late, and takes ‘sickies’, gets the award also. And of course we cannot dismiss the slack one thanks to the Unfair Dismissal rules. But can they decide they don’t want to work today? Of course. And what can we do about it. Nothing!!

And it shouldn’t be the number of employees that determines whether a business is small or large. Why don’t you consider the profitability as well. That would knock quite a few from large to small status.

And I would say to the ALP it is long overdue that the Labor Government really needs to understand that when a business person invests in a business they should be looking to achieve a clear profit of 20—30% on investment. In fact the government should give them a medal or a grant per employee to compensate for the grief. Because at present, we risk our homes, health and families for little reward. By the way—a tax deduction is of little benefit if there is not a profit.

And I note Ms Gillard refers to IFAs and that IFAs can be used provided that employees can be no worse off overall. Is there a like provision in the industrial relations rules somewhere that ensures that the employer is no worse off overall as well. I don’t think so.

So again, don’t swan around shopping centres getting photo opportunities for Ms Gillard allegedly consulting with small business. Come out to the coal face and sit down in the office and see the small business owners battle to put a few dollars in their pockets after making sure that all their employees are no worse off’.

And finally, perhaps the ALP forget that I am a worker myself—and a bloody hard worker. A lot harder worker than most of my employees. I’m the one who opens my accounting office at 7.30am and am still here at 7.32pm most days of the week. I’m the one who actually creates wealth by creating 8 jobs in my practice. Not any government. And if that’s not stupid enough of me I open a bakery 1.5 hours away that I visit weekly and get back to Goulburn at 12.30am after a 6.30am start the previous day. And there I created another 20 jobs. And who pays my super, holidays, sick leave and long service leave.

And just a fascinating comment from a knowledgeable person on recent developments in the PMs job and Australia generally.

It was with interest I was discussing superannuation matters with a client who has been working in Australia for many years as a foreign correspondent for a number of European News agencies. He is a citizen of Australia as are his wife and children. They have a small rural block.

We were discussing his super which is currently in a Swiss managed fund in Switzerland and I suggested that it may be prudent to move the super into an Australian Fund. His reply was a bit shocking for an Aussie. He replied, ‘not on your life. I do not trust this government. They have already fiddled with super and I do not trust them to leave super alone. Far better I leave it where it is and I can sleep at night’. And anyway, he added, ‘I do not want my super invested in a country where the person who is promoted at an election as the alternative PM, and elected as such, can be ousted by non-elected people. When that happens in other countries its called a coup. So we have seen a Trade Union coup of the Australian PM.’

I could not argue with him.

I do apologise for my very long winded response, but I do look forward to your comments to my, and most small business concerns with the Australian Trade Union Party.

Yours sincerely, Grant L Pearce

As I understand it, to date this gentleman has not had a response from Senator Stephens.

The lack of infrastructure commitment by the federal government, including road funding, was raised repeatedly during the campaign, and the Barton Highway duplication between the Hume Highway and the ACT attracted considerable public debate following a number of tragic accidents.

Accident statistics sourced from police show that from 1 January 2000 to 7 October 2010 there were some 300 crashes on the single-carriageway section of the Barton Highway. The statistics show that there were 86 injuries and 13 fatalities in that 10-year period caused by vehicles crossing the road for various reasons and colliding with an oncoming vehicle, tree or embankment. Overtaking manoeuvres where oncoming vehicles were brought into play and vehicles being hit from behind and forced into oncoming traffic were also attributed as causes for some of these crashes. Police officers say there appear to be no common denominator to these accidents. Some involved alcohol, some were on wet days, some involved front-wheel-drive vehicles and some were fatigue related.

Police quite obviously are unable to say that dual carriageways would have prevented all of the fatality and injury accidents but, from their experience, they believe dual carriageways do prevent contact with oncoming vehicles, thereby minimising the seriousness of most collisions. As an addendum to that, I note the massive loss of life that occurred on the Hume Highway in the sections that were single carriageway until such time as the dual carriageway system was funded and built.

Unfortunately, successive ministers from both sides of the political spectrum—and the side that I represent is one of them—have delayed and obfuscated on the obvious need to urgently duplicate this significant piece of vital road infrastructure, despite various reports from motor organisations such as the NRMA, which classed the Barton Highway as one of the worst roads in the country. Significant criticism centred on the fact that it is an arterial route into the Australian Capital Territory.

In the case of the current minister, it is apparent from my observations during the election campaign that he believes the covering of a saleyard complex to protect domestic animals is more important than reducing serious injuries and fatalities on highways such as the Barton Highway.

Time does not allow me to discuss all of the issues of concern raised with me but, interestingly, what did concern me during the campaign period was the lack of policies centred around agriculture—another savage indictment not only of the agriculture minister of the government of the day but previous agriculture ministers and shadow agriculture ministers. After just under 10 years of drought, serious rainfall commenced in December 2009 and continued to fall throughout 2010, giving farmers much needed relief and a promise of the best crop season for many years. That promise has come to fruition but, as is always the case in agriculture, the crops, whilst being acclaimed as the best in 20 years are being subjected to the elements of Mother Nature which threatens to take the gloss off what should be the most positive financial outcome farmers have experienced in a decade.

Those elements include the threat of a locust plague, the level of which has not been seen in some 60 years and which I have raised in this place a few weeks back, and continual rainfall, which has saturated the land to the extent that it could damage crops, thereby affecting yield and quality. It does not stop there because, due to the season that we have had since the drought broke in December 2009, we have had a massive build-up of fuel on public and private land. The risk of devastating firestorms is out there and there does not appear to be too much movement with regard to governments at all political levels getting off their backsides to be ready for that.

Then we had the debacle of the Murray-Darling Basin plan, released by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority on 8 October 2010 which, without due consideration and proper consultative process with the irrigators and rural communities, threatens the very survival of the irrigators who produce the food within the basin. Rural towns reliant on the economic benefits derived from those irrigation areas are under threat from this ill-conceived ambush of rural Australia.

How could any government be so ignorant and blind to the harsh reality of the vulnerability of farmers, who are financially, physically and mentally exhausted after years of debilitating drought and little, if any, income? Fortunately, the angry reaction of farmers, small business and rural residents within the basin has forced government to take two steps backward and reassess this cold-hearted, jack-booted approach to an issue that can be resolved cooperatively with the very people who rely on the environment for a living.

Farmers have proved time and time again that they have the commitment and the ability to recognise the need to conserve our most precious resource, water. As an example, apple and grape growers use computer-driven micro jet watering systems triggered by sensors in the ground which tell the computer when the vines and the trees need water. This technology has assisted some apple-growing areas to produce five times the volume of apples with the same amount of water they used 100 years ago. That shows the commitment of people who rely on the land and the environment for their living. That is the commitment that they have to conserve our very precious resource—water—and that is something that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority should take on board.

Why has the incompetence of government allowed the commonsense approach of addressing the modernisation of water infrastructure, which was funded by the previous government to the tune of $5.9 billion, to be dumped when it had the ability to make the system more efficient and continue to produce food efficiently, maintain the economic viability of the industry, and help support towns reliant on the most efficient producers of food in the world? Hopefully the Senate inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin hopeless, industry- and soul-destroying plan will come up with the answers, putting the management of the Murray-Darling Basin into perspective. I also trust they will look at the history of the system which has seen Mother Nature put under such stress before that the rivers in the system have dried up.

I thank the House for the opportunity of putting these things on record, particularly the very detailed letter from the small business man in the town of Boorowa. It is a classic example of how small business people are being affected by the decisions of government. I thank the House for its indulgence.

10:43 am

Photo of Kelvin ThomsonKelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I want to thank the people of Wills for putting their trust and confidence in me for a sixth time to represent them in this place. Indeed, Labor in Wills improved its two-party preferred vote and we stand on the electoral pendulum at 72.6 per cent as the second-strongest Labor seat in Australia. It is a source of considerable pride. I thank my campaign team and my family for the steadfast support that they have provided to me in good times and in bad. They give me the strength to go on and I am very much in their debt.

In August last year I raised in the parliament the issue of population, advancing two propositions: first, that the world has a population problem and, second, that Australia has a population problem. I was therefore really pleased to hear the Prime Minister say, in her first significant statement after she became Prime Minister in June, that she did not believe in a ‘big Australia’. Big Australia had become the shorthand expression for the 36 million population that Treasury has said Australia will reach by 2050 if we run a net overseas migration program of 180,000 per annum between now and 2050.

Prime Minister Gillard pursued this conviction into the federal election campaign, telling her own constituents:

I do not support the idea of a ‘big Australia’ with arbitrary targets of 40 million people. We need to stop and take a breath.

She said that she did not want us hurtling towards a big Australia and that we should not sacrifice our wonderful environment or our unique quality of community life.

Ultimately, I do not think population was a major vote changer in the recent election. The Liberal opposition neutralised our foray into this area by advocating a cut in net overseas migration to 170,000 per annum. We were able to counter this thrust in turn by pointing out that net overseas migration is already trending back to this number. The fact is that the 170,000 figure will still give us a population of 35 million by 2050—not much to excite the voters there.

There is no doubt in my mind that, if Prime Minister Gillard had put her opposition to a big Australia into tangible form, by setting a lower net migration target, or if the Leader of the Opposition had picked a lower status quo altering number, there were votes there for the taking. Given the closeness of the election result, it is something worth thinking about. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister’s clear opposition to a big Australia has created a strong expectation around Australia that we will see a change in direction from the rapid population growth path of recent times, once the panels she has appointed to investigate the issues have done their work and reported early next year.

Of course this will be an ongoing battle. The big business and property developer forces, who are both the cheer squad for and beneficiaries of rapid population growth, have no intention of submitting quietly. They will continue to press for high migration at every available opportunity. They claim that high migration improves our standard of living. Given this incessant claim, it is very interesting to examine the issue of living standards. There is no doubt that many people today are experiencing real cost-of-living pressures. There is no doubt in my mind that the rising cost of living and the difficulty ordinary Australians are having in making ends meet have been behind the fall in Labor’s electoral standing this year. Indeed, I heard the opposition take this issue up in a matter of public importance during the first sitting week of the parliament after the election. They had plenty to say on what they assured us was the government’s failure to act to help ordinary Australians with cost-of-living pressures. They also waxed lyrical with concerns about the impact of action to tackle climate change on the cost of living. What they did not produce was anything at all which might assist people who are presently battling to make ends meet. Given the opposition has produced no plan of any kind to deal with cost-of-living pressures, I have come to the conclusion, unfortunate but unavoidable, that the opposition is not fair dinkum about tackling cost-of-living pressures and is simply seeking to make political capital from them.

But they are at least right about the existence of cost-of-living pressures. These pressures arise from a number of sources, but the key cause, the most important cause, is population growth. Population growth leads to greater demand for products, and that greater demand puts upward pressure on prices. This is particularly evident in our basic resources of land, water and energy. These resources have limits, and population pressures are forcing us to turn to more expensive methods of meeting demand, such as desalination plants for water and deep-water drilling for petrol.

The cost-of-living pressures are most clearly evident in electricity and gas prices and local council rates. Over the past 10 years, electricity prices have almost doubled across Australia’s eight capital cities. The most populated cities, Melbourne and Sydney, have seen the highest price rises, and prices have more than doubled in the past 10 years. In real terms, across Australia, electricity prices have increased by over 40 per cent over the 10 years. Melbourne prices have risen by over 50 per cent in real terms—52 per cent. So have Sydney’s—51 per cent. In Brisbane, real electricity prices have gone up by over 38 per cent, and in Adelaide real electricity prices have gone up by over 26 per cent.

You might think that more people—a growing population—would lead to economies of scale and lead to lower electricity prices, but you would be wrong. Rising electricity prices do not just show up on the household bills I have referred to; they also show up in the rising cost of electricity per kilowatt hour. Instead of rising population causing lower prices, it leads to a need for extra infrastructure and therefore higher prices. The more crowded a city becomes, the higher the cost of doing business. Congestion costs kick in and just maintaining electricity infrastructure becomes more expensive. In Victoria, electricity and water bills are up 25 to 60 per cent from 2005 and gas is 20 per cent higher. Prices in Sydney since 2005 have jumped over 60 per cent, and in Brisbane by over 50 per cent.

It is untrue—and mischievously untrue—to assert that rising electricity prices are a consequence of carbon trading or measures to reduce carbon emissions. It is, or should be, well known that Australia has no emissions trading scheme or carbon tax. As for other measures, as the Clean Energy Council has pointed out, the cost of supporting residential solar power is a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared to ‘billions of dollars in network costs’. It points out:

The Australian Energy Regulator estimates the cost of improving the electricity network in NSW at more than $14 billion over five years. Based on the 50 MW installed under the NSW Solar Bonus Scheme, the cost of solar electricity from the current scheme is less than 4 per cent of this.

Rising electricity prices hit pensioners and the poor particularly hard. Melbourne has had a very cold winter—and the weather during the federal election campaign was no exception. One of my campaign workers visited a woman pensioner who had asked for our assistance with a postal vote. The inside of the house was as chilly as the outside. When my campaign worker inquired about this, the woman said that she could not afford to heat her house. This woman was enduring a harsh winter without any artificial heating. It is far from satisfactory. For many pensioners, rising electricity bills have made it very hard to make ends meet.

The situation with water bills and gas bills is not much better. Again, a rising population is putting upward pressure on water and gas prices. We have already got at the easy water and the easy gas. Augmenting our supplies involves things like desalination plants and pipelines, which come at greater expense than our present supplies.

It is a similar unhappy story with local council rates. I always expected that more people in my municipality would lead to lower rate bills due to economies of scale and more people sharing the rate load. The opposite has been the case. In nominal terms, council rates in Melbourne have increased by over 100 per cent—more than doubled—from 2000 to 2010. In real terms, rates have increased by over 48 per cent. Across the eight capital cities, rates have increased by 60 per cent in the last 10 years and, in real terms, rates have increased by over 23 per cent. Sydney council rates, which are subject to capping by the state government, have increased by less but have still risen over the last 10 years by 41 per cent and over 10 per cent in real terms. Regrettably, this pattern of  increasing rates is set to continue. Victorians will pay an average of $79 more in their rates in 2010-11—up by over six per cent from last year based on the draft council budgets. This is of course above the CPI and again underscores the impact of rising population on local government finances.

These costs of population growth—rising electricity prices, rising water prices, rising gas prices, rising council rates—are being borne most of all by those who can least afford them; fixed-income earners and pensioners in particular. It is all very well for the opposition to cry crocodile tears over cost-of-living pressures on ordinary Australians, but if you are genuine about this problem you will come up with an alternative proposal to the present arrangements. The opposition has not done so.

I believe there are things we can do. We are not powerless about electricity prices. At present electricity prices are overseen by regulatory authorities. For example, in New South Wales it is the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, and in Queensland it is the Queensland Competition Authority. It is said that price-cap regulation is only a transitional measure during the development of retail markets and that governments are moving towards the eventual removal of price caps. Looking at the evidence of the past decade or two of electricity privatisation and price deregulation, I am concerned about what this trend will mean for household electricity consumers, particularly pensioners and others on fixed incomes.

I do not agree with the moves towards electricity price deregulation. Indeed, I think it is high time pensioners and other household electricity consumers got some relief from ever-rising electricity prices. I think regulatory authorities should limit electricity price rises for household consumers to the percentage amount by which pensions rise. This would give pensioners and fixed-income earners some badly needed respite.

I urge electricity pricing regulatory authorities to consider the hardship which the rises over the past decade have caused and to think about pensioners who are struggling to make ends meet when they consider applications for price rises. I know there will be objections to this. Some people will say the market should set prices, but electricity is an essential item and electricity consumers have not been able to prevent prices rising way above CPI by shopping around. Consumers need government to be involved in the price of such an essential item.

Some people will ask: how will electricity companies invest in new infrastructure if they cannot charge higher prices? My response is: at present the costs of rapid population growth are being borne by ordinary household consumers in general and pensioners and those on fixed incomes in particular. These costs should be borne by the beneficiaries of growth—the property industry. Electricity companies should not be prevented from recovering the costs of new infrastructure from the new developments which necessitate it. Household consumers should not be asked to subsidise infrastructure development over which they have no control. I also know there will be objections from some people who say that we need electricity prices to rise as a pathway to cutting our carbon footprint. They believe rising prices will encourage people to reduce their electricity use and/or turn to renewable cleaner sources of energy generation.

The first problem with this view is that it is too vulnerable to political scare campaigns. We hear it from the opposition all the time and it is going on right around the world. The second problem with this view is that it does not do justice to the real hardship experienced by low-income earners when electricity prices rise. I know that there were provisions in Labor’s carbon pollution reduction scheme to compensate low income earners for the impact of higher electricity prices on them. I also acknowledge the work of organisations like the Brotherhood of St Laurence which have engaged in the climate debate in a constructive way, seeking to tackle the carbon problem while at the same time protecting the interests of the poorest people in our society. But it remains the fact that low-income people are doing it tough now and they are entitled to get some relief from ever-rising electricity prices.

The third problem with this view is that it may have been acting as a climate change panacea, distracting attention from many other good and worthy options for reducing carbon emissions. I think there are many different ways of skinning the climate cat, and some of the more important ones lie in the areas of agriculture, soil carbon and re-establishing natural landscapes.

I want to deal with the claim that Australia needs more migrants because we are short of workers. It is just not so. Our unemployment rate is over five per cent. We have over 422,000 Australians looking for work. Many of them are young Australians aged between 15 and 24 who really need to get off to the right start in life. In October it was reported that Broadmeadows has an unemployment rate of 15.9 per cent. Broadmeadows is just beyond the northern boundary of my electorate and I know it very well. According to the 2006 census, of the people in Broadmeadows aged 25 and over, over 50 per cent were born in non-English-speaking countries. For men aged 25 to 44, over 47 per cent of the non-English-speaking country born reported income of less than $399 per week. This is entrenched unemployment, poverty and disadvantage.

If we continue running a high migration program, they might go and work in iron ore mines in the Pilbara but the evidence is not promising. It suggests that significant numbers will simply get caught up in a cycle of unemployment , poverty and disadvantage, as has happened in Broadmeadows. So I suggest that, before we succumb to the wailing of employers crying skill shortages, we put our talents to finding work for those 15.9 per cent unemployed in Broadmeadows, who are entitled to our attention. I do not care whether we find them work in Broadmeadows or in the Pilbara, but let us not talk about skill shortages again until we have got them into the workplace.

While high migration is being used as a battering ram to keep down the pay of ordinary workers, CEO salaries are skyrocketing. The ACTU has released a survey today showing that the typical CEO is taking home almost a hundred times the pay of the average worker. Executive pay at Australia’s 50 largest companies rose by nearly a million dollars, over 17 per cent, last year while the average pay of a full-time worker rose just $3,200, or five per cent. One of the great things about Australia has been its egalitarian nature, where Jack was as good as his master. But if the boss is being paid 100 times as much as an average worker, is Australia really still the land of the fair go? I believe the ACTU’s proposals to limit the tax deductibility of salaries to a million dollars or to cap executive salaries to a multiple of the earnings of ordinary workers have merit and should be seriously considered by this parliament.

Returning to the impact of council rates, there is one state which retains the power to cap rates—New South Wales, where the minister for local government annually determines the amount by which councils can increase their general revenue. Given the lack of state government powers, rising council rates are not easily addressed but it is a serious problem. I was recently advised that the former Kodak site in East Coburg recently sold for $79 million to the Perth based Satterley Property Group, almost double what Urbex is believed to have paid for it in 2006. The reason that Urbex was able to double its money in just four years is of course that the land value has risen. Who underwrites this spectacular land value rise and the spectacular profit for Urbex that accompanies it? That would be the long-suffering ratepayers of Moreland whose rates pay for the community infrastructure which surrounds the Kodak site and makes the land as valuable as it is. They also underwrite the rising value of the land by tolerating the downside of the increased population: traffic congestion, more competition for community facilities and open space, loss of privacy and sunlight which comes with high-rise et cetera. My view is that local councils should not acquiesce in or, even worse, encourage high rise monstrosities which put pressure on local infrastructure and reduce the quality of life for local residents.

One community in America which is campaigning for a stable population has come up with a campaign slogan which goes, ‘Don’t build it and they won’t come.’ The property lobby will complain that this would make housing less affordable but the fact is that it is their high migration policies which have damaged housing affordability. Unless and until we reduce high migration and net overseas migration to the levels of the early 1990s we will continue to see housing affordability decline. A home of your own, the great Australian dream, will disappear as surely as it has done in other countries which have gone down the high migration, high population road, and our young people will have been let down. It is time we cut the rapid migration program, stabilised our population and got on with providing the infrastructure and services that people need. Unless and until we do this, both federal and state governments from whichever political party will be dogs chasing their tails, forever in catch-up mode, unable to really help ordinary people with cost of living pressures or other pressures of daily life and wondering why it is that the voters do not seem to like us.

11:02 am

Photo of Steve IronsSteve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker Bird. I rise to give my address-in-reply. I would first like to congratulate you on your selection to the Speakers Panel. If I had been in the main chamber I would have been congratulating the Speaker on his re-election to the panel.

For the people of Swan I would like to get a few things on the record following the 2007 election. I thank them for giving me the opportunity to serve and represent the electorate in this place again. I do not take this role for granted and will continue to work hard for the people of Swan. To the Liberal Party and its members, executive and staff, I also thank you for the opportunity to carry the flag for the Liberal Party and its values, which I share, and for the people of Swan in the 43rd Parliament.

During the last term I was often asked when I was going to start my next campaign and I always replied that it started on the 14 December 2007, when I was officially declared the member for Swan. Our next campaign has already started and my division members and supporters are revelling in the fact they are involved in a marginal seat—for some of them it is like living on the edge.

Mr Speaker, during the last term to win the seat of Swan we faced many challenges. Once I detail them the value of the thanks I will make to people who assisted me and the Liberal Party will be even more significant because all the hard work they had to do to overcome these challenges placed before the team to win Swan will be apparent. In late 2008 we faced a redistribution that made us notionally a Labor seat. In 2007 I won the seat by 164 votes and after the redistribution, if you use the notional votes from the booths in the new areas, we were starting 649 votes behind. We were faced with winning the seat off Labor for the second time after the redistribution reflected exactly the Labor submission to the AEC.

The next challenge was to face a candidate who was described in the West Australian as a potential future leader. The West also said on 19 July:

Then there is the “notional” Labor seat of Swan, held by Liberal Steve Irons but where Labor held a 0.27 per cent margin after the redistribution. In a state where the Coalition is expected to shore up its support, it is arguably the most fascinating race of all.

“Labor have got a very good candidate … (like Ms Gillard a lawyer with Slater and Gordon, where he specialised in asbestos litigation), and 15 months ago he might have been favoured to win,” Dr Phillips said.

So we also faced the challenge of an opponent who would have the backing of his former employer, Slater and Gordon. I know they also manned at least one booth on election day, along with the people from the eastern states who had flown in to support the Labor candidate. There is a reason they flew in, but I will go into that explanation later.

Next we faced the ballot draw, which placed the Labor candidate in position 1 on the ballot paper, and Labor took full advantage of that by making their how-to-vote card a ‘donkey vote’ card.

In Swan we also faced a concerted effort from the union-Labor Party front called GetUp!. The pretence of independence they sell to the public is a complete fallacy and the recent release of details about them receiving a $1.2 million union donation is proof of that. I will continue to alert the people in my electorate to the fact that this group are a fraud when they represent themselves as independent.

The Labor Party must have wanted this seat desperately and all the big guns came into the electorate swinging. With the state Labor heavyweights already holding three local seats in my electorate—the seats of Belmont, Victoria Park and Cannington, held by the state opposition leader, the state opposition Treasurer and the former state secretary of the Labor Party—I and my team were faced with combating their combined efforts and resources in my campaign to retain Swan. They used every possible opportunity they could to promote the candidate, even to the point of getting him to attend citizenship ceremonies. The citizenship ceremony charter states in section 10 that these ceremonies are for elected representatives, but Labor had no shame in turning them into political campaigning opportunities in Swan, which contravenes the code.

As for the federal Labor heavies, we had the entire cabinet in Swan in May, their last community cabinet in Australia before the election. Many of the locals who attended and had time with the ministers felt that it was a sham and there was little or no interest in local issues from the ministers. They felt the whole night was carefully scripted and an arranged event that never really got to the core issues that many of my constituents face. After that event, up to election day, Prime Minister Gillard came to Swan at least three times and former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, affectionately known as ‘the silver bodgie’, also visited, which he had also done in the 2007 election. Bob Hawke in an election opinion piece on 6 August said about WA:

Overall I did not get the anti-Labor feeling in WA that is suggested by the polls—perhaps I am being unduly optimistic but we may see a net gain over there.

Sorry, Bob, you got that wrong: 12 seats out of the 15 WA seats went to the conservatives. It makes you wonder if Bob had his mind on other issues besides what faces Western Australians.

We had many government ministers visit. It was a continuous stream coming through a revolving door and handing out financial commitments and cheques. All in all there were commitments of over half a billion dollars for the electorate of Swan from the government for this election, and I only hope they start to deliver soon. The downside of their biggest commitment of $480 million was that it was based purely on the MRRT getting up. You would have thought that with the results from Western Australia and Queensland, regarded as the two mining states, the message on the mining tax is loud and clear: the people in these states do not want it.

