Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to talk about some complex issues that I think are really important. I want to talk about where we are in a parliamentary sense, in a social sense and in a party sense. I want to talk about issues that go to the core of where ordinary people are in their everyday lives. Often in this place, and through the media, we hear all sorts of discussions and commentary—and see newspaper articles and front-page stories—telling us what the big issues of the day are. I am sure that all members of parliament and many people out in the street would easily be able to recount what the so-called big issues are. But I do not think they are always that clear and I do not think that the issue that is on the front page is always a big issue for everybody in the community.

This has been a very interesting year, in more ways than I care to recall. In particular for my electorate it has been a year that saw devastating floods which caused massive upheaval. It has been a politically volatile year with lots of ups and downs for everybody. As we draw close to the end of the year, I think it is important that I note some of the things that I think are most important to my electors in the electorate of Oxley. My comments are not navel gazing; they are not criticising or critiquing anybody in particular; they are just some points about what I think the big issues are in this country—and I do not think they are the ones that we would most commonly jump to.

I do not think gambling reform is one of the big issues. As big an issue as it is—and certainly it is a loud issue—I just do not think it is really big. I do not think too many families when they wake up in the morning and brew their coffee or tea and put the toast on are discussing what gaming reform will mean to them. They are probably talking about what they are going to do at work, what the kids are going to do at school, whether somebody needs to go to the doctor and maybe the cost of living, the price of fuel and all those types of issues. But I can guarantee you almost 100 per cent that, on a day-to-day basis, they will not be talking about gambling reform. That is more the preserve of a very specific slice of the community. As with a lot of change and reform, this is difficult. There is good intent behind this, and there is good delivery. But, while it is made out to be the biggest issue since sliced white bread, in the end you will find that the community impact is actually very, very small, if not almost insignificant. It will come and go and later on you will wonder why anyone ever made a fuss in the first place.

Then there are the migration issues. Dare I even mention them? There are the issues of boats and migration. Yes, these are big issues in the community. They certainly polarise people on one side of the debate or the other. You will often see it as part of any media cycle. I think in the Liberal-National Party tactics group in the morning, before question time, they go: 'If we run out of ideas, we can always throw boat people back on the table. I'm sure that'll cause a little bit of controversy and spark something up.' But how much is it an actual issue for people, for ordinary families, when they wake up in the morning and they are brewing their cup of tea and they are talking about what is important to them as a family? The issues then are: who is working today; who has got a job; how are the kids going at school? Grandma or grandpa might not be feeling too well; somebody might have to stay home. I bet you any money that the vast majority of Australian families are talking about those issues rather than how many people are coming to this country through a migration program. If you did a calculation in percentage terms, or in number terms—any calculation you like—with 23 million people in this country, the tiny numbers involved when we start talking about immigration are insignificant and play very little to no role in people's ordinary day-to-day lives. Yet you will find these issues on the front page of every paper once or twice a week, because we are told these are the biggest issues. I actually disagree. I do not think they are the biggest issues at all, and for ordinary families I do not think they even come close to being the biggest issues.

Looking at the other big issues, some are a little bit more complex. If we look at the Clean Energy Future package and climate change, this does impact on people's lives every day. But, again, I think that when people get up of a morning and they are thinking about their day they will probably do a number of things in this area. They will look at saving water. We have grown used to that, particularly in Queensland. Even though we have had a horrendous year of floods we are still conscious about saving and conserving water. We turn off the lights a bit more than we used to, and we use energy-saving light bulbs, because we all agree, we all understand and we all acknowledge—and perhaps children acknowledge it more than adults—that we actually need to conserve our resources and conserve energy; we need to look after the planet. There is a real sense of that and that we all need to do something.

I am prepared to stake a wager. I am not a gambling person; in fact, I cannot recall the last time I gambled on anything, although perhaps in politics we gamble every day. But I am prepared to wager substantially that once the climate change debate has been and gone—once there is the introduction and people see it, experience it and live it—it will be a whole different debate. In fact, the debate will come and go. As we know now through a CSIRO study and other good economic modelling, the impact of the climate change bills is just one-tenth of the impact of the GST. I talked to people today, and people are saying, 'What GST?' It has come, it has gone, people are used to it, and it actually works. So it is fair enough—just like the climate change bills and what we are doing in the Clean Energy Future package, which will deliver something significant in this country.

The real big issues, the ones that should be on the front page in a positive fashion almost every single day, include what we did in every single school in this country, primary and senior: new school halls, science labs and classrooms. That is the really good stuff. There must be some dichotomy out there in the community or with certain people. Many people are happy to acknowledge the great work done and the need for the biggest infrastructure spending program in schools in over a generation, 30 years. Yet it seems that the media's only focus is the very small percentage, the very few, where it did not quite go perfectly to plan. I would rather focus on the 99 per cent. Again, I would stake a fairly large wager that you could go to any school in the country and ask that school community what they think of their new hall and science lab—what they think about their kids' education and the infrastructure that this government delivered—and the response would be positive. No other government in the prior 30 years had the gumption to do it. We did, and it cost a lot of money, but it is an investment—it is money well spent. You do not just spend it in bricks and mortar; you spend it in people, and that is what we have done.

Look at what we are doing in terms of hospital reform, in trying to wrestle one of the biggest issues in this country. If any issue is the single biggest issue, that is probably people's health care. We have a first-class system, a better system than any country in the world, but there is one significant problem: whether it is the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the Medicare system or general health delivery, at the current rates we will not be able to sustain this beyond 2026, because all of the revenue of state governments will be needed to sustain the current spending levels. It will take a courageous government, a good government and a government that sees beyond itself, beyond the horizon and beyond the next election to have the guts to stump up in this place and make the significant reforms that will benefit my children, your children and their children. That is what I think is the government's role.

That is what I wanted to say tonight. I wanted to put on the record that it takes more than just the political cycle, more than just what is popular and more than just the cheap shots and the stuff that is not on the front page of the papers; it takes doing the right things, the things that you know are right for this country, for ordinary families, for working people and for children's health and education. We have to make sure we get those things right.

I heard before one of the opposition members talking about road infrastructure and how we have promised and delivered a significant study on a road that needs upgrading but will not be built for 10 years. I would like to say to him: that is two years fewer than the previous government's, the Howard government's, 12 years of doing absolutely nothing in their own electorates. If there is one thing that this government can be absolutely proud of—and there are many things—it is infrastructure spending. We introduced the largest infrastructure spending program in this country's history.

I have an example of it not only in my electorate in Queensland but in Blair and beyond, through to Toowoomba and back through the other end, through Liberal Party seats and Labor Party seats. When you spend on infrastructure—and this was the whole point of Infrastructure Australia—you deliver it for everybody. You deliver it across state and local government boundaries and you do it in corridors because it needs to be done. You do it on a strategy delivery process, one that is beyond the electoral cycle. That is what good government is about. That is what courageous government is about. While it may be that polls go up and polls go down and sometimes you are at the bottom of the polls—and I have been there a few times—and sometimes you are at the top of the polls, regardless of what the polls say you still know what is right. You still know the things that you have to deliver and it takes a Labor government to have the guts to actually do it. (Time expired)