Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-13 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-13. The two additional estimates bills seek to appropriate funds from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for additional expenditure requirements which have arisen since the May budget was brought down. In effect, they give effect to the announcements in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which was brought down around October.

The irony is that these things are probably just another mere introduction to endless other blowouts since that time. Since October we have had the Treasurer walk away from a surplus, given up on a surplus. There are no financial accounts which would inform us and the rest of the community, the finance sector, the people trying to do business out there, anyone trying to assess the state of the nation's books, trying to make investment decisions with some confidence, trying to make multi-million or multibillion-dollar investments when no-one has the foggiest idea about what the state of the books is. The government has walked away from it. This appropriation bill is probably a foretaste, a forerunner of more that might be introduced into this place to overcome further reckless spending of this government to further fill black holes. We know of $120 billion in unfunded promises: what else is there? We have got a raft of things here, many of which just happen in the course of normal government, and I accept that, but they are a symbol, if you like, another $1.27 billion symbol of a government that really has become quite inept at in any way managing the books. So much so that here we stand today several months after the Treasurer has stepped away from a surplus with absolutely no idea what the state of the books is. Yet every day we hear in the main chamber in particular, and I presume here and in the other place, cries of 'Where are your costings?'

Of course the costings have been done. What no-one knows, including us, is how any of these things can be funded. What money is there to fund them? Are the government telling us how they are going to fund dental schemes, an NDIS or the Gonski recommendations in education? Are they telling us anything about the funding? Not on your nelly! That is not going to occur. Yet they want some anodyne discussion on the cost of things. We have put out the cost of things, if you had not noticed—so many things. What we are still waiting for, and what the community is waiting for—what everyone is waiting for—is what money is going to be there. What is in the piggy bank? What will be in there? The government do not know themselves. The Treasurer does not know.

Dr Leigh interjecting—

There is embarrassment on the other side, and feigned smiles and all the rest. Well, you had better go away and sort out your Treasurer. Get him to release what the books are and what is in the books so that we can have a sensible discussion not only about appropriations but about the general finances of this nation.

This is serious business. No wonder no-one is investing out there. No wonder no-one is taking risks. No wonder there is an investment strike in the business community. No wonder people are not buying houses. It is because there is no confidence. How could there be when they look at a Treasurer who is growing whiter by the day, who stumbles through question time and who one day says on the basis of some shonky legal advice that he cannot tell us what revenue they are going to get from a certain tax and the next day releases it after pressure from the Greens and us?

It is government by mistake, day in, day out, and the community absorb it. They feel it, they see it and they are shaken by it—so much so that many of the problems in the retail sector are because no-one is spending. They are paying back the mortgage and paying back the plastic because they are fearful of spending money and of making any commitments. They are not buying houses as they normally would. The general run of business—the turnover of business—has just stopped in its tracks in many cases in many parts of the country. There is a crisis of confidence, and there need not be. There should not be if there were prudent, sensible management.

The thing is that they have seen the wanton waste in so much of what has been done. People understand that governments spend money. They vote a government in, and they will accept that government will make decisions about expenditure on their behalf. They might not understand it and they might not even like it, but in many cases they will accept that that is the responsibility of government. What they will not accept is wanton waste, and that is what they have seen now for five years. So much of the reckless spending by this government that has taken place has led to irresponsible, pathetic, wanton waste, with no attention to detail and no attempt to implement policies in a considered, rational and prudent fashion. People get fed up to the back teeth with it. They cannot understand it, they are angry about it, they are confused about it and they feel deeply let down by this process.

Through all of this, all we hear as a reason for it—and, again, this is an insult for people; it is adding to that crisis of confidence and it is designed, almost, to undermine people's confidence in the government—is endless crying wolf. 'It was somebody else's fault.' 'The dog ate my homework.' Month after month, parading in through this chamber, the main chamber and other chambers, the Treasurer and his colleagues on that side of the House are saying that it is somebody else's fault. As the Treasurer said, we have here a huge revenue whack, if you like, out of the blue, which has made it very hard to get to a surplus in 2012-13. Instead of crying wolf endlessly, why not take responsibility for their own mistakes? Why not take responsibility for the problems that this government has created?

Of course, the truth is that over the first four months of this financial year revenues were 9.2 per cent higher than in the previous year. This is at the same time that the Treasurer was on his feet saying, 'We've taken a whack out of the blue.' There had been a nine per cent increase in revenue since the budget.

There are a lot of families who would do quite well and be quite satisfied with a 9.2 per cent increase in revenue. But what did we see accompanying that revenue increase? A further four per cent increase in spending—in four months. The record level of spending of this government just continues to go on, year in, year out, despite the sort of spin that we hear. People understand that. They see the waste. They know that four per cent is on top of what was already bloated and unnecessary spending of a massive order, so much so that the government have spent $172 billion, would you believe, more than they have received in revenue.

It does not stop. No bells are ringing. No-one in the government is saying: 'Hang on. We'd better pull our heads in here.' Even if you just stopped new programs, over time it would reduce the proportion of government spending in the budget and take the pressure off, but, no, there are no programs of any order being cut. It is all new program after new program. They say, 'Don't worry about gross debt.' Well, that is what we pay interest on. We are paying $7 billion-plus a year of interest that was not being paid five years ago. We were not paying one cent five years ago. Now it is $7 billion a year. That could pay for seven first-class, world-centre-of-excellence hospitals, if you wanted them, but in one year it is just being given away in interest payments. It is money that could go to fund the NDIS. We would not have all the double backflips and machinations and—I can see it coming down the track—tricky accounting to try and get through how the government are going to fund the NDIS. Future governments will have to fund it, not this government. That is for certain.

So we have got revenue steadily growing, but the government cannot catch up with their spending increases. Why not? What happens—and you can see it over every budget of this Treasurer—is that they deliberately assume unachievable levels of future revenue. I have seen it in business. I have seen CEOs with start-up businesses tell their boards they are going to make millions of dollars in revenue, and they get the boards and investors to commit to a lot of funding. They go and spend it, and then the revenue does not turn up. They do not get the contracts. They make it up. They deliberately assume unachievable levels of revenue.

I look across the chamber each day and see the Treasurer, and I am looking at things I have seen before in another world, in the business world. This Treasurer is no different to some of these CEOs who make it up for their boards and their investors, get commitments of large lumps of money, either borrowed or invested, and then the revenue does not arrive. That is exactly what has happened here. In the budget, the Treasurer makes these politically inspired, deliberately unachievable assumptions of future revenue, and spends the money. Then, when the revenue does not come in, and there is a more realistic revenue stream—which is still increasing; revenue has increased every year—he cries wolf. 'Woe is me,' we hear all the time. Well, take some responsibility for the wanton and gross miscalculation on revenue forecast, the unachievable assumptions that have been made.

We have been saying this for years, at every budget: 'These revenue forecasts are not achievable.' Lo and behold, that is what happens, and yet we hear: 'Woe is me. We've got some write-downs.' They are writing down their own forecasts. It is a joke, but it is just part of the usual spin and management that we see from this government—the media management rather than the housekeeping management, which is really what they were charged to do when they were voted in, or when they assumed a minority government with others, Independents and Greens.

We have a situation which has been created by the government unnecessarily, and they say: 'The world is a difficult place. We've had a global financial crisis.' I accept that.

The government took funding decisions which I think were grossly excessive. If they had not wasted and billions and billions of it, it would have been somewhat better. The fact of the matter is that an inherited strong balance sheet, monetary policy, 3¼ per cent reduction in interest rates, the devaluation of the Australian dollar—it went to 60c in the first quarter of 2009; we had the highest trade result in our history the quarter after the global financial crisis and it brought billions of dollars into our economy and into the pockets of households. In addition to that, we have had the heavy lifting by China—demand. Those were the four things—an inherited economy in great shape, monetary policy, the automatic stabiliser of a devaluation, and China—that got Australia a 150-year high in our terms of trade. We have been so blessed compared with other parts of the world.

They were the things that got us through. The government then came along—six, eight or nine months later—with a massive injection of spending on school halls, which was wasted in many cases. They could have done most of that work for half the price. Lots of school in my area were saying that the buildings could have gone up for half or less than what they did. Then we had the pink batts debacle, cheques to dead people—for goodness sake! This is the sort of thing that leaves people just scratching their heads. It is why there is a crisis of confidence. There we are with a situation created, and yet they say to us: 'But it's such a difficult climate out there. How could we get to surplus with Europe going so badly? Europe has pulled us down into the mire. Europe is still hurting us.' Well let me tell you, there are seven other countries—including five in Europe—who are in surplus already. If European countries can be back in surplus, then there cannot be any excuse for Australia, which is at 150-year highs in their terms of trade.

We are still 20 per cent higher in terms of trade today than when the Howard government lost office. They keep telling us that the Howard government benefited from the 'rivers of gold'; well the terms of trade are still 20 per cent higher. They are coming back, but they are still 20 per cent higher! Yet the Treasurer is saying he has got a whack out of the blue. How could that be a whack out of the blue when we still have record levels of terms of trade compared with over the past few years? What is going to happen when the terms of trade come back to more normal levels? I will tell you what is going to happen: we are going to find ourselves in the out years—next year, the year after, the year after that—with growing and increasing structural deficits, all of which have been assumed away by unbelievable forecasts of revenue or are being funded by taxes that turn out not to return any income. Can you believe it? So we have either got unbelievable and unachievable assumptions about revenue, which never materialise, or we have got taxes that have been introduced—27 new or increased taxes—and we even get a tax that does not produce any money.

But not only does it not produce any money of any consequence and leaves a further black hole, which further undermines confidence and worries people deeply, but also people are waking up at 2.30 in the morning all over this country worried about whether they are going to keep their jobs. Why? Because they see a government in total disarray. They see a Treasurer who fumbles and mumbles through question time looking ashen and standing next to a Prime Minister who does no better, who keeps telling us things which you cannot trust, who signed a document and said, 'We won't change the mining tax,'—in black and white—and now, today, virtually admits that they are going to change the mining tax. How can business operate like this? How can people make decisions and feel comfortable that this country is in good hands when they keep seeing this charade of mistake, dissembling and incompetence. It is serious, people! Why is there anxiety at a time when we are so blessed with the resources we have got and the demand out there?

It should not be this way. It should not be this way, but it is, and it is because of the government's incompetence and inability to focus on the job that they have to do: to tell people as it is, to make truthful statements about what they think is going to happen with the books and to stop playing politics endlessly. Stop worrying about your own jobs and worry about other people's jobs out there. That is the responsibility of governments. It is just not acceptable that this would happen.

I should raise my voice! People are cross about it. I am cross about it. But it is not about us here; it is about the people out there. That is what it should be about, and yet here we are. We are going to go through this charade, I know, for months. There will be more dissembling. There will be more suggestions of other people's faults. There will be more misrepresentation of the accounts. There will be more clever accounting tricks, and there will be increases in taxes. We can see it coming.

Some way or other, the super is going to happen. Already there has been so much speculation that people are frightened to invest or spend, go to the movies or do whatever. They are putting the money aside. They are not sure whether they can afford it or not or what is going to happen. We have had another month of speculation. Clearly the government are going to do something on super. They are going to get money from somewhere. They are going to try and tax people who have worked their tail off for years to put money aside. Now they are going to see it taxed. Now they are going to see a threat, a doubt, over their security in their later years.

We will see a change to the mining tax. The government will say: 'How clever are we? We have just raised some more revenue.' But, of course, what they have done at the same time is cause a major problem with sovereign risk. That is forgotten. Forget about business! Don't put yourself in the shoes of people looking to risk billions of dollars!

I went into Asia for a few days before Christmas to talk to business leaders, government leaders and others—investors. I wanted to see: what were the opportunities coming down the pipeline? What was our standing? What was going on? I sat in a meeting with the head of one of the region's major banks, an Asian bank. He said to me: 'Mr Robb, could you explain something to me? Over the last four years, we have backed investments to the tune of billions of dollars into Australia. What has happened since is that there have been lots of rule changes. There have been new taxes which have affected these investments.' And he said: 'The ROI, the return on investment, in nearly all these projects has now been deeply undermined. Could you explain what is going on? Australia historically has been associated with being able to invest with some certainty, in that a deal is a deal. Once things are signed, once contracts are done, once we have reached some accommodation and understanding with the government, Australia historically has stuck with it.' Here I was not being lectured to, but in a way I was, and it is so galling. He was really saying that Australia and sovereign risk are now in the one sentence. That has never been the case.

This is what is happening with this mining tax. This is what is happening when you change things. This is what happens when you change super rules having said you never will, you won't do it, of course you won't, not one dot, not one whatever—no, you will not do any of that!

Government members interjecting—

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

Order!

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are just undermining the ability and the confidence not only of investors in this country but of investors outside this country, people who have already put big money in here and are confused themselves. You are confusing the world with the way in which you are managing the shop.

Government members interjecting—

You can try and shout me down.

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

Excuse me. No.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can try and shout me down. You will have your turn. You get up and explain.

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

And the member for Goldstein will stop using the word 'you', please.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. Those opposite will.

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

And they will cease interjecting. Let me deal with that. You will continue, in silence.

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. That would be nice, thank you. So here we are with a bill which has become almost a symbol of the uncertainty and lack of knowledge that anyone, including ourselves, has on what the state of the books really is. It is just another chapter of many chapters of overspending.