It is interesting to see that the only three companies that have come to any agreement on this tax are prepared to walk away from the agreement because they believe there has been a clear contravention of the agreement by the government. That comes as no surprise, and I can tell you that none of the mining companies I spoke to in WA, which were the mid-sized miners, ever believed it would go ahead as promised, because they just do not trust this government. They all say that this government says one thing and then does another. If there were any message I could give to the people of Western Australia about the MRRT, it would be that it is a false claim by the government that the MRRT will benefit all Australians and belongs to all Australians. I challenge any government member to tell the people of WA when they ever benefited from the coal in Victoria. We only have to look at the backflips on the promises on carbon tax and the offshore processing centres for victims of the people-smuggling trade that were made before the election—those promises have been broken as well. So I say to the three big miners: you should not be surprised. On behalf of the people in my electorate and the people of WA, the message to the Gillard government is, ‘We do not want a mining tax.’

Since I have mentioned people smuggling I remind the Prime Minister that the people of WA do not want you to enhance the people smuggling trade, but stop it. The expansion of Curtin, and now the plan to utilise Northam in WA, is not what you promised at the election. It is no wonder that the people of WA think this government stands for nothing.

We had the NBN promise to the people of Victoria Park in my electorate, with great fanfare from the Prime Minister and the Labor candidate. Why the obvious choice of Belmont was not picked is beyond me, but I guess the Labor Party saw more votes being gained in the Victoria Park area than in the Belmont area, which had a submission that was ranked highly by the communication minister’s office. Even the promise to the people of Victoria Park is no longer guaranteed, as the focus has moved to regional areas. I do not have an issue with the focus being on regional areas but, when the promise to my electorate was obviously a grab for votes, I would suggest again that the people of Swan will see this government as standing for nothing.

Earlier I spoke about people from interstate being flown in to man the booths for the Labor Party, which my booth workers and I commented on after the election. It was not until I read an article by Robert Taylor in the West Australian on 1 September that I understood the reason for that, which I would like to get on the record. The article’s headline was ‘Divided campaign causes big split’ and it said:

In the aftermath of Labor’s desultory Federal election campaign, questions are being asked about the role of one of the State’s most powerful political figures, a man largely unknown outside the ALP.

The article states that my opponent:

… would not have been the ALP candidate for Swan without Mr Bullock’s imprimatur because the Shoppies control the numbers which decide such things.

It also says that the campaign chairman, the WA upper house MP Ms Kate Doust, confirmed that Mr Bullock ‘hit the roof’ when campaign volunteers rang him not only once but twice to ask if he could contribute to the cause of the Labor candidate for Swan. Ms Doust said that she did not know who the volunteer was. The fallout between Ms Doust and Mr Bullock was that:

… two weeks before polling day, the union boss pulled his considerable troops out of Swan and sent them north to Cowan, where his friend Chas Hopkins was fighting a losing campaign against Liberal incumbent Luke Simpkins.

That is why my volunteers found that there were Labor people on the booths in Swan who were from interstate or did not even live in the electorate of Swan.

While we are talking about Cowan I would like to congratulate Luke Simpkins, who is the doorknocking king of Cowan. Luke and I came into this place in 2007—the only new seats across the country for the Liberal Party in the 2007 election. The other new Liberal members elected in 2007, who are a fantastic group, were all returned in 2010. It is great to see them back; they deserve to be here.

There are many people in WA who I need to thank and congratulate, but I would also like to mention the member for O’Connor, Wilson Tuckey who lost his seat. Wilson owns a property in my electorate of Swan and during my first term he gave me plenty of words of advice—some sought and some unsolicited. His advice was always well researched, either through experience or through diligence, and I learnt some very good lessons on points of order in the chamber, which he was kind enough to frequently raise. Over his 30 years, Wilson has made an enormous contribution not only to this place but to Western Australia. I wish him well and I will make sure I log onto his blog from time to time to check his sage words of advice.

I must also congratulate the class of 2010 and give a warm welcome to all the new members, particularly those on this side of the House. I would also like to mention the new member for Hasluck, Ken Wyatt, who is the first Indigenous member in this place. Ken’s first speech was fantastic and I personally related to many of the experiences that he mentioned in his speech. I am sure that he will be a superb member for Hasluck. He has a bright future here and his wealth of experience, both vocational and personal, will assist him and be of benefit to his constituents in Hasluck.

To the other WA members—Nola Marino, Michael Keenan, Mal Washer, Judi Moylan, Barry Haase and Dennis Jensen—I look forward to sharing the long trek from WA to this place with you over the next term of parliament. It is a testing trip, as many of our eastern state colleagues who have done it understand. Standing up for WA when this Labor government seems determined to destroy the fabric of Western Australia’s lifestyle and economic success by imposing the MRRT and short-changing us on the GST is a responsibility that none of us, including our strong Senate team, will shirk. We will embrace the challenge on behalf of WA because the people of WA have put their trust in us by giving the coalition their overwhelming support. We will not fail to take the fight up to the government.

During the campaign Tony Abbott worked tirelessly for the coalition and his stamina was second to none. I thank the Leader of the Opposition for visiting Swan during the campaign. At one stage he and I were pulling out weeds at the Canning River regional park area with local volunteer groups. They do fantastic work in the local area and they are among the many active groups in my electorate who need support from local, state and federal governments.

I cannot thank the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop, enough for her support in Swan and for helping me make sure we won the coffee bean count at the Belmont shopping centre. Julie and I attended the recent Bali bombing memorial dawn service in Kings Park together. It was a reminder of the many challenges faced around the world today that are caused by terrorists from nations that want to impose their will upon us through violence and terror. Julie, your contribution at the election, not only in WA but across Australia, was nothing short of excellent and I know your WA colleagues are proud of you.

To the member for Canning and former member for Swan, Don Randall, thank you for all your advice about campaigning and about this place and for the opportunity to discuss our love of WA and golf. I know the task you faced in Canning was enormous and I congratulate you on your magnificent victory over former WA state minister Alannah MacTiernan. Every time I heard her on the radio and saw the press reports, I just could not believe how much confidence she oozed—she was acting like she had already won the seat. Don, I knew you could win and I assured everyone who asked that you are a fighter and a scrapper and that you would be very hard to beat. Your experience and tenacity as a marginal seat campaigner is admired by many of your colleagues and you again showed that that reputation is earned, not just bestowed.

Issues such as debt, the deficit and the disastrous mining tax were certainly key election issues. However, there were also key local issues and these were many and varied. Members will have heard me talk about these at length in the past. I want to take the time to briefly mention some of these now. The environment was a key concern. My electorate is surrounded on three sides by water. There are some precious freshwater and estuarine wetland environments containing some spectacular biodiversity.

During the last term, I spoke out against the Rudd-Gillard government’s neglect of the environment, particularly its cuts to the budget of the Perth NRM. These cuts made it harder for the many environmental groups in my electorate to tackle pervasive problems such as the spread of the noxious weed hydrocotyle. That is why a particular highlight of the campaign for me was when I was able to announce with Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett a fantastic $1 million commitment to tackle the environmental problems in the Swan and Canning River systems, including a specific amount dedicated to addressing the hydrocotyle problem. In addition to this, we made some fabulous commitments for the green army projects across the electorate in spots such as Tomato Lake in Kewdale. I assure the people of Swan that I will continue to fight for better resources for our environment.

Railway crime was also an issue. As members will be aware, I have been fighting for improvements to the Thornlie to Armadale train line for quite some time. After a bashing at Burswood train station, I began distributing surveys along the train line asking residents to suggest improvements. There was a massive response. I took briefings from the police and Transperth and inspected the CCTV monitoring facility at Perth Central station. As a result of this research and the community feedback, I was pleased to be able to secure an election commitment of $150,000 to upgrade the CCTV at Burswood train station. I note that the Labor Party also made a commitment of $100,000 to that problem. It is good that we both saw it as an issue that needed to be dealt with. Hopefully, the Labor Party will meet their commitment.

There was also the issue of roads. Several of Perth’s major freeways and road arteries cut through my electorate of Swan. Many of these roads are congested and require upgrading. It was great that the Liberal Party managed to commit to upgrading the Great Eastern Highway and the airport roads without the great big mining tax that I mentioned early in my speech.

I want to talk about another road issue that we were able to address: the Manning Road on-ramp. People have been calling for a southbound on-ramp for the Manning Road since the 1980s in order to reduce congestion and improve road safety. There had never been any action, with the Labor candidate for Canning once asserting it was not a priority despite widespread support. During the election we were able to secure a commitment of $10 million for the on-ramp. The Labor candidate in Swan also called for this commitment, so he did realise there was an issue.

Crime and antisocial behaviour is a key concern in many parts of my electorate as well but, since I am running out of time and there are a few people I need to thank, I will move on from local issues to that. There were many others in WA who should be thanked, particularly the people at Menzies House. They ran such an efficient, smooth-sailing campaign ship that I am sure any private enterprise would be happy to have the people at Menzies House running their business. There were many people from the Swan division who volunteered their time, their energy and their wisdom in supporting the Liberal Swan campaign. I thank the Swan division executive, the branch presidents, the division members, the booth captains and all the booth volunteers on the day. Many of those people also helped with letterbox drops. Throughout the campaign, they helped with envelope stuffing and yard signage. It was a great effort from the many people who are committed to the cause. We also had support from the Swan River division. Their support was a sign of the strong growth in the division since 2007.

I would really like to mention some of the staff, because they did such a good job and I think they deserve some recognition. As you know, staff who work for members and senators also face the loss of their jobs when we face an election. If we do not win they lose their jobs, and so it is under that pressure that they also help us with our constituent work as well as committing their own time on weekends and after hours volunteering in our campaigns. That is what my staff did and they did it magnificently.

First of all, I will mention my office manager, Karen McGrath, who kept running things smoothly. Karen is a wise old hand at campaigns, and she and her hardworking husband—the state member for South Perth, John McGrath—were out nearly every weekend doing letterbox drops for me around the electorate. Karen has resigned since the election and I wish her well. We will miss her in the office. Karen was very experienced, having also worked with Wilson Tuckey and Senator Chris Ellison.

Jonathan Martin is still with me and in Canberra this week; he works tirelessly on the weekends and after hours. His commitment was magnificent. Emma Langoulant has left the team to join her partner in Melbourne; her work ethic and great sense of humour was always appreciated and I wish she could have stayed working with me. But the draw of Melbourne and her boyfriend was too strong and I hope it all works out for her.

Jo Chapman joined the team late last year and has brought considerable expertise in journalism, broadcasting and community engagement by making sure that I was everywhere. Jo brought her kids along to the weekend events and morning walks to make it a real family deal. I also want to mention her husband, Roger, who through his company helped us to deliver a much-needed wheelchair to a woman in Mongolia. One of the charity groups was going to have to pay nearly $1,000 to get that wheelchair to Mongolia but he organised it through his company, which was actually doing some work in Mongolia at the time.

Tisha Grubi was a graduate from the Esther Foundation who joined my office and was always ready to help with whatever needed to be done. Tisha is currently in Uganda at the moment doing missionary work, but will return to Australia soon to take up a cadetship with the ATO. It was a pleasure having Tisha in the office and for me to be a part of her return to society from the disaster that her life had become. Tisha is a star and I just know that she has a great life ahead of her with her beautiful daughter, Sky. The Esther Foundation has done a super job with her and many other young women in Western Australia and throughout Australia.

Over my first term I have been assisted at various times very capably by Marion Shannon, Helen Leslie, Annette Livesey and Victoria Jackson—a big thank you to all of you. I would also like to mention that support I received from WA senators such as senators Eggleston, Back, Johnson and Cormann. To my mates Travis Burrows, Gordon Thomson, Jim Crone, Mike O’Neill, George Jones and Frank Parker, thanks for all your help.

The Young Liberals were just great and I had them out every morning waving signs and banners along various points out on the highways and roads in Swan. To my supporters, many of whom are not Liberals but who give up their time to support me, I appreciate that.

Finally, to my son Jarrad I say that all of what we do here in this place is for the betterment of this great nation, but without your support and the sacrifices you make personally I would not be able to do this job. You have had to become independent very early in your life, and you have had to spend time alone without me or your mother being there for you. The anniversary of the Forgotten Australians apology yesterday reminds me that you had to experience loneliness, but the support network through your school and friends has been of assistance to both of us and you have become a fine young man.

I want the residents of Swan to know that I will continue to do my utmost to represent them.

11:23 am

Photo of Ms Anna BurkeMs Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | | Hansard source

It is an honour once again to make an address-in-reply speech as the elected member for Chisholm. I am constantly amazed that I am still in this place. I stood for preselection in 1997 with the famous words to my husband, ‘It’s all right—I can’t win.’ Twelve years down the track I still marvel at the concept that what I thought was pie in the sky resulted in five election wins in a row.

Back in 1997 when I stood for preselection it was on the basis that nobody else wanted to and I was the last candidate standing. When I was advised that the then sitting member of the seat, Dr Michael Wooldridge, who was a minister in the Howard government and quite a well-respected and liked local member, had swapped seats I think my jaw hit the floor. I kept waiting for the phone call from the ALP head office to say, ‘You know how you were preselected unopposed? We have changed our minds.’ They have not, and I have been preselected unopposed ever since.

I want to thank very much at the outset the people of my electorate of Chisholm for the great faith they have shown in me over all these years—12 years as the federal member. It has been a delight, an honour and a joy, sometimes a disappointment, sometimes a frustration and often a struggle, but on the whole it has been an exercise that gives great joy to me as an individual, also knowing that we are giving back so much as well.

When you talk to people who volunteer—I am not sure that we could ever consider ourselves volunteers—they never say that it is about the thanks; it is always about the joy of giving and being involved. I think that is the way it is for members of parliament. When everybody asks, ‘Why did you enter parliament?’ you stand there and look at them and in some respects you think, ‘Yes, why did I do this to myself?’ But the reason mostly is—everybody, through the history of ages, has quoted this—‘to make the world a better place’. If we can leave this place saying that in our own little patch we have done something that will leave it a better place then that is a good thing.

One of the joys of having been here for so long was finally getting into government and being able to do some good things in my electorate. One of the absolute frustrations of being in opposition for nine years was going to many events but never actually being able to say, ‘We’re delivering. We’re doing. We’re here; we’re offering.’ One of the bizarre things about being in an inner metropolitan seat is that there is not often a lot of announcements, a lot of cutting of ribbons or other things that go on. For the nine years in opposition there was program money but there were no announcements: ‘We’re going to do this,’ or ‘We’re going to do that.’ It was incredibly frustrating and demoralising, especially when there were fantastic things that needed to be done within my seat. So one of the absolute joys and pleasures over the last three years has been going out and saying: ‘Hey, I’ve got something to deliver for you. I’m the one who is going to cut the ribbon and open something that the government has funded.’ Not that that is what the job is all about, but it is a reward for the many community groups and wonderful institutions in my electorate who have been tirelessly working towards the betterment of their facilities. So the last three years have been a culmination—seeing things happen and making promises for the future.

My seat of Chisholm, as I have said, is wall to wall suburbia—houses. It is where people live. Most people live in suburbs but we never talk about them, which I find quite bizarre. We talk about regions and the inner city but most people in Australia live in the ‘burbs’. They live in the suburbs. That is the kind of area that I represent. I am proud to do that. My constituency is an amazing group of individuals. It is a highly diverse mix of ethnicities, religions and ages. Although I have an ageing electorate there are also new people moving into the electorate. This year a lot of the primary schools are staggering enrolments in their prep years; they are not quite sure how they are going to accommodate them all. That is a bit of a shock for an area that has had an ageing population.

My electorate is also a highly expensive area to move into. Buying a house and bringing up a family in my neck of the woods is quite a challenge. That is why we have not seen a lot of baby growth in the area, but in the last couple of years this has changed. So the constituents are an interesting mix, including of a lot older ethnic groups—a large population of Greeks and Italians. There are many groups that are very committed to maintaining their cultural identity, and I am really proud to be part of that in my electorate. The maintenance of language, culture and distinction is something we should encourage, and I enjoy participating with all of those groups. Now we have the emerging Chinese and Indian groups who are moving into the electorate and making their mark within the business sector, where they are bringing prosperity.

Nobody gets into parliament alone, and I am going to thank people now so that I do not get to the end and forget them all. As always, there was a huge group of people who came out. Because this time around people were saying that my margin is now safe—I always find that quite entertaining—I did not see many people from state or head office. I will be honest: I did not see too many ministers. So it was really very much a local grassroots campaign, and I want to thank those people who spent tireless hours in the cold. It was so cold during this election—let’s never have a winter one again—but those people were there at train stations and they were there letterboxing and doorknocking in the misery. They were there manning the pre-poll for three weeks as the sleet and the rain came over them.

I want to thank, in no particular order, Joy Banerji; Megan Berry; Kathleen Brasher; Peter Chandler; the magnificent Howard and Marie Hodgens, who have been there with me since day one; Anne Hyde; Dan Juleff, who appeared from nowhere this campaign and was just fantastic; and Allan Clausen, who has also been there for a very long time. I am eternally grateful to Wendy Dickenson, who managed to turn up in between her husband’s 101 medical appoints, and the magnificent George and Joan Edwards, who I am sad to say I will lose in this current redistribution. I am eternally grateful for their endless support. I would also like to thank Pat Gault and the magnificent Cyril and Jan Kennedy. Cyril must have been at the Oakleigh pre-poll every day. There was also Adele Mach and I want to thank Brenton Ward, who managed to turn up in between his nursing shifts. His wife is probably never going to speak to me again. I would also like to thank Andrew Kaighan, Raff Ciccone, Tony and Barbara Dwyer, Lorie and Dave Werner and Kerry Perrett. Lorie managed to come to my office even though she had just had a knee reconstructed, so thank you very much. I know I have left people out. I also want to thank very much Mary and Will Chiron, who I know are drafted constantly by their mother. I owe you big-time for the Saturdays you spent on pre-poll. To people like Conrad, who just appeared out of the blue, thank you very much for all the amazing work you did.

I thank all my state colleagues for their support and assistance throughout the campaign. At the moment, they are in their own battles to maintain their seats—and, in my neck of the woods, we have some very marginal seats. In particular, I thank Bob Stensholt, who was always there for me. He is an amazing campaigner and I thank him very much. I thank Ann Barker—‘Annie Oakley’—who is one of those stalwarts who have been there for a long time. I thank Maxine Morand, who is a terrific local member—and I hope people recognise that in two weeks time—and Hong Lim. The local members have done so much and we really act as a team, which is just terrific. Some people do not have the same sort of relationship with their local members. I am very lucky in the work that we all do together.

I would also like to thank my staff. I thank Joe for running a phenomenal campaign. He came in young and enthusiastic with all of these ideas—and of course we kept saying, ‘We’ve done it five times and this is how we do it.’ He persevered and ran a terrific campaign, and I am incredibly grateful. I thank Jason for answering 101 endearing queries from constituents. He has an electric-light mind. We have one of the most highly educated electorates in the country, so we get some really good theories. I thank Jason for his ability to do that. I thank Janet for doing everything and managing it in the midst of everything else. I am eternally grateful. I thank Rick for his assistance. He knows everything, but occasionally we let him know that he does not. To Sophie, Liana and David, I say a big thankyou for being on my staff but also for doing the extra yards and literally not having a weekend for many weeks. I had surgery just prior to the election and was not able to drive, so I am eternally grateful to everybody who picked me up and took me places as well—and I probably was not on my game, so I want to thank them all for picking up the pieces during that time. I particularly want to thank the lovely Lindy, who, unfortunately, I lost because of the changes in my circumstances. Her dedication throughout the campaign and in the harrowing 10 weeks of uncertainty afterwards is testimony to her amazing dedication not only to the ALP but also to me. I am eternally grateful for that.

It has been an amazing experience being the federal member for Chisholm. My electorate is home to three phenomenal educational institutions and they are the core of my electorate: Monash University, which is just about the largest university in the Southern Hemisphere and certainly the largest university in Australia; Box Hill TAFE—I always include TAFE in higher education and I am very pleased to see that the federal government has recognised TAFE as part of the higher education sector and not just as a poor second cousin; and also the city campus of Deakin University at Burwood. One thing we did last year and during the election campaign was to announce some terrific funding for these institutions. Last week I had the pleasure of opening the $2.8 million green hub skills centre at Box Hill TAFE, to which the federal government committed $2.7 million. This is a new facility to teach state-of-the-art technology to actually deal with what businesses want today. It has a new solar energy rooftop generation system and solar training facility—you can actually walk on the roof and work on this thing—a new rain harvesting system and a green plumbing training facility. Box Hill TAFE will be able to deliver in real time new skills and advantages that industry is crying out for. This facility also recognises the changing environment—people are saying with their feet and with their dollars that they recognise climate change is happening and they want to adapt their own homes to make them sustainable within their own environment. This is a terrific thing.

We have also announced another amazing facility at Box Hill TAFE—$15 million towards a new integrated technology hub, which will boost green skills and create an additional 3,103 student places. The hub will provide Box Hill TAFE with a facility to train graduates in a simulated workplace environment in the building, electronic and mechanical industries. As I said last week, Box Hill TAFE is taking over the suburb of Box Hill. It is an amazing institution that is recognised worldwide. It provides skills for now and into the future. This $15 million project will add enormously to the work that is being done there.

I had the pleasure of going to Monash University with the Prime Minister to open the $29 million Centre for Green Chemistry, which supports 700 jobs. Again, all of this money is going towards the creation of green skills and new jobs into the future. Green chemistry is an amazing initiative, and we should be talking more about it. The centre is up and running. It works in conjunction with business in the area and CSIRO to create technologies for now and the future. The $89.9 million towards the New Horizons Centre at the Monash medical STRIP again focuses on technologies, innovations and industries for the future. I am very much looking forward to the completion of that amazing facility.

Further funding of $16 million will go towards the redevelopment of the entire site at Gippsland TAFE. I have often spoken about Gippsland TAFE in this place. This TAFE teaches people how to be linesmen—going up poles and doing things like that—and, as my father said, it has not changed since he did his training there as a sparky centuries ago. So the whole development of this centre will be a great enhancement and will ensure that people are being trained in the here and now.

We have also undertaken some terrific local initiatives that will assist the community. On Saturday, I will be opening the new Wembley Park sports precinct, to which the federal government committed $2.3 million. This is a terrific project. Wembley Park hosts soccer. It is an absolute boom game in my neck of the woods, and having lots of Greeks and Italians probably contributes to that. Certainly Wembley Park had been getting fairly tired. The City of Whitehorse has been facilitating this project. We have seen the construction of a new soccer pavilion and new male and female toilets—which is terrific because females are really getting into soccer. Funding will allow for the provision of a new roof, installation signs and new fencing, along with the refurbishment of existing grandstands and change rooms. You can see already that this has had a great impact on the local community.

At the other end of my electorate in the city of Monash we have seen work nearing completion on the youth and community hub at Batesford Reserve. This project has been in the pipeline for years. It has been a terrific model and idea by council to consolidate a lot of the groups in the area who need space. We had the land but we did not have the money for building. So, when the federal government came along with $4 million towards this project, Monash council jumped at it and now we are going to see an amazing facility in an underprivileged area of my community. The services will include youth counselling and support, community health services and Monash Link. The community health facility will also be incorporated into neighbourhood programs of education and training, adult education, U3A and the tenants association. Everybody is coming into this hub. It is one spot where everyone can be together. The integration of services is a terrific model. I was there when the first stone was laid. I have not seen it since, but my state colleague the member Burwood assures me that it is a magnificent building, and I am very much looking forward to opening it.

In my electorate of Chisholm I have two very large public hospitals and quite a number of private hospitals. The Monash Medical Centre, which would be one of the largest hospitals going, has been the recipient of $3.1 million for a very innovative idea—the 23-hour care unit. It is being funded through the government’s Elective Surgery Waiting List Reduction Plan. The idea is that this 23-hour unit will be for small elective surgery, where you will be able to go in and out in one day. You are not allowed to be in the ward for longer than 23 hours. It will be for specific surgery that sometimes gets bumped off the list because it is not as important as other things. This innovative project will mean that many people who need vital surgery—some conditions can be life threatening and cause a lot of pain—will receive it. It has been an amazing thing and it is now up and running. I want to commend everyone at the Monash Medical Centre for the great work they have done. In the process, they also had to relocate their endoscopy suite, which I had the pleasure of opening earlier this year. The relocation of the endoscopy suite has ensured that the hospital can provide greater placement of services to the literally thousands of people who go through the Monash Medical Centre every day.

I have sat in the emergency waiting centre at Monash hospital on more than one occasion in the past with my father, so I can tell you that it is a hospital that is utilised.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11.40 am to 11.52 am

Before the division I was talking about the wonderful things that we have been doing in my electorate. There are some things that still need to be addressed and done. I want to commend and thank the state government for its commitment to the rebuild of Box Hill Hospital, but I think there is more that could be done and I will be continuing to fight for federal funding towards that hospital. It is a very large hospital that services not only my constituency but large constituencies all across Victoria, going down to Gippsland, and the hospital even services parts of Tasmania. So I am committed to ensuring that Box Hill Hospital gets the full rebuild it needs.

I also want to recognise the great work that is being done on funding additional medical places in hospitals and also in the private sector. Epworth Eastern is doing great work to ensure that our trainee doctors and allied health people and nurses have placements. One of the issues we have nowadays is to ensure that there are enough places whereby people can get appropriate training and qualifications. I am thankful that we have funded additional money for that area.

I come to one of the other projects that are ongoing. It is of great concern to the community, and I continue to call upon the state and federal governments to look at ways of resolving it. It is the issue of the train line at Clayton Road and an urgent underpass. Some integrated unit is needed for that terrible situation. The train line is so close to the Monash Medical Centre hospital. We are going to see some tragedy occur in a very short time frame. In the morning the boom gates can be down for 50 minutes of an hour because of the volume of trains going through the area. This situation cannot continue and I call upon everybody to recognise this.