Sitting suspended from 16:59 to 17:12

I should bring my comments to a conclusion, given the list of speakers who are following and given that I have made the principal point, which is that, as normal practice, we will not oppose or seek to amend this Appropriation Bill, although it does again demonstrate—and it has become a symbol of—the overspending, unexplained spending and confusion. So much of it could be clarified if the government were to show some transparency. Tell us the numbers and tell us really what the circumstance is, and it is not just 'us' the opposition, but us the community. That is why in this important election year we have again chosen what has been the normal practice: not to rely on the Treasurer and on what have been inflated or misleading forecasts or numbers or dissembling and all of the rest. This budget this year will be the first budget in the history of the parliament which will fall in the middle of an election campaign. We could not trust the last four budgets over the last four years, and so what hope would anyone have to trust what will come out in May this year? In many ways it will be a fiction. That is my expectation. That is why we have to wait and do what the head of the new Parliamentary Budget Office suggested: wait for the real numbers. The real numbers will help us understand the ability we and others have to fund policies that we would like to introduce. Those numbers will best come when Treasury and Finance, independent of the government of the day, come down with their forecasts and state of the books within 10 days of the writs being issued.

When that happens, we will look at the capacity to fund on the real numbers, not on the fictional numbers, and we will put to the people a program which will return this country to prudent, stable, sensible, adult management. We will remove the waste. We will seek to restore the certainty and stability that people need to make decisions and get on with their lives. We will seek to remove the crisis of confidence which so envelops this country at the moment and which is not and should not be necessary given the blessings that this country has. What we need is good government, and the opportunity will present itself this year.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are several old chestnuts the Liberals can be relied on to trot out every election year, and one of those that we hear so often in the ACT is the line, 'Labor ignores Canberra'—the suggestion that somehow Labor governments take Canberra for granted. But, unfortunately for the Liberals, the people of Fraser are a clever bunch. They are able to see through this line easily, because it is so demonstrably false. The investments that this Labor government has made in Fraser are visible everywhere, from the Majura Parkway to the National Broadband Network rolling out and the many schools enjoying new facilities thanks to the Building the Education Revolution program.

If you were to take the time to visit all of the sites where Labor has invested in my electorate of Fraser, you would be taking a pretty comprehensive tour of Canberra's north. I can even provide you with a loose itinerary. You can set off from the flourishing suburb of Braddon, where my electorate office is located and where Minister for Human Services Kim Carr and I opened a one-stop shop for Medicare and Centrelink in October last year. The co-location of these facilities is a core part of Labor's service delivery reforms. It is making access to housing, health, crisis support, education and training, and family and financial support easier for Canberrans.

If you were to then drive north, you would pass North Ainslie Primary School, one of the 804 schools around Australia to have been awarded grants of up to $50,000 to install renewable solar energy systems, rainwater tanks and other energy efficiency measures to cut pollution and save money on their electricity bills. You would also be seeing schools that have benefited from those grants if you drove through the suburbs of Campbell, Charnwood, Dunlop, Florey, Fraser, Hawker, Kaleen, Latham, Lyneham, Macgregor, Macquarie, Majura district, Ngunnawal, Palmerston or Turner.

If you visited any primary school in my electorate, you would be proudly shown their new facilities and you would hear firsthand how that community worked with the design firms, the department of education and the architects to construct a new building that improved the learning experience. In Florey Primary School, you would be shown new science labs where children can follow in the footsteps of the great Howard Florey, who discovered penicillin. At Amaroo School, teachers can teach in their traditional classrooms or they can remove the dividing walls between classrooms and teach in teams. At the Forde campus of Burgmann Anglican School, the new multipurpose hall has sharply raked seating so all children can see the stage. At Black Mountain School you would be shown a school hall that allows all children to come in and enjoy the school community together and a stage that allows children in wheelchairs to go up and speak and receive awards just like children who are not in wheelchairs. If you were to go up the road to Jervis Bay, you would see a purpose-built learning centre with Smart Boards designed in close consultation with the local Indigenous community. The Building the Education Revolution program has seen an unprecedented level of investment in our community's schools, improving the facilities Canberra's schools need. At the same time, we have also provided transparent information to parents about their child's school. If you were up at Jervis Bay, you would probably also see the new $18 million training facility at HMAS Creswell.

You could also follow Prime Minister Julia Gillard's footsteps and stop for morning tea in Amaroo, where she met with pensioners to discuss carbon pricing assistance in May of last year.

Thousands of Canberra pensioners also benefited from Labor's historic 2009 increase in the pension—the biggest increase since the pension's inception, worth $1,600 a year for someone on the single full rate age pension.

Moving a little further south you might see the revamped Belconnen skate and BMX park, funded in part by the government's stimulus package. It is a great resource for Canberra teens to show off their ollies and kickflips, and a chance to get together and build community spirit on the shores of Lake Ginninderra. It provides a space for Canberra's youth to not only stay fit but also create lasting friendships. If you were not a particularly skilled skateboarder and you took a tumble in the park, you would be glad to know that the nearby West Belconnen Health Co-op in Charnwood provides a bulk-billing GP medical service. It currently has over 5,400 people with co-op memberships. That centre began thanks to $220,000 in seed funding from the Commonwealth government in 2009, and now has another outlet in Belconnen, bringing more GPs to the electorate of Fraser.

Speaking of Labor's investing in health facilities in Fraser, you could drop into the University of Canberra, my equal favourite university in my electorate, and see how the new GP super clinic is coming along. The federal government has provided $15 million for the clinic, which will soon have another hub site in Casey. These investments provide training opportunities for young doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, not only bringing new doctors to the ACT but also improving the training of young doctors, making Canberra's health services even stronger and providing important regional services to Canberra's surrounds, such as the mobile health clinic that I was pleased to open at the University of Canberra last year.

Before you leave the University of Canberra campus I am sure you would want to have a chat to some of the staff or students about the $26 million of investment the government is making in bringing new courses and new entry pathways and ensuring the latest learning technologies are available. You would find that since Labor came to government the University of Canberra's funding has increased by 59 per cent. Enrolments are up by 45 per cent. That is thousands more students, many the first in their family. They are able to pursue careers in health, journalism, law and finance.

You could then take a drive through the post code area of 2615, in which ACT Labor MLA Chris Bourke and I ran a campaign to help residents find their lost superannuation. We saw from government statistics that people in that post code had a particularly high rate of lost super. Residents in suburbs like Dunlop, Flynn, Holt, Melba and Spence are among the many who will benefit from our decision to remove the tax on superannuation earnings for the lowest paid one-third of Australians. Many other Canberrans will benefit from federal Labor's raising universal superannuation contributions from nine to 12 per cent.

If you are passing through the suburbs of Bonner, Bruce, Crace, Harrison, Nichols or Watson you will see over 17,000 new homes, built for low- to moderate-income households to rent below the market rate. That is on top of an exciting NRAS investment on the ANU campus. It is all part of the Gillard government's National Rental Affordability Scheme and complements other initiatives to improve the community's access to affordable housing, including the $450 million Better Housing Affordability Fund and the $100 million Building Better Regional Cities Program. Housing affordability is a particular challenge here in the ACT, and the ACT is to receive a disproportionate share of federal funding to address housing affordability.

Heading out to Gungahlin, you might want to take stock of the NBN rollout. It is already becoming available for residents in Gungahlin, Harrison, Watson and Macgregor, with Acton, Braddon and Canberra City soon to follow. I recently joined ministers Conroy and Lundy at the switch-on of the Gungahlin connection. There we saw students at Harrison school speak by video link with Japanese students who were practising their English while the Harrison school students practised their Japanese. Anyone can use the Gungahlin digital hub, ACT's first public connection to the National Broadband Network. Canberrans can learn more about how to access the exciting features of the National Broadband Network through free training sessions covering a range of computer basics, everyday online activities, online safety and security and connection options.

Working your way back down south, you might go through Mitchell, where the Gillard government put $90,000 from the billion dollar Clean Technology Investment Program to help the Elvin Group, a local manufacturer, reduce energy costs, improve efficiency and lower carbon pollution. As you continue to tour, if you are travelling at peak times, you might notice that traffic in the inner north gets a bit congested. You might therefore be pleased to learn that the Majura Parkway, 50-50 funded by the Gillard and Gallagher Labor governments, will help reduce the amount of time that Canberrans spend sitting in their cars, making us a more productive city and freeing up time for us to spend with family and friends. Construction on the Majura Parkway is underway. It will be the biggest road-building project in the ACT's history, reducing commuting times, taking trucks off our local streets and making us a happier and more productive city.

You would also notice how Labor's record $22 billion investment in early childhood education has helped the many talented early childhood educators throughout the ACT, including the terrific staff at the Acton Early Childhood Centre, which my children attend. Labor has increased the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent, which has seen a massive injection of desperately needed funds into the sector and has improved access to child care for Canberrans.

While you are on the campus of the Australian National University you will see where the new Lena Karmel Lodge will be housing 550 new students. Take a moment to remember that, since Labor has been in office, enrolments at the ANU have risen from 6,350 to 7,086, and these new students are among the additional 150,000 Australians studying at university nationally. At the ANU, $5 million has gone to refurbishing student learning and living areas, and total funding for the ANU has been boosted by over $130 million.

You might meet some of the many extra students who are able to receive youth allowance, thanks to the Labor government's lowering of the age of independence from 25 to 21, a reform that benefits not just students at the University of Canberra and the Australian National University but also students studying at UNSW@ADFA and at the Australian Catholic University. These students are able to earn more money while they study before it cuts into their Centrelink payments, thanks to Labor, and that has ensured more students from disadvantaged backgrounds are able to study at university.

Now you are near the city, and you might want to head over to Civic, where you can visit the community dental surgery. The Gillard government is investing $5½ million in the ACT's public dental system over the next 2½ years to reduce public dental waiting lists. That funding will enable almost 4,000 more ACT residents to get low-cost dental care. I was pleased on Monday of last week to visit the dental surgery with Chief Minister Gallagher and Minister Plibersek to see the great work that has been done in that state-of-the art dental surgery.

After seeing all those Labor investments in the electorate of Fraser firsthand, you might find yourself a bit exhausted, but the tour has not finished yet. Labor in the ACT has also invested $6½ million in carbon pricing assistance; $6.4 million for energy efficient upgrades to community facilities; around $300,000 for the launch site for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which was kick-started with a launch at Black Mountain School; and over $1 million each year to the black spots program to improve our roads. I am very proud to be the chair of the ACT Black Spot Consultative Panel, using federal funding to make our roads safer with a program that requires that public benefit be at least twice the expenditure. The million dollars of spending that go into the ACT annually translates into at least $2 million of community benefits.

ACT households have also seen millions of extra dollars in their pockets through the schoolkids bonus, worth $410 for every child in primary school and $820 for every child in high school for eligible families; and thousands of dollars through Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme to assist new parents in welcoming home their babies and easing the transition back into the workforce for new mums. As a city with high female labour force participation, the ACT particularly benefits from Labor's Paid Parental Leave scheme.

We have also seen additional expenditure to make it easier for dads to spend time with their newborns through dad and partner pay, not to mention the benefits of Labor's economic management, which is bringing down interest rates for Canberra's mortgage holders. I mentioned housing affordability before, and a Canberra family with a $300,000 mortgage is now saving around $5,000 a year on its mortgage compared to when the Liberals were last in government. You might even schedule time to meet with the thousands of Canberra workers who, thanks to Labor, were not subject to the unfair workplace relations scheme that the then Liberal government had in place. You could talk to the many Canberra public servants who value a government that values them—a government that is not committed to getting rid of 20,000 public servants.

Ours is a great city. It is the bush capital; it is Australia's social capital. We are a leafy, walkable and friendly city with a vibrant multicultural life, and I am proud of the investments the Gillard government has made in Canberra. (Time expired)

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has become an annual event under this government: every February rolls around and every February the immigration minister—this time a new Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, taking the place of the last one—comes before this parliament and asks for more money. It happens every single year. Every year they put forward a budget, every year they blow that budget and every year they come back here and they ask this parliament for yet more taxpayers' money.

Just to remind the House of this government's failure in the area of budgeting for their border protection failures, it is worth going back and just looking at their history. This is a government whose failure to manage our borders has directly translated into its failure to manage a budget. These two failures are hardwired, one to the other. In 2008-09, the budget blow-out from the original budget, as revealed in the additional estimates, was $2,257,000. The following year, 2009-10, the blow-out in that budget from the original estimate was $167 million. In 2010-11, the blow-out from the original estimate for that year was $765 million. In 2011-12, the budget blow-out leapt to a whole new level, and the variation from the original estimate first advised by the government was $1.3256 billion—that was the blow-out from the government's original estimate of the expenditure for that year. In the current year it has exponentially gone to a whole new level. In 2012-13, the government is now estimating that it will spend $2.2328 billion on asylum seeker management costs. That is a variation from their original estimate, when the estimates for this year were first published in the forward estimates, of $2.1263 billion.

This is a level of border cost blow-out which has no precedent. There are many costs to this government's failure on our borders. We know of the chaos, we know of the tragedy, but the financial costs are also significant. They have gone beyond testing the patience of Australians as they see billions upon billions of dollars having to be sucked in to this whirlpool of border failure, drawing resources from other important objectives that a government should be funding—resources that, at the very least, would be ensuring that the deficit would not be at the stratospheric levels it has been at under this government in recent years.

A habit, a practice of border protection failure, has led to this habit and practice of constantly underestimating the costs and constantly having to come before this parliament and ask for more money. The cumulative budget blow-out as at this point in time, when the costs of the increase in the refugee and the humanitarian program to 20,000 are taken into account, is more than $6.5 billion over the last four years. $6.5 billion—that is the level of blow-out.

Let us reflect on what the government have asked for over the last few years as these appropriation bills have come before this parliament. Following the 2009-10 budget, they brought forward the appropriation bills, now acts, No. 3 and No. 4, and in those bills they sought $54 million extra for recurrent and $34 million extra for capital—some $88 million. In the following February of 2011, they came into this parliament and they said, 'Please, sir, can we have some more?' They asked for $298.5 million in recurrent appropriations and a further $192.956 million for capital—a grand total for that year of an extra $491.5 million on top of what had already been appropriated to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The following year, in February 2012—groundhog day—Appropriation Bill (No. 3) sought an extra $332.546 million in recurrent and a further $9.3 million in capital for a grand total of $341,815,000 extra to cover the recurring blow-outs in this government's border budget through asylum seeker management—year on year on year.

Then, of course, came this current budget year, and such has been the level of blow-out that the government have had to ask twice. Last year, in November or thereabouts, the government came before the parliament and asked for another $1.674982 billion on top of what had already been appropriated in the budget of the previous May. The government tried to dress that up as funding the implementation of the Houston panel, but that is an absolute deceit, because the overwhelming and vast majority of those funds were not going to the implementation of measures from the Houston report, they were going to fund the sharpest increase in illegal boat arrivals that our country had ever seen. Too many people had just turned up, and it had absolutely collapsed the budget. So, the then Minister for Immigration and Citizenship came before the parliament and asked for $1.674982 billion. You would think that between November and February that should have been enough to tide them over, but, no. Once again, here we are in February, despite that enormous appropriation of last November, and the government is now asking, in these bills that are before the House, for $64.7 million in recurrent and $32.4 million in capital appropriations. That brings the grand total of these additional appropriation acts and bills since 2009-10 to some $2.7 billion.

As we reflect on those numbers, it is the score card of this government's fiscal failure and of their border failure. They are failures which the government are only too aware of. I mean, you just can't go around asking for that much money every year and not notice—you tend to notice that you always have your hand out to this parliament. That is what the government do in this area. Asking for that much money in this particular area is unprecedented. So they ask again, and the parliament is asked to shell out once more on behalf of the taxpayer. The government have gone even further on this bill, though, because the additional estimates that were released last Friday are a record. There has been an escalation in the budget from just $85 million for asylum seeker management related costs in 2007-08, when the government inherited management of these issues, to the current year's budget of $2.2 billion in just five years. Remarkably, next year they say that the costs involved in asylum seeker management are going to fall by a billion dollars, and then the year after that they are going to fall by another billion dollars. Within the space of two years, the government are budgeting to cut the cost for asylum seeker management by $2 billion.

You would have to think that a reduction of that magnitude could be assuming only one thing: that they had actually stopped the boats. The budget for 2012-13 as revised by the portfolio additional estimates, which was saying where the expenditure would be in the out years, down to $871 million and $833 million, has now been revised down by this government in those out years to just $451 million and $338 million. I asked a simple question in estimates yesterday, through Senator Cash: 'Is that what the budget looks like when you stop the boats?' The answer was yes. So that is what it can look like. But the government have missed one fatal point, and that is: you have got to actually put the policies in place which stop the boats before you bank it in your budget—and this government have failed to do that consistently. They have resisted, for years, putting back the measures that are absolutely necessary to achieve the very outcome that they have now budgeted for in this desperate raid on out year savings that can be legitimately claimed by the coalition but cannot be even remotely credibly tamed by a government that has the worst border protection record of any government in our history. The estimates are based on a belief that Labor's policies can achieve that objective, and they simply will not.

If we look at what has happened with boat arrivals over the last five years, we have gone from an average of two per month in 2007-08 to an average of more than 2,000 per month. That is where the arrow is going. The arrow is going up in terms of arrivals, and this government is claiming that the expenditure is going to come down. That is the parallel universe we live in here in Canberra when we sit around this place, where the government believe they have delivered a surplus and that they have stopped the boats. They are living in an absolute fantasy land when you look at these estimates. They cannot stand. This sort of deceit in a budget document cannot stand. Today in estimates the finance department secretary indicated that they had accepted this assumption on the basis of offshore processing being the central component of what was announced following the Houston report. At no stage have the coalition ever claimed that the simple introduction of that one measure is necessary. We have always argued that it has been a suite of measures.

There were two other very critical measures in place back in 2001-02. There were temporary protection visas, which this government continues to reject, and there was Operation Relex—the process of turning boats back and sending people back. Those measures are not in place under this government and therefore they cannot budget for coalition policy outcomes if they are not going to put coalition policies in place. One could be forgiven for thinking that the budget revision which was released last Friday was assuming the election of a coalition government, because that is the only way that the figures that are maintained in this set of budget estimates and that are funded by this bill, at least for the current year, would ever be realised.

There is a great measure of responsibility that will fall on the Secretary to the Department of Finance and Deregulation and the Secretary to the Department of the Treasury when they put the non-political estimates out there for budget prior to an election and we ensure that the true figures, based on the actual performance of this government's policies—not on their imagined performance, which is what is before them in these figures we see here today—and it will be incumbent on them to ring true. But there is an opportunity for the government to get this right. They can stop putting across this absolute fiscal furphy and they can correct these measures when they prepare the estimates for the next budget. As a result, I seek leave to table the letter that was sent to the Secretary to Department of Finance and Deregulation and the Secretary to the Department of the Treasury last night by the shadow Treasurer and I, highlighting these very points that there has to be confidence in the budgets and the estimates upon which costings will be based.

What we have before us at the moment is only a demonstration, once again, of why the numbers that this government is putting out in terms of expenditure are pure fantasy and are not a basis for anything in assessing the relative costs of the government's programs and what the impact will be on taxpayers. It is absolutely critical that we get this sorted out.

There is an opportunity for the government to come clean. They are a government that point-blank refuse to implement the coalition policies that they have abolished. That is their choice. They have made that choice. It has cost us $6½ billion in budget blow-outs and far more in the chaos and tragedy that we have seen since. But they have the opportunity to at least get the estimates of their expenditure right, and what is currently in the portfolio additional estimates is nothing more than fantasy on behalf of the government. It is nothing more than an absolute fiscal furphy. It is imperative that they remedy this, because we know that they have not delivered a surplus, despite their claims, and they are certainly not going to deliver these figures with their border protection record and the policies that they have put into place, because they just do not measure up.

Geoff Lyons (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is leave granted?

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it is not. If he had followed the protocol and given it to us before he wanted to table it—that is the protocol. After that speech, I would not give it to you anyway.

Geoff Lyons (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I notice that the member for Fowler is in another place and speaking at the moment, so I call the member for Banks.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am compelled at this stage to make some comments about what I regard as a mean-spirited speech by the member for Cook in this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 and the cognate bill. Not only is it mean spirited; it is pretty miserable, but it shows one of the problems that the Labor Party has had to face since 1995, when John Howard took bipartisanship out of the migration debate. What we have seen for the last five years from the opposition is that, for political purposes, asylum seeker immigration matters are placed front and centre with no cooperation from both sides of parliament. That has damaged the fabric of the country. It has sent the wrong message overseas to the international community about this country's behaviour towards asylum seekers. And it has actually resulted in a situation where, quite frankly, the people who have benefited from this illicit trade know that there is a gridlock situation here similar, for instance, to the US congress and what President Obama has had to face on a number of matters. The opposition should not be allowed to get away with the fact that they have been responsible for the surge that has taken place because they have sent the wrong message.

When we were last in opposition, on a number of issues we might not have agreed with the then government, but we cooperated with them in the national interest. The classic was in 2001, and it created some problems within the Labor Party. That has resulted in the figures that have been a blow-out. I served on the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Immigration Detention Network with the member for Cook, and it was a very productive committee. Nineteen of the 31 recommendations were unanimous. The government picked up 26 out of the 31, to do with reviews by ASIO, community detention and a whole range of other things.

The Leader of the Opposition is to be commended in terms of Indigenous affairs, because that is an area now where we do not have the partisanship that we once had. But in relation to migration we need to get back to a situation where both sides are able to sit down and have a civil discourse, because, if the opposition wins and the member for Cook becomes the minister, he is going to inherit the problems that he created. It is not a simple situation.

Additional appropriations have been around since time immemorial. Both sides of the House have always requested additional appropriations because they are a finetuning, a tweaking, from the climate of a budget at the time of the budget. Before, the budget used to be in September; now it is in May, and you get your estimates in December. Of course the finetuning is there.

The basic philosophy behind this government is that we have placed importance on jobs, the protection of jobs and job creation. That comes through in the additional expenditures that we are dealing with in the appropriation bills that are before us today, because without those additional appropriations there would be job cuts, and those job cuts would have a multiplier effect on our community.

The proudest thing that I saw at the time of the global financial crisis when we were in government was the infusion of money into our community on a host of programs that included Building the Education Revolution, where schools throughout Australia, in Labor, Liberal and National Party electorates, all had capital expenditure put on them. That created jobs, but it also created infrastructure that created better learning environments in all communities, and the communities are repaying the investment that the government put in. Social housing was another classic example. I was with Minister Plibersek, who was the Minister for Housing at the time, and we opened up a social housing program in the St George area, which is now part of my electorate. They told me that, but for that program, they would have lost their jobs; the companies would have folded.

We need to acknowledge that what the government has been about is protecting jobs and creating jobs. Frankly, the fact is that we do not have a surplus at this point in time because of the world economy and a combination of factors in terms of slowdowns in sections of our community. We as a government need to provide the safety net, and that is what these appropriation bills do. We should not apologise for that. If we had done nothing, the Treasury estimate was that an extra 200,000 people would have been put out of work as a result of the global financial crisis. Instead, at this point in time in the life of this government, we have 840,000 jobs to date having been created. What does that mean for local communities?

The opposition tell us that what they will be doing is $71 billion worth of cuts. With a multiplier effect in the community by four, that is a $280 billion impact in terms of the whirlpool of money washing around in our economy. That will create devastation, and we have seen it in Queensland. In March we saw 25,000 jobs lost in Queensland when Premier Newman went berserk and cut the public service and other things. These are not just public service jobs. There are on-costs.

I happen to have the privilege of being the President of the Revesby Workers Club, a licensed club in New South Wales, and for the last seven years we have been working on a diversification program—a $100 million program where we are diversifying our income in relation to the club. We now have a 90-place childcare centre with over 29 new staff and a fitness centre with over 4,000 members and over 60 staff involved in that centre. These are extra jobs that are being created. The fitness centre was a smaller fitness centre earlier. We have a situation where we are going to the next stage. In April the first sod will be turned for a commercial development which involves a Coles supermarket, six specialty stores, a 4,000-square-metre medical centre and a 26-lane AMF 10-pin bowling facility. At the moment we have 380 full-time, part-time and casual members of our staff. We will build the next stage of the commercial facilities and there will be people leasing those buildings. We estimate a doubling in the number of jobs on the footprint of the site that the club owns, so they are not all going to be jobs where people are employed by the club. I have seen a growth up to now from 220 jobs—roughly a third full-time, a third part-time and a third casual—to the next level. As I say, we are relying on poker machines to be able to fund the loan facility, but it is also about an economy that is not burnt out. There are not a lot of loans around. We have been very fortunate in terms of our tendering process, getting very good tender prices because of the economics.

I dread to think what will happen if the Leader of the Opposition is elected as our next Prime Minister and his government does what the opposition say they are going to do in relation to cuts and sending people to Northern Australia. What we would be dealing with is different sorts of appropriations. We would be dealing with cutting and savagery on a scale that we do not know.

The last time we saw this was when the coalition was elected under John Howard and they had that horrific budget of 1996 when they slashed and burned across the sector, and ATSIC, as it then was—and I was the shadow minister for Aboriginal affairs—had $470 million cut. We still have not seen a recovery from those savage cuts. Many community facilities that were run by women in those local communities folded—and then you ended up with the intervention.

So we should not apologise—and I do not apologise—for the fact that we are not having a surplus at this point in time. It is our ability to service and to protect our community that counts. In terms of our economic performance and rating, everyone outside Australia sees Australia as the shining light, as the beacon. They cannot get it. President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron in the UK just cannot get what all this negativity is about. We have just been hit in the last couple of years by an economic tsunami and Australia has come through it better than any other country in the world. I think part of the problem is that there is a bit of cynicism out there. Because we have so effectively protected our workforce, they do not really appreciate what the government has done. That is life. We have got to be able to sell the message.

But the message really is: the coalition are not about creating jobs. It is in their interests to create an extra pool of unemployed so that they can attack the conditions of the working people of this country. What you will have will be a different attack. Rather than a Work Choices attack, there will be a greater pool of unemployed so that they can attack the conditions of the workers and take away their conditions—the further casualisation of the workforce.

So I am quite proud to be standing up and giving extra money to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship in relation to these matters when it comes to community detention and infrastructure. What the member for Cook does not tell you is that if you actually keep people in detention it costs you about $100,000 a year and if you put them in community detention outside detention centres the cost is a fraction of that. So you are actually saving money because it is much cheaper. That is why there were, and always are, alternative sentencing options in our courts for juvenile offenders and others to putting them into high-security or maximum-security prisons or detention centres, because the cost is much more. And it is more humane.