And in the last minute available to me, I want to also thank the people who really make it possible—that is, our families. Without their support and undivided care and attention we could not be here. Certainly in my situation, having come to this place and then having my children, without the love, care and support and the unending work that Steve, my husband, does behind the scenes, it just would not be possible. People ask me, ‘How do you do it?’ I say: ‘Don’t ask me. I leave my husband at home as a single parent for 20 weeks of the year!’ And he has done it for the entire lives of our children. To Maddy and John, thank you for your ongoing support and understanding. John wants me to become a regular mother one of these days, and probably I will, maybe some time in the near or distant future. I keep assuring him that he gets the best of both worlds, because occasionally I can take a lot of time off, so he should recognise this. I also want to thank my mother, but she should not have gone to Perth during the election, that was just uncalled for, and all my wonderful brothers and sisters.

11:55 am

Photo of Paul FletcherPaul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak in reply to the Governor-General’s address. What I want to talk about in particular is the question of productivity, which was a key theme in the remarks the Governor-General made—scripted obviously for her, as is usual practice, by the government. It has also been a theme that we have heard quite a bit about from the Prime Minister and from the previous prime minister, including during his frenetic dash around the country in the week of Australia Day where he spoke a lot about productivity.

The Governor-General had this to say in her address:

Foremost among those challenges is the need to build a high-productivity, high-participation, high-skill economy that delivers sustainable growth for all Australians.

          …            …            …

The government will advance its economic reform agenda to lift productivity and competitiveness and prepare for the future, through reforms to taxation, superannuation and business regulation, and through investments in education and infrastructure to drive future growth.

I want essentially to argue three propositions today. The first is that it is reasonably uncontentious that Australia had good productivity performance for quite a number of years thanks to a bipartisan program of microeconomic reform, which was pursued for around 25 years until 2007, when it came to a screeching halt. The second thing I want to talk about is the issues that ought to be on the agenda now in policy terms if we are serious about improving Australia’s productivity growth. And then the third is to contrast what is called for as items that ought to be on the agenda by many expert commentators with the depressing reality of what we are in fact seeing when it comes to the approach of this government.

Therefore, let me start with the proposition that we have seen substantial microeconomic reform over the past 25 years and that that has been a contributor to our productivity performance. And there are many commentators who make this observation. Let me cite the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens. He gave a speech couple of years ago to the alumni of the University of Sydney economics department, where he studied, and indeed where I studied—I noticed with some concern that some of the professors that he cited from when he was there 10 years ahead of me were still there when I was there so that suggests to me that I am somewhat older than I thought that I was. The Governor of the Reserve Bank had this to say:

Those who have looked into this in detail—

namely, the performance of the Australian economy—

have posited several possible contributing factors, including better macroeconomic policy frameworks, a wide range of microeconomic reforms in labour and product markets, and luck.

That is the voice of the Governor of the Reserve Bank.

What does Professor Fred Hilmer have to say? He is now the Vice-Chancellor of the University of New South Wales, but in the early 1990s he was instrumental in developing the competition policy framework, which was so important to Australia’s microeconomic performance throughout the nineties and to productivity improvements which followed as a result.

In a recent speech Professor Hilmer reflected on these forces. He noted that the federal government has ‘reaffirmed the importance of productivity in a number of reports’. He cited the Australia to 2050: future challenges Intergenerational report which talked of the criticality of the three Ps—productivity, participation and population—and which referred to productivity growth as the main driver of economic growth and living standards in the future. Professor Hilmer went on to note that ‘despite the professed commitment to improving productivity, recent performance is not encouraging’. He talked about the consequences of that bipartisan commitment to microeconomic reform throughout the eighties and nineties that I spoke about before, but he noted that in the last several years multifactor productivity growth has again slumped, averaging only 0.4 per cent per annum.

Interestingly, I note that the Department of Finance and Deregulation in its brief to incoming ministers recently released under freedom of information agreed with this analysis. The department noted productivity performance is a key determinant of living standards and that, following microeconomic reform in the 1990s, productivity surged but productivity growth has now been slowing and that that presents an important challenge for this term of government. So, so far, uncontroversial: there appears to be a consensus amongst many experts in this field that we had good microeconomic reform progress for many, many years, but it came to a screeching halt in 2007 and as a result we are seeing a decline in productivity growth.

The second issue that I want to address is the question of what ought to be on the public policy agenda now if we are serious about productivity improvement. Again, the first thing I want to do is go to the speech that Professor Hilmer made quite recently. He talked about the fact that there are plenty of forces which he described as ‘enablers’ of productivity growth, such as infrastructure, skills, the legal and institutional framework, labour market flexibility and technological progress. But he also made the point that there are three key incentives which are drivers of productivity growth: competition, tax and corporate governance. He made the point that there needs to be a shift from focusing on incentives to focusing on enablers. If I can quote Professor Hilmer directly, he said this:

While both incentives and enablers are important, without incentives enablers have a limited impact on productivity.

So he is drawing a clear distinction between things that are nice to have and things that are really important in driving productivity.

The next person that I would like to cite on this topic is Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission. He makes the point that, notwithstanding the emphasis we have seen from this government in talking about education, research and development and so on, the recent slump in Australia’s productivity was not caused by any lack of spending on education and training or by a falloff in research and development or even infrastructure. In other words, the challenges which need to be addressed when it comes to genuine productivity reform are more substantive and underlying than merely pumping more money into education and research and development.

He talks, interestingly, about some of the drivers of poor productivity performance. He talks about government procurement and notes quite critically the recent decision by the New South Wales government to introduce a price preference of up to 25 per cent for locally supplied goods and services. I cannot pretend to be shocked when I learn that the completely hopeless New South Wales Labor government is being fingered for poor performance on productivity, consistent with its atrocious performance on just about every other indicator one could mention. Gary Banks also talks about that longstanding recipient of industry assistance initiatives, the automotive industry, and notes that there is a real temptation to hand out cash to the automotive sector. He talks critically about that being done by the Australian government and it follows that if we are serious about productivity we have to question the kind of approaches that are being pursued in this area.

Again, it is interesting to look at what the Department of Finance and Deregulation has to say on the question of productivity growth and the issues which need to be on the agenda. Looking at the incoming government brief, the department of finance talks about productivity savings made to date in regulatory reform activities such as in the seamless National Partnership Agreement, but then talks about unfinished business, including the removal of retail price caps in relation to electricity generation, the removal of state based regulation of road transport and rail and maritime safety and other areas. The point I am making is that, when you look at the detail of what the experts in the area say are the issues that need to be addressed, if we are to get serious about improving productivity growth in Australia, you see that there is a yawning gap between the issues identified by the experts and the agenda of the current government.

That brings me to the third area I would like to talk about: what is it that we are actually seeing being done by this government as opposed to its rhetoric about the topic of productivity? Let me start by going to some of the things that Professor Hilmer has had to say. He has talked about the great attraction that this government has for regulation in so many areas. I will quote verbatim what he had to say:

There are a number of examples of regulation being introduced that appear to continue this trend of increasing anti-competitive regulation which include:

Prohibiting financial planning trailing commissions versus simply requiring full disclosure;

Unwillingness to let economics determine energy and conservation choices;

Unwillingness to allow a market solution for the provision of broadband;

Restricting overseas ownership of housing; and

Reducing the degrees of freedom available to universities when competing for students and funding.

Professor Hilmer may not have wanted to make the point in these terms but I am happy to make the political point, the important point, that when you look at what this government is doing—and he has cited a number of instances—you see it is pursuing an agenda which is completely at odds with its stated preference and desire to improve productivity.

Let me come to the next issue about which we see a yawning gap between the performance of this government and the rhetoric—that is, how major infrastructure projects ought to be assessed. The Chairman of the Productivity Commission—again, in the speech he made last year—talked about, as a second potential source of productivity gain, those larger scale nation-building infrastructure proposals which were brought forward and selected without the opportunity to conduct adequate cost-benefit analysis. I wonder what he might have been referring to there. I wonder whether he was referring to this government’s stated policy of committing $43 billion to the National Broadband Network while refusing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Is it any surprise that the Chairman of the Productivity Commission is raising his eyebrows at this conduct on the part of this government, which is so at odds with the stated emphasis of pursuing gains in productivity?

It is not only Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission, who is raising concerns about the issue of cost-benefit analysis. What does the Department of Finance and Deregulation have to say in its incoming ministerial brief? ‘There would be benefit in expanding and strengthening the established Infrastructure Australia processes.’ Of course there would be if the biggest single infrastructure project in Australia’s history—as we keep being told—has completely sidestepped the Infrastructure Australia processes. What a remarkably disciplined piece of understatement this is from professional bureaucrats who are presumably gritting their teeth as they write it. They go on to say, ‘There is a strong case for finance to play a stronger role in this area through updating its guidelines on cost-benefit analysis.’ What they also might want to do is publish them and circulate them to the office of every minister in this building because apparently no copy has been seen in the office of the broadband minister, Senator Stephen Conroy.

There is also in the incoming brief a very interesting proposal which is again relevant to the question about whether this government’s performance on microeconomic reform and seeking and delivering improvements in productivity is in line with its rhetoric. What are the government’s own officials saying to the government? They are saying this:

Infrastructure needs can also be addressed by making better use of existing infrastructure.

And what do we see when it comes to the National Broadband Network? Do we seek the better use of existing infrastructure, or do we see the payment of $11 billion of taxpayers’ money to the owner of the largest telecommunications network in this country to trash it, to rip it up, to throw it out, to say that this network will not be available to anybody to use even if they would quite like to have the choice of using this network as an alternative to the National Broadband Network? Do we see ‘making better use of infrastructure’ as is recommended by the department of finance in its incoming ministerial brief, or do we see precisely the opposite of that from a government which is acting in a way that is wholly inconsistent with its stated rhetoric about pursuing policies which will deliver improved productivity growth? I am very sorry to report that we see the latter.

Is it only the department of finance which has expressed concerns about this? Is it only the Productivity Commission which has expressed concerns about this? Funnily enough, it is not. What has the OECD had to say about the question of microeconomic policy in the telecommunications area? Once again, you get a strong sense, as you review what the OECD has said, that the officials are gritting their teeth as they try as best they can to convey their deep concern about the approach which is being taken by this government. Talking about the heads of agreement between the National Broadband Network and Telstra, the OECD said:

The heads of agreement signed with Telstra eliminate competition between the new fibre optic network and the existing technological platforms … This implies a de facto restoration of a public monopoly over the supply of access to wholesale Internet services. Multiple empirical studies have stressed the value of competition between technological platforms for the dissemination of broadband services. Moreover, such a monopolistic incumbent could forestall the development of, as yet unknown, superior technological alternatives.

We have a government which claims to be concerned about driving improvements in Australia’s rate of productivity growth. It is uncontentious, between the major parties, that that is a worthwhile goal; it is uncontentious that achieving improvements in productivity growth is critical to growth in our gross domestic product and to the welfare of Australians; and it is uncontentious that you will only achieve material improvements in productivity growth if you are pursuing a sustained and disciplined program of microeconomic reform. Regrettably, although the rhetoric of this government is designed to give the impression that that is precisely its objective, its behaviour—its conduct—is quite the opposite.

I think the framework which Professor Fred Hilmer has articulated is an extremely instructive one. Professor Fred Hilmer is the man who was responsible in the early nineties for the carriage of the competition reforms which were so critical to the improved microeconomic performance of this country. Professor Hilmer has now taken the opportunity to review Australia’s progress in microeconomic reform and productivity growth and to ask the question: how are we are doing now compared to that hard work, that detailed program of work, throughout the nineties which delivered such sustained improvement in productivity and in the welfare of Australians?

The framework which Professor Hilmer has used to analyse this question is to draw a distinction between incentives and enablers and to make the point that ultimately it is about incentives for behaviour by participants in the economy. You can talk all you like about spending money on various areas. As we know under this government ‘reform’ is a codeword for ‘spending’. The real benefits in terms of microeconomic reform and productivity improvements are only going to be realised and achieved if we are serious about continuing to deploy the force of these incentives which Professor Hilmer talks about—competition, tax and corporate governance.

What we have seen in the last three years is that 2½ decades of consensus on microeconomic reform has come to a shuddering halt. We have a government which is making the popular and easy decisions. We have a government which has never turned its back on an opportunity to spend money. We need to get serious about improving productivity. Let us see the action match the rhetoric.

12:16 pm

Photo of Greg CombetGreg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise, of course, to also offer an address-in-reply to the speech delivered by the Governor-General during the official opening of the 43rd Parliament. As noted by Her Excellency, the configuration of this parliament poses challenges not experienced in our Commonwealth for seven decades. It has facilitated a need for renewal and change that we are witnessing and has prompted the formation of the Gillard government through an agreement with the Greens and two Independents.

The Gillard Labor government are determined that, through strong leadership, consultation and a common-sense approach to public policy, we will deliver more for the people of Australia. At the forefront of the government’s priorities is the need to ensure that the economy remains flexible and strong. We are committed to sensible fiscal measures that will see the budget return to surplus by 2012-13. Our economic reform agenda includes changes to the nation’s taxation system together with amendments to business regulation and superannuation. Proceeds of the proposed mineral resource rent tax will fund cuts to business tax, enable a rise in the superannuation guarantee levy from nine to 12 per cent and allow for ongoing investments in infrastructure to help drive national productivity and growth. All of this will broaden our economy so that more people can benefit from the country’s prosperity regardless of where they live.

The ongoing rollout of the National Broadband Network is also very important. It will help expand economic opportunities in regional areas and improve service delivery in important service areas such as education, health care and small business. Making high-speed broadband available across this country will markedly lift productivity.

The Gillard government has also committed to addressing cost-of-living pressures faced by many families. The new Paid Parental Leave scheme comes into effect from 1 January next year. Under that program eligible working parents of newborns and adopted babies will receive 18 weeks parental leave pay at the federal minimum wage. That is a historic achievement by this government, and it is something that in my former work as a trade union leader I worked very hard to achieve. We have increased the childcare rebate as well to 50 per cent. The education tax refund will extend to cover the cost of school uniforms, and family support payments are set to increase by up to $4,000 a year for teenagers enrolled in school or vocational training.

As the coalition becomes clearer in its yearning for a return to Work Choices, the government will stand by its values and a fair and balanced workplace relations policy. The dignity afforded to working people is extremely important—that they are treated with decency and respect in their workplace. The Gillard Labor government will continue to improve access to services as well as to the financial viability of our health system through the National Health and Hospitals Network. GP superclinics will expand into more regional and suburban communities while support will be offered to families late at night or on weekends through a national GP after-hours hotline. The government also plans to invest more into integrated aged-care services and places. All of these initiatives are extremely important for Australian people.

Tackling climate change is also a defining issue for this government. Of course I am very committed to meeting this challenge and, with my department, I will work for our country in my role as the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Climate scientists from around the world are telling us that the levels of carbon pollution being emitted into the atmosphere are contributing to climate change. The government accept and respect the climate science and we are committed to building consensus on our policy response. This is clearly in our long-term national interests. Our economy and our environment are extremely sensitive to the challenges of climate change, and the fact is that the longer we delay taking action to reduce the emissions intensity in our own economy the greater the harm and the more it will cost to reduce carbon pollution in the future.

So we must make a start now, and that is why the government is providing strong support for investment in renewable energy. We have legislated a renewable energy target ensuring that at least 20 per cent of our electricity supply will come from renewable energy sources by the year 2020. In fact, modelling suggests that the scheme that will come into effect from 1 January 2011 is likely to deliver slightly better than that, in the order of 22 per cent of renewable energy by 2020. Nineteen billion dollars worth of investment in renewable energy generation is anticipated.

The government is also keen to promote greater energy efficiency in industry and homes as part of our climate change strategy. Recently the government released a Prime Minister’s Task Group on Energy Efficiency report which reinforced the government’s approach and the need for a price on carbon as well. And on that specific issue, it is widely recognised that, to drive down emissions in our economy—that is, to cut carbon pollution—in the most cost-effective way, we need to implement a carbon price. A carbon price in effect will put a price tag on each tonne of pollution going into the atmosphere. It is a major economic reform that will create an incentive to reduce pollution, unlock investment in clean energy and create jobs, and drive investment into low-emissions technology. Many in the business community—including BHP Billiton CEO, Marius Kloppers, AGL Energy CEO, Michael Fraser, the President of the Business Council of Australia and many other business leaders, along with many who are in leadership roles in the non-government organisations and environment groups around the country—strongly support putting a price on carbon because they know it will provide investment certainty and allow business to start moving towards a low carbon pollution future.

To achieve consensus on the best approach to introducing a carbon price the government has formed the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, comprising the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and me, Senator Brown and Senator Milne and Independent MPs the member for Lyne and the member for New England. That committee is now well and truly into its work program. Also, as part of our approach of building consensus, two roundtables have been established. One will engage the business community and the other will engage a range of non-government organisations, including environment groups, unions and representatives of the social services sector. Discussions at the roundtables will focus on the introduction of a carbon price and offer advice to the government on other issues surrounding climate change.

The Prime Minster has also announced plans to establish a climate change commission. This commission will engage with the community to promote a better understanding of climate change science and how a carbon price would operate. The government is finalising plans for the commission at the moment and will announce the commission’s make-up and work plan in the near future. We are getting on with the job of tackling climate change because the longer investment uncertainty clouds our economy the greater the impact on prices and jobs, ultimately. To this end the government is also investing record amounts directly to support research and new technologies in renewable energy—solar, wind power and other areas of energy efficiency.

The government’s program that I have pointed to has particular relevance to my own region in the Hunter in New South Wales and in my electorate of Charlton. Recently I had the privilege of joining the Prime Minister to sign contracts for the Smart Grid, Smart City project, which will be implemented predominantly across the Hunter region, including in my electorate. Over the next three years, this $500 million initiative, of which $100 million was allocated by the government, will demonstrate how an electricity network of the future can use information and communications to improve the efficiency of power generation and power distribution and its use at the domestic and business levels. Under a consortium led by Energy Australia, 50,000 households in Newcastle, the Upper Hunter and parts of Sydney will have the opportunity to participate in the trial and learn much more about how to reduce their energy usage and, therefore, their electricity bills.

The Hunter region is also at the forefront of several other research projects and innovative trials. Important research into renewable energy and solar technologies is being carried out by the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle, while the government has committed $30 million towards establishing the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources. This institute will be developed at the University of Newcastle, through the sustainability round of the Education Investment Fund. It will bring together up to 400 researchers in the Hunter to advance research in clean energy production, energy efficiency and the minimisation of carbon emissions. I was there only a couple of weeks ago and was shown the potentiality for support for a program that may, for example, be able to improve the efficiency of coal fired electricity generation by a margin of 20 per cent in a number of power generation stations in New South Wales. That project alone, if it were ultimately successful and commercially applied, could therefore make a significant contribution to emissions reductions.

Not too far away, though, and now also within the boundaries of my own electorate, another 400 researchers will soon be devoting their time to a range of medical research projects, after the government delivered a total of $48.5 million towards the construction of a world-class research hub for the Hunter Medical Research Institute. Once complete, the new facility will not only align services with existing health infrastructure at the John Hunter Hospital campus but also encourage collaborations and the development of new approaches to tackling major health issues. It will deliver improved health care to the wider community as a result of research outcomes and reduced health costs and by enhancing opportunities for commercialisation. I am very proud that we have that project at the Hunter Medical Research Institute in the region and of the contribution that it makes at a national level.

Each of the projects I have just described will play a vital role in delivering for a modern Australia, with the additional benefit of creating many more job opportunities for Australians. I am also pleased to report to the House that construction of the much anticipated GP superclinic in my electorate, based on the south-western side of Lake Macquarie, is now nearing completion. The federally funded initiative will reduce the patient to doctor ratio in Morisset and its surrounding areas as well as boost the delivery of other important allied primary health services to the local community, and these are desperately needed.

The Gillard Labor government is delivering on its commitment here to prioritise national health. In Charlton, almost $250,000 has been allocated, for example, to the Glendale Medical Centre under the Innovative Clinical Teaching and Training Grants program. This will allow for the construction of purpose-built teaching and training facilities, benefiting students from the nearby University of Newcastle and, of course, benefiting the citizens in the Glendale area, where there is a high demand for, and insufficient supply of, these important primary healthcare services.

The government has provided the biggest boost to the pension in our nation’s history, and this is particularly important in my electorate. More than 26,000 pensioners across Charlton, which is a relatively high proportion in electorates across the country, benefited from the latest increase on 20 September, when the maximum fortnightly rate increased to $716.10 for singles and to $1,079.60 for couples. The government also plans to introduce a more generous work bonus for age pensioners who choose to engage in part-time work, meaning they can earn up to $6,500 without affecting their pension. This is a very positive step for pensioners.

The people of Charlton also stand to benefit from signature infrastructure projects that are being carried out by the government. Work is underway on the multibillion dollar Hunter Expressway, for example. It will help to address traffic congestion at the end of the F3 Freeway north of Sydney and on other local arterial roads. This is a civil engineering project in excess of $1.5 billion. Public transport will also be in the spotlight as part of a $20 million feasibility study into a major high-speed rail project connecting Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne via Newcastle. More libraries, more multipurpose halls, classrooms and administration facilities are being officially opened throughout my electorate thanks, of course, to the government’s economic stimulus package. This initiative was absolutely vital in providing employment opportunities in my region for local tradespeople. It has been welcomed by local schools. I have not had one complaint about the BER, only extremely positive feedback. There are schools that have not seen significant capital investment in their infrastructure since the 1950s and 1960s, and they are now enjoying new classrooms, new libraries and new facilities that are much better for teachers, students and the community. All of these things have been strongly welcomed, and I am very pleased that school students are benefiting in this way.

Sports participation in Charlton will receive a welcome boost through new community infrastructure proposed for Wallsend, at the northern end of my electorate. The government has allocated $140,000 to the Northern New South Wales Football Association, to conduct a feasibility study into building elite training and futsal facilities. I was pleased to make that commitment during the election campaign. Meanwhile, upgrades to amenities at Evans Park in Cardiff are also nearing completion, which is another result of the economic stimulus funding. Young people on the south-western side of Lake Macquarie will also have access to a variety of community activities from next month. The PCYC in Morisset is about to be reborn, which is welcome news, following a major overhaul of a dilapidated building. The government has worked in partnership with the Lake Macquarie City Council and local partners to bring that about with a funding grant of approximately $120,000. It has been strongly supported by the council and the local community.

So there are many very positive initiatives of the government at a national level and a local level, as I am sure any fair-minded member of parliament would observe, that have made a tremendous difference to people’s lives over the previous term of government and will continue to do so during this term. I am very pleased to say that the outlook for my electorate is extremely positive. While there are a number of infrastructure investments that remain outstanding and that I intend to work very hard to support and while there are a number of other projects that I am going to continue to work through with the local community, I am very proud of what has been achieved over the last three years. The Gillard government is obviously committed to addressing the cost-of-living pressures faced by many families and I will continue to work very hard to represent the interests of people in my electorate in this respect.

Finally, I take this brief opportunity to thank those who supported me during the recent election campaign in my electorate. I thank all of those in my electorate office and particularly all of the members of the Labor Party branches, who came out as usual to support the Labor candidate, and all of the volunteers. Most of all, I recognise and respect the support that I was able to achieve from the voters within the electorate of Charlton. I am tremendously privileged to represent them.

12:33 pm

Photo of Alex HawkeAlex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I am happy to speak in this place today in reply to the Governor-General’s address. The 2010 federal election was, of course, a great sea change in Australian history, a time when Australians did stand up for a different vision of what they wanted from their federal government and sought a new direction from it. The reason they did that follows on from what the member for Charlton has just said. He said that any fair-minded member of parliament would need to look at the performance of the government and assess it carefully. That is what voters in the electorate of Mitchell did do at the last federal election. They took a very careful look at the policies, the results and the delivery of services that were provided by the federal government in the last term.

In this place, I have spoken at length about Building the Education Revolution and it just so happens that in my electorate of Mitchell there have been serious problems with federal government service delivery in the BER program. Some members of parliament might say, ‘That’s only confined to one or two schools or a very small percentage.’ If you are in a school community that has been badly affected by government failure then you feel it. Communities in my electorate have certainly felt that failure quite keenly. What am I talking about? Annangrove is an example. I want to acknowledge the Leader of the Opposition and our education spokesperson, the member for Sturt, who paid a visit to the community in Annangrove during the federal election to launch our national education policy. That community has a school of 90 pupils. It received a BER grant of around $900,000—an opportunity, one would have thought, to make a significant investment in the future of that school for the community.

What could you do with $900,000 to achieve real advancement for the education of those 90 pupils? The school is in a semi-rural area. They asked for new toilet blocks. They asked for more classrooms. They asked for these very important infrastructure upgrades for their community. They were awarded a library. Members here will say, ‘What’s wrong with a library?’ They already had a library. For 90 kids, we have the farcical situation at Annangrove of two libraries sitting right next to each other. The original library has air-conditioning. It is a great little library. It has shelving, connection to the internet and other features. It functions very well. The new library is not air-conditioned, there is no shelving and it is not connected to the internet. That cost $900,000.

There are line items in the BER for expenditure at this school in Annangrove for $60,000 for landscaping. If you ask what landscaping has been done at the school, you will be pointed to a one metre by one metre piece of concrete and 10 plants. It is of great concern to that school. I want to congratulate the P&C president, Donna Hunter, for having the courage to come forward and raise these matters with us. Of course, we have raised this with Mr Orgill and his committee. This is an example of what is wrong with the BER and the delivery mechanisms within the New South Wales government—two libraries for 90 pupils and the new library, which does not work, at a cost of $900,000. Something has gone awfully wrong by anybody’s standards. Members opposite have gone quiet.

I want to talk about another great school in my electorate, Baulkham Hills North Primary School. It just so happens that the president of the P&C at Baulkham Hills North Primary School, Mr Craig Turner, is an architect. When he came across the BER plans for his school—a new school hall; sounds like a worthy project—he found it was going to cost from $1.2 million to $1.3 million. That sounds marvellous! However, the new school hall to be built under the BER was going to fit only 20 more pupils than their existing hall. It was not big enough to hold the whole school. This architect, this representative of his school community—not a partisan political player, not a member of a political party—came to me as the local member and said: ‘Why $1.2 million for this? I can design a building that will house the whole school and have it constructed, and it will deliver the outcome that this great public school needs.’ The answer lies in the bureaucracy and the incompetence of the New South Wales government, and the rigidity of the BER program not allowing enough flexibility for local public schools.

The independent and private schools in my electorate each achieved a great outcome from the money they were granted. They got architect designed structures that were exactly what they needed for their pupils. The local public schools got a template, mandated outcome by the state government that did not provide the best outcome for schools in many cases. While many are grateful—because they have to be grateful for any infrastructure upgrades they get—they did not get the opportunity that they deserved. Why? Because of the rigid and foolish bureaucratic mechanisms within the New South Wales government.

It is the case in New South Wales that there was a big swing against the Labor Party at the election. Perhaps the coalition did not go as well as we could have. I know the member for Dobell will not defend the performance of the New South Wales government because it is beyond defence in my state. State Labor has underinvested in infrastructure—and the top issue in my electorate is the provision of infrastructure. The north-west rail line has been the most bitter failure of the New South Wales government. It was promised, cancelled, promised and cancelled. Also the south-west rail line is a failure.

What we did see in the election campaign was that great, famous commitment of Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister to build a rail line in Sydney. Her advisers on that day—because it was done on that day and it was done on the back of a coaster—really failed her. There is one thing that you do not do in Sydney, and even the member for Dobell would acknowledge this: you do not come out as a politician and say, ‘I am going to build a rail line in Sydney.’ Nobody believes you. Why? We have had a state Labor government for 16 years that has promised rail lines, including the Parramatta to Epping line, and delivered billboards which said, ‘Coming soon.’ They had cranes up the top of Epping and bulldozers parked on the side of the road. It was a great PR stunt before a state election. Of course, once the election was over the bulldozers were moved, the cranes were cancelled and the billboards came down. We never heard of the Parramatta to Epping rail line until the federal election. Fancy that. Three weeks out from election day, Julia Gillard says, ‘I’ve come up with an idea to move forward, to move Sydney forward and that will be the Parramatta to Epping rail link.’ It sounded like a worthy initiative. It probably lost them just enough votes to lose the seat of Bennelong. I say to the voters of Sydney and New South Wales ‘thank you’ because we need to punish bad governments. They need to be dealt with harshly. And there is no worse example of a bad government in Australia today than the New South Wales state Labor government. It deserves to be punished. It deserves to be sent a very serious signal—governments in this country cannot be allowed to get that bad ever again.

Is the federal government now going to commit to building the Parramatta to Epping rail line? My colleague the member for Bennelong is actively seeking the answers to those questions affecting his community at Bennelong, and also affecting my community within Hills Shire. But we do not have any answers yet. Is this a promise that is going to be cancelled? Is this a pre-election commitment that is going to go by the wayside? We are about to find out. We will maintain the pressure on this government to deliver the money and the commitment to upgrade infrastructure in Sydney.

There is no doubt that under the Rudd and Gillard governments that Sydney has missed out on vital infrastructure funding. There is no allocation of money for infrastructure in the biggest city in our country. There was money for some studies on the metro line, but the incompetent New South Wales Labor government cancelled the metro line and had to, humiliatingly, return the $51 million for the study to the federal government. There were no other infrastructure funding provisions in any of the budgets of the Rudd or Gillard governments—none in Sydney, our biggest city. It is the city most underinvested in infrastructure in Australia. This is the city we are asking to take the bulk of our migration. This is the city we are trying to urban consolidate—pack in people without the adequate infrastructure to provide for those people. No wonder voters in Sydney are sceptical about immigration. No wonder it has been given a very bad name. My family are migrants to this country. They came here in the waves of migration after World War II and they have worked very hard and built a great life for me and my family today, and I am very grateful to them. That is the experience of so many people in Sydney. Yet, why are so many people in Sydney so concerned about immigration. It is not so much because of the people, the humanity; it is because of the policies of government that have crammed so many people into so little space without the proper infrastructure provision, and there is no better example than the city of Sydney.

The federal government fails to provide infrastructure money even when it lauds its infrastructure funding programs all around the country. There may very well be places where it is funding infrastructure but in Sydney it is not. The communities of Sydney continue to be ignored at both the state and the federal level. And that does mean that we have to change what we are doing in the Sydney basin. Indeed, it will lead to further scepticism about immigration and our migration program because Sydney cannot afford to continue to be the recipient of so many people without provision for them. That is something that has received a lot more attention in recent times.

The coalition did have a clear position on so many issues at the last election, including water protection, repaying our debt and ending waste in government. Ending waste in government was, I think, a theme that really resonated with the community. People knew that under the Howard-Costello years not only was debt repaid, not only were the finances put in order but also provision was made to fund future obligations of the Commonwealth government, particularly Commonwealth superannuants, but also to fund, through the Future Fund, other commitments of the federal government to ensure that there was a financial base.

In Mitchell, this could not be more critical. In my electorate, I have the highest proportion of families with dependent children in Australia. The average income is one of the highest in the country, but we also have one of the highest rates of mortgages—I think we are second—and of McMansions in the entire country. That is a very homogenous society: families with mortgages on over-high-average incomes, but using nearly all of that income, of course, to service mortgage debt. Most cash, as we know, is being put into paying off those mortgages. In the last year, there have been seven interest rate rises—even though the current government said that it was going to do something about interest rates. That is of very serious concern to my electorate.

One of the great things about Mitchell is that we have so many small businesses in the Norwest Business Park. It is a very entrepreneurial and innovative community. But those small businesses are suffering, as they are across the Sydney basin. When I speak to my colleague the member for Macarthur or to the member for Hughes, they tell a similar story about this Christmas: small businesses are finding that there is less cash in people’s pockets as the cost of living escalates and as interest rates also take money out of those pockets.

That is why we are so concerned about banking and financial sector reform. The reason we are—though there is some scepticism opposite—is that, in the life of the Howard government, banks did not raise their rates outside of Reserve Bank movements. This is a very critical point to understand. That was not through a legislative instrument. That was not an informal agreement. That was not an unwritten agreement with the federal government or Peter Costello. And it was despite an Asian financial crisis, a tech wreck, and many serious world and local economic challenges.

There are many reasons and factors. When you have serious and competent professional people managing your economy, the CEOs of the banks have no choice but to take those people seriously. There has been a marked change in the attitude of the banks towards the federal government. Peter Costello had an arrangement and an understanding with the banks where they knew that they would not move interest rates outside Reserve Bank movements—and that was not by legislative instrument or by pressure but by force of respect and personality and ability: ability to manage the economy and to communicate why interest rates should not be moved outside of Reserve Bank movements. That was a very successful formula during that period.

That is why we have put forward our nine-point plan. It is a plan for the future. It is a plan to ensure that small businesses in Mitchell are able to access finance from banks. People in small business, when they talk to me, speak in a very concerned fashion about how they cannot access finance. With the taxpayer now underwriting the major four banks—which, of course, continues to need to be looked at—we need to look at how we re-encourage competition in the banking sector. How do we get competition in finance so that people can access finance again? If the government is not prepared to look at that, or not prepared to do anything about it, then it should adopt the opposition’s policy, its nine-point plan, to ensure that we have competition in the banking sector. It is vital for there to be competition in funds and to not just have all the money locked up in the big four banks. It will mean pressure on interest rates. It will mean pressure on fees, charges and services. Competition—so important to so many things—is one of our keynote policies.

I want to turn now to some other key factors affecting Mitchell and to local issues within the campaign. I want to thank and congratulate my friends in the Indian community in Sydney. The Indian community, at the last election, being dominated by very hard-working small business people, adopted the view that it was time to seek a better alternative in government. We had many successful functions with the Indian community. We visited their temples in Wentworthville. They were very encouraging of the deputy opposition leader, Julie Bishop, who made a visit to my electorate—for which I was very grateful—to hear about their key issues. The Indian community in Sydney is very concerned about those key issues: competent management of the economy, and the performance of the federal government in doing something for small business and ensuring that we have a safe and well-funded infrastructure program for the Sydney basin. So I do want to thank and congratulate those members of the Indian community who came forward and worked so closely with us to ensure that there was a good understanding of coalition policy and that people had a genuine choice within the Sydney basin.

It is, of course, a great scandal in Australia that, when an incoming government is sent a strong signal by the electorate of, ‘You have got your settings wrong. You have failed us so badly,’ they do not heed the messages from that very strong signal. In fact the opposite has occurred. What I find most distressing about this current government is that from the outset the Prime Minister has flagged her intention to abandon all of her core election promises. She has even had the gall to say to the electorate, ‘We are going to abandon our core promises. We are going to go down a different path.’ That signals that we now have a government that is run by a minority group: the Australian Greens. One of the great features of this parliament will be to what extent the Greens dominate the agenda of the Australian government going forward. I do not think, if they are allowed to dominate in the way they have been dominating in the first session of this parliament, that things will improve in Australia.

The government’s vaunted carbon tax, which of course they swore they would not implement in the election campaign, of course now becomes a core commitment of this government. We did not hear a lot about climate change in the election campaign. That is because in the world today and in the Australian community there is a growing—I hesitate to use the word ‘scepticism’—concern about the validity of the climate change argument and about whether the political takeout of climate change has been the correct one. There is a very big difference between what the scientists tell us about climate change and what the politicians say. Issues are regularly hijacked by politicians for their own benefit. I would suggest that in this case there is a growing view in the world today that climate change has been hijacked for political benefit by left-of-centre political parties.

There are sensible and competent things we can do to help the environment. The coalition had a plan for some direct action to do practical things that would benefit the environment and not just implement new taxes. If the way to solve the environmental situation in the world today is to raise tax, why wouldn’t everybody be for it? If all we had to do was apply new taxes, charges and fees, that would be a very simple way to fix things. Of course the reality is that new taxes, charges and fees will not produce environmental benefit.

The government abandoning the promise not to implement a carbon tax is going to resonate with the electorate. People do not want a carbon tax on the back of rapidly rising electricity prices, particularly in New South Wales. That is after a decade of underinvestment in electricity generation by the New South Wales state Labor government. The privatisation of electricity tore two or three state Labor governments into pieces over the electricity generation question of how much they were to invest in electricity. We are already paying the price with massive increases in electricity prices. Utility prices in Sydney are probably the most common concern. Yet this government proposes to implement a major new tax that will, of course, push up the price of electricity rapidly. It is of grave concern that the Greens may well continue to dominate the Australian government agenda for the years ahead.

I want to say a big thank you to the people of Mitchell for the opportunity to represent them in this place for the next three years. It is a great honour. I am grateful to them for the support they showed me at the last election and I pledge to work in their interest and to ensure that we get better infrastructure and services in the north-west of Sydney, and that our economy and finances allow people to get ahead, allow businesses to generate employment and opportunity and allow our families to affordably live in the Sydney basin and to have a bit of room for their kids. I thank you for the opportunity.

Sitting suspended from 12.53 pm to 4 pm

4:00 pm

Photo of Yvette D'AthYvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

It is both my pleasure and my privilege to be giving this address in reply as the federal member for Petrie for a second term. I am humbled by the trust the people of my communities have put in me. I also know that with this trust comes heavy responsibility. For that reason I must start this address by acknowledging the community and saying thank you for making the decision to continue to support me and the Gillard Labor government. I would also like to thank my staff for their tremendous effort and support over the past three years. It has been almost three years to the day since I was first elected, and the staff have been there to support me throughout this entire time, with only one permanent staff member moving on to a higher position within a state government minister’s office.

I would also like to thank the volunteers and relief staff who have worked with me in the office from time to time. They have all played an important role in our office. I would also like to thank the ALP branch members and supporters who have supported me not only through the election this year but since I was first preselected in 2006. They have continued to provide their ongoing support and to work hard with me for the betterment of our local community. No one person can win an election and it is this group of dedicated people who have ensured that I was returned as the member for Petrie.

To the Petrie campaign team, and particularly James Sullivan, the campaign manager, once again I thank you so much for your efforts and the tremendous jobs that you did, especially keeping me moving and out on those stalls at 5.30 every morning during winter, which was certainly a challenge, even with Brisbane weather. As every candidate knows, you certainly go through highs and lows over the period of a campaign and it is the people around you who give you strength to keep going. My supporters and the community did this. Thank you also to the Australian Workers Union. We have heard much criticism today in other debates in the chamber about the union movement throughout Australia, and it is once again disappointing to listen to such arguments. It just reinforces why there are still workers across this country who feel intimidated about belonging to a union and having that membership known openly throughout their workplace and about having the right to representation. I am a union member, I am proud of it, and I will continue to speak publicly about the important roles that unions play in workplaces throughout this country.

That brings me to the most important acknowledgement—that is, to my family. To my broader family—my father, my sister and her family, and my brother and his family—thank you for your support. I said in my first speech that my family and friends could not quite understand why I would want to put my hand up to do a job like this. I do not think their opinions have changed much. If anything, they have watched how hard I have worked and the nights I no longer have with my family and the weekends that I no longer can socialise with others, and are even more surprised that any person would want to be an elected member. But my reasons are clear, and I will go through them shortly.

I must say to my husband, George, that his belief in me gives me the confidence to put myself forward. My children, Emma and Cameron, have grown up so much over the past three years of my first term, and I certainly do not just mean in size—although they are catching up with me quickly. But my children, through my role as an elected representative, are learning more about the world around them, that governments at all levels and people of all political persuasions have an important role to play in shaping that world. I thank my husband and my children for their ongoing love and support.

I have learnt a lot in my first term as the federal member for Petrie. I am certainly wiser to the needs of the community and the challenges that we face in addressing those needs. Having said that, my resolve to work my hardest to advocate strongly on behalf of my communities has not diminished or wavered in any way. In taking a moment to revisit my first speech I was reminded of my words on that Monday, 18 February 2008. I spoke of how the efforts of businesses, community groups and individuals throughout my electorate gave me hope and inspiration, strength and energy. I believe I am even more inspired and more determined today than ever before. I am optimistic about the future for my local communities and for this nation. I am optimistic because I know what Labor was able to achieve in its first three years in government and I am confident of what we can achieve in the future under a Labor government.

I would like to take just a moment to look at what some of those past achievements have been. Labor was the first government of this Commonwealth to hold a welcome to country in this national parliament. Labor was the first government to apologise to the stolen generation, a moment in time that I will forever be proud to have been associated with. Labor was the first government to apologise to the forgotten Australians and Labor is the first government to introduce a paid parental leave scheme. It was the federal Labor government that saw this country through the worst global financial crisis that the world has seen since the Great Depression. It was the Labor government that acted swiftly and decisively, before many countries around the world, to initiate a stimulus package to support local jobs and invest in public infrastructure, where the private sector had all but walked away. It was the Labor government that provided much-needed support to our financial institutions to protect people’s savings. Our government is now the envy of the developed nations for our economic credentials and the strong economic performance that we are exhibiting as a nation.

Of course it is this Labor government that has put in place—and the analysis shows it is on track—measures to get the budget back into surplus by 2012-13. It was the stimulus announced in October 2008 and the Nation Building Program introduced in February 2009 that helped my local communities. The injection of payments to many pensioners and low- to middle-income earners, and an urging by the government to spend that money locally, meant local businesses, especially the retail sector, were able to weather the financial storm over the Christmas period in 2008 much better than they otherwise would have. This meant that jobs were saved. The investment in community projects through the Jobs Fund and the local governments meant additional work in the local area. The knock-on effect in infrastructure investment also meant that the government was supporting jobs not only in construction but in the retail, wholesale and manufacturing sectors and where the materials were being sourced. For all of its faults, we should also acknowledge that thousands of homes were insulated by reputable companies and that that insulation is serving those homeowners well.

To my mind, the greatest investment of all has been the investment in education. The Nation Building Program included the largest investment in capital infrastructure that our schools have ever seen. Across the electorate of Petrie we have new multipurpose halls and fantastic libraries. We have refurbished classrooms in our primary and secondary schools, we have new outdoor learning areas, we have new courtyards, we have new shaded areas. These schools have been transformed. Whether it is Clontarf Beach State School, Kippa-Ring State School, Aspley State School, Bald Hills State School, St Paul’s School, Grace Lutheran Primary School, Grace Lutheran College or many more, they all tell me the same thing: they are thrilled with their new facilities. The principals, teachers, parents and students are celebrating the fact that they have facilities which they never envisaged they would have. The contractors tell me about the jobs that have been saved. I hear a chorus of contractors telling me that if it were not for the school building work their businesses would have collapsed a year ago.

Much more work is still being done. Buildings are still being erected and new science and language centres are near completion. In addition, schools across the electorate have received computers under the computers in schools program and these schools are now at a two for one ratio. Trade training centres are being built. Schools are now getting new projects and new facilities under the Local Schools Working Together pilot project. Two schools in my electorate, a state government school and a private school—Redcliffe State High School and Southern Cross Catholic College—have joined together, through Local Schools Working Together, to build a performing arts centre. That centre will be used not only by the students but by the broader community, as will the school halls. Quite often I drive past these school halls—after school hours, in the evenings or on weekends—and I can see them being used by our local church and community groups. These are facilities for the whole community.

Our investment in schools goes well beyond infrastructure. It includes the development of national curricula, the My School website, the national partnership program and more support for national numeracy and literacy programs. These are all positive things that this government started in just its first term of government.

It was this Labor government, in its first term, that increased the base rate of the pension, providing people with much needed additional income. The Labor government did so much in just its first term. We must not forget that, in that first term, we did what we promised the Australian people we would do—we got rid of Work Choices. We provided three lots of tax cuts; we increased the childcare rebate; we invested massively in health, in GP training places and in nurses; and we continue to invest and move forward with our health reform agenda. These are all great things that we did in just our first term.

I am very proud, my electorate of Petrie having chosen to return me as their representative, to talk about some of the new initiatives that we are now taking on as part of our second term. The most important initiative is one that our local community has been wanting for a hundred years, with a corridor having been set aside for it for 32 years. This federal Labor government has delivered an agreement with our local council, the Moreton Bay Regional Council, and the Bligh state government to finally get a real commitment to the Moreton Bay Rail Link. The project will deliver a 12.6-kilometre rail line from Petrie to Kippa-Ring and six new train stations at Kallangur, Murrumba Downs, Mango Hill, Kinsellas Road, Rothwell and Kippa-Ring.

The people in the electorate of Petrie never thought they would see this happen. It is this federal government that made sure that we delivered. What does this project mean for our community? With 84,000 people living along the line, it will mean an incredible change. Every full train will take some 600 cars off the road and reduce carbon emissions. There will be increases in business opportunities and benefits for our schools. The schools in the area have been saying to me, ‘We have to hire a coach to try to go into the city, to the museum, to take the kids on excursions, but now we will be able to catch public transport.’ In the past, there have been parents who could not afford the high cost of some of those excursions. Now those excursions will be much more affordable.

The program is for construction to start in 2012 and by 2016 the six stations will be operational. But we are not waiting until 2012. The surveying work has already started and this Saturday the first public consultation on the project will take place in the North Lakes community. People will be able to come along, see the proposed line and talk about the proposed train stations and what the project means for our local area. It is only a matter of weeks since the election and we have started work on this line. That is absolutely incredible.

That is not all we are doing for our local community. We are building a GP superclinic. We started this superclinic in the first term of government but we have invested further money into this clinic so that when it opens in June next year this will be a state-of-the-art clinic. The additional funding we have promised the Redcliffe Hospital Foundation, as the provider of this superclinic, means that they are going to be able to go out and start delivering health services and programs in planned aged care and outreach services even sooner—before the centre is even opened. This is fantastic. This centre will have a dental school and GPs will be trained for the first time on the Redcliffe Peninsula. There is not one GP being trained in the area. This new GP superclinic will be training.

There are new stormwater initiatives—the Fitzgibbon Stormwater Harvesting Project and the Fitzgibbon Potable Roofwater Project. These are amazing projects that will deliver 133 million litres of new water supplies to the area. That is equivalent to 53 Olympic size swimming pools. These new estates will have their own water and take pressure off our existing dams. These are wonderful initiatives. The federal government has committed $7.13 million for those two projects to be rolled out by the Queensland Urban Land Development Authority.

Last but not least—and one which is very close to my heart—deals with the young people in our area. We will be building a North Lakes Youth Space. It is so desperately needed in this area that is growing so rapidly. This suburb has been there for only 10 years, but it still has another five years of growth to occur before it gets to capacity and we do not have sufficient youth services. The fact is that new families have come in over the last 10 years and these kids have grown up and are now teenagers and they do not have much to do in the area. We have invested $3 million to build a new Youth Space. We will not only provide a safe place for these young people to come but also have support services, counselling and services to assist them in getting skills and going into the workplace and assisting those most in need in our local community.

These are just some of the things that we are doing. Of course, the National Broadband Network is so important in our area. Mr Deputy Speaker, you would appreciate the need for the National Broadband Network. We may be just outer metropolitan areas but we have many suburbs where people cannot get connection in their home. We need a fast broadband system. The people in the electorate of Petrie want a fast broadband system, and that is what we as a Labor government will be delivering to them.

We will continue our investment in education and I will continue to be a very passionate advocate for investing in our schools and working with our schools in some many areas—not just the curriculum or the capital investment. There is an important funding review going on. I meet regularly with my schools across the private and public sectors and the state education bodies so that we can talk about the issues important to them and I can be a strong advocate on their behalf in this parliament.

We will continue with our health reforms. Our local hospitals are very excited about where we are going in the future with health reform. We have amazing nurse practitioners already operating in our emergency departments and we want to see more of them. We are training nurse practitioners for other hospitals in the region now because of the excellent work that our nurse practitioners are doing and the pressure they are taking off the emergency department by supporting those doctors. They will be working directly in conjunction with our new superclinic. If a person comes in they are triaged as category 4 or 5 and they are sent straight over to the clinic, which is open until 10 pm at night seven days a week and is bulkbilled, and they will be able to get treated there, taking pressure off the emergency department.

These are fantastic initiatives. This is what the Labor government are doing. We have done so much in our first three years and we have so much more to do. I look forward to working with my communities to achieve that.

My communities are doing such amazing things. The networking that I am seeing—the cooperation between community organisations, not-for-profit organisations, and businesses—in my electorate now is incredible. Big businesses such as car dealerships are joining with our community associations to help our youths. Many local restaurants are helping community organisations to raise funds for our young kids, to make sure that their basic needs are met for going to school. So they have books and pencils, they have school uniforms and shoes, and they are able to go on excursions. That is what bringing businesses in with community organisations can do. And by partnering with the government we can achieve so much for our local area.

I look forward to facing those challenges—and we do have many challenges, especially with the growth in our area, which is significant. Ours is the third fastest growing area in South-East Queensland. We do need to face those challenges. But together, as a community, we can face those challenges, and I look forward to continuing my strong advocacy on behalf of the people in the electorate of Petrie.

4:20 pm

Photo of Sophie MirabellaSophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | | Hansard source

It is a great privilege and a humbling experience to have been chosen by the people living in the electorate of Indi to again be their federal member. I owe them a great debt of gratitude. I will be, as I always have been, fearless in my advocacy of the values and concerns of the people of my electorate. I would also like to put on the record my gratitude to those who helped in my campaign: the Liberal Party members, the thousands of supporters, and of course my long-suffering staff and family.

In many respects it has never been a harder time to be a representative of a rural electorate, and that is because so much that we hold dear is under threat. So many important decisions that need to be made to lay the foundation for future prosperity outside metropolitan areas are not being made and, where they are, they are having dire consequences. Decisions are being made for the whole country, for which our children will suffer through increased taxes. They will bear the significant burden of repaying debt, to pay for disastrous decisions: the huge white elephant of the NBN, the problems and financial cost we will have from illegal immigration when the boats keep coming, and the great big new tax that the Labor Party wants to impose. These are some of our broader challenges. Then there is all the money that is being spent on very expensive sheds and schools which, if I wanted to put one on my farm, would cost at most a fifth of the price. This money will not be available in the future for very important, prudent, good spending and investment in social and built infrastructure in Australia, and we will be paying interest on this very bad spending.

There have been a couple of issues of particular importance to my electorate. We have seen billions of dollars wasted in national programs by the Labor Party. Let us look at a couple of examples. In north-east Victoria, we have had a project worth $600 million to revitalise the main railway line, the Melbourne to Sydney line, between Albury-Wodonga and Melbourne. You would think that when significant funds were spent on upgrading infrastructure there would be improvements, but not only have we had slower services because of 80 danger points; we now have no train services. The train line is so bad that we can no longer have safe train travel. It is almost Monty Python-esque in its absurdity. It would be funny if it were not such a disgraceful example of mismanagement of something as basic as that.

The issue of water is the No. 1 environmental issue for Australia. It is the No. 1 issue for my electorate. Yet we have seen the handling of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan being nothing short of absolute amateurish incompetence. From the outset it was obvious that the government did not care about the basin, because it is a rural issue and they do not really care about the country. When the Labor Party won the 2007 election, it took them 18 months to appoint the MDBA commissioners. It is little wonder that everything is running behind schedule when such delays occurred in the first instance. The coalition had a very sensible $10 billion 10-point plan but the government could not accept that. They had to come up with their own program, and they still do not know where they are heading. We had a good plan that would have returned health to the river, primarily by investing in river communities to ensure that they were able to produce more food with less water. Innovation and investment in better productivity are the sorts of things that help a nation grow its economy and maintain its standard of living—but none of that from the Labor Party.