Yes, there has been a surge—we know there has been a surge—but the opposition does not take the blame because they say that they are not in government and they seek to sheet the blame home on the government. In my opinion, they are culpable because of the environment they created. People have mobile phones. People have computers and there is a communication network. When we got that piece of legislation through the parliament that time as a result of the expert committee, there was a slowdown at that stage. But when you cannot get stuff through the parliament, that sends the wrong message to the people smugglers. It is a good thing, I would have thought, that there is an estimate that the cost will come down in the future. In a difficult area the government is trying to get around it. So I get a little bit annoyed at the cant and hypocrisy that I hear, not from all members but from some members on the other side, because they take glee in human misery and see political advantage in that human misery. It is not a place where we should go to. It is not a place they should go to, and I know that there are many members on the other side who do not go there, members who have crossed the floor in relation to the harsh measures that were introduced by the former government.

So as far as appropriation bills are concerned that give extra money, I am not frightened of them—I welcome them. In effect, they protect what I think is the most valuable role of government: protecting the jobs in our society.

I saw what happened when youth unemployment went from 17.1 per cent in 1996 in the Canterbury-Bankstown area to 34½ per cent in 1998 as they closed the Skillshares, as they put fees on for TAFE, as they coordinated a whole campaign of cuts. Kids were on the streets, and you can trace some of the problems in Bankstown back to that time. We should learn from those mistakes. We should be creating opportunities for people. We should not be apologising in additional estimates for extra expenditure when they try to do these things.

Mr Somlyay has a bit of knowledge about economics. He has been around for a while, not just as a member of parliament but as an adviser before that. The budget itself is not the only night upon which a government puts forward its economic blueprint. There is tweaking that takes place, so it is no longer all done on the one night, it is done throughout the year—through MYEFO and a whole range of other things. So I am quite happy to stand here and support the appropriation bills and commend them to the House, but I express disappointment at the tone of the member for Cook's speech. It was a mean-spirited, nasty speech. I expect more from him. If he wants to be a future minister in a government I expect better of him. I expect the better side of his character to come forward. He was, of course, the state director of the Liberal Party at one stage, and that is what I think we heard today. He needs to grow up from that and act a little bit more responsibly, because I thought it was a rubbish speech.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on these appropriation bills. I represent the regional electorate of Murray, in northern Victoria, which has been a major contributor to that state and to the national economy through manufactured food exports and food for the domestic markets. We generate billions of dollars through agricultural production, which generates more employment than any other industrial sector. The food and beverage, grocery and fresh produce sector is not only Australia's largest manufacturing sector, it represents 28 per cent of total manufacturing turnover. It is comparable in size to our mining sector and ismore than four times larger than the automotive sector, which enjoys such regular largesse and subsidy from this government.

In 2010-11, when all of the value adding and activity along the food chain was taken into account, agriculture provided over 1.6 million jobs in the Australian economy. Half of those jobs were in regional Australia and 99 per cent of the approximately 130,000 farm businesses are Australian owned. When all of the value-adding processes that food and fibre go through are aggregated, agriculture's contribution to the GDP averages around 12 per cent or $155 billion per annum. So why aren't we in awe of this industry sector? Why aren't we paying it attention? Why is it so often the butt of bad government policy? Why don't we understand the market failure that is so evident both in our domestic and international markets? And why do we have some 700 to 800 people gathering in the Western District of Victoria just the other day with a new group called Farmer Power, which tomorrow will be participating in a gathering in my electorate where we expect 700 or 800 people again saying 'enough is enough'? We have an agricultural sector in rural and regional Australia which is in despair, which is not getting a fair go and a decent livelihood. They cannot sustain the environment as they know they must, and have always done, because they simply are not getting enough to cover the costs of doing business in Australia.

The farm sector has outperformed other sectors in growth over the last 30 years, with an annual rate of about 2.8 per cent. But in very recent times this has slowed to one per cent, reflecting, amongst other things, the government's neglect of vital research and development spending, which is necessary for innovation and to grow productivity, and the removal of water out of the Murray-Darling Basin from food and fibre producers. Over 1,500 gigalitres of water is now out of production and in the Commonwealth's own environmental water holder's bucket, with no advantage or additional sustainability for the environment.

When the coalition left office, a free trade agreement with China was almost ready for signing. That FTA languishes unsigned, and today's media carried stories about how our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was going back to try and repair the broken bridges in China—a result, unfortunately, of her naivete and clumsiness when last there.

New Zealand has an FTA with China and so their dairy products, meats and wines enjoy significant cost advantage over Australian exports. They also enjoy tariff advantages with Japan and the Republic of Korea while our DFAT effort is underfunded and underskilled and totally ineffective. The carbon tax has been particularly brutal in raising the cost of energy for food producers and food manufacturers who are energy intensive. They are also price takers; they cannot pass the extra 15 per cent on their electricity bills to buyers in export markets, where we are already less competitive because of the high Australian dollar. And none of our EU or US food market competitors are serious about reducing their massive subsidies to their own primary producers and manufacturers.

Australian farmers export about 60 per cent of what they grow and produce, but in our domestic food and beverage markets we also have significant market failure. You cannot pretend we have free trade or fair trade in our domestic markets. Labor members of parliament proclaim that we live in a free-trade international-domestic environment so no support is needed for our struggling producers. Nearly 80 per cent of market share being held by just two supermarket chains in Australia means that they can compete on price alone with each other, boasting about charging just one dollar for a litre of milk. There was in fact a price per litre of milk of 62c in the Western District recently in a supermarket which thought it was a wonderful thing for their buyers, the people with the shopping trolleys. Sadly, those same people with shopping trolleys might not have an option of Australian produced milk in the near future. 'Down, down, down', we hear our supermarkets cry. They are referring to their prices but they could be referring to their suppliers' viability and capacity to survive. They could be referring to what our next generation of farmers actually think about continuing in their fathers' and mothers' footsteps.

We have labour costs pushed up by this Labor government because it has no concept of the flexibility needed to compete when you do not have a nine to five Monday to Friday workplace, where seasonal peaks and troughs in labour requirement mean you must have a flexible and fair approach, not just a punitive set of penalty rates for weekends or before or after regular hours of work. We are 30 per cent higher when it comes to comparing labour costs with our nearest neighbour, New Zealand, so it is no wonder that Heinz's Girgarre tomato sauce factory marched out of that town last year and headed straight for New Zealand, where they do not even grow the tomatoes required to manufacture tomato sauce. We now have food manufacturers in Australia who can import ingredients like fruit juice concentrates or tomato paste or preserved or frozen fruits, vegetables or seafoods at a fraction of the price of buying that same food for processing from an Australian farmer or fisher. In 2011 and 2012 total imports of foods and beverages exceeded industry exports by $2.8 billion. Not surprisingly there was also a decline in employment in the Australian food and beverage grocery and fresh produce sector by 7,000 in the year 2010-11.

This Gillard government has produced a National Food Plan. I so wanted this plan to be a thoughtful, useful, innovative plan. Unfortunately, it is a joke. It failed to focus on the problems of Australia's competition policy failure. It did not talk about the market power of the supermarkets and what had to be done in relation to the confused food labelling laws in Australia where you can get away with implying that much of the product is from locally produced ingredients. The supermarkets continue to get away with squeezing prices and increasing the demand for home brands production at the expense of Australian manufacturers' own branded products. All of this is the reality in Australia's agricultural and food sector. But the Australian National Food Plan failed to even mention that this is the context in which Australian food producers try to survive.

I was recently bemused when one of the big two supermarkets told me that their contract with suppliers always includes the capacity for the supplier to revisit the agreed price if the cost of the production had risen.

They assured me that they rarely, if ever, receive an approach to renegotiate a price on a contract—'So everyone must be happy!' they said. Even they knew that that was laughable. If any supplier complained about price to one of the big two, they would know that outside the door there was a queue of alternative and desperate suppliers waiting to cut just a little more off their bottom line. They have nowhere else to go. The export markets that they have to compete in are corrupted and there are the costs of doing business with the high Australian dollar, our non-competitive carbon tax—the refrigerant gas tax—and our labour costs. All of those factors mean that, if you happen to sell some of your product in the domestic market, you just might limp by for another season.

There are no complaints to the Produce and Grocery Industry Ombudsman either, because retaliation can be so swift and so deadly. For example, there are seven or eight Australian-based dairy manufacturers all jostling to supply basically two buyers—Coles and Woolworths. To suggest that there is any market power in the hands of suppliers in the Australian food and beverage value chain is to demonstrate you know nothing about the realities of life in that sector in Australia.

In my electorate there is a town called Tongala. It is a dairying town in what was once—and will be again one day, I hope—a rich dairying area. It boasts a Nestle factory, which produces the best condensed milk in the world, sought after particularly for confectionary and fudge making. There is a big export abattoir that converts surplus dairy cows into ground beef for export to the USA. Tomorrow this town of just a few thousand people is expecting close to a thousand local primary producers and other business and community members—all of them dependent on a decent go—to gather in the Tongala Shire Hall to protest and to plan. The dairy industry cannot survive and thrive with the prices now being paid for their output. These primary producers can survive droughts, floods and fires, but they cannot survive the policy and market failures that characterise our country.

These people cannot survive in an environment where the government of the day sees them as simply superfluous to need—out of sight, out of mind. For example, why do we not spend some of our foreign aid dollars on buying purposely manufactured product in Australia, which could be highly nutritious—for example, milk powder based product—which we can send to the most drought-affected or disaster-affected communities elsewhere in the world. Other countries do that—the United States and New Zealand, for example. That means that you have further employment in Australia, your surplus Australian food and juices unable to be sold can be utilised outside of Australia, rather than our aid programs depending on simply cash donations—and we know a lot of that cash goes astray. We can then be assured of the quality and nutritional levels of the food supplied to save the Syrian refugees or the desperate people in Mali. Of course this government would have to see that this is a subsidy, not protection, and is plain common-sense. At this point in time, however, I am not getting very much sympathy for an option that was taken up long ago by European, United States and New Zealand governments.

Let me, in my final minutes, talk about one of the greatest and most extraordinary disasters now occurring in Northern Victoria. There is an irrigation system managed by the Goulburn-Murray Water, which is a state-owned authority with over 600 employees. That authority is now spending $1 billion of federal money to reduce its irrigation footprint by 50 per cent. It wants to reduce the channel system from 6,300 kilometres to just 3,000 kilometres—and, no, it is not going to replace all of those channels with pipes or alternative systems of water delivery. It wants to have at least half of the irrigators convert to just stock and domestic or dryland farming only. The productivity of the region is already being affected by this reduction in water security.

Before 2007 we had 1,900 gigalitres of water to put into food and fibre production in this area; since 2007 we are down to about 1,000 gigalitres. This area in northern Victoria, which has wide brown plains with only about 15 inches of rainfall, but with glorious soils and a glorious climate, is just ideal for irrigated agriculture. That is why we were the food bowl of Australia. That is why we had the biggest dairy exports out of Geelong year after year—magnificent country with water security. That is, as we speak, being destroyed by government policy. I find this just too difficult to explain to people who say, 'That can't be true; that can't be right.' Well, come and see how a 100-year-old irrigation district is being destroyed in order to save a state owned government instrumentality that is heavily in debt and cannot manage the whole of the system by itself. Obviously, an irrigator cooperative is the answer, as in New South Wales, Western Australia and every other irrigator state in the country. But, unfortunately, at this point in time no-one is seeing reason. Farmers are being killed by a thousand cuts.

Food and fibre production in this country will continue to suffer as long as such stupidity prevails. We have to listen to the voices on the ground who know best, because our growers can meet the demand for additional food into Asia and more in the future if only they are given a chance.

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

I rise to support Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2013. I noticed in the papers that this bill includes, amongst other things, recognition of funding of settlement services, particularly with respect to refugees and new arrivals, and the fostering of multiculturalism. In doing that, I thought this might be an opportunity to talk about multiculturalism as I experience it in my electorate. As most members of the House are aware, because I say it regularly, I do have the most multicultural electorate in the whole of Australia. That is something I am indeed very proud of. I am very honoured to be their representative in this federal parliament.

Last weekend, the Vietnamese and Chinese communities from all over the world came together to greet and celebrate the arrival of the Lunar New Year. This marks the transition from the Year of the Dragon to this year, the Year of the Snake, which carries the meaning of wisdom, intelligence, opportunities and change—not as I joked in one of the speeches during the course of that celebration, the year of politicians. It has nothing to do with us at all, other than the hope that we have the necessary wisdom in this place.

Since becoming the member for Fowler I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity on three occasions to attend and join a number of the celebrations that mark the Lunar New Year. Vietnamese New Year, commonly known as Tet, marks the arrival of spring in the Vietnamese homeland. Tet or Chinese New Year is considered one of the biggest and most popular festivals in the Vietnamese and Chinese community, and is celebrated on the first day of the first month in the lunar calendar. No matter where Tet or Chinese New Year is celebrated, the beginning of the new lunar year is not just a day, but occupies several days of celebration. I have been attending celebrations throughout my electorate over the last two weeks. I am reliably assured that it is likely to continue for the next couple of weeks.

To give an indication, on Saturday 2 February I had the pleasure of attending the Tet festival at Fairfield showground in Sydney's south west along with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who formally opened the Tet festival celebrations. Despite the very inclement weather that Sydney had been experiencing over that weekend, which left Fairfield showground a quagmire of mud, the rain did not stop the joy of the celebration and it certainly did not stop the 30,000 people that attended over the three days that it was held. It was a remarkable contribution with respect to multiculturalism.

Not minding the rain, my wife, Bernadette, and my four grandchildren, Nathanial, Noah, Charlie and Maisy—Maisy has just turned two—turned up at the festival wearing traditional Vietnamese ao dais, much to the photographer's delight. Again it was certainly one of the festivals that really lends itself to the true practice of multiculturalism.

The spectacular colours, music and, of course, fireworks mark a tradition in Vietnamese culture that has now been celebrated for centuries. I congratulate the Vietnamese Community in Australia New South Wales chapter, in particular their President, Mr Thanh Nguyen, for once again holding such a successful event under very challenging circumstances in south-west Sydney. Mr Nguyen is a very good friend, and I see the work that the association does on behalf of the community. I commend him, his committee and the volunteers for all the hard work and great efforts in organising an event that enables the larger Vietnamese community to come together and celebrate. One thing that was remarked on and that was a key point of the celebrations was the recognition of all those Vietnamese students who had in excess of 99 per cent in their higher school certificate. Again, it is a showcase of education and attainment.

On 3 February I also had the opportunity of attending the Sydney Indo-Chinese Youth Sports Association's new year celebration. For many years now the association has provided sporting, training and cultural activities for the younger Chinese generations in my electorate. Mr Thay Lim, president of the association, has given local young people an opportunity to learn about the traditional and cultural performances within the Chinese tradition. I was very impressed with the work undertaken by Mr Lim and his management committee and was certainly captivated by the talented performances including martial arts, acrobatics and a taekwondo self-defence display that was demonstrated by the young people.

Last Friday the president of the Asian Chamber of Commerce, Mr Tranh Nguyen, together with the Mayor of Fairfield, Mr Frank Carbone, invited me to attend with them and hundreds of other residents the Lunar New Year celebration in Canley Heights. The Asian Chamber of Commerce has supported and provided a strong voice for local Asian business men and women that have settled in Australia and is helping them with networking and innovative marketing as well as helping to expand their businesses in our country.

Having celebrated the lunar new year for three years now I am well aware that the lunar new year is an occasion for family reunion and a time for both Vietnamese and Chinese to express their respect for and remembrance of their ancestors. It also has a long and deep rooted tradition for families to visit pagodas and pay their respects at the various temples. I was honoured to be invited to the Phuoc Hue Temple by the Most Venerable Thich Phuoc Dat for the new year celebration and the countdown to the actual new year. The temple is one of the biggest and most popular in Sydney's west, and there were more than 40,000 people attending the temple for celebrations last Saturday.

The new year celebrations involved live entertainment, traditional foods and sensational fireworks display. A major part of the celebration each year is the energetic and vibrant line dancing. In that respect I should indicate that, by tradition, the lion represents joy and happiness and, I understand, lions are often summoned to bring luck and good fortune.

I acknowledge the hard work of Dong Tam, an association that is comprised of many school students who have worked very hard in developing their skills in martial arts and also in producing a spectacular line dancing display that they did.

On Sunday I attended, together with many of our community leaders, the Mingyue Lay Temple, which is the Buddhist temple in Bonnyrigg, for their new year's celebration. This temple follows the Chinese tradition. The temple is led by the President of the Australian Chinese Buddhist Society, Vincent Kong. The vice-chairman of the temple is James Chan, who has been a very good friend over many years before I came to represent Fowler. I have spoken in this place on many occasions about him, his goodwill and his generosity to the community. This event certainly showcased the value of multiculturalism in South-West Sydney.

After attending that temple I visited the Australian Chin Lien Chinese Association. Their temple is the Kuan Yin Temple. It is led by President Michael Chan and they took me through their Buddhist religious celebrations. I also had a chance to talk to Michael Chan and his committee about their involvement with aged care. They are very committed to providing services within the community. They are trying to provide specialised aged-care arrangements for vulnerable members of the Chinese community in Western Sydney. We should recognise the very good work they are doing on behalf of the broader community.

On Sunday I also visited the Vietnamese Catholic Association to pay my respects. As a Catholic I attended mass with Father Paul Van Chi and his parishioners at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Mount Pritchard. Father Paul Van Chi is a remarkable person. He is very strongly committed to raising awareness of human rights abuses in Vietnam. It is in that respect I have worked very closely with him over the past three years. He is certainly a man who understands that the success of a modern Vietnam must start with the country recognising and honouring the human rights and dignity of the people of Vietnam.

I have always taken pride in Australia's multiculturalism. Particularly in Western Sydney it is not just words; it is something you feel out there. This is something we do very well. My grandchildren growing up in this environment will take for granted being able to become involved in various traditions and cultures and to experience their spiritual as well as their commonly delights. That is going to be something that is part and parcel for the up-and-coming generation.

I am very proud to represent this community in the federal parliament. In excess of 30 per cent of my community have an Asian background. The opportunity to learn about the different Asian customs and traditions has made me as an individual more respectful of the cultural values and beliefs of these communities. We as a nation should be particularly proud at times like this that bring the broader Australian community together. We should savour the depth and vibrancy of our multiculturalism because this is something we do very well.

It also reminds me of the valuable contribution that the Asian community have made to Australian multiculturalism. Clearly the Vietnamese have called Australia home for no more than 38 years, since the fall of Saigon, yet it is hard to think of any other group of immigrants to this country that have made such a remarkable contribution in such a short period of time, whether it be through academia, the professions or the trades. Their general involvement in the community is to my way of thinking unparalleled. I recall that, within two weeks of the Queensland floods, a group of Vietnamese doctors in my local community set up their own fundraising.

They raised $140,000 over that period through the generosity of the Vietnamese community. One of the doctors, Dr Luu, told me there was an old Vietnamese saying, and it loosely translates like this: when you eat the fruit of the tree, you have regard for the people who planted the seed. He said that, within Vietnamese custom, coming to Australia was something that gave them opportunity. Therefore, when other Australians were in need, it was their turn to try to help—and they take that very, very seriously. I have to say, to see that in action is something that is quite humbling.

I hope the Year of the Snake brings reward and prosperity for all, particularly those on this side of politics come 14 September. I wish all the Chinese and Vietnamese communities a very joyous and happy New Year as they celebrate the Year of the Snake. So allow me to try this: kung hei fat choi; gong xi fa cai; kinh chuc moi nguoi mot nam; manh khoe, vui ve; chuc mung nam moi.

Alex Somlyay (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish the member for Griffith were here; he could tell me what those last few words spoken were! Appropriation bills are a good opportunity for members of parliament to address any issue—and you do not necessarily have to speak about the contents of the bill itself! So I am taking the opportunity today to talk about a number of issues that are very important to my electorate, which I have represented for almost 23 years now—and I think I have six months to go, probably! I will become an armchair expert, a blogger and all that, to drive all you people crazy, if you are back here!

Volunteering is a thing that I have come to really appreciate over the time that I have been a member of parliament, especially in my area. The Sunshine Coast in my electorate of Fairfax is a tourism area, it is a retirement area; the main industry is retirement, believe it or not: retirement! Retirees spend more money in retailing, shopping et cetera than any other sector of the community, so they are a very important part of my community. But as retirees get older, they need care. And because they have moved from interstate or from elsewhere in Queensland, they do not have family to look after them, and it falls upon volunteers to step in and carry out those little things that families normally provide for the elderly.

My electorate of Fairfax was named after Ruth Fairfax. She was the founding president of the Queensland Country Women's Association, a great organisation of volunteers. Recent national statistics reveal that more than six million Australians undertake some form of volunteer activity and that the most represented demographic is the 45 to 54 age group. By no means do I dispute these reassuring revelations about our country and our extraordinary capacity to give so selflessly of our time and energy. Simply, volunteering is in our veins and our communities are indeed richer for the diverse contributions people make.

However, my own observations in my electorate of Fairfax have prompted me to reflect on how local Sunshine Coast volunteers may or may not match this demographic profile. During these 23 years I have been to countless meetings—AGMs and events and with community based and not-for-profit organisations across the entire Sunshine Coast. Looking back to 1990, my first year as a federal member, I have wonderful memories of walking into rooms and halls throughout the region and meeting volunteers, many of whom were associated with those organisations well before my political arrival. Now they still seem to be there; they have been there for the last 20 years—and they are getting old. And I suspect they will be there long after my political departure, because today, more than two decades later, when I am invited to these same events I see the same people still there, and I see the same people at different events.

If I go to a Red Cross meeting and then I go to a CWA meeting, I see many of the same faces. There is a brigade of volunteers who just do nothing else. It is not that I am tired of seeing the same faces of those wonderful volunteers—quite the contrary—but I am thinking that they must be exhausted from their many years of dedicated service. It is volunteer fatigue of a different kind.

We know Australia has an ageing population, and my experiences on the Sunshine Coast confirm that mature members of the community are generously represented in the volunteering ranks, and that is not a bad thing. However what causes me concern is the likelihood that these volunteers are obliged to continue the good work because there is simply no-one to take their place. Would their departure leave unfillable gaps? Would organisations with proud traditions, such as I mentioned, the CWA, cease to exist? I hope not. The individual contributions of these organisations are part of the social fabric of our communities. Let us not lose them through unintended neglect.

So how can we foster the sustainability of our volunteer based community groups? How can we 'succession plan' for our volunteers into the future? Does government have a role? I believe so. In my small way every month when the Electoral Commission sends me a list of new constituents in my electorate, I invite them if they are new to the area to join volunteer groups and give a bit back to the community. That is one way of recruiting.

The collective contributions of volunteers are well documented by the ABS. I know through the ABS reports that Australians share extraordinary amounts of their time going on volunteer courses. It is also estimated that the volunteers provide billions of dollars of unpaid labour—billions. No level of government—state, Commonwealth or local—could ever hope to pay or to compensate for the work that volunteers carry out.

We can acknowledge this generosity and encourage even greater participation by simple things like tax incentives and making sure that it does not cost people too much money to be volunteers. The cost-of-living pressures that people have at the moment are acting as a disincentive for volunteers to volunteer. Volunteers have been building the social capital of our community for generations and I think it is about time we thought about how we can in some way repay the favour. It may be the lifeline that some organisations need.

The other issue that I want to raise is, of all things, coal seam gas. Australia has an abundance of natural gas supplies with reserves found throughout our continent. For millions of years these gases have been forming under our country's vast tracts of earth but it has only been in the last hundred years that we have tapped into this resource for commercial and domestic applications.

In very recent times Australia's gas industry and more specifically coal seam gas exploration projects have surfaced publicly, becoming the subject of much political, social and environmental debate and scrutiny. These are issues within our community which are divisive and which do polarise opinions. It is certainly in Australia's best interests, both in the short and longer term, to focus on achieving the right outcomes.

But let us not lose sight of some very simple facts. Natural gas is generally recognised as a clean, safe, convenient form of fuel, an alternative to electricity, the other energy elephant in the public debate. As a nation, we are prolific at producing and exporting this gas, but do we really maximise this resource domestically to our international advantage? I ask then: why are we losing the argument about coal seam gas in the court of public opinion? I do know why. It is because the general public hear the negative arguments about fracking and the effect on aquifers and other environmental concerns. They see farmers and others protesting.

Mr and Mrs Average say, 'What's in it for me?' They see no positives for themselves in this great natural resource. Really, this is a great opportunity. We should see this as an opportunity. The opportunity is there for a national project at least as important as the Snowy Mountains scheme of the early 1950s and 1960s. It will not be impossible for the NBN to deliver optic fibre to every home and every business. Why don't we roll out gas lines at the same time so that Australia can reap the benefits domestically that we are exporting to China, Korea and Japan?

We are ambitiously promising to lay out these fibre optic cables across the length and breadth of the country as part of making our indelible mark in the new world of cybercommunications. As part of this undertaking, it seems pragmatic to me to simultaneously install these gas lines to our homes and businesses with energy for tomorrow, potentially infinitely. It is a real pipeline for our future. Without energy there is no NBN. If we take this infrastructure leap of faith now, we are providing a valuable resource for our population that has ability over time to reduce domestic energy costs and to lower the cost of living for all Australians. I do not know anyone who does not want cheap, more convenient and safe power sources. To make our business and industry more competitive in global markets by reducing the current burden of high energy costs presently through our export mechanisms for gas, we are making our trading partners more competitive.

Currently, Australians have no or little affinity with the natural gas industry because as consumers we have come to rely on other fuel sources because of its unavailability and its price, and because of taxes. Australians should be given access to more economic alternatives. We have to prepare better for the future and investment in the domestic application of natural gas is equally as prudent as delivering on our export aspirations. Wider mainstream use of natural gas brings other advantages in terms of opening up greater research and development into gas exploration and safe extraction. Collectively, let us choose to be the guardians of Australia's ample natural gas business. We have an obligation to the current and future generations, so let us change our energy destiny. Other countries have done that. If you look at Norway and the oil rich countries, they have all provided access to these low-cost energy sources for their domestic consumption. Australia should do the same.

There is one word that really irks me and that is the word 'branding'. I hear the word 'branding' regularly. There is the Labor brand, the Liberal brand. It reminds me of a story I want to tell the parliament that I heard some years ago. There was a board meeting in this pet food company in New York and they sat through the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning because the sales of their cans of dog food had fallen dramatically. They were there at three o'clock in the morning when the cleaners turned up to work. The cleaner knocked on the door and came in. They had all these things up on the board and they thought they would market-test the branding on the cleaner. They said to her: 'What do you think of the branding? What's the problem?' She said: 'It's not the branding. The dogs don't like the dog food. The dogs don't like what's in the tin.'