We foresaw the problems that have engulfed the Labor Party with the release of the draft. We produced an election policy just months ago that called for a full socioeconomic study on the impacts of basin reform. It outlined a plan to get water-saving infrastructure projects back on track, proposed more funding for community adjustment and established a fund to identify and kick-start new projects for sustainable water use. We have seen the Labor Party try to hide behind the Water Act. They say, ‘It’s not really our problem; it’s the Water Act.’ But the reality is that the Howard government had provided for balanced outcomes, and Labor’s position is just another example of their refusal to be grown-up and responsible politicians. Those on the opposite side who form government need to take responsibility for their actions.

The act already requires Labor to engage in a way ‘that optimises economic, social and environmental outcomes’, and the recent outcry and distress from rural communities was because these very outcomes were utterly ignored. The Prime Minister was exposed as engaging in a great election lie when she said,

I am determined we will do what is necessary to implement the Murray-Darling Basin Authority plan.

But now she says:

It would be highly inappropriate for me to announce a government decision at this stage …

The problem is that Labor do not do the hard yakka in the first place. They do not assess the situation. They do not gather all the relevant scientific information and regional data that is required and that is essential to produce a national plan worthy of implementation. This ridiculous rush has resulted in a situation where the Ovens catchment in my electorate will effectively have 70 per cent of its irrigation water cut. This catchment already returns 95 per cent of its 1,804 gigalitres back into the system and currently irrigates only 0.7 per cent of the total water in the Ovens system. So you can see the one-size-fits-all rushed approach has potentially disproportionately disadvantaged a highly efficient and effective and very small irrigation water-using area in the basin.

There is much work to be done, and we are not going to allow the government to get away with this sloppy work. We will not rest until we get a detailed plan which appreciates that the basin is a diverse area, with different needs and uses. The government’s incompetence on water policy mimics what we have seen from the state Labor Party over the last few years. The Labor Party broke their previous election promise not to pipe water north of the divide; but, lo and behold, their great big white elephant, which rips out water from north-east Victoria and delivers it to the city, was built, breaking an election promise. Recently, they have had to stop water coming down the pipe because, lo and behold, it rained. If they did not have an ideologically intransigent position of no more dams, they could have invested the wasted money that has gone on building the pipeline in building dams. We need to be able to understand rainfall patterns in Australia to capture the water when it falls so that we can use it later. Past visionaries in representative positions in parliaments were able to make these decisions, but the Labor Party are incapable of doing so because they have a simple rule: no more dams. It is as was described by one Labor senator: robotic zombies following this mantra.

At Wonthaggi they have proceeded with a desalination plant without even thinking about different options. Kenneth Davidson from the Age has done some very good work in revealing some of the very alarming statistics. The Victorian taxpayer has lost upwards of $3 billion through this project, and this $3 billion to $4 billion at the beginning equates to an extra $11 billion in interest charges over the next three decades. Imagine what better projects this money could have been spent on. In Australia this costs $32 million per gigalitre, which is simply ludicrous when you compare it to $5.5 million per gigalitre for a plant recently announced in Saudi Arabia.

While this is all very dispiriting, of course, it is not a surprise. As I said, they don’t care about country Australia; they don’t care about the issues that matter in non-metropolitan Victoria. It is no surprise that Julia Gillard visited a regional electorate only once in the entire campaign. That is truly telling. Perhaps it mirrors her attitudes to pensioners and the armed forces. It has been reported that she does not think pensioners and those in the armed forces vote Labor, so she has not really cared about policies catering to them. Perhaps she thinks that regional Australians do not vote Labor, they predominantly vote for the coalition, so why should you care about them. She has never pretended to govern for all. She has excelled at the politics of politics, but she has utterly failed in being a visionary. She has utterly failed with every single policy that she has touched. It is the reverse Midas touch, and it is very sad for Australia.

In my own portfolio we have seen some very dismal failures. We know that it is critically important for our economy, for our progress as a nation, to maintain productivity. Essential in productivity is innovation and investment in research and development that underpins that innovation. We have seen a minister who thinks it is okay to slash support in critical areas for Australia’s future like commercialisation and research and development, but sees no object to spending money on wasteful causes. He is the sort of person who takes extreme umbrage and offence and tries to intimidate people when they make this rather obvious and self-evident point.

While I know it is not something he personally wants to introduce, he has lost the plot so badly that he has been lumped with the job of pushing through the visionless this policy of the cash-for-clunkers scheme, which is a shemozzle. Minister Garrett, who represents him in the House of Representatives, does not even know the name of the program. Minister Garrett, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, who is supposed to know all about all the government’s great and wonderful plans to reduce emissions, cannot even tell you how much cash-for-clunkers is going to cost, even though it is plan is to supposedly reduce our carbon emissions. It was a bad idea, it was formed on the run, the whole concept has been discredited internationally and no less than four ministers over the last three weeks have not been able to speak with one voice and get their lines on it right. She should just break this election promise. This is one election promise she should break. Do all the Australian taxpayers a favour and dump this dud.

This would follow, of course, from one of her more spectacular failures—the $1.7 billion blow-out in the Building the Education Revolution. Interestingly, in Victoria only 20 per cent of the buildings have been completed after 15 months. So when you hear the government say that they have saved us from recession, it is all garbage. What they have actually done is hock this nation’s future because if this money was so critical to stimulating the Australian economy why have only 20 per cent of the buildings been completed? What is the continued $100 million a day being borrowed by the government doing to interest rates? It is pushing them up—that is what it is doing. The government are out there in the marketplace competing with business and private individuals for finance and they are pushing the price of interest rates up. It is Australian families who are suffering and who will continue to suffer.

We saw millions of dollars go offshore with the pink batts fiasco when overseas crime gangs came to Australia, registered and then sent money overseas. We have seen the extraordinary waste of money in other mismanaged programs such as the $850 million blow-out the solar homes program, the $300 million wasted on the Green Loans Program, the $50 million wasted on the stimulus advertising, the $14 million wasted on the climate change advertising and the $2 million wasted on the 2020 Summit. That is almost the price of a packet of lollies compared to the sheer volume of funds wasted by this government. It will continue because they have no other solution—if there is a problem, they will just throw money at it.

The reality is that before the Labor Party won in 2007 Australia was engaged in reform through a government that made the difficult decisions. Between 1998 and 2007 Julia Gillard, and those who now sit on the frontbench, opposed every major economic reform of the Howard government, even though we have been fortunate enough to have been beneficiaries of those reforms during the recent financial crisis. Now she is running the most economically incompetent government in living memory. It is a government that has turned a $20 billion surplus into a $57 billion deficit in such a short space of time.

We saw her make a particular election promise to stop the boats but a lot of us knew she was not fair dinkum. She just had to say something to keep people happy and to allay their concerns. She said she would stop the boats, but she did not know how to do it and she really did not care as long as she could make it through the election. She tried to look tough—she even took a marginal seat colleague and a brigade of journalists to tour the harbour on a gunboat. She devised a grand plan for a regional detention centre in East Timor and announced it before discussing it with the East Timorese government.

But what do we have now? A record number of boats are coming to Australia and they are not going to stop, because the carpet has been rolled out. And true to form, the factions in the Labor Party do not want her to stop the boats coming in. They believe we should have an open-door policy. She pretends to talk tough but people are starting to see through the rhetoric and the lies.

One of the worst policies that this government could inflict on Australia—and there is a lot of competition—is the NBN. We have a Prime Minister who says, ‘I believe spending every dollar carefully is important.’ So Madam Prime Minister, where is the cost-benefit analysis of the NBN? What are you saying to the thousands of people who are going to be left behind because you refuse to have a broad and visionary outlook on technology with regard to broadband? Why don’t you allow a full cost-benefit analysis so that people can see how much it will actually cost? What happened to your famous words you said soon after forming government, ‘So let’s draw back the curtains and let the sun shine in, let our parliament be more open than it was before’? And what about, ‘We will be held to higher standards of transparency and reform and it’s in that spirit I approach the task of forming a government’? What a load of rubbish. What an absolute embarrassment. Labor will spend billions of dollars, plunging our nation into debt, just to create a giant monopoly—a white elephant—that will destroy competition, increase the digital divide and increase costs.

That does take the cake, but perhaps it will be outdone by the Prime Minister’s broken promise regarding climate change. What was her solution? Her solution was to frame Kevin Rudd, stab him in the back, take over and then announce the most ridiculous election promise of all time: a citizens assembly. After emphatically ruling out a carbon tax during the election campaign, she is now going to back such a tax. She cannot be taken on her word, because it does not mean anything. There is no track record of actually living up to any promises, and the Australian public are seeing through that. The Australian people deserve something better than—to paraphrase a long-time Labor hero—a political party run by ruthless, robotic machine men who preside over lobotomised zombies. We deserve the vision, the passion, the ideas, the diversity—(Time expired)

4:40 pm

Photo of Bernie RipollBernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to speak in the address-in-reply debate, because it gives members of parliament so much scope to talk about anything they want. It also provides us an opportunity to talk about some of the things that happen in our electorates, certainly to address some of the good things that this government has done, to review programs and to look at some of the positive things and not just be on about three-word slogans and everything negative. There are lots of good things, and we should talk about those as well.

It might be easy for some people to forget the good work that is being done by this Labor government, not only through its first term but coming into the second term. We came into office in very difficult times, when difficult decisions had to be made. This is a good government and I am very proud of it for the things that we have succeeded in doing—things that were very difficult and done in difficult times.

One of this government’s greatest achievements, and it is just one of them, was its economic stewardship of the stimulus package and the way that we helped guide Australia through what is accepted globally as one of the worst economic downturns in the last 70 years—a global financial crisis which had an enormous impact right across North America, South America, Europe and the developed world. Certainly we felt it here, but not to the same extent. That was due mainly to the efforts of this government to make sure that did not happen. In fact, we did such a good job of that that it is now quite common for some people to question whether a GFC actually occurred at all. I talk at a lot of different forums—economic forums and forums on financial services—and I often ask people, ‘Who actually believes that we even had a financial crisis?’ For some people, they just did not feel the pain that is associated with a recession or a global financial crisis. And that is a good thing. It is a good thing that in Australia we did not go through that same experience, that we did not feel that pain that was felt by so many other countries around the world.

In fact, we were very focused—not only in terms of the stimulus package itself but also in terms of what the stimulus package actually does in practice and has done. Our primary focus in this area was the saving of jobs, the preservation of jobs. According to reports done by the OECD, our stimulus package and the measures we took through the global financial crisis saved more than 200,000 jobs. In fact, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist, said that this government actually did a ‘fantastic job’ of saving the country from problems. Of course, he was referring to the problems of job losses, interest rate rises, people losing their homes and so many other things associated with the global financial crisis and an economic recession. Professor Stiglitz also said that the stimulus package, when compared with the US, was ‘better conceptually, in size and design.’ He also said that it was carefully thought out, the way we got the money out into the community, the staging of it, and all the concerns that went into the delivery were well done. Basically he gave this government a really big tick in terms of the way we handled the global financial crisis, our response to the crisis and the measures that we introduced. I think it is important to understand that, because many people did not feel the full harsh impact of that crisis.

Some people may say, that we went a little bit too far or we spent a little bit too much. It is always a fine line. It is always a close call when a government has to make that big decision about how far it goes. Do you go just a little bit short, still have the recession and waste the money that you put in there, or do you aim to get it spot on? Every report, every economist, everyone out there has said that we actually got it just right. So it is a great credit to the work that Treasurer Wayne Swan and the government did.

It is easy now for people to almost laugh it off as if it did not happen. But the reality is that it did happen and it was the worst in 70 years. The reason it did not happen for us is, in a sense, because of the work we did. So I am very proud of that work. How do people view our economy? The reality is that our economy is the envy of the developed world. Every other comparable economy would gladly trade their economy for ours any day of the week.

Australia’s unemployment rate, for example, is at around five and a bit per cent—5.2, 5.3, 5.4. That is what most people would consider close to full employment, which is a great number. Of course it is never low enough. I think that is the reality for all of us in this place. We would like to see unemployment as low as possible. Australia’s unemployment rate is about half the rate of comparable nations across the world. You only have to look at Europe, where they have more than 10 per cent unemployment across the board or the United States where they have about 10 per cent unemployment, to see that Australia is much better off. That does not mean for one moment that that unemployment rate is low enough—no rate is low enough—but having it in the low fives means that we are doing something right.

It is interesting to note that the MYEFO released earlier this month forecast that Australia’s economy will grow by about 3¼ per cent in 2010-11 and by another 3¾ per cent in 2011-12. By any measure, that is quite a healthy figure. It is certainly within the RBA range of where growth should be. I think it is important that we note that. There would be some—and dare I say some in the opposition if not most of the opposition—who would criticise that. It is never quite good enough for them. But it is a sound figure. It is a manageable figure and it is the right amount of growth for this nation.

Some people say, particularly those in the opposition, that our debt, our national sovereignty, is in jeopardy because of our sovereign debt. They could not be further from the truth. They just could not be more wrong on this very important matter. In fact, net debt is forecast to peak at around 6.4 per cent of GDP in 2011-12. That is quite a respectable, manageable and low figure. Some people might say: ‘What does 6.4 per cent represent? What does that mean in real terms?’ Let me make some comparisons. By comparison, net debt in major developed economies is expected to reach around 90 per cent of GDP by 2015. That is 14 times higher than Australia’s, which is expected to peak at a much lower rate.

If you compare developed nations right across the OECD, we are at the bottom end of the net debt scale. We are not just at the lower end by a little bit; we are at the lower end by a massive amount. The amount of national debt and sovereign risk in this country are not only within the expected range but more than well-managed and more than manageable into the future.

One of the best things that this government or any government can do is keep a strong economy and keep people in jobs. The greatest safety net any person has against any downturn is having a job. It should always be the focus of governments to keep the economy strong and keep people in work. Government should make sure that whatever else happens globally—access to funds, the ability to borrow, and every other matter which is so important to people in terms of their economic future—the economy is strong. And that is exactly what we have done. One of the ways we have done that is by making sure we do it in balance—a balance between job creation, keeping interest rates low, continuing to provide government services that are so vital to people and making sure that those government services look after older Australians. Older Australians have provided so much to this country.

Remember we experienced one of the greatest economic downturns in the country. So much for the rivers of gold that used to flow into Canberra in the heady days under the Howard government when the economy was exceptionally strong, globally and nationally. But those rivers of gold were not used to their optimal levels. At the same time that we experienced the global financial crisis here, the greatest contraction of the economy that we had seen in 70 years, this government managed to make one of the greatest pension reforms in 100 years. What we were able to do was deliver to pensioners a real increase for the first time in more than three decades of up to $115 per fortnight for single pensioners and $97 per fortnight for couples, thanks to our reforms of September 2009. But we did not stop there. We felt that it was important to get the balance right as well and to get the indexation right. So we also moved on indexation to make sure that they keep up with the cost of living through a system not based on one index or two indexes and CPI data but on three indexes, making sure that the highest of three indexes is the one that we refer to. Pensioners have made a long-term commitment to this country and so has this government to them. The Gillard government has made a long-term commitment to properly index and properly grow their retirement incomes, not to use some sham puny bonus scheme before an election, which was a cynical scheme under the previous administration.

There is a range of other things that this government did in its two terms, including the delivery of two historic apologies, the first one being to Australia’s Indigenous people and the stolen generation and the second being to the forgotten Australians, those child migrants who grew up in state care. That demonstrates to me the important balance of a government that is practical and logical and can deal with economic issues but has a heart and a soul and can also deal with the issues that have been a stain on Australia’s vast tapestry that needed to be rectified. By making those two apologies, we do not by any means fix all the problems that exist but we do begin the process to right some of the wrongs of the past and to bring some healing and some closure to people that not only deserve it but need it. So I am very proud of those things that we did.

Something that I am just as much proud of is something that is often criticised the most today: the Building the Education Revolution program. I cannot find a better cause or a better way to spend a stimulus funding package than to do it on schools. Firstly, you create local jobs. If anybody here of fair mind goes and talks to contractors and workers, the people who actually help build these new science labs and classrooms and halls and libraries and so forth, and asks just how important it is to them, they will often tell you that if it were not for that project they would be out of work—they would not have a job—and in turn might lose their home.

The importance of that program should never be underestimated. But it flowed much deeper and much further. It was more than just the mere construction of a brick building or a concrete building or a steel building. It was also about changing, for the first time in generations, the outlook of the students and the teachers in those schools, of the parents and of the communities. The sort of response I have had from my schools and from sitting down with students has overwhelmed me. I had the great privilege to sit down with the year 7 students at Durack State School in my electorate when we did something a bit unusual: after we had the hall ceremony we sat down and talked inside the new multipurpose hall, which gets used for unbelievably everything. This is a school that previously really did not have any facilities and its staff could have never dreamed of having the sorts of facilities that we have been able to provide.

I asked the students what this meant to them and, honestly, they responded that for the first time it meant they felt important, it meant they felt that other people cared about them, their school and their community. It meant that for the first time they could have classes which they could not have before. They could actually gather all the year 7s together for the first time. They could gather the year 7s and other years together and hold particular seminars. It meant that for the first time they could get all of the parents together, in one place at the same time, and discuss productivity and education within the school.

I have heard criticism today, as I have heard it many times before, from the opposition, who are so disingenuous about this particular program and so wrong about this particular program. They say it does not deliver productivity. Well, they could not be more wrong on that. They only have to go and talk to school principals and teachers and parents and students and ask them about productivity and ask them what a new science lab or a new classroom means to them. It has not been a perfect program—I acknowledge that. When you deliver 26,000 different projects across thousands of schools across the country, you expect a few little problems here and there, but the massive vast bulk of people are so positive about them. What all of it has delivered for students is so good that it should never be underestimated.

I also want to briefly mention trade training centres—because you cannot talk about schools and not talk about trade training. Students need to have choices. We live in a complex world. It is a complex educational environment and a complex skills environment. Students ought to have options and flexibility in taking an academic path or a vocational path. You cannot just deliver that in the traditional way of either finishing year 10 or finishing year 12. Students need to stay in school until year 12 but they need pathways, they need to be able to work with industry directly. We have created that through trade training centres.

I want to mention three specific schools—Woodcrest College, Forest Lake State High School and Redbank State High School—which have partnered together in an incredible collaboration to share an expanded facility and provide their students with an endless list of opportunities, with industry directly creating high-skilled high-end jobs. For example, Volvo trucks will provide them with the latest high-tech gearboxes so that when the students finish they will already be skilled in using equipment that is being used out in industry. This sort of stuff you just cannot buy, this sort of stuff you almost cannot dream of, yet we have started to create it in schools. I cannot imagine that anybody could disagree with that; in fact, I know that nobody does. The opposition might talk tough in terms of politics but they could not look a student in the eye and tell them they do not deserve to have those sorts of opportunities.

I want to briefly mention the Ipswich Motorway. There has been a community road safety campaign for well over a decade and a desperate need for a 21st century motorway. To save lives but also provide economic growth in the western corridor of South-East Queensland is of the utmost importance. If it were not for the election of a Labor government in 2007, this motorway would never have happened. The reality is that the motorway is now almost completed—with incredible results. There have been no deaths on the motorway since work began and there have been incredible incremental improvements. I cannot think of a better way to spend $3.2 billion. It has been a fabulous project with incredible outcomes.

I also want to talk about housing as a sustainability issue for Australia and for our cities and how we achieve the living standard that we have today. Housing is one of the critical areas of need and it is related to transport, water, energy and many other issues. The National Housing Supply Council’s very important State of Supply Report 2010 has some incredible figures. There is a housing shortage of 178,400 homes in this country. If you conceptualise that in terms of families and individuals, it is a lot of people who really do not have a place to live; it is a lot of homelessness and it is a lot of disadvantage. The shortfall in Queensland is 56,100 homes, which is exceeded only by Sydney. Brisbane and Queensland need to do more work. The council also found that housing remains unaffordable for many households, whether they rent or buy, and that in 2007-08 there were already more than 300,000 lower-income homebuyers in housing stress—that is, paying more than 30 per cent of their gross income on mortgage repayments.

This report paints a picture of neglect over the previous decade or more. That neglect is very hard to deal with today but this government has taken it on by setting up a National Rental Affordability Scheme, whereby we are working with developers and the private sector to ensure that we can provide affordable housing—because people deserve an opportunity to have a decent place to live. We are also working on a range of other areas. We are providing public housing and more funding and working with the states and local government authorities—and they also need to step up to the block to make sure that they do their part. A great opportunity exists for a new cooperation between the three levels of government to look at those areas. It goes back to housing and sustainability. If we turn our attention to these matters we can solve them. If we continue to grow under the current models and growth patterns then we will have some serious issues in the future about how we provide for our own population, let alone how we fit into the global picture of population.

Listening to the simplistic arguments that you will hear from the other side about boats coming over, as if there is some sort of magic wand, and the simplistic arguments that they put forward on all of these issues, which are interlinked, you realise that during the more than 10 years that they were in government they did nothing about any of them. They might have focused on one or two populist, petty issues, but they did not do anything to fix the structural inefficiencies within this economy or to look at some of the really big issues. The evidence of that is that we have to pick all those up today. The reason we have some serious existing issues to deal with today is because nothing was done in those areas for well over a decade.

It is a great pleasure to talk to the address-in-reply because it gives us an opportunity to lay on the table some of the issues that we think are most important, not only for our electorates or our states, but which are also in the national interest.

5:00 pm

Photo of Michael KeenanMichael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to speak on this address-in-reply. I want to specifically thank my electorate, the people of Stirling, for putting their confidence in me for a third time. It is always good to be returned and to get that vote of confidence, and this time we had a very good electoral result in Stirling. For a swinging seat the margin now is better than it has been in many years, which I would like to think is a reasonably strong endorsement of the work we have done over the past six years.

It is always an honour to be re-endorsed by your electorate. I want to thank them for that, but also thank my campaign team who worked tirelessly to make sure we got the right outcome. My campaign team has been the same since I first won the seat off Labor in 2004—that is, John Franklyn, my campaign manager; Fay Duda, who manages the finances of the campaign and is always tireless in doing all of the things that a campaign requires and has boundless energy; my parents, who have always been very helpful and good political operators in their own right having worked on Liberal Party campaigns for many years before I was in parliament; my office, led by Sallyanne, who did an incredible job and worked very hard; and I also acknowledge Dan and Adam and Pauline and Amelia, my portfolio adviser. My office is an incredibly skilled team, and I do not think I have ever had a better office in the six years I have been in parliament. I thank them very much for their incredible efforts during the course of the campaign that saw us achieve such a wonderful result in Stirling.

In my third term in parliament my focus will be, as always, on my electorate and how we can serve my electorate of Stirling better. I believe that we would have been better served by the election of a Liberal government. In fact I am very confident we would have been better served by the election of a Liberal government. And during the election campaign I was very pleased to be able to make a number of announcements on behalf of the coalition that would have brought great benefits to my electorate. In some cases I have been campaigning for these things to happen for the whole six years I have been in parliament.

Sadly, as far as we are aware the Labor campaign in Stirling did not make one promise on behalf of the Labor Party on what they would do if the Labor government was returned. We thought that was curious, but it was also very disappointing. I am disappointed by the fact that the two Independents made the decision that they did, that the Labor Party was returned to office and, therefore, my electorate of Stirling will not be getting any benefits at all from that.

My No. 1 priority is crime prevention, and we have funded during the past six years some very important crime prevention programs. I was pleased to announce in this campaign that an elected Liberal government would have delivered $1 million to expand crime prevention within the city of Stirling. It would have done that by expanding the closed-circuit television network across many parts of my electorate, and this would have been a massive blow to criminals in Stirling who, to date, have dodged the law. CCTVs are an effective way of assisting police to catch the culprits of crime. Importantly, they also act as a deterrent for criminals.

The $1 million was to be delivered to the City Of Stirling, which is my sole local government authority, to go towards improving CCTV coverage across the city via the provision of CCTV cameras to be installed and deployed in crime hotspots. The City Of Stirling already works closely with the local police to address street level crime on private business premises and public areas throughout the City Of Stirling, and the network would have strengthened this already strong working relationship. The project would have had a huge impact on reducing the rate of crime, including at the Mirrabooka regional centre, Clarko Reserve, Trigg Beach and the Terry Tyzack Aquatic Centre. Unfortunately for the people of Stirling, Labor announced no funding for such a project. Just as Labor is soft on national security, so is it soft on local crime prevention. I will continue to support the city of Stirling in its work to make our local communities safer places to live, and I would like to think that the Labor government would do the same. But, sadly, we have had no indication of that to date.

Another of my top priorities is local roads, and that featured heavily again during the local election campaign. I announced that an elected Liberal government would deliver $10 million to build an overpass at the dangerous Mirrabooka Avenue and Reid Highway intersection. Hundreds of local families have raised this issue with me, as well as the need to improve this notorious black spot. That is why I have fought hard over the past six years to deliver funding to do those things. The intersection, which consistently ranks as the worst black spot in Perth, has been the cause of countless accidents, and therefore it has been a priority of mine since I was elected. Building the overpass would have saved lives. The Western Australian Labor Party said in 2004 and again in 2005 that Mirrabooka Avenue was the worst black spot in Western Australia and promised to do something about it, yet Julia Gillard’s Labor has not committed even one dollar to the project. Once again the people of Stirling have been the ones to pay the price for the policies of an ignorant government whose interest has remained focused on the eastern states.