Politics is not about branding. I do not want to be branded as a 'Liberal' and therefore have an identikit image. I am an individual. I am a person. Politics is about people. It is the people of a political party who are important, and their performance, and not the 'brand', in the terminology that the advertising gurus would have us use. I wanted to say a few more things but I will save them for another day.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4, and it is a delight to follow the member for Fairfax, whom I genuinely will miss in this place. I worked alongside him when he was the Chair of the House of Representatives Health and Ageing Committee and a proud champion of the tradition of the Country Women's Association, after whose founder his seat of Fairfax was named. I want to thank you, Mr Somlyay, for being an incredible champion for breastfeeding. I note that may not be something many of your colleagues know about, but your work on the Health and Ageing Committee and the report you did on Australia's breastfeeding rates was a very outstanding piece of work. I want to thank you for the great leadership you showed on that committee. You will be missed.

The additional estimates represented in the bills before us seek appropriation for measures announced since the 2012-13 budget. Our 2012-13 budget focused on assisting families with cost-of-living pressures. The budget has continued our commitment to advancing the skills and education of all Australians. It reflects our significant investment in our nation's infrastructure—roads, rail and ports—and in new infrastructure such as the National Broadband Network. It is a true Labor budget. I particularly want to highlight our commitment to ensuring the health needs of all Australians and to talk a little about that in my constituency.

Since the election of the government back in 2007, my region has seen unprecedented investment in the health and hospital system. Year after year the federal budget has delivered on a major health infrastructure in our region, and the 2012-13 budget was no different. That budget included two major new health investments in Ballarat. The first was the expansion of facilities for Ballarat District Nursing and Healthcare to support nurses who deliver incredibly important services in people's homes, supporting people staying longer in their homes and recovering from often fairly awful health circumstances. In addition, there was $2.6 million to enable La Trobe University to buy house and land packages in Ballarat to accommodate allied health and dental students on clinical placements in the region. Obviously, increasing the number of students who do their placements in our region will increase the chance that they will settle and conduct their practices in regional and rural areas.

Ballarat District Nursing and Healthcare had been discussing their project with me for a long time. Their funding provides for podiatry clinic rooms, a wound clinic, a diabetes education clinic and the upgrade of their IT infrastructure. The demand for their services across our region is continuing to grow. The upgrade of their facilities is going to ensure that this healthcare provider can provide the services needed for the people of Ballarat and the region well into the 21st century.

The $2.6 million funding for house and land packages for La Trobe Uni is also warmly welcomed. The work to provide those is well underway and I look forward to many of those students operating within another federally funded project, a new dental clinic, in my electorate. Ballarat is a great place to work, to live and to raise a family. We want health professionals to experience our region and the advantages of living and working in regional Victoria. That funding to La Trobe University is doing just that.

The budget also saw a $3.3 million boost to Ballan and district health services. The funding is in addition to $1.4 million we have already provided for the GP superclinic, which is up and running. Ballan and district health services have seen incredible improvements over the past five years. It was the first GP superclinic in the country and it continues to thrive and attract doctors and nursing staff from across the state. There was significant funding from the federal government, and the centre now includes 24-hour emergency care, dental, physiotherapy, dietetics, podiatry, occupational therapy, psychology, pathology, echocardiograms, audiology, district nursing, community health nursing, a women's health clinic, chronic disease management, drug and alcohol support services, welfare support services, emergency relief, optometry and transport connection services which were not available in that community previously.

The $3.3 million committed to that service under this year's budget is providing additional consulting and treatment rooms, rehabilitation facilities, pharmacy, education facilities and space for additional staff, as well as a hydrotherapy pool to help with rehabilitation for both young and old residents to exercise and to rehabilitate all year round—a very significant commitment to the Ballan community.

The funding for health project follows on from other major commitments that have previously been announced and are well underway in terms of construction: the Ballarat Regional Integrated Cancer Centre, $42 million from the Commonwealth; the Ballarat dental clinic, $8.3 million from the Commonwealth; Ballarat primary care facility, $11.6 million from the Commonwealth to build a new community health centre; Ballarat headspace; Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital, the upgrade of $2 million there; the Creswick Medical Centre upgrade; the Daylesford Springs Medical Centre upgrade; and Daylesford student placement accommodation—all Commonwealth funded programs under this government for health in my region.

Labor has invested heavily in transforming health services and the way health is delivered in my electorate. Yet, on health, we have seen in Victoria one of the most extraordinary misinformation campaigns that I have ever seen in the time that I have been involved in politics. Investment in health has been a very serious priority of the Gillard government, and in this budget and the appropriation bills we are talking about tonight, the government has been providing $3.2 billion of funding for the day-to-day running of Victoria's hospital system. It is a $196 million increase from last year, so every hospital in Victoria should be getting more money than last year, and that money is coming from the Commonwealth government. By 2015-16, this will rise to $4.5 billion in health funding coming from the Commonwealth to the state of Victoria, and that is an increase of $900 million over four years.

Under that funding agreement, Victoria's health system has received $1.2 billion more than they would have under the opposition's old health funding model, the Healthcare Agreement. This is in addition to the infrastructure capital payments that I have just spoken about, that are funding projects right the way across the state of Victoria.

While federal Labor is providing record investments in revitalising Victoria's health system, the Liberal state government has cut $616 million out of the health system and has sought to use the Commonwealth's increases to mask their own cuts. The federal government is providing extra funding to Victoria under the National Health Reform Agreement, and, despite claims to the contrary and despite MYEFO adjustments, that money is continuing to go up every single year. Hospitals and patients in Victoria have a right to feel that they have been let down by the Victorian Liberal state government, and that they have been taken for mugs on health.

In addition to all of that funding, under the national partnership agreement—a separate agreement from the National Health and Hospitals Reform agreement—the Commonwealth is investing more money specifically in projects to relieve pressure on elective surgery, to relieve pressure on emergency departments and to provide for extra hospital beds. That is in addition to the National Health and Hospitals Reform program. Victoria has already received, under that partnership agreement, an extra $556 million on top of the health funding that I have already outlined, and of this money $128 million was paid to the Victorian Liberal state government on Thursday. That agreement and that money are for specific projects in specific health services in Victoria. This includes $4.4 million that has been earmarked for Ballarat health services.

There are some media reports today that are also a bit worrying; they clearly show that $2.4 million was also on the table and available to be provided to Victoria on Thursday, but because the Liberal government has not provided the data it had agreed to provide that money cannot be paid under the agreement. We are very keen to pay that money, but unfortunately the Victorian state government needs to come to the party and actually honour its commitments under that agreement. The federal government is keen to provide that investment to Victoria, and to Victorian health services as soon as the Baillieu government provides the promised assurances that that funding will go directly to front-line services.

As part of health reform an independent administrator provides information on how each state and territory is spending Commonwealth money across its public hospital system, including funding that goes to each hospital. Not surprisingly, it is Victoria which is the only state or territory government that has not properly provided that data. In Victoria we have had a state Liberal government that has slashed some $616 million from Victoria's health system. That is a figure that is in its own budget papers. The Commonwealth in the meantime has increased funding by $900 million and will do so over the next four years, including this year. Yet the Victorian Liberal government continues to withhold data and refuses to adequately report data as part of its agreement under the health and hospitals reform.

The question needs to be asked about what is happening to Commonwealth funding in health as it goes to the state of Victoria. Where is it going? Hospitals in Victoria should be asking very specifically, 'How much of my money is money that is coming from the Commonwealth,' and are they getting every single dollar of Commonwealth funding they should be? My concern is that they are not. My concern is that Commonwealth funding to the state of Victoria is not being passed on to front-line health services as it should be, and the Liberal state government of Victoria needs to tell us why. Having been around in this space for a while, I know that state governments tend to like squirrelling away a bit of Commonwealth money—they tend to like doing that. We talk about The Blame Game, a very good report that the member for Fairfax and the member for Shortland were intimately involved in. I want to know whether every single dollar of Commonwealth money, all that extra money that is coming in from the Commonwealth to Victoria, is going to front-line hospital services. On Thursday an extra $128 million is coming under the partnership agreement into the state of Victoria, agreement that there are specific hospitals that it should go to. Ballarat Health Services is one of those, and $4.4 million is quite a lot of emergency service procedures. It is 18 beds in the hospital. I want to know that money is directly going to the hospital. It has been paid to the state government and the hospital needs to be asking where it is.

I want to be very clear that there is a stark difference between the federal Labor government and the Liberal state government in Victoria when it comes to health funding. Labor has invested in health and has increased its investment in health. We want to see better health services across this country. The Liberal Party in Victoria has cut funding. We have seen Mr Baillieu slash funding in Victoria and I am concerned about what the consequences nationally will be if the Liberals are in power here. I am pleased to support these appropriation bills and the additional expenditure that they represent. These bills show our long-term investment in health, our long-term commitment to health infrastructure for families across my electorate.

Our budget supports families with cost-of-living pressures. Families and pensioners are receiving payments to assist with bills. We are delivering tax cuts to working families and have tripled the tax-free threshold so that up to a million Australians are no longer required to lodge a tax return. We will continue to support families with things like the Schoolkids Bonus, something that has been very well received in my electorate and I know was very much needed and was very timely for the many families as their children return to school. The budget has significant investment in roads, education, aged care, dental care and skills training as well as the initial commitment to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I am pleased to signal my support for these appropriation bills and to have had the opportunity to outline the significant investment both in capital and recurrent funding that comes from the Commonwealth to the state governments directly into health and directly into health in my own electorate.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the second time today I have followed the member for Ballarat to make a speech. She, like me, represents an electorate with a major regional city—in her case it is Ballarat and I represent Wagga Wagga in the seat of Riverina. Ballarat and Wagga Wagga are not dissimilar inasmuch as they are both really important economic hubs in agricultural regions and regions with diverse economies.

I am sure that when the member for Ballarat goes down her main street she, like me—when I journey along Baylis and Fitzmaurice streets—hears stories about how difficult it is for families to meet day-to-day cost of living pressures. I listened to her speech very carefully, and much of it centred around blaming the Victorian Department of Health for, she alleged, not putting forward Commonwealth money into important medical funding, hospitals and the like. But that is what we are hearing so much from the federal Labor government—that is, blaming the states. We hear what a terrible job Campbell Newman is doing in Queensland and Barry O'Farrell is doing in New South Wales and Ted Baillieu is doing in Victoria. Those three premiers inherited parlous state economies following on from wasteful Labor state governments.

I am sure when the Liberal-National coalition is re-elected federally—hopefully this year—we will, unfortunately, also be lumped with an economy with huge debt and deficit which will take some recovery and which Mr and Mrs Average will expect us to fix. The way things are going, many people's grandkids are going to be paying off the debt that has been racked up by this federal Labor government. We are all familiar with the phrase 'another day, another dollar' but at the moment it is 'another day, another $106 million' that we are having to borrow to make ends meet. Anyone who has run a small business, as I have, knows that you cannot spend more than you make. Unfortunately, that maxim does not fall in the lap of the Treasurer, who continues to borrow—offshore mostly—to make up for his waste and mismanagement of the economy. When he announced the mining tax on 2 May 2010, the iron ore price was $161 per dry metric tonne. In January 2013 it was $150, a reduction of seven per cent. Thermal coal was $100 per tonne in May 2010 and in January 2013 it was $93, a reduction of seven per cent. The mining tax covers only iron ore and coal. The Treasurer said in his recent press conference:

The data being released today shows that the MRRT has collected less revenue in its first two instalments than was forecast originally. Now clearly, the huge drop in commodity prices in the second half of last year had a dramatic impact on MRRT revenues …

There has been no huge drop in commodity prices since the mining tax was announced, and yet, despite all the fanfare around the introduction of the mining tax and Labor saying that people were going to get their fair share of mining tax revenue, it has really returned only $5.50 per person. If you put in a tax and get only $5.50 per person, the tax obviously is not working—according to the Treasurer's own figures.

This government's atrocious record in finance is well known, and it seems that every day that Labor makes an announcement it is another embarrassing gaffe for those opposite. The first amongst these is the fact that when Labor came to office in 2007 it inherited a $20 billion surplus and $70 billion worth of net Commonwealth assets.

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

And a GFC.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear the member for Shortland say, 'and a GFC', and that did have an impact. I will admit that certainly did have an impact. But we cannot keep using the global financial crisis again and again and again. When the Treasurer comes out with his budget and says that he is going to put the country back into surplus, we cannot keep harking back to the GFC five years earlier and saying that things are still so bad that he just cannot get his figures right. I take the interjection, and as a member of the coalition I accept that the GFC did have quite a dramatic impact on finances globally, and we are still seeing the meltdown in many overseas economies.

The member for Shortland would probably say, 'And we've done very well despite that.' Yes, we have—I would agree with her—but we have done well because of a coalition government: 12 years of a Howard-Fischer-Anderson-Vaile Liberal-Nationals government which actually managed to balance the books and managed to produce surpluses so that Mr and Mrs Average, as our friend the member for Fairfax talks about, were able to get funding initiatives for their electorates and were able to know that their government had integrity and fiscal responsibility.

To date, Labor has delivered the four largest deficits in Australia's history, topping a whopping $172 billion. This Labor government has borrowed more in its five years than every other Commonwealth government had borrowed since Federation in 1901. It is an amazing thing. This is after the Howard coalition government delivered four of Australia's largest surpluses in history over its time in office. But unfortunately it has all been squandered by those on the other side on such things as school halls—not a bad initiative on paper but the delivery of it was terrible—pink batts in roofs and so many other initiatives which, on the surface, could have been reasonably worthwhile if they had been put into place with some accountability, with some economic rationale. But no, no: in typical Labor style, it was just policy on the run, done on the back of a beer coaster and implemented without any thought for the fact that this was going to cost taxpayers and hit them in the neck again and again. Because of this, the Labor government is accruing billions and billions of dollars in net debt.