The local environment also received a double blow from the fallout of the Labor Party’s retaining office. The future of Stirling’s primary education centre for environmental prevention—the Henderson Environmental Centre—is in jeopardy since Labor failed to match the coalition’s commitment to a $100,000 upgrade. As the local member, I announced that the coalition would provide the funding to develop the centre into one of the premier environmental centres in Western Australia. The Henderson Centre has been the driving force behind the strong presence of environmental activism in Stirling, and my announcement was a proper acknowledgement of the role the centre plays in my community.

Despite a commitment of support from the local and state governments, this worthwhile project appeared to go unnoticed by Labor, and they refused to commit even one dollar to it. I have had to explain to the local environmental groups that use the facility why their Commonwealth government does not value the work that they are doing to promote the environmental message. The upgraded centre would have been used to educate schoolchildren from the northern suburbs on the importance of their local environment as well as to assist university students with research projects while delivering a broader environmental message across the community. It is a great facility that has a lot of potential, but this is a huge loss to the Sterling community and one of my greatest disappointments following the election campaign.

The other great blow delivered to the local environment was the scrapping of local green army projects. Under the coalition government, Stirling would have been the recipient of funding for three green army projects worth $125,000 each. The projects earmarked for the green regional open space, Mettam’s Pool and Trigg Bushland Reserve would have delivered significant training and practical experience in the vital area of environmental management in Stirling. The green army projects were to provide tens of young Australians with the opportunity to work on local community based projects for a six-month period as part of the Liberal program, but the environment as well as an emerging workforce will now miss out on the benefits of these projects.

Despite these projects no longer going ahead, I would like to make a special mention of the existing work being done by hardworking volunteers. It is their work that would have been buttressed by this extra green army funding. These volunteers put in an enormous amount of work to raise environmental awareness in the local community. I mention groups such as the Friends of Trigg Bushland and Stirling Natural Coastcare. They should be commended for their efforts to protect our local environment. I would like to acknowledge the army—literally—of volunteers that gives up a lot of time and effort to go out in their spare time to make the local environment better. I am very disappointed because the green army projects would have gone a long way to helping them in doing what they do so well.

Sporting clubs in Stirling have also been the victim of an absence of any commitments from the Labor campaign in Stirling. During the campaign I was proud to announce that a Liberal government would deliver $95,000 to install a synthetic playing field at the Scarborough Bowls Club. Scarborough Bowls Club is a fantastic local sporting club with membership numbers now exceeding 1,400 people and rising at a rate of 20 new members a month. At present the club has to spend upwards of $25,000 a year to maintain each of their playing surfaces. This cost would have been reduced to zero had the Labor government matched the coalition’s commitment for funding for a new synthetic field. Instead, members will now likely go without the surface which would have lasted for up to 10 years and delivered environmental benefits by reducing the club’s water consumption.

The announcement buoyed the club’s confidence in their push to get their name on the map and it opened new avenues for them to be more competitive when bidding to host state and national championships. While, until the Liberal government is elected I cannot provide the funding that this club so desperately needs, I would like to note that they are a tireless club that continues to work hard in my local community.

Sports, crime prevention and the environment have all suffered in Stirling as a result of Labor’s victory. But I would also like to add a couple of extras to that list. That particularly goes to Indigenous issues in my electorate. These are complex and an ongoing source of concern for me and require more attention from the federal government.

One of the first announcements during the campaign, and one of my proudest, was a re-commitment of the coalition to the Reel Connections program which works in Mirrabooka to try and help the youth there. Mirrabooka is an incredibly multicultural area. It traditionally has been where new arrivals in Western Australia go. It has hosted waves of immigration from the postwar period when it hosted immigrants from southern Europe through to Vietnamese migrants during the wave of immigration after the Vietnam War. Currently it hosts the African arrivals and the Middle Eastern arrivals. Traditionally they would who go out to Mirrabooka because it is an area in Perth that has an available pool of lower priced rental housing and also a host of services at the Mirrabooka town centre. That can lead to problems and there has been an ongoing problem out there with petty crime. There has been an ongoing problem with some of the new arrivals not getting on with some of the existing communities.

We wanted to do something to try and integrate some of those communities more fully into the local community. We did so by funding the Reel Connections program under one of the Howard government’s existing programs. It was under the auspices of the City of Stirling and was very heavily supported by the local police. It was very successful in bringing some of those communities together and promoting cross-cultural understanding in a way that lessened some of those tensions.

Sadly, that funding ran out this year and we committed during the election campaign to refunding it to the tune of $450,00, but that funding commitment was not matched by the local Labor campaign. We were very disappointed about that because they were asked to do so. Now, of course, that program has lapsed which means that my community will miss out on an incredibly important crime prevention and community building project.

I would like to be standing here today to announce that, if we had had a different election result, all of these worthwhile projects in Stirling would have been funded. But the sad reality is that, during the whole course of the election campaign, the Labor Party did not commit to do one thing within the Stirling community which I thought was relatively extraordinary.

We had the benefit of two prime ministerial visits yet there was not one announcement of anything positive for the community. Indeed, two weeks out from the election Prime Minister Julia Gillard visited my electorate and spent some 45 minutes with the local newspaper in an effort to garner support for the local Labor candidate. But she had not one positive thing to say about improving local roads, protecting the local environment, protecting local jobs or helping the hardworking local police to fight crime. Quite frankly the people of Stirling feel robbed—and rightly so.

Seats on the east coast in the states of Queensland and New South Wales became beneficiaries of Labor’s election spending but seats in Western Australia, including in Stirling, were completely ignored. Indeed, the people of Western Australia are now much worse off as a result of the re-election of the Labor government, with the threat of the mining tax still hanging over our heads in a way that will wreck the local economy. I will continue to fight for the worthwhile projects that I have outlined today and I call on the Labor government to support them as well, because the people of Stirling deserve better.

I will move, in the remaining time I have, from issues in my own electorate to issues in my portfolio of justice, customs and border protection. It has certainly become quite apparent that a change in the Labor Party leadership did nothing to put a party that had allegedly lost its way back on track. One of the areas in which Labor has significantly let the country down is in the protection of Australia’s borders. This crisis is becoming increasingly worse, with illegal boats now arriving at a rate which we have never seen before. In August of 2008 the then Rudd Labor government began the process of rolling back the strong border protection regime that they had inherited from the Howard government. Since that time 189 boats, carrying over 9,000 people have arrived in Australia illegally. This year, 2010, is the worst year on record for illegal boat arrivals. We are only in the middle of November, yet we have had 121 boats arrive. It has become readily apparent that the Gillard Labor government cannot cope with the influx of arrivals, and neither can the detention facilities that we have in Australia.

This year the coalition announced measures that will restore integrity to Australia’s borders. The key principle that we outlined on this issue was to secure our borders. We will stamp out people smuggling and effectively deter illegal and unauthorised arrivals while at the same time treating refugees compassionately in accordance with our international obligations. We will move all processing off shore. We will ensure that unauthorised arrivals seeking asylum are intercepted and processed offshore—not on the Australian mainland as is increasingly the case under this government.

We will reintroduce a non-permanent visa for unauthorised arrivals. The coalition has successfully used this in the past as one of the very important planks to take away the ability of people smugglers to sell their product. We will continue to have compassion and provide for a fair refugee and humanitarian program but we will not skew that program to people who can afford to pay a people smuggler to bring them here illegally. In fact, we will skew it to people who are sitting in refugee camps, particularly in Africa—but also in other parts of the world—because there are people sitting in those refugee camps who would never have the wherewithal to pay a people smuggler to come to Australia illegally. That point has been consistently made to me by people who have arrived here legally, after significantly long waits in refugee camps in Africa, and who have now settled in my electorate. You will not find any greater opposition to illegal boat arrivals than from communities of people who have come here to Australia legally. That point has been made to me over and over again from people who have arrived here from the Sudan, the Congo and other very difficult places in western Africa. Their families still sit rotting in these refugee camps, with no hope of ever leaving those camps and being resettled in another country.

Of course, the very limited hope they might have to join their families here in Australia is being destroyed by the fact that our system of arrivals is now completely skewed towards people who come here illegally. I think this is something that should be better understood by those who are urging compassion for refugees. We believe that that compassion should extend to the fact that people who are sitting in refugee camps should have the possibility to come to Australia on what is a very generous program by international standards.

We believe in an uncompromising approach to protecting Australia’s borders and keeping Australia safe. We are also committed to securing our borders against other threats such as illicit drugs, disease, illegal foreign fishing and, of course, people smuggling. The integrity of our borders can only be maintained with a properly resourced Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. Since coming to office, Labor has cut funding to the Customs service to the tune of $58.1 million. This has, of course, made Australia’s borders less secure and our nation more vulnerable. During the election campaign, we committed to restore that funding but also to allocate another $30-odd million to make sure that we can improve our program of cargo screening to stop these threats from coming into Australia in the first place. (Time expired)

5:21 pm

Photo of Nick ChampionNick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

It is a great privilege to give this speech as the returning member for the electorate of Wakefield. I am the first Labor member ever re-elected to the division of Wakefield in the history of the seat, and that is certainly a great honour for me. I acknowledge that in the past it has been a far different electorate as far as its electoral boundaries were concerned; it traditionally favoured the conservative side of politics. In my first speech I made reference to Sydney McHugh, who was the Labor member between 1938 and 1940, but I regret that I did not acknowledge the election of Albert Smith, who was the Labor member between 1943 and 1946 and was part of the Curtin government and a former worker at the Knapstein Brewery. It is still a brewery today but also a rather good winery in the Clare Valley and I certainly suggest members visit if they get the chance. At the brewery is a very good picture of Albert Smith when he was a worker there. He made an important contribution during the war years—

Photo of Paul FletcherPaul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

The winery is much more new Labor.

Photo of Nick ChampionNick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

It is a brewery again, which is a good thing.

Photo of Paul FletcherPaul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Mr Fletcher interjecting

Photo of Nick ChampionNick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

No doubt, but a good brewery all the same. Albert Smith’s first speech to the parliament had some interesting points, particularly towards the end. He spoke about interest rates, banks and competition and the importance in particular of lending in the rural areas. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess. I wanted to acknowledge Albert Smith’s role and his very important contribution to the electorate.

In my maiden speech I also talked about some of the issues that I was passionate about, but I regret that I did not go a great deal into rural living and the joys of growing up in the country. I was taken to task by the Plains Producer, which is a very good rural newspaper. It covers the Adelaide Plains and Balaklava and occasionally it tells me where I have got things wrong. The newspaper suggested that I should have remarked in my maiden speech about rural living, so in an endeavour to make up for that I will acknowledge that there is no better way to grow up than in a country town and by going to a country high school and playing football in a country league—generally having those experiences that you only get when you grow up in the country. I do not think I would be in this House if I had not grown up in the town of Kapunda and spent my formative adolescent years there. Certainly I would never have worked on a farm or picked apricots or grapes or any of those things. They were formative experiences in my life that have helped me to be a better member of parliament.

My home town of Kapunda has been through a difficult time in the last week and a half or so because of the terrible murders that were committed in the town. A lot of my friends and former schoolmates are quite worried about these events and obviously somewhat disturbed that these terrible crimes have been committed in a very quiet and peaceful country town. We are happy that the police have made an arrest. That is a good thing and hopefully it will put to rest a lot of the fear that is in the town. But it will be sometime before the town recovers from these terrible events. I would like to extend my condolences to the family and friends of the deceased. On that rather sombre note, I would say that growing up in the country has been a good experience and one that I hope to express a little more in the House where I can.

I want to talk a little about the local elections in the councils in South Australia. As is the case with all elections, some very good people have been re-elected, some very good people have been elected and some very good people have sadly faced defeat. In the council of Light the mayor has been changed. I would like to acknowledge the election of Bill O’Brien, who is a resident of Kapunda. I wish Mr O’Brien all the best and look forward to working with him. We did have a rather pleasant barbecue dinner in Kapunda not so long ago. The former mayor, Robert Hornsey, was also there. I have enjoyed working with him over the last three years. He has been a good mayor and made a good contribution to public life in Kapunda, Freeling and other areas in the district of Light. I noticed in the paper he said that for the first time in 17 years he has an empty diary. No doubt he will get to spend more time on the farm and more time with his lovely wife, Anne.

I would also like to acknowledge three other councillors: Jane Alcorn, Bill Carrick and Ron Kubisch, all of whom are leaving the council. I think they all did a tremendous job. I enjoyed working with them and certainly look forward to seeing them in the community. Special congratulations to Deane Rohrlach, my old principal from Kapunda High, who was re-elected in the Light council.

In Gawler my good friend Brian Sambell was re-elected as mayor. It was a competitive mayoral election with some very fine competition from other candidates. But it was good to see Brian re-elected and it was good to see the election of Brian Thom; my former opponent in this seat, David Strauss, who was the Liberal candidate at the last election; and my good friend Adrian Shackley, who always reminds me that the Gawler River and the environment at Gawler are important things.

In Mallala my good friend Marcus Strudwicke was re-elected. I would especially like to acknowledge Joe Daniele, who has contributed to the area and the council for decades. He is a very strong spokesman for the Two Wells ward of the Mallala council. I would also like to acknowledge Tony Flaherty, who is head of the local RSL and will be leaving council. He is a strong contributor in the town of Mallala.

In Playford a new mayor has been elected—Glenn Docherty. I have already talked to Glenn. He is the youngest mayor in Playford’s history. It is good to have youth and vigour around the place. I am keen to work with him and make sure that the city of Playford is a vibrant place and a place where young families can get a go; likewise, my commiserations to Martin Lindsell, who was the mayor of that city for four years and a former mayor of Munno Para. I think he gave the job his all during that period.

I would also like to acknowledge the election of some of the other councillors. In particular, it is good to see people like Geoff Boundy, Dino Musolino, Duncan MacMillan, Andrew Craig, Joe Federico, Nick Cava, Gay Smallwood-Smith, Julie Norris, Coral Gooley and Max O’Reilly returned. They are all passionate about the city. Likewise, it is good to see some of the new entrants: Marilyn Baker, Nik Skrob, Adam Sherwood and Denis Davey. Denis is a real character. It will be interesting to see all that he brings to that role. I look forward to seeing the poetry about the council meetings.

In Salisbury, Gillian Aldridge was re-elected unopposed, which is the best form of election. She is a great mayor of Salisbury and I would obviously wish her well. Salisbury is a great council. It has a very good group of councillors who always work together.

In Wakefield Regional Council it was good to see James Maitland re-elected. He has been a strong voice for rural health and I think had cause to know just how important that is in the last 12 months. I look forward to working with him and the Wakefield Regional Council, as I look forward to working with Mayor Allan Aughey, who was re-elected unopposed in Clare and Gilbert Valleys Council. I look forward to working with those gentlemen in the future, particularly in the Wakefield group of councils. I have worked closely with that group—with Terry Bell, the director—to make sure that the councils, the state government and the federal government are all focusing on the same priorities in terms of infrastructure and really being a bit entrepreneurial about what we seek from government and making sure what we put up is the best quality project.

With the remaining time I have got I want to talk about the projects I have committed to over two elections, particularly the ones that we are still developing and still finishing off. I have spoken many times about the ones we have completed—things like the Craigmore television retransmission tower, which has fixed a problem for about 15,000 residents who had intermittent television reception. I am glad that we fixed that. It was a very popular commitment and an even more popular achievement by this government.

I also look forward to working with the Angle Vale community on their community sports hub. That town has been waiting a long time for its own oval and for sports facilities. They have done well with pretty substandard facilities that had a question mark about their ownership between the council, the education department and local landowners. That has created some uncertainty over the years. I have been working with sports groups in the area, in particular Colin Sherriff from the Angle Vale footy club; Bob Wharton from the Angle Vale Cricket Club; Peter Dommerdich, James Balacco, Sharine Pritchard and Michelle Wilson from the Angle Vale Soccer and Community Club; and Jeff Boundy, the council leader, who has been a passionate spokesperson for that project. It is good to see it finally getting to the point where we can break ground and actually build this excellent facility, which is a partnership between the City of Playford and the federal government. I look forward to really making sure that that gets delivered. It will have change rooms, a canteen, meeting spaces and public toilets that the local community can make the most of.

Likewise I look forward to working with the Gawler council and the town of Gawler on the Gawler rivers project. It is a very important $5 million project, with $3 million of federal funding, on the North Para and South Para rivers. Basically it is a partnership between the council and the environment and heritage association to re-create a linear park and walking trails along most of the two rivers in Gawler, which really do define Gawler in so many ways. It is an area that is utilised at the moment but perhaps not to its full capacity.

We want to really revitalise these parklands, provide walking and cycling connections between Dead Man’s Pass, Clonlea and the river junction. We want to make sure that it is accessible to elderly and disabled residents of Gawler and that you can ride your scooter on it. We want to make sure that people can walk and ride along it and that there is erosion and pest control and revegetation of degraded areas. It is a particularly picturesque part of Gawler. There is nothing more beautiful than this area in the twilight, and I look forward to many more people being able to use it as a result of federal funding and the partnership that we have built with the council and the heritage association of Gawler. It is a very popular project and something we are very committed to.

Likewise, in the election we managed to get a commitment on a feasibility study to waterproof Greater Gawler. The northern suburbs of my electorate have been pioneers in the reuse of stormwater. Salisbury council has been a world leader, and certainly a leader in Australia, in the reuse of stormwater—cleaning it up through wetlands, pumping it into an aquifer and then reusing it for a range of industrial and other uses, mainly to water the parks and gardens but also for manufacturing. Often the water is cleaner and less contaminated in many ways for industrial use than the water they get out off the mains, so it has been a great boon to Salisbury. The previous government did provide some funding to roll it out in northern Adelaide to the cities of Playford and Tea Tree Gully, and that is something we supported. It certainly allowed the City of Playford and the City of Salisbury to build very efficient and popular aquifer storage recharge systems.

The conventional wisdom had been that you could not do this in Gawler because it had a fractured aquifer. But, working with the Wakefield group of councils, we had a look at it and decided that we would utilise some of the expertise that has been used in Salisbury. Chris Kaufmann, who is a water engineer, and Terry Bell have been looking into this and they have come up with a project with the district of Light, which is adjacent to the town of Gawler, which has an aquifer that is suitable for aquifer storage recharge. Basically, they are trying to create a proposal to supply about 2.5 gigalitres of non-potable urban water through this scheme by about mid-2013. That would be a very valuable project to enhance urban waterways and to enhance the flood protection that has been done by the Gawler River Floodplain Management Authority. But, more importantly, it would help us plan for growth in this area and, in particular, it would allow, through the purple pipe system, irrigation of council reserves, sports fields, caravan parks, the golf course, the industry at Kingsford estate and, most importantly, new subdivisions and dwellings.

We think that that is particularly important because in the district of Light Roseworthy is one of the places identified for major metropolitan growth in Adelaide’s 30-year plan. It is particularly important—and people say this all the time—that we should put in the infrastructure before we put in the houses, and this project is attempting to do that. I will be working on the project in the future.

You do not get re-elected without a lot of thank yous, and I will attempt to make them as quickly as possible. I have got to thank some union secretaries: Peter Malinauskas from the SDA, Sonia Menickella, Jon Gee, the Regional Secretary of the Vehicle Division—

Photo of Paul FletcherPaul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Mr Fletcher interjecting

Photo of Nick ChampionNick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I knew that would get the opposition going—Bob Donnelly, the state secretary of the CEPU, John Camillo from the AMWU and Jamie Newland from the Maritime Union of Australia. I also have to thank the NUW. All those unions helped with my campaign. I am very proud to have their help and I have always been proud to be a unionist. I think it is a good thing.

I also thank my campaign team and, in particular, my campaign manager, Aemon Bourke. Aemon was a particularly committed campaign manager. He has always been a great friend and I really do appreciate all the hard work that he did. He and his wife Emily, who was Amanda Rishworth’s campaign manager, are now having twins, so I do not think either of them will be working terribly hard on a campaign in the future; they will be working on their family and I wish them well with that.

I also thank Josh Peak and Tom Carrick-Smith. I thank my office—Mat Werfel, Rob Klose and Andrew Anson. I also thank Jess Nitschke, who has been a great help but, sadly, has left my office now. I also thank some of the people on the ground—Stephen Hollingworth, Craig Withers, Sonia Smethurst, Kym Thodey, Carmel Rosier, Brad Johnson, Brent Gorman, Graham Klose, Deb Filipone, Deralyn Mulroney, Tim Palmer, Malcolm Klose, Jenny Werfel, Alan Nelson, Robert Potter, Sean Hill, Juan Legaspi, Adam Brown, Andy Marshall, Guy Ballentyne and Susan Cunningham, from Clare, as well. I thank all those people. They have been a great help. I think all my colleagues as well. I thank the House.

5:41 pm

Photo of Scott MorrisonScott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | | Hansard source

Members of parliament have many great privileges in this place, but none is greater than the privilege that is bestowed on each of us when we are elected to this place and when we are returned to this place. It is a great delight to return to this place. I am pleased to be back and I am pleased to be returned by the constituents of Cook, who have been very generous. I sincerely thank all of them for the trust they have again put in me to represent them. While members of parliament have many responsibilities in this place, there is none greater than the responsibility we have to our constituents—and that will always be my No. 1 priority while ever I remain in this place according to their grace and favour.

The local campaign in Cook, in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire, addressed many issues and there were many topics of concern. Many of these topics of concern were also shared with the neighbouring electorate of Hughes. I am particularly pleased to be joined in the parliament by the new member for Hughes, Mr Craig Kelly, who was elected to this place for the first time on the occasion of the last election. The member for Hughes gave an outstanding maiden speech to the parliament just this week and I commend him for it. I look forward to us working closely together as Liberal federal MPs for the shire. I worked closely with the former member for Hughes, Danna Vale, who retired at the last election. I pay tribute to her. She was a role model as a member of parliament, a role model as a local member and a role model as a human being. Her heart was full of compassion for the people she represented and for those much further afield. I pay tribute to Danna Vale in this place.

The local agenda of issues are matters that are close to my heart. The issues that particularly caught attention were largely about ensuring that we can preserve the lifestyle that we enjoy in the shire. The shire is a magic place to live and raise a family, and it has always been my primary commitment in this place to keep it that way and preserve it for future generations. The F6 remains on the drawing board, as it has been since the early fifties, and I hope we are going to have a government at some time that will finally build this road. That is primarily the responsibility of the New South Wales government. I am sure the member for Bradfield would join with me in looking forward to March next year, when we will finally put the Labor government in New South Wales out of its misery and, more importantly, end the misery that the people of New South Wales have had to endure. Of all the bad Labor governments, this one is truly a Rolls-Royce achiever. Mind you, the federal government here in Canberra is already showing early signs of being a worthy competitor to Carr, Iemma—I am starting to lose count of how many premiers there have been. I am sure that in history the Gillard government will be up there with, if not exceeding, the incompetence we have seen in New South Wales.

But the issue of the F6 is an important one, because it goes to the missing link in Sydney’s road system. That is not just important for the shire. It is important for the St George area. It is important for inner south-western Sydney. It is important for the Illawarra. It is the missing link that needs to be filled. At the last election, the coalition, once again, took a pledge to the people of Cook, Hughes, Gilmore and other places, that we would fund an appropriate alignment study and a feasibility study to ensure that this project could finally get to shovel-ready stage.

One of the great indictments of the Rudd and Gillard governments’ economic stimulus package is that, of all the billions that they have spent on infrastructure, only one in seven of those dollars was spent on economic infrastructure and projects such as the one that I am calling for here with the F6. It will be a tunnel under the shire that will connect the Illawarra to the city without heavy traffic spewing out its fumes on the families who live in the shire. Not only will those families not have that heavy traffic on their roads, but also they will be able to enjoy the economic benefits of the project itself—the benefits that will come from the project having been completed and providing the economic advantages that will come from the linking of the Illawarra to the city and the shire to the city. So we remain committed, as the Liberal Party in this federal parliament, to that objective.

Aircraft noise is a topic that spans the political horizon. It is a topic in Sydney which members both Labor and Liberal—and, I suspect, at some time in the future, Green—will contend with because of the nature of the operations of Sydney airport. I commend Sydney airport for the way it handles matters, but I remain continually concerned at some of the practices of Airservices Australia. Most recently, during this campaign and over the last couple of years, we have been concerned in the shire about the Boree 4 standard arrival path, which has increased in use. That has increased the frequency of incidence of noise over suburbs in my electorate of Cook—and not only in my electorate but also in the electorates of the members for Banks, Barton, Watson, Grayndler and Reid—as a result of the increase in the use of this standard arrival path.

There is also the Rivet 9 standard arrival path which is used often by members when we are returning to Sydney from this place. For some mystical reason, it has been decided that planes on this path should pass over our homes rather than a national park when coming into Sydney. I am very pleased to report that, since the last election, the minister for transport—who, equally, is from an electorate which is affected by these issues—has been very constructive in taking on these issues on my behalf. We have had some positive discussions and I am looking forward to getting—at our next meeting, which he had indicated we would have before this year closes—a report on progress on those two particular issues. So aircraft noise will remain a very important issue locally and I will continue to keep it top-of-mind as I represent the constituents of Cook.

There was also the need to support our local community organisations. The shire is very much a place that likes to help itself. It is made up of tens, if not hundreds, of organisations, out there supporting our community. Whether it is sports clubs, or local charities like the Sylvanvale Foundation, Civic Disability Services or Enough is Enough with Ken Marslew, or other groups, these organisations are out there just doing the jobs that make our community function. We are truly blessed in the shire to have such a level of community engagement and spirit. It truly enriches the lives of all of the families and people who live there.