The member for Shortland might be surprised to hear this, but I do say her government is praiseworthy in some respects, inasmuch as there have been times when federal Labor has rolled out some good initiatives in the Riverina, in my electorate. The funding for the Life Sciences Hub at Charles Sturt University at Wagga Wagga; the rail freight hub at Bomen, north of Wagga Wagga; and the medical facilities at Wagga Wagga Base Hospital, Griffith and Hillston have all been welcome initiatives. People say to me: 'What does all this net and gross debt mean? What does that actually mean? I'm still getting three feeds a day. I know it's costing me more and more to fill up my car at the petrol station and I know it's costing more and more when I go to the supermarket to buy groceries, but what does this debt really mean to me?' What I say to them is that it lessens our ability to get more funding for the sorts of medical and educational programs and projects that we so desperately need.

The member for Ballarat was highly critical of the states in this respect. I believe that in many instances education and health should be quarantined when it comes to cuts. You would perhaps agree with me there, Deputy Speaker O'Neill. Education and health are the great enablers of our country and, before state governments go and take huge swipes at those sorts of funding initiatives, they should really think carefully about how that is going to have an impact on the people that they represent. That goes for our side of politics as much as it goes for the other side of politics. As I say, I know the blame game has been played out in the chamber about the states and how 'dreadful' the coalition state governments are. However, they have inherited huge financial messes and they have had to make very prudent and at times wholesale cuts to balance the books.

We all know what Labor is like at delivering surpluses. Time and again we have heard the Prime Minister and the Treasurer tell parliament that Labor would deliver a surplus in 2012-13 on time, as promised—their words, not mine. In fact, on 650 occasions the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and Senator Wong have repeated their promise to deliver a surplus, but the Treasurer has now announced that it will not be. It will not come true.

On Christmas Eve, when the government thought it could nearly get away with it, the Treasurer unceremoniously abandoned the government's non-negotiable surplus, blaming a huge revenue whack—'Out of the blue', he said—rather than years of wasteful spending and illusionary forecasting.

We look at some of the areas Labor has taken a scythe to and, sadly, defence is one of them. We talk of things being quarantined, such as health and education; this country really needs to ensure that funding is made available to defence so that our troops overseas are best equipped and trained, and that the training being done here in Australia at such places as the Army Recruit Training Centre at Kapooka in Wagga Wagga enables our soldiers, and Air Force and Navy personnel to be best equipped and best trained to meet the challenging needs of these troubled times. As many members are aware, defence spending is a huge issue in my electorate. Wagga Wagga is a tri-service city, with Air Force, Navy—believe it or not, even though we are many miles inland—and Army being very prominent military bases and important players in the community.

Among this culture of mismanagement and splashing cash around like there is no tomorrow and it will not have to be paid back, Labor has seriously neglected the Australian Defence Force, cutting the defence budget by at least $5.5 billion this year alone and over $25 billion since coming to government five years ago. That is shameful. When I talk to ex-service personnel they are not only annoyed at the fact that this government is cutting spending in defence, they are also annoyed that there has been no real commitment on their superannuation benefits, no real commitment to ensuring that they are paid the amount that they should have been or should be paid for the service they have rendered this nation. Those people put their lives on the line for the defence of our great nation, and they are not being shown the same faith by this Commonwealth government. I do hope that when the coalition comes to government—hopefully, this year—we will certainly look after these people who certainly looked after our nation.

By the government's own account in the Asian white paper, we are entering a period in our history when regional flashpoints are likely to increase, and Australia will be required to take on an increasingly active role in our region. There is no doubt that the Riverina electorate will have much to do with ADF training for this period. This assessment is at complete odds with the government's decision to cut defence funding to its lowest level since 1938, the year before World War II began. The share of gross domestic product being spent on defence is now just 1.56 per cent, and next year it drops even further to just 1.49 per cent. For a portfolio area that is as important as Defence that is indeed disappointing, embarrassing and shameful.

We could talk about agriculture. In fact we will talk about agriculture because it is an area that Labor is not all that much across when it comes to ensuring money is spent on such important things as food security, quarantine measures and ensuring that farmers are given the support and help they need to do the job they do so well, and that is feeding our nation and others too. I was pleased that, when the opposition leader announced the coalition's Real Solutions plan, agriculture was one of the five pillars that he put forward. The coalition will take agriculture to the next election and put solutions in place to ensure a better and more prosperous regional Australia. Our famers are the best in the world. Even the member for Moreton across the other side would agree with me on that. But farmers are not being looked after, unfortunately, by Labor, and I will certainly continue to lobby loudly and often on behalf of those people who do such a fine job farming. The coalition will make sure that sector, which made this country great, is preserved and protected at all costs. (Time expired)

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the two bills currently before the House, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2013, which will appropriate $600 million and $366 million, respectively. Obviously, as most students of politics and economics would know, this is the standard fine-tuning process that occurs when you have a budget in May and then in September you have the figures and costings, and this is the usual process.

Tomorrow it will be five years since I have been in this parliament, and I certainly remember that first day in parliament. I know that it will be acknowledged around the nation tomorrow, because that was the day of the apology to the stolen generation. We started the day with a welcome to country—first time ever in the history of the Australian parliament—and then we had the apology. It is amazing what we have seen over the five years that I have been a member of this parliament. I know the member for Shortland has been a member for a few years longer than that. So the member for Shortland can comment on things before Labor was in power and with Labor in power.

In the five years that Labor has been in power I have certainly seen that we have had to make some tough economic decisions to ensure that this nation remains in a strong position, especially when compared to other advanced economies, other OECD countries, and especially over that amazing time of the global financial crisis—something which some amateur historians on the other side of the chamber seem to put a bit of whiteout on and say that it did not occur. If you go to Spain and talk to the young unemployed—with unemployment running at 50 per cent to 60 per cent—they will say that we did have a global financial crisis and the effects are being felt still. Thankfully, under the guidance of Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Gillard and Treasurer Swan throughout, we have seen Australia pull the right levers to make sure that we stay in a strong position.

On 14 September I hope that the people of Australia make a decision based on how this Labor government, the Gillard Labor government, has handled the books. I know people vote for lots of reasons, but I would hope that, when they look at the books and they make their decision on 14 September, they will recognise that, for the first time in history—and the indicators are there—we have got all three of the ratings agencies giving us a AAA rating. If that AAA rating is lost, you pay more for your money. That is just basic economics that most Australians would understand.

I have been out and about a lot in my electorate since Christmas and New Year and, sadly, people are doing it tough. We had a fair bit of water come through—not like the floods of two years before—and people were particularly worried. On Australia Day this year I had a chat to a lot of people in my electorate just to get a bit of a sounding for the year and find out what is going on. I had an awards ceremony on Australia Day where I recognised a lot of the hardworking volunteers from my electorate. Many of them were talking about the people they help and how they were doing it tough.

These volunteers, whether they do a few hours each week at their local school P&C or their P&F or keeping our streets safe in terms of volunteering with Neighbourhood Watch, which has a role for everybody—young or old or anywhere between—or taking time to deliver food packages through the Meals on Wheels program, something which I used to do before my children came along and ruined my mornings or my ability to volunteer outside of this job—do wonderful work. I am particularly proud to be able to recognise the work of these members of my community, and I was particularly proud to acknowledge the winner of the Moreton volunteering prize, which was won by Adele Rice, the founding principal of Milpera State High School. Adele worked at Milpera State High School for 28 years.

Milpera, which is located in Chelmer—one of the wealthier suburbs in Brisbane and in my electorate—is a school that reaches out to new refugee and immigrant children who come from all around Brisbane to this school where they teach English right across the curriculum. Milpera has changed the lives of hundreds of refugee and immigrant children over the years, and Adele played an important part in that. She actually received the James Killen award that I give out, which is actually handed out by Lady Killen on behalf of her late husband, a former member for Moreton, who was from the other side of the chamber but was recognised as a great volunteer in the electorate. My thanks go to people like Adele Rice who make a generous contribution, in particular, and to the many new Australians in the Moreton community.

I am especially proud of the $16.2 billion of investment in the nation's future that has been rolled out all around this land through the Building the Education Revolution program. This is the single biggest investment in Australian schools in the nation's history: 45 schools received over $92 million in investment in education infrastructure in Moreton alone. These projects have resulted in schools and their communities using better, modern facilities that have given schoolkids the best opportunity to learn and to develop into young adults and obtain skilled jobs. We will continue to see the benefits of this program for many years to come.

I note the member for Wright is here. Probably the same thing happened for him. Many of these BER facilities were actually used as flood recovery centres. Certainly, in my electorate two of them were used as flood recovery centres back in 2011 as well. So they are both a community benefit and a benefit for education. These facilities are an investment in our nation's future. It was a GFC stimulus program but they are an investment in our nation's future. Today they are changing the way our students learn and are giving teachers and staff more enjoyable places to work in and the ability to deliver innovative curriculum by having these new places. The bricks and mortar of these buildings are merely the foundations on which long-term educational benefits will be built and will continue to flow to Australian students for years to come, setting up higher skills for the future.

As a former teacher with 11 years experience at the chalkface I take a very strong interest in the schools in my electorate. I am a passionate advocate for the National Plan for School Improvement and it has been great to see so many passionate teachers and parents advocating for their children's future by contacting me by emails and petitions and by knocking on my door, turning up to street stalls and also by letting me know at my son's school. I am an education ambassador, a member of the parliamentary education committee and Chair of the Caucus Education Committee and a parent of two young children, one who is at school, so I do take a great interest in education—and I know that you, Deputy Speaker, do as well with your background. That is why I am pleased to see Labor taking on the difficult task of changing the current education funding model and I will continue to advocate for the implementation of the national schools improvement plan in Moreton and in this House.

The education sector initiatives that we have seen, which I have discussed, are complemented by our National Broadband Network, which is a piece of infrastructure that is not only great for education but also crucial for economic productivity. Unfortunately, productivity in Australia has been flatlining for approximately 10 years. As economists know, productivity is the real indicator of whether the economic engine is finely tuned. Sadly, in the quarter when we came to office five years ago it was actually running at zero. It is starting to improve but there is still a long way to go. That is why we need to invest in education, the NBN and some of those big infrastructure projects such as the Kessels-Mains intersection in my electorate.

This Labor government has remained committed to improving productivity not by lowering wages—that is not the smart way to do it; it is a simplistic way and it does not bring real productivity gains—but by building infrastructure and by delivering services more efficiently. That is what the NBN is about. How have we done this? How have we invested in a productivity boost? Well, obviously by investing in education. I am proud to say that we have doubled the education budget. But we have also done other things to improve it. Our economy has been under strain but nevertheless it has proved to be very resilient, despite the jeremiahs amongst the many people in the community, particularly those opposite, and we have seen investments on the rise and those investments will come to fruition in a few years time once we have moved from investment in infrastructure and into the production stage.

When I go around my schools I take a little sly look, as politicians tend to, at plaques, ones with my name on them, just to say, 'I'm proud of that.' I do see other plaques. I often walk past a flagpole and see the former member's name on that flagpole—a great flagpole, and I love flagpoles as a great contribution to schools. But I would put our 3,000 libraries up against the opposition's 3,000 flagpoles any day. In my electorate I see the improvements of 21 classrooms, three science and language centres, 26 libraries, 21 multipurpose halls. I think they are great contributions.

What else have we done? Obviously we have been investing in doing things smarter, investing in the health agenda, particularly combining that with the NBN, the eHealth agenda and the personal health records. It is not enough just to build classrooms; you also need to give people the opportunity to learn and for the services to be delivered in a new way. This is how we will improve productivity. The NBN, as people who are a lot more savvy than me will tell you, is not just about sending emails and doing a bit of banking and searching Google. It is much more. It is about letting smart businesses, particularly from remote communities—not my electorate—compete with businesses all over the world, particularly as we move into the Asian century with that emerging middle class in Asia. The NBN will also improve health and judicial systems through initiatives like telehealth, connecting remote and regional hospital patients to major hospital networks and giving patients access to specialists with the click of a button rather than having to come down from Cunnamulla or Mount Isa or places like that. They will now have diagnoses made, even by psychiatrists, over the internet. Obviously teleconferencing is one thing that assists business, but the NBN has the capacity to transform how we do things in so many ways, even the judicial system, so that people will not have to travel for miles to get access to justice or to attend a minor court hearing for a minor civil dispute, and that is a good thing. All of these advances will combine to improve Australia's productivity, and I am pleased to be on this side of the House where we are investing in the nation's future and where we are positive that we see the glass is half full, not just trying to smash the glass entirely.

I am saddened to say that the leader of opposition business, the shadow spokesperson for education, has made a conscious effort to move away from the national plan for school improvement. We saw the amazing thing today where he was trying to gag debate on the education legislation. The opposition has opposed an initiative that the education sector strongly supports and, sadly, after their 11 years in office they cannot tick off a lot of things in terms of setting up a national curriculum or fixing the broken education model. The SES scheme had great intentions, but the reality is that in over half of the schools where funding was maintained it did not work. They failed to give more power to school principals and they invested in flagpoles rather than in those other essential things. They are some of the things that we can tick off. From what we can glean between the last election night and what the opposition has said so far, they have a commitment to cut $2.8 billion out of the education system and they we able to reject the Gonski review reforms within half an hour of it being delivered. Surely that is speed reading taken to an extreme. We have had a comment from the member for Sturt that he is prepared to sack one in six teachers, not realising the collegiality that is so important in the education system and not realising the important role of nurturing younger teachers and how much of that is taken up by experienced teachers in the system.