An initiative that we introduced in my last term, the Cook Community Classic—which seeks to provide support for these organisations through a series of sports carnivals, raffles, ocean swims and gala balls—is now in its third year. Last Friday evening—with the support of Jason Morrison from 2GB, who came down to host and MC the event; many other charities, in particular Caringbah Rotary; and our numerous sponsors—we raised around $40,000 net. That followed a similar effort last year. We have the ocean swim coming up this Sunday at Cronulla Beach and other activities including a beach soccer tournament for under-10s. This is a truly great community-owned initiative. I have been very pleased to work with the Bate Bay surf clubs to get it off the ground. We see it grow in success every year, and I am sure it will be a success again this weekend.

But it was these issues of advocacy on local matters which can be effected in this place together with working as a facilitator in the community that have been the model I have sought to follow in the last term and I am very pleased that the community has responded so generously at the last election in sending me here with an increased margin. But, of course, the community was also concerned about matters beyond the local ones. In particular, the waste and mismanagement of the Rudd-Gillard government was something that was very top-of-mind, and perhaps it was because of what they saw in the waste of funds going into school projects in my electorate—and I am talking about over $1 million paid in special commissions, to contractors who were not from our area, that were handled through the monolith of the New South Wales state government bureaucracy, a very secretive process. One contractor was delivering projects for the entire region while small contractors, small businesses and others were very frustrated by their inability to access any of these programs as a million dollars alone was paid just in commissions. The community was mystified by the waste and mismanagement of public money. While elements of the program might be appreciated, they have come at a heavy cost.

People in my electorate understand that because the people in the shire understand the value of a dollar. They run their own businesses. They pay their own bills. They know that every dollar matters and that you do not spend dollars unwisely in your private life, because if you do then people in your family will miss out, so the people who are close to you and whom you want to help will miss out. The people in the shire expect nothing more from this government than they expect from themselves, that the government spends its money wisely and on things that make a difference in their lives. That is why we are here. They were massively disappointed and outraged by the waste and mismanagement they saw from the Rudd-Gillard government in their first term and by the vote that was conveyed in the election—they certainly did not want to see that government returned.

The other issue is debt and deficit. The borrowing of $100 million a day was something that outraged them again. This was a key theme that ran through the course of the election and continues to run to this day as constituents continue to raise the matters with me.

At a portfolio level as the shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, I note there were many issues that were part of the national debate. I will touch on a couple of them here. The first is to do with the area of population. The coalition made a simple statement that the levels of net overseas migration that were running under the course of the previous term of government were unsustainably high, and I am sure the Deputy Speaker shares some sympathy with that view, having articulated it courageously as well. We might not agree on some of the solutions or detail but I think we certainly see one thing: unsustainable rates of population growth rob future generations of the quality of life that we enjoy today, and that is not something that we in this place can allow to happen as custodians of matters that affect those outcomes. We made this point and we made it regularly, and I would reject the point made particularly in that debate that this population growth was a function of skilled migration, because the ABS figures showed particularly most recently, with the breakdown of net overseas migration—the figure that we focused on—that only a third of net overseas migration at the high levels was actually accounted for by skilled migration. That is for both the temporary and the permanent classes. There were other factors involved, but net overseas migration was something that we believed needed to be better managed.

The government suggested that this was something that could not be managed because it was largely in the area of temporary migration. The government needs to understand one thing: temporary migration is going to be a more significant component of our immigration intake into the future so we had better get a handle on it and work out ways by which this can be better handled, better quoted and better organised; otherwise it will continue to run away from us and we will be unable to deal with the consequences that follow. We argued for a productivity and sustainability commission to advise governments on what was a sustainable band of population growth. We argued that government should set migration programs that ensured that we were able to stay within those bands that we would then set as government.

This was a responsible approach that would give the community confidence that migration programs were not pulled out of the air but subject to some real scrutiny around what was sustainable. How do we know what is sustainable? By looking at what the delivery of infrastructure is going to be on the ground. Everyone knows that we can have a greater capacity for growth if we invest in the capacity for growth, but everyone also knows that the delivery of this capacity on the ground, whether it is infrastructure or services, simply has not been happening. The punters—the Australian people—are not mugs. They are not going to accept unsustainable rates of population growth when they know that the capacity to absorb and deal with that is not being put in place on the ground.

Regarding border protection, a clear difference was shown during the course of the election campaign. This issue is out of control. Six thousand people have arrived illegally by boat this year. There are 5,360 people in detention, creating a rolling crisis in our detention network. Both of these are gold-medal record accomplishments that no government should seek to achieve but that this government has filled its trophy cabinet with. This is an indictment on this government and it remains asleep. The government thought that the issue here was the debate—the debate was about the debate. Senator Evans, the former Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, confided to a group at the University of New South Wales that his great failure was that he had failed to control the debate. Apparently that was his great failure. The new Minister for Immigration and Citizenship says he wants to elevate the debate. I need to remind the government that the issue here is not the debate. We are not trying to run a talk show; we are actually trying to run a parliament which puts in place a government that will do productive things. We are not here to run a debate; we are here to put in place policies that affect the issues that the Australian people are concerned about—and they are concerned about this issue because they believe, and I think rightly so, that the integrity of our migration program is being compromised by the weak policies of this government.

We need to preserve the confidence and integrity of this program in such a way that does not create a situation where women currently at risk in places such as Africa, the Middle East, parts of Asia and Latin America—and who have family members who have come Australia as offshore applicants as part of our humanitarian program—continue to suffer. They are being crowded out of our refugee and humanitarian program because of the border protection failures of this government. There are simply no places left. While they wait in their hellholes, others come and get access to visas in far less time. The coalition believe that is fundamentally unjust, so the coalition will stand up for those women who are waiting, and we have no problem with the suggestion that others may have to wait longer to ensure that their opportunity is not denied.

We have put forward a clear policy: temporary protection visas, third-country processing, turning around boats where the circumstances permit, which are very limited, and tightening the process around what has become a ‘no-document’ entry process for illegal boat arrivals. Fewer than one in five people who were processed in the last two years actually had documentation, and for those from Afghanistan it was only 13 per cent. That compares to more than nine out of 10 people who arrive by plane and subsequently seek asylum. We said that if there was a reasonable possibility that you have discarded your documentation then we will presume against you for refugee determination. Of course, the returns policy needs to be fair dinkum. It cannot be just a donation to the International Organisation for Migration. This government needs a return policy that ensures that, if you are unsuccessful, you are returned.

In the time remaining, I would like to thank the many people who once again ensured that I was able to return to this place as the member for Cook. In particular, I want to thank Mike Douglas, who is the chairman of my campaign committee, and the many hundreds of volunteers that Mike led, enabling me to not only take up the campaign in Cook but also to support my colleagues around the country and be part of the national debate on matters that were of great importance. I also want to acknowledge Wade McInerney, the chair of the Cook FEC, and the work of the FEC, which was involved in supporting our local party. I want to thank all the supporters of the Cook Endeavour Forum, in particular our chairman, Mike Tynan, the first father of business and of the shire. Mike is an extraordinary man who is of great achievement and I thank him very much for his support. Also, Kevin Schreiber worked so hard in all of the areas supporting that forum.

I want to thank my staff and in particular those were embedded in the electorate office and worked tirelessly: Ann Duffield, my chief of staff; Julian Leembruggen, my tireless media adviser; Troy Loveday; Louise De Domenico, who recently joined the team and did an outstanding job; Latisha Wenlock, who has been with me for quite a period of time; and Matt Versi, who has done a great job in my office—he is a young man with a big future. I want to thank all of them for their great efforts as well as Julie Adams, who has led the community classic and will be busy preparing for it this weekend.

To my dear wife Jenny and my beautiful children Abbey and Lily: they provide the perspective and context and focus for my life that makes everything else relevant and makes everything else make sense. I thank God for the blessing of them in my life and I am truly grateful.

To Tony Abbott: you will forever hold a very special place in the history of the Liberal Party for what you were able to achieve at the last election. It will be surpassed only by what Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, achieves at the next election when the coalition is elected to government.

I want to thank all my colleagues for their support and I appreciate their encouragement. I want to thank also Malcom Kerr, the state member for Cronulla, who will soon retire. He will be replaced by Mark Speakman who I look forward to being elected as the Liberal candidate next March. I particularly today want to dedicate this victory to Marg Dyson and Evelyn Thompson, two great Liberals who passed away during the campaign. I thank them for their service. (Time expired)

6:01 pm

Photo of Darren CheesemanDarren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Thomson. I would like to congratulate you for being returned to this place. You have certainly served this place with honour and distinction for many years and I have enjoyed working with you. It is with great pride today that I rise to give my second speech in the address in reply to the Governor-General. Indeed, it is a great pleasure and something that I hold tremendous pride in. To be elected to this place is a tremendous achievement that many of us have striven for over many years. I would like to thank the electors of Corangamite for giving me that opportunity to do this again.

In 2007, when I was first elected, many people in the federal seat of Corangamite were surprised at the outcome. The reason for that surprise was that I became the first Labor member in more than 70 years. I remember getting around the electorate shortly after that victory and being sworn in as a member of parliament, reaffirming my commitment to all of those communities in what is a very, very diverse regional country electorate in Victoria.

Corangamite covers some 7½ thousand square kilometres, covering localities such as Anglesea, Apollo Bay, Barwon Heads, Colac, Inverleigh, Linton, Lorne, Torquay, Winchelsea and many parts of the City of Greater Geelong, particularly the suburbs of Belmont, Grovedale, Highton, Ocean Grove and Portarlington. What makes being a member for Corangamite so rewarding is the diversity of those communities that I represent. All of them are motivated by similar but different issues. All of them derive their incomes from very different and diverse parts of the economy, from beef to crops, dairy, fishing, forestry, sheep, horticulture and organic farming but also from the important tourism industries, manufacturing, technologies, health and universities. That is what makes representing this seat so enjoyable—the opportunity to participate in such a diverse debate.

Indeed it is almost impossible to undertake the role of a parliamentarian without loyal and dedicated staff. I would certainly like to place on the record my thanks to Richard Morrow, Joe Taylor, Sonia Kosicki, Annette Downie, Michael Rootes, Shannon Farley and Sue Weymouth. They have all worked for me with dedication over the last 2½ years, providing a tremendous service not only to me but to the people of my electorate by ensuring that their interests have been attended to through the course of that time. I would like to thank them very much for that hard work.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 6.05 pm to 6.20 pm

Before the division I was in the process of thanking my staff, who not only have worked tirelessly for me over the last three years but have also worked tirelessly for the electorate to ensure that the issues and interests of my electorate are recognised and responded to on behalf of the Gillard government. I also thank my campaign team, who have also worked tirelessly to campaign with me over the last three years. I particularly acknowledge Rose Hodge, Greg Slater, Lisa Darnanen and many friends and colleagues in Young Labor who have been out with me doorknocking, holding street stalls and ringing and talking to voters on issues that are important to them. Running a political campaign, whether you are a member of the Labor Party or a political opponent, takes an enormous amount of volunteer effort. I certainly very much thank them for that significant resource and help.

I also put on the record my thanks to the Victorian ALP head office and I particularly single out Dean Rizzetti and Nathan Lambert for their support, their advice and their guidance. It has been very much a privilege to work with them. I also thank the trade union movement who, again as they did in 2007, came out and supported me in a very active way to ensure that we were re-elected locally and were able to form a Labor government. I particularly thank the LHMU, the CFMEU, the VBU, the ASU, the NUW, the ETU and the CPSU for their friendship and support over that period of time. It is true that the Liberal Party spent a significant amount of money in trying to win the seat. We were able to respond through the hard work of many, many, many volunteers in getting out there and selling our message.

As I said earlier, my electorate is extremely diverse, both geographically and in terms of the communities within it. We have the Bellarine Peninsula, the Surf Coast—including towns such as Torquay and Jan Juc—and, of course, the famous, iconic Bells Beach. We have the Great Ocean Road, we have the Otways and we have very productive farming land. Representing this tremendous part of Victoria and the very diverse communities within it provides me with enormous satisfaction, for which I thank those communities, and provides enormous challenges in getting our message out there in a way in which is understood by them.

I think it is probably fair to say that the two issues that I predominantly campaigned on in 2007 were Work Choices and climate change. I know many other members of this House campaigned extensively on those issues in 2007. I was delighted that we were able to resolve the Work Choices issues early on in the previous parliament. I know my electorate was grateful for the new regime that we put in place: Fair Work Australia as well as the restoration of workplace rights and terms and conditions that had, quite frankly, been built up by generations of working families. To be able to put in place a mechanism that restored those rights was something that I was tremendously proud of and something that my community responded to in a very strong way.

As I mentioned, the other dominant issue was climate change. Climate change proved to be a difficult issue for the last parliament to respond to. It was particularly difficult for the Liberal Party, which constantly changed its position as it changed leaders. I certainly believe that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that we proposed was the right way to go to put a price on carbon and to set about a path of a lower carbon future. We know the history of that legislation and that it was ultimately frustrated in the Senate. It is unfinished business from the 42nd Parliament. I, along with many of my colleagues and my community, certainly hope that the 43rd Parliament is able to put a price on carbon and is able to respond to those challenges. We know that, if we do not do that, communities in electorates like mine—electorates right across this nation—will struggle as a consequence of not responding to climate change. That is something that I look forward to working with this government and this parliament to resolve over the coming few years.

Through the course of the last parliament the other significant challenge that we had to respond to—one that we were not anticipating during the course of the 2007 election—was the global financial crisis and the crippling impact that that would have on many economies around the globe. The Australian economy, through active government intervention, responded in a very strong way. If we look at what the government did, we see that we put in place programs that would lead to significant investment and a significant flow of capital into the Australian economy that was needed because the private sector was withdrawing capital as equity markets and the like were drying up.

In particular, the Building the Education Revolution—the part that I am most proud of—has led in my electorate and electorates throughout this country to a substantial number of new jobs as companies, builders, subbies, plumbers, plasterers and electricians go about building the new, modern school infrastructure that is so sorely needed across this country. We know that whenever the Australian economy goes into recession it is always the building sector that goes in first and it is always the building sector that comes out of a recession last. I know the importance of that work. There is no doubt that without active government intervention from us the economy would have been in far worse condition than what it is in now.

If we look around the world and we have a look at where other countries are going in responding to the global financial crisis, it is true to say that our economy is a remarkable story in comparison to most of the rest of the OECD. In fact, as each and every month goes past it seems that another economy is sinking further into the abyss of the global financial crisis. It is certainly having devastating consequences. The OECD continues to report these matters to us on a regular basis.

It has been with some pleasure that over the last few months I have been getting around and opening these new school facilities and certainly seeing the delight on the faces of the kids, their parents, their grandparents and, of course, importantly, their teachers, who have in many cases been asking for some time for a substantial capital injection into their schools to build new facilities. I look forward to getting around the electorate and opening some, I think, 57 further projects. I have about 64 schools across my electorate.

During the course of the 2010 federal election, I was out there advocating for the needs of my community. I would particularly like to put on record my thanks to all of the ministry and the cabinet for the commitments that we as a government have given to my electorate. Some of the projects we were able to commit to and now deliver include the duplication of the Princes Highway—something that I have campaigned for for many years—from Waurn Ponds, the outer suburbs of Geelong, right through to Coolac. There is also funding for the Coolac Bluewater Fitness Centre; for the Geelong ring road, an important economic driver in my electorate; and also for many sporting clubs throughout my electorate, including the South Barwon Football and Netball Club, the Torquay Tigers, the Belmont Lions, the Ocean Grove footy club and Winchelsea Community Sports Club. All of these are tremendously important projects for maintaining a fit and healthy lifestyle and certainly projects that I was very pleased to support. I am very grateful that I was able to secure those commitments for my community.

My community, particularly the outer growth suburbs of Geelong and the Surf Coast, has gone through quite remarkable population growth over the last 10 years or so. It is important that we keep up with the infrastructure requirements and the needs of those communities. It is true to say that the Howard government failed to do that and we have over the last three years been playing catch-up. I have been able to secure those projects to ensure that we provide a quality life, an opportunity for kids to receive a quality education in quality buildings, and an opportunity for those communities to participate fully in sport and recreation. I have been very pleased to be involved in that.

In the very short period of time left I would like to again acknowledge and thank the voters of Corangamite for giving me this opportunity. I am sure many of them in 2007, when they first elected me to this place, were probably surprised, given that I was the first Labor member to represent the seat in more than 70 years. I am certainly of the view that they made a very clear and deliberative decision this time around in 2010 to support me—not only to support me but of course to support a Gillard government.

Indeed, on the pendulum my seat was the last seat that the Gillard government secured. That enabled us to talk to the Independents and the Greens and persuade them that we were the best party to represent the interests of this nation and to govern. I would certainly like to recognise that and to thank the electors of Corangamite not only for returning me to this place but also, importantly, for enabling the Gillard government to be the government for the next three years.

The electors might have been surprised in 2007 and I am sure they were surprised for different reasons in 2010, but I would certainly like to thank them. I look forward to working hard on their behalf over the next three years to secure commitments, projects and opportunities for our community as we go forward. It is a great privilege to be here. Great responsibilities come with that and I certainly look forward to working on behalf of the electors and for them.

6:36 pm

Photo of Judi MoylanJudi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

The opportunity to stand in this House is a great privilege, and I would like to thank the people of Pearce for trusting me, for a seventh time, to represent their interests. I am continually in awe of the strength of our democracy, even though it is often maligned, and I am continually reminded what a privilege it is to participate in the great democratic process of this House. I am nevertheless mindful of the large number of people who cast informal votes in this election, who clearly feel disenfranchised. The close result serves to remind me—and, indeed everyone in this House—of the duty of care. In my case it is a duty of care in the conduct and consideration of the business of this House and the solemn obligation to work to restore the confidence of those who chose not to engage in this election by voting informally. How good it would be, though, if the public could see more of the constructive, bipartisan nature of the work that goes on here through the committees. That rarely gets aired in the public portrayal of our work in this place.

Of course our system of democracy is not perfect. I am reminded of the words of Sir Robert Menzies who, in his ‘The forgotten people’ radio speech, confessed:

I, like you, am aware of the weaknesses of democracy, of its occasional stupidities and shallowness, its temptation to prefer the rabble-rousing spell binder … But, giving all this in, I believe in democracy as the only method of government which can produce justice based upon the recognition of enduring human values.

The suite of changes ushered in with this new parliament present me with greater opportunities to speak and represent the people of Pearce, as well as to bring attention to issues that require reform, and I am grateful for the opportunity to make a contribution in that respect. Of course, one of the agreed parliamentary changes has been to have greater independence of the Speaker. I have not had the opportunity in the big House to congratulate the member for Scullin on his reappointment to that high office, but I do so on this occasion of my contribution to the address-in-reply debate.

To successfully contest an election one requires a veritable army of people to assist. And those people seem to necessarily have a great belief in our great democratic processes, because they give a lot of time voluntarily to this cause. It is very much a team effort. It is therefore a great pleasure for me to acknowledge and thank the Western Australian State Director of the Liberal Party, Ben Morton, and his team, including campaign officer Whittney Jago, as well as the State President, Barry Court, and his executive.

The Pearce campaign, I have to say, was brilliantly run by an experienced campaign committee to whom I am indebted. It is more than I deserve. No member could have been better supported than I was, once again, by campaign chair Lane Taylor and the team, including Ron Farris, Stuart Burling, Trevor Hancock, Kirstin Mardardy, Pearce Divisional President Rod Henderson and my staff, Jana Allan, Anne Bagot, Conrad Natoli, Simon Hall, Michael Spark and Ros Wright. My campaign team was supported by the members of the Pearce division of the Liberal Party, and I was particularly grateful to the many generous donors and helpers. We had about 350 volunteers assisting in the lead-up to the election and on the day; I have to say I am extremely grateful for their generous contributions to the success of that campaign in Pearce.

Being the first Liberal woman to be elected to the House of Representatives in Western Australia for the so-called conservative parties in 1993, it is a particular pleasure for me to be able to welcome my fellow Western Australian, the member for Hasluck, Ken Wyatt, the first Aboriginal elected to the House of Representatives. His electorate neighbours Pearce. Listening to the member’s address-in-reply speech, I was deeply moved by a quote he read from Nelson Mandela that said:

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation.

I always get a little choked up when I read that, but I would like to add a personal note: ‘and the daughter of a railway man can take a seat in this great parliament’. Mandela’s words are a timeless reminder that governments should provide to every citizen the opportunity to reach their full potential. Menzies spoke of the many forgotten people in his era whose values he described as relating to homes material, homes human and homes spiritual.

Homes material refers literally to those saving for their own home, and we might care to reflect that the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute estimates that in Australia today more than 860,000 low-income households are currently experiencing housing stress. That is just over 15 per cent of all Australian households. The housing crisis is one I have spoken on in several successive address-in-reply speeches in this place, and it is a crisis that continues to mount.

Yesterday the West Australian reported that there are 55,000 people on the waiting list for social housing in Western Australia alone. Why should this concern us? Well it comes back to the other two homes that Menzies referred to in his forgotten people speech. Explaining the concept of homes human, Menzies remarked:

My home is where my wife and children are. The instinct to be with them is the great instinct of civilised man; the instinct to give them a chance in life …

All parents share this desire to give their child or children the best possible chance in life, yet some families face greater challenges than others. And as this country becomes increasingly wealthy, there is a very substantial underclass of people developing who are not keeping pace with the great wealth growth of others. More than 1.2 million Australians have profound or severe disability, for example, and because of limited services family members often provide most of the care with a disproportionate number of women carrying that work. Carers frequently feel sidelined, financially disadvantaged and despairing at the lack of respite available to them.

Those with mental illnesses face the additional challenge of this illness being swept under the carpet of the nation’s collective conscience. An estimated 20 per cent of the population have suffered mental health disorders, yet our mental health services are desperately underfunded. I applaud the efforts of those generous souls running services such as the Avon Youth in the wheat belt town of Northam in my electorate, and elsewhere, always struggling for funding and doing their best in what can only be described as very challenging circumstances.

The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth will be holding a workshop in Canberra in December to raise issues affecting children and young people. To some extent this builds on the work that I participated in in the previous parliament as part of the Standing Committee on Family, Community, Housing and Youth looking at the issues that affect children and young people. I am looking forward to attending that workshop, because I think a country, a government and a society can very much be judged on how it cares for its children, its aged and its disadvantaged.

Finally, Menzies spoke of ‘homes spiritual’—going back to that theme—the fabric that draws together. He noted:

In war, as indeed at most times, we become the ready victims of phrases. We speak glibly of many things without pausing to consider what they signify. … We speak of “morale” as if it were a quality … created by others … when in truth there can be no national morale which is not based upon the individual courage of men and women.

The challenges of today are no less onerous than those of previous generations. We face wars of a different kind. It has been a sad duty for me to attend Pearce air base on several occasions as the bodies of some of our young men serving in Afghanistan have been returned to Australia and their broken-hearted families, friends and communities. I pay tribute to our service men and women and their families and hope that, whatever our views may be on the conflict in Afghanistan, we will always seek to honour the memory of these young people and respect the sacrifice they have made in the course of their duty to Australia.

We face other challenges of varying nature. How are we going to provide water? How are we going to grow enough food? How are we going to provide the amount of infrastructure that such a large continent requires with such a rapidly growing population? We need to think about the energy issues that will confront us in the decades ahead and we need to think about how we can leave our environment in good shape for the future. So I think that, loosely speaking, the wars of today and the challenges of today are no less onerous than those of the Menzies era, just a little different. Our democracy may have its weaknesses, and no doubt this parliamentary term will have its occasional rabblerousing, but I am personally committed to endeavouring to seek the justice that Menzies so eloquently spoke of and to remember the many forgotten people in our midst today.

Going back to the theme of education, one of the greatest gifts we can give all children and young people, apart from the basics of stable accommodation, good nutrition and a safe and stable community to live in, is education and training. They can then take their place in the wider community confident in the knowledge that they can take control over their own lives. The member for Hasluck has already spoken to me about our mutual interest in education and training. We have committed to working together to ensure that the eastern region of Perth in Western Australia offers opportunity to young people from primary to tertiary level education. We share areas where we have some of the most disadvantaged young people, and most of the places of higher education in Perth are located in the western suburbs or the southern part of the northern suburbs.

It has long been my dream to ensure that we have adequate higher education places in the eastern region. We started on that a few years ago and made good progress. I know that my community in the Avon are keen to ensure that Muresk Agricultural College, which is actually closed at the present time, has a robust future. I am committed to supporting the community in the continuity of courses on the campus to give rural students tertiary opportunities they may not otherwise have. Trade training opportunities are also a priority. Under the previous government we anticipated an Australian Technical College being located in the eastern region to offer further opportunities to young people—and I strongly supported that.

The eastern region is a fast-growing region with tremendous pressures on major roads, such as the Great Eastern Highway and the Great Northern Highway—highways of national significance—and the need for a bypass road through the beautiful Swan Valley and the Chittering is now an urgent priority. I have been pleased to work with the community in an effort to speed up funding commitments by both the state and federal governments. This road carries traffic through the heart of the beautiful Swan Valley—one of the oldest wine-growing regions in Western Australia and an iconic tourist precinct.

With the volume of heavy haulage vehicles using this road due to the mining boom, it is now obvious that this needs urgent priority. A delay in this work will jeopardise future developments in the north-west as this becomes a traffic bottleneck, compromising the integrity of the Swan Valley as a tourist precinct and putting the lives of road users at risk. I had the pleasure of having a meeting with the state minister for transport, Simon O’Brien, just recently to raise this and other issues such as the Great Eastern Highway, which is equally important in carrying the traffic from the eastern seaboard of Australia to the ports and airport and other places in Western Australia.

Given the profile of the Pearce electorate, regional tourism has been a matter of great interest, particularly in the lead-up to the election because it is a major provider of jobs and it boosts the local economy. We need to have a new funding model for regional tourist offices, and I have made a commitment to work to that end. As I said, many small business people become engaged in regional tourism. It is very important to local economies, and at the moment we do not seem to have a funding model that actually fits. There is a great deal of work that could be done for minimum cost with the use of the internet.

Talking about internet use, also marking the civilised man, according to Menzies, is ‘the life which finds room for literature, for arts and for science’. The digital revolution has provided the greatest tool through which we can exchange and experience mankind’s richness of culture and discovery. It is just wonderful if we can learn to use it productively. I suppose it was thought of as a bit of a luxury to begin with, but the internet has fast become a necessity underpinning education, the economy, our social life and even the delivery of health care into the future. But speed has become the singular focus of debate rather than a broader conversation about how we view this powerful technology interacting with and adding value to our daily lives. Vision should drive policy, not technicalities; yet an overarching vision is missing in the debate about the internet and the ability for all people to be able to access it.

Finally, there are many priorities for the electorate of Pearce, including primary health care and while we have largely dealt with the issue of infectious disease, the real challenge today is chronic illness—and diabetes is perhaps one of those illnesses on a relentless march and much more does need to be done to emphasise preventative health. I am pleased to see the government’s recent commitment to preventative health, but one of the key barriers to better preventative health is the pressure on our overworked general practitioners, and access to primary health care could be and should be a major contributor to keeping people healthy.

Again, in the regions that I represent, there is a great deficiency of doctors and of primary health care. It was a matter of great sadness to me and indeed to the whole Avon community that two children recently died as a result of the lack of medical treatment in the country town of Northam. This country town is about an hour and a half out of the centre of the city. It is just a complete tragedy that two children should lose their lives because there was not a doctor on duty at the regional hospital.

I am pleased that, in working with the Wheatbelt GP Network, the minister did send me a note just recently to say that there will be a GP clinic established in Northam to supplement health care there. I have also spoken to the health minister about the need for a rural training school for doctors so that we are not just trying to plug holes all the time but growing our pool of doctors for the wheat belt into the future.

In conclusion, our democracy may have its weaknesses, and no doubt this parliamentary term will have its occasional rabble-rousing, but through it I will endeavour to seek the justice which Menzies so fondly spoke of and not forget the forgotten people.

6:55 pm

Photo of Tony ZappiaTony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

On 28 September, the Governor-General delivered her address to the 43rd Parliament in which she outlined the government’s national agenda on environment, economic and social policy. The issues that the Governor-General referred to in her speech are all issues of the utmost importance to this nation. Our ability to successfully manage all of those issues and to deliver on the commitments to the Australian people and the expectations of the Australian people are, I believe, underpinned by how successfully we manage climate change and population growth.

It is my view that, because of the mismanagement of both climate change and population growth, we are facing many of the problems which have become national priorities today. Importantly, climate change and population growth are very much linked. Both are also underpinned by greed—often disguised as economic growth and economic prosperity. There is considerable evidence that population growth is contributing significantly to climate change, which in turn is contributing to population shifts and ultimate sustainability. Notably, it seems that population growth was not on the agenda at the climate change conference in Copenhagen and, if it was, there was very little said about it. If human activity is causing climate change, as the overwhelming scientific evidence concludes, then global population growth will inevitably add to climate change and make climate change adoption measures considerably more difficult. Effective climate change and population growth strategies are the keys to resolving many of the issues which today confront governments around the world and which have largely been caused by a failure to manage growth and ensure that it is sustainable.

I will begin by summarising some key matters relating to climate change. Firstly, regardless of all the protesters, the conspiracy theorists, the extremists and those who simply do not want to accept that climate change is real, the overwhelming scientific evidence from credible scientists and scientific organisations around the world, across a range of scientific disciplines, confirms that the world’s climate is changing, that we are not simply experiencing normal weather cycles and that the problem is serious. If the scientists are right, it is indeed not only the greatest moral, environmental and economic challenge of our time but also the most difficult global challenge ever faced by mankind because it requires a global strategy and, therefore, agreement between countries with different needs, different aspirations, different levels of ability, different agendas and different objectives. Climate change is an incredibly complex matter on which to reach agreement. Not surprisingly, the first attempt to reach agreement on it at Copenhagen had only limited success. However, the Copenhagen conference should never been seen as a failure because, firstly, never before have 192 countries of the world come together to discuss climate change; and, secondly, there was no disagreement that climate change is real and that mankind is a major contributor to it. Those are two critical points for those who wish to criticise Copenhagen as a failure.

Climate change is real and it is already costing nations around the world, including Australia, hundreds of billions of dollars each year in responding to the unprecedented number of natural disasters, ranging from floods to fires through to tornadoes, cyclones, sea surges and tsunamis. The damage caused by each event is immeasurable. Billions of dollars which could otherwise be used to provide the very services that communities are screaming out for are soaked up in repairing the damage caused, in addition to the loss of productivity for months and sometimes years. Consider what we could have done for our health system, for people with mental health issues or other disabilities, with the $13 billion that has been set aside to restore the Murray-Darling Basin. Consider how much more prosperous our nation would have been if the Murray-Darling Basin had been in full or near-full production over the last decade. Consider how many services could have been funded if millions of dollars each year were not being diverted to assist with the natural disasters that are becoming regular occurrences.

To those people who remain sceptical about climate change and still believe that we are simply seeing natural weather pattern cycles and do not believe that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change I say: research the issue with an open mind. I noticed that only yesterday there was some media commentary with respect to a book, Merchants of Doubt, written by Professor Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway. The book exposes the campaign being run by the climate change sceptics as being run by the same people who previously ran the campaigns for tobacco companies challenging the dangers of cigarette smoking, the campaign challenging the existence of the ozone hole in the atmosphere and its link to carbon fluorocarbons, the campaign challenging the effects of acid rain and the campaign that caused the delay in regulating DDT in the USA. In summary, climate change and changing weather patterns will result in population shifts. It is also causing food and water shortages, which in turn will lead to an escalation in international conflicts.

I turn to the matter of population sustainability. I do not know what the ideal population should be for Australia or what a sustainable population for Australia should be, but I do know that key social issues, such as stresses in our health system, housing affordability and infrastructure bottlenecks, are all the result of services not keeping up with population growth. We have already fallen well behind in our quest for sustainability. Many of the strategies and policies being implemented now will at best fix the problems of today. As we pour money into addressing today’s immediate priorities, demands will continue to grow with population growth. New, unplanned and unforeseen needs will also arise. Yet we have developed an economy that is dependent on growth. Without growth being factored into future budget forecasts, governments will quickly find their budgets unsustainable. At some point, growth will have to stop. What happens to the budgets then?

It is notable that the advocates of a big Australia and global population growth are the sectors that will profit from an increasing population and, therefore, more consumers. These are the industry sectors that are not content with remaining viable. They continuously strive for growth; they continuously strive for more profits—growth and profits which depend on more and more consumers. You only have to look at the major advocates of a big Australia and population increases around the world and you will find that those campaigns are being driven by those who have the most to gain. Those same sectors inevitably, however, leave governments to pick up the social costs associated with that growth. It is all right for them to make the profits, but, when it comes to the problems and the social consequences of the growth, that is a problem for governments. It should not be. It is a problem for all of us, whether it is in this country or on this earth.

Of course we also have industry sectors that argue for population growth because their own growth is dependent on available labour hire. As we all know, it is also the case that having more labour to choose from is a great bargaining tool for keeping wages down. Again it is all about the bottom line for certain industries. Regrettably, each industry sector is focused on its own needs, its own priorities and its own future. Governments, however, have a much broader responsibility.

Population growth is also a major contributing factor in climate change. More houses, more cars, more industry and more construction means more energy requirements and therefore more pollution. More growth also means more destruction of the very environment and the very elements of nature that would ordinarily assist with neutralising the increased pollution. In Australia, population growth has caused the loss of much of Australia’s most fertile agricultural land and the flow-on effects to food production. Even with more efficient energy systems, the simple reality is that increased population contributes to increased carbon dioxide emissions. The only beneficiaries of increased population are those who profit from consumption. Regrettably, they do so at the expense of the masses, at the expense of the environment and at the expense of our children and grandchildren. To quote an American saying, ‘We do not inherit our land from our forefathers; we borrow it from our children.’ We have massive responsibilities to future generations. It is also my view that ultimately the environment will prevail. Regardless of what we do, nature will find a way of correcting itself. The sad reality is that when that happens people—future generations—will be the victims.

I want to speak briefly about a couple of other matters. The first issue is one I have already alluded to and which I link to climate change: the state of the Murray-Darling Basin. To put my comments in context, the Murray-Darling Basin covers one million square kilometres, or one-seventh of the Australian landmass. It contributes 39 per cent of national agricultural production. It includes 30,000 wetlands, of which 16 are Ramsar listed. The average annual inflow into the basin is about 10,000 gigalitres. New South Wales takes about 54 per cent of that, Victoria 34 per cent, South Australia seven per cent and Queensland five per cent.

Under the Australian Constitution, the basin comes under the jurisdiction of the states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. An agreement was reached in 1915 in regard to the management of the system. The agreement has been amended and there have been different agreements over the years, but effectively that was the agreement that set the framework. South Australia capped its licences with respect to new licences that were issued in South Australia using South Australia’s share of the water in about 1969. Then there was an agreement with New South Wales and Victoria where a cap was placed on the river in those two states as well. In the interim, there was a considerable number of new licences issued by the upstream states, and there was an overallocation—as many would come to refer to it—of the water from the Murray-Darling system.

In 2007 the Commonwealth Water Act was brought in by the Howard government. Under that act, an independent Murray-Darling Basin Authority was to be put in place. There was a subsequent agreement between each of the states and the ACT and the federal government on 3 July 2008, which effectively transferred management of the system to the federal government, and the work of the authority began.

The point I make about all this is that the Murray-Darling Basin system is critical to the future of this country. Some three million Australians depend on it for their drinking water supplies, in addition to the agricultural production and our food security. We know that the system has been badly managed. We also know that that was compounded by over a decade of drought. But we also know that we cannot continue to operate and manage the system as it was in previous times. we know that reform is necessary.

This is reform that will be brought in after almost 100 years of allowing the system to be managed in a particular way. Of course it will not be easy, but it is reform that is absolutely necessary. Whilst there is a lot of political debate taking place right now in respect of how the process is going, it is so important for the future of this country that the political bickering be put aside and we get it right in ensuring that the Murray is environmentally sustainable into the future and the communities that depend on it remain viable.

The work that is being done at the moment by both the authority and the parliament is necessary and, I believe, will ultimately lead to a more sustainable system. I would like to think that this work, which was in essence initiated by the previous government and continued by this government, will have bipartisan goodwill so that we get the best results out of it rather than see it become a political football, as it has been in recent weeks.

Australia, like the rest of the world, faces some very difficult challenges into the future. I appreciate the comments of the member for Pearce, who a moment ago made a similar reflection. If you look at issues around the world—whether they be climate change, population growth, the fragile state of the global economy, food security, global refugees, energy security or the emergence of different superpowers around the world—and then come back to Australia and add to those our own local issues of health reform, housing, Indigenous disadvantage, migration, education, our commitment in Afghanistan and so on, you quickly begin to understand that we have some very serious and difficult challenges ahead of us.

We have just been through an election campaign in this country where quite frankly, like most campaigns of recent times, there was far more politicking than there was consideration as to what the real issues of the future are and consideration given to policy directions for the future of this country. But the issues that we are confronted with are very real and very serious. This government has made a commitment to addressing those issues in a measured and serious way. They will not be easy; they will be very difficult issues, and of course they will be used as political footballs from time to time. The reality is, however, that if they are not addressed, regardless of whether this government or another government is in office in three, six or nine years time, they will be the same issues and they will not be easily dealt with.

It is my view that this parliament was elected by the people of this country to look to the best interests of this nation, and the best interests of this nation are not served by disagreeing on every matter, or opposing every matter, or using every political opportunity that you can, but rather by looking at the policies of the government of the day and seeing how those policies can be improved. I believe that anyone who comes up with policies and strategies that ultimately serve the best interests of this nation will get the support of both this parliament and the broader community. On the contrary, if members of this parliament simply continue to quibble and argue among themselves we will rightly be condemned by the Australian people. I look forward to serving in this parliament over the next three years because I look forward to being part of a government that addresses the serious challenges that confront this nation.

7:14 pm

Photo of Joanna GashJoanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I would first like to place on the record how honoured I am to have been elected for my sixth term in this Australian parliament. At the same time I am humbled and grateful for the confidence extended me by the constituents of Gilmore. There are still many stones left unturned, and I am not yet ready to leave those stones unaddressed. I was pleased to hear the Governor-General speak about the importance of regional Australia, because her comments are directed unequivocally to electorates such as the one I represent. The need for regional infrastructure investment cannot be overstated. Gilmore is a very important part of regional Australia and I will continue to work as a strong advocate to ensure that we receive our fair share. In doing so I have been criticised for crossing jurisdictional borders, but I make no apology for that. Failure on someone else’s part does not constitute an acceptance of the situation on my part.

The challenges were compounded by changes to the electorate boundaries which changed Gilmore from a 4.7 per cent Liberal seat to a notionally Labor seat. This was the third boundary change for me in Gilmore and it made this election contest my hardest yet. So, for the 1,000 people who manned the booths on my behalf, it was a supremely gratifying moment to hear Gilmore be the first seat reported on polling night and with a swing of 5.7 per cent to the Liberals. It was a case deja vu as Gilmore was the first seat announced as a win for the coalition in 1996.

I especially want to thank the constituents of Barrack Heights, Barrack Point, Shellharbour Village, Shell Cove, Flinders, Dunmore, Minnamurra and Kiama for their trust and support. When I doorknocked, many said they had not really had any contact with a Liberal member before. May I assure those residents I will not let them down.

Special mention must be made of my FEC team, John Bennett, Wes Hindmarsh, Liz Tooley, David Smith, Clive Brooks, Dennis Chugg and David Gray. Most have been with me since 1996. I am grateful to my former staff member, Julia Guy, who returned from England to assist me, and to my current staff who work so hard. Thanks also to my state colleague, Shelley Hancock, the member for South Coast, who will be facing her own election in March 2011.

I particularly want to thank the Calverley family, Tracey, Steve, Jan and Sheridan, from Kiama, who were so determined to assist and gave 110 per cent. I thank all of those who put up signs and corflutes on their properties. Our signs were on private properties, unlike those of my opponents, which were plastered on power poles and in public spaces in blatant defiance of the law. To Kellie Marsh and her team, to the Young Liberals of both the Shoalhaven and Wollongong and to my family—my daughters, granddaughters, sister and brother-in-law—thank you. And special thanks to Dorothy Barker, Pam Coles and Jan Hancock.

Gilmore had two Labor candidates. One was David Boyle, who Sussex Street selected but the local Labor Party branch rejected. There was a second candidate who to this day has still not had the good grace to concede defeat.

My gratitude goes to shadow minister Bronwyn Bishop—she is simply the best—to Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Stephen Ciobo, Greg Hunt and, of course, former Prime Minister John Howard and to Tony Abbott, who actually visited Gilmore twice to support my campaign. It is of interest to note that, when we took John Howard into hardcore Labor heartland in the north, it was a remarkable sight. There was not one protester nor one jibe against the Liberal Party. There was just genuine respect and warmth from the crowd at Shellharbour Square shopping centre. As the Illawarra Mercury reporter exclaimed, ‘I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.’

Gilmore struggles with the same challenges that other regional areas face such as low socioeconomic status,—Gilmore being in the top 50 most disadvantaged electorates in the country—a lack of transport, high unemployment, a lack of infrastructure, limited health and dental services, long medical waiting lists, growing numbers of people struggling with mental health issues, homelessness, cost of fuel in country areas compared to metropolitan and limited opportunities for our young people. I am pleased that the 43rd Parliament will have a greater and renewed focus on regional Australia to address these issues.

What actually transpires remains to be seen and I have not hesitated to let the Prime Minister know exactly what it is that we want. By confronting the infrastructure and transportation challenges that regional Australia faces we are putting all regional residents on an equal playing field to their metropolitan counterparts, especially as Gilmore has no train services past Bomaderry and relies solely on the Princes Highway. Upgrading infrastructure like the Princes Highway to be at least a dual carriageway in both directions would make accessing goods and services easier and safer for those in the outlying areas.

It would also stimulate opportunities in business and tourism for these areas—something that is sorely needed. For a long time, tourism has provided the backbone of the local economy, and present global circumstances do threaten that. We need the ability and the means to diversify our commercial and industrial product to generate low-skilled jobs and to inoculate our economy against economic fluctuations. An enhanced road transport system must be the necessary first step. It would create employment in the planning, building and post-construction phases.

I point to the Building the Education Revolution program as a case of how not to do it. It is a program that failed to use local skills and products, in many cases bringing little benefit to the local economy. Just last week, I heard of a case where the cement poured at a local school for a BER project is being ripped out to start again. Let us hope that they employ some locals this time to get the job right. While some schools did benefit from this program, their success was eclipsed by the many cases of overspending, over-engineering or simply spending when it was not wanted or needed.

The coalition made a total of 16 commitments to the electorate of Gilmore, which would have been delivered if we had been elected. They include: a $2.6 million Shoalhaven headspace sight, also promised by Labor—and I have to say that the government has just called for tenders for that project; a $1 million Kiama Harbour upgrade to assist them in marine tourism and recreational fishing, which is a huge drawcard for local tourism; a $35 million cancer care centre equipped with a linear accelerator, which was granted by both sides of politics and which was a win-win outcome for our community; $20 million for the Princes Highway, our major highway, which the Labor Party simply refused to commit any funding for; $10 million for the Shellharbour boat harbour marina to boost tourism and future development; and $1 million for CCTV cameras for the safety and security of our residents, especially local businesses, which are paying for the chronic lack of adequate police resources.

We promised $25 million for an Australian technical college, which would ideally have been in conjunction with Vincentia High School, which had been refused one of Labor’s trade training centres not once but three times. Last week, the government finally announced that Vincentia High School will now receive a trade training centre. We promised $1 million for Shoalhaven endoscopic services. We currently have a situation where people are waiting one to three years for a colonoscopy. We would have provided $1 million for Shoalhaven hospital emergency equipment to reduce our growing waiting list for all types of surgery; $500,000 for green army projects for Shellharbour, Kiama, Nowra and Ulladulla and to allow some of our not-so-young unemployed to assist in environmental projects; and $300,000 to make a solar town in Kangaroo Valley.

We promised $2 million for the Dunn and Lewis Bali memorial centre to commence stage 2. I acknowledge the Shoalhaven City Council and this government, who provided funding to finish stage 1 of the project after the initial $500,000 contribution of the Howard government. We would have given $2 million for a Point Perpendicular cliff walk at the Jervis Bay headland, which is a new, visionary and innovative project that would generate overseas tourism through the promotion of our natural wonders. We promised $1 million for a southern Shoalhaven boat harbour feasibility study. The Shoalhaven does not have a functional boat harbour for the many tourists who need such a facility. We would have given $1.5 million for the Shoalhaven basketball stadium upgrade. The growing popularity of this sport means it has reached the need for upgrades that will allow the local association to host major competitions. We would have given $350,000 to the Shoalhaven regional tourism office and all other regional tourism offices to entice more private operators and to increase opening hours.

All these projects were developed in conjunction with local stakeholders and went through rigorous processes to become the final official commitments. They are exciting, innovative and job-creating projects that I have since forwarded to this government for their consideration and to the Independents who helped form the government with their belief in regional Australia. It is important that our Prime Minister and the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government are aware of such projects, mainly to avoid the need to reinvent the wheel and to work on them with Regional Development Australia bodies. I have specifically invited the new minister for regional development, Simon Crean, to come down and see for himself some of these projects and the other needs that we have in Gilmore. I am delighted that he has agreed to do so, particularly following the tragic accident we recently had on the Nowra Bridge. While the RTA are reviewing my nomination for black spot funding for the site, I also wrote to Mr Crean, highlighting the necessity for a third bridge crossing. This is just one of the matters I intend to discuss with Mr Crean during his visit.

Another minister who I hope will visit the electorate soon is health minister Nicola Roxon. One of only two commitments that the Labor Party made for Gilmore was a $7 million GP superclinic. While I am not one to knock back funding for our electorate, regardless of where it comes from, many of our local GPs have serious concerns about the proposal. I have had meetings with Ms Roxon’s office to highlight some of these concerns, pointing out that a one-stop shop would be difficult for people from all of Gilmore’s 149 far-flung towns and villages to access, due to the limited transport options that we have. I also pointed out that most of our major regional centres have private medical practices that would welcome the opportunity to expand and offer additional services, such as dental or after-hours consultations. I am looking forward to working with the Shoalhaven Division of General Practice to put in a tender for the funding that will achieve this outcome. The tender documents were last week made open for submissions.

Another issue that I will be focusing on in this term is homelessness. I recently held a meeting with all of the local providers in my electorate, which was briefly attended by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Julie Bishop. It became very clear that emergency accommodation is in short supply in Gilmore, as are affordable rental properties. One idea put forward involved the government providing financial incentives for homeowners to house those transitioning from homelessness. It might work on a similar model to the Defence Housing scheme, whereby homeowners allow their properties to be used for a fixed rent, and their home is repainted and well kept by the government. This would have the added bonus of integrating individuals who need assistance into the community, as opposed to building high-density developments which have the reputation of promoting social instability. We have seen many examples of this locally in the last 12 months, with the state and federal Labor governments’ public housing stimulus projects. Large-scale developments are being built in Ulladulla, Worrigee, Nowra, Bomaderry, Gerringong and Barrack Heights, without the consent of council and without public consultation. The Gerringong development is even being built on a block zoned ‘commercial’, which resulted in enormous public and council opposition. To return to the original point, of low-cost housing: without financial incentives caution prevails, and private homeowners simply do not consider potential tenants who do not have the appropriate references, income and rental history. We certainly have a severe shortage of low-cost housing locally, resulting in more strain on public services. However, I recognise that our existing service providers do an incredible job with the little funding that they have.

I had the privilege of visiting CareSouth’s Nowra youth accommodation and was blown away by the great work that they do with our young people. They provide temporary housing, assistance with job seeking and education in essential life skills. I would love to see more of this in our community, but it was not until we sat down together with all the provider agencies that we discovered how little we have to address the growing demand. Jim da Silva City Farm is another great example. It provides long-term accommodation for men struggling in society, and is a joint venture of the St Vincent de Paul Society and the department of housing. The men are cared for, offered assistance and, most importantly, given the chance to improve themselves with volunteering opportunities, friendship and activities—in fact, I can assure you that they make great scones. I was privileged to have had them as my guests some years ago in Parliament House. There are people who have faced all sorts of disturbances in life that many of us cannot even begin to imagine, and they deserve a leg up.

Gilmore’s unemployment rate is chronically above the national average. I have spoken about this time and time again, as I have of the need to introduce opportunities for job creation. That means stimulating business investment, and that was the justification behind the upgrading of Main Road 92. Until the benefits of this road start to emerge, which they are slowly starting to do, we will still need to identify other ways of generating job opportunities. The Shoalhaven Jobs Drive, which was for the month of October, was designed to do just that. It created, in one month, 271 jobs. It is about connecting businesses that have job vacancies with people who want jobs. The idea came about through a discussion we had with our regional employment coordinator, Jane Robertson, several months ago. I am thrilled that the idea was taken up and acted upon. I have to say that this success was largely due to the nature of the Shoalhaven community, which is renowned for pulling together at times like this.

Even for those of us who are lucky enough to be working locally, the median weekly household income for Gilmore is barely two-thirds of the national average. Low-income households are finding the rising cost of living particularly tough right now, with soaring electricity prices and the lingering threat of a carbon tax.

It is no surprise that I get approached by a lot of pensioners and groups who want to know why they cannot get access to free health and dental services, the same as some of our asylum seekers get in detention centres, and have somewhere to live. What do I tell them? They can see with their own eyes how detainees get prompt medical attention, how their children get full schooling and how they are regularly fed, while many of our pensioners have to forgo meals just to pay the electricity bills. They are struggling to make ends meet, and as a result their health and quality of life are slowly but surely degrading. While many rail against detainees being locked in compounds, many of our pensioners are virtual prisoners in their own homes. It is important that we get this issue right to avoid further angst and feelings of resentment within the community and dividing our country even further. The government have not handled this issue well, and it is time they acknowledged this and took action.

On a more positive note, I would like to share with the House a few of the projects that I have been very proud to see completed in my time so far as the member for Gilmore. There is the Shoalhaven university campus, which I hope will, as it grows, inspire more and more students from our area to consider tertiary education. Currently only 30 per cent do, compared to 70 per cent in other areas. There is the Graduate School of Medicine, which aims to address the shortage of doctors in rural and regional Australia—and I am pleased to report that our first home-grown batch of doctors have graduated this year. There is the nursing school, and of course there is Main Road 92, which we celebrated the opening of a few weeks ago with an excited Nerriga community. All of these projects had the support of the Shoalhaven City Council, which we have always worked very well with over the years. I am proud to say that we have three very good councils in Gilmore: Shellharbour, Kiama and Shoalhaven. With each I enjoy a very good relationship.

I cannot finish without making a special mention of the contribution of our local defence bases at HMAS Albatross and HMAS Creswell. The Navy have been very supportive and enjoy an enviable reputation as a responsible corporate citizen. They get involved in all aspects of the community and are always there to lend a helping hand. I am fortunate to be in a position to represent our defence forces, both serving and retired. After leaving the forces, many continue to live in and participate in the community. Their expertise, compassion and energy drive many local community organisations.

We all want what is the best for this community, and I look forward to working with all levels of government again over this next term to continue to get the job done for Gilmore. I thank all in this chamber for their indulgence.

Debate (on motion by Mr Melham) adjourned.