The Labor government is focused on investing in education for all Australian children. Education is something I am particularly proud of, in terms of the opportunities that we had during the global financial crisis. From memory, not every single one of the appropriations that were necessary for the global financial crisis was voted down by the opposition. I should not say that, in terms of the stimulus packages. With one in particular, I remember, the most significant one, the Leader of the Opposition literally slept through the vote—one of the most significant moments in Australian history and he was found wanting. Not just found wanting; found snoring. It was an amazing insight into how he approached the mums and dads and workers that would have been affected if we had not stimulated the economy, and I am proud to have been associated with a government that invested in education and those other stimulus packages that made sure that Australians did not lose the 200,000 jobs that it was projected we would lose. I commend this legislation, the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-13 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2013, to the House.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The electorate of Wright consists of families, small businesses, farmers, sporting groups and organisations. It is not that dissimilar to most electorates throughout Australia.

As a government we ask each of those organisations or groups or families to do one particular thing. It is appropriate that, in speaking about appropriations bills Nos 3 and 4, which we are debating here tonight, and talking about managing finances, as a government we ask these organisations and families, we ask mums and dads, to live within their means, to live within the parameters in which they can survive without getting themselves into financial risk. This is an election year. One of the greatest things we have about democracy is that people have the final say. They will determine who they believe is better able to manage this economy, and they will base those decisions on the track record of the coalition and the track record of this Labor government. I suggest that this election will also come down to a position of trust. As a person voting this year in an election year, who do you best trust to manage the economy and the future of our nation?

I want to take you on a journey. I want you to remember that, recently, Labor decided to walk away from their not-negotiable budget surplus for 2012-13. It was a concession that they had lost control of the nation's finances. On over 650 occasions the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation repeated their promises that they would deliver the nation a surplus. In fact, there was an embarrassing situation in the chamber the other day when nine members of the government were brought to task over pamphlets that had been circulated in their own electorates by the government stating that they had already delivered a surplus. Surely the economic credentials of those members are such that they must have known that at the last budget Labor actually delivered a $44 billion deficit, a far cry from a surplus. When we ask the electorate to take politicians into their trust in the next campaign, it is right up there with the Achilles heel of the Australian Labor Party: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' I would be very surprised if we do not run it and run it. How can you trust a Prime Minister who says one thing one day and another thing the next day to suit her political survival strategy? Just in case you thought the Prime Minister got it wrong and she was out there on her own, let me tell you that, no, she was flanked by the Treasurer of the nation, who said during the 2007 campaign that it was hysterical that Australians believed we were moving towards a carbon tax.

The government has delivered four of the biggest budget deficits in history, with an accumulated value of $172 billion. To put that into perspective, that is $172 billion worth of deficits in four years. I would challenge anyone who has the capacity to go to the library or to go back through Australia's history books to as far back as Edmund Barton, our very first Prime Minister at the beginning of Federation. This is not a Liberal line, this is not just the rhetoric that we roll out on both sides of the House. If you go back and have a look at the cumulative deficits from both sides of the House since the beginning of Federation and add them together, you would come to a figure of only $123 billion. But in four years this Labor government has stuck on $172 billion, more than the entire deficits since Federation. Admittedly, in that calculation there is not an equalling calculation—

An honourable member: Let's be honest!

Yes, to change it—a pound would have been worth more then. That is at face value.

I am glad the interjection from the other side spoke about honesty because I am going to get to honesty. As I said in my opening comments, this election will be about trust and who you trust to best run this economy.

In effect, the government has spent $172 billion more than it has earned over that period. That is how a deficit comes about. In 2011-12 the net debt hit an unprecedented $147 billion. Every day this government has been in charge of the budget, debt has increased. That is a fact. The Prime Minister loves that saying. Well, that is a fact. Since Labor has been in government, debt has increased. Labor has now sought to increase the government debt ceiling limit on four separate occasions. We had only one GFC; we did not have four of them. The government amended its debt ceiling limit in 2008 to $75 billion. It was again increased in 2009 to $200 billion during the global financial crisis, and rightly so. In 2011 the government increased this limit yet again to $250 billion. Then in the budget the government increased the limit to $300 billion.

Government debt on issue at the moment is well over $250 billion. There are still further spending projects, such as the NBN, which is around $56 billion when the initial estimates for that project were that it would come in at $4 billion. That is a big difference. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is $10 billion of government expenditure that does not get counted in the deficit, so that is extra again. As a result, that money is going to finance subprime commercialism that our banks will not pick up. We boast that we have the best banking structure in the world. If our banks will not touch these projects, why is it that, when this nation is drowning in debt, that would be a priority project for this government? Who knows where these figures will end up with reference to the increased deficit next year?

Labor cannot manage money; Labor cannot manage the books. Regardless of the government's rhetoric, it has a spending problem and a forecasting problem. It does not have a revenue problem. Let me take you back because the best way to understand the integrity of future forecasts is to go back in history and look at what the forecasts were four years ago. This will demonstrate that your budgeting expertise is right. I take you back two years ago to when the forecast for this budget was a $10 billion deficit. At the 18-month mark that $10 billion figure was revised to $22 billion. Six months after that, at the 12-month mark, that $22 billion figure was revised to $36 billion. They were substantial jumps. Finally, the deficit that was delivered upon the mums and dads of this nation to be paid back in the future was none less than $44 billion. So it started at $10 billion and went to $44 billion. I encourage the Australian people when they cast their vote and are making their assessment on trust to look at the facts.

It consistently assumed unrealistic high levels of future revenue and spend levels and then cried, 'Woe is me,' when the politically aspired forecasts were not realised. The government is now spending more than $90 billion a year more compared to the last year of the Howard government. So, from a stimulus perspective, this government is spending $90 billion more than when we last left office. Federal government revenue was more than $70 billion higher compared to when Labor took office. How can that be? We have $70 billion more revenue going through the coffers. You will often hear the Treasurer say on the floor that forecasted revenues are down. The fact is that there is $70 billion more revenue being generated today than when we left office. Why is there more money coming through? Because of the 27 new taxes.

Again, the people of Australia will get their democratic right to say whether they have had enough or to continue down this track. I suggest the longer this Labor government stays in power, the greater the chance we will see more taxes. In the first four months of the financial year, government revenues were 4.2 per cent higher than previous years. Despite crying poor, the government has benefited from a mining boom that has delivered the strongest terms of trade in 150 years. You would think that if you were in that rush of gold and the rivers of gold were flowing, that would be the ideal time from an economic perspective to pay down debt. When revenues are peaking is the time you should be paying down debt, but not this government.

Spending was four per cent ahead last year. Labor has proven to be incapable of living within its means. Yet we ask families to do it. The problem with this government is this: when the forecasted revenues are coming back, as we have heard the Treasurer say, a householder would reduce their expenditure, but not this government. The Treasurer says that on the back of the resources sector revenue forecasts are coming back, but this government is talking about Gonski reforms and the NDIS with absolutely no idea of where the coin is going to come from to pay it let alone balance the books. I would suggest that between now and the election date we will see some very tricky manoeuvring with the management of the books for the so-called surplus that we were to have at the end of this financial year. I will not be surprised if you see that figure blow out. As they have done in the past, I would not be surprised if they bring forward expenditure to make that figure look bad so that when they get to the pre-budget economic fiscal outlook that will look a lot better.

Respected forecasters Independent Economics believe that the budget should already be back in surplus by about $15 billion or around 0.1 per cent of GDP at this point in the economic cycle. We have seen unprecedented levels of waste. Pink batts, overpriced school halls, cheques to dead people and blow-outs in border protection are symbols of this government's incompetence. Talking about the waste of money, it was interesting to hear speakers in the House during the last couple of months talking about the way some of the federal government money has been appropriated. I thought it appropriate to remind the Australian public tonight that this government spent $140,000 on a study to look at the sleeping habits of snails. This government spent $340,000 to see whether climate change is affecting fiddler crabs—fact; I am going to use that every time. This government spent $314,000 to study whether birds are shrinking. There was an additional—

Honourable members interjecting—

Interject, but you need to question where you guys spend money as a government, because this is ridiculous. Another $578,000 was spent on research on an ignored credit instrument in the Florentine economic, social and religious life from the 1550s. The previous speaker spoke about how as a nation we need to increase productivity. Guess what? I have just given four great ways how as a nation we can increase productivity! We need to spend money more wisely. We need to be more diligent. I suggest that the capacity of this government to bring the budget into surplus is beyond it. Only a coalition government will truly be able to deliver the nation to prosperity. (Time expired)

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in this debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-13 to speak of a delegation to Myanmar that I had the privilege of being a member of late last year that was sponsored by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, GAVI. We had the opportunity to see firsthand some of the excellent work being done to ensure that the need of people in underdeveloped countries around the world for access to vaccination and immunisation programs. This was in a country coming back into mainstream international society. Myanmar is a nation that faces a range of challenges arising from the last 50 years that many members would be aware of. There are challenges there of a democratic nature and certainly challenges from a developmental point of view.

I had the privilege while I was there with colleagues to see what is being done by GAVI to try and ensure that the children of Myanmar get access to vaccinations that we in Australia take for granted, vaccinations that save lives and that provide people with the opportunity to live active lives and to be productive members of their society. GAVI takes an innovative approach to ensuring that aid dollars are spent effectively and efficiently. How effectively our aid dollar is spent is often a cause for debate in Australia. On particular occasions one could look and scratch your head and wonder whether that is in fact the best way to go. But I would like to ensure the House that, when we look at the money from Australian and international sources through GAVI, we can be very confident that the work that is being done is producing fantastic results.

GAVI came out of a recognition internationally that there were real problems around immunisation levels. There had been significant improvements through the mid 1970s up until the early 1990s thanks to WHO and the UNICEF Universal Child Immunisation campaign and a remarkable 80 per cent of the world's children were being immunised with the six EPI vaccines—tuberculosis, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles and polio. But in the 1990s, that pretty much ground to a halt. We were still in a situation coming up to the start of this millennium such that there were some 30 million children not immunised. These 30 million children in developing countries were in need of assistance.

This was something that caught the interest of a range of people, in particular people like the head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, who convened a summit of WHO, UNICEF, academics, health ministers, international agencies and the pharmaceutical industry in March 1998. Their agenda was: how do we start getting vaccines to children who need them most? Bill and Melinda Gates, through their foundation, also got involved some six months later. They hosted a dinner at their home for leading scientists to discuss what could be done to overcome the barriers preventing millions of children from receiving basic vaccines. Bill and Melinda challenged their guests to come back with proposals for breakthrough solutions. A second summit occurred in March 1999 in Italy. Rather than the setting up a new international organisation, out of that process came a commitment from the existing major players to work together in a new partnership, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

The point of that process was to try to work out the best way to work with what we had and to try and address the key problems with respect to the operation of the system. It focused on four major strategic goals: accelerate the uptake and use of underused and new vaccines; contribute to strengthening the capacity of integrated health systems to deliver immunisation; increase the predictability of global financing and improve the sustainability of national financing for immunisations, and; shape vaccine markets to ensure adequate supply of appropriate quality vaccines at low and sustainable prices to developing countries. It is an innovative model. Through significant funding from 20 donors they have been doing great work. GAVI has been able to contribute to the achievement of major progress. More than 370 million children have been immunised to data and more than 5.5 million children's lives saved in 72 countries—not counting many more children who will not become ill and will therefore be able to achieve the full potential of their lives.

Currently, GAVI supports vaccines such as pentavalent, pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, rotavirus, human papillomavirus, measles second dose, meningococcal A conjugate, rubella and yellow fever. It also has measles campaigns in selected countries, outbreak responses to meningitis, and yellow fever vaccine stockpiles. The GAVI Alliance is also looking ahead to see what else might be able to be done. It is looking at what new vaccines are coming forward. It is seeing what it can do to ensure that it does not stop where it is but moves forward to ensure that the needs of developing countries and their communities are met.

GAVI are not just about providing support; they are also about making countries more able to help themselves. This is about working together to ensure that we build the capacity within developing countries and that there is a commitment from those developing countries with respect to what is being done. GAVI do that by working with governments and by seeking commitments from those governments around the question of what the priorities should be, and they do this by trying to build, with international organisations, the health infrastructure in countries to ensure that they are able to most effectively deal with these issues.

In 2011, GAVI set itself an ambitious target to help vaccinate nearly a quarter of a billion additional children and to help avert an additional four million future deaths by 2015. Since 2000, GAVI has approved support for vaccines in 77 countries, including locally in Indonesia and Timor-Leste. A review by the Australian government and multilateral organisations in 2011 found GAVI to be among the world's top performers in delivering cost-effective results, with a measurable life-saving impact. This follows GAVI's strong performance in similar reviews undertaken in the UK and also in Sweden. As I said, GAVI brings together the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the World Bank, civil society, the vaccine industry in industrialised and developing countries, research and technical agencies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as other foundations and philanthropists who are working together to produce real outcomes.

The work that we saw in Myanmar was significant. We went to towns and villages and saw what was actually happening to assist the provision of these vaccines. We saw lives being saved. We saw children who will live as a result of the assistance and help they got and are getting through these programs. There is no doubt that it is working on the ground. We visited cold stores, which are part of the delivery supply chain. We spoke to experts in country. We spoke to families about what this program meant for them in their circumstances. From all of that, we got a real understanding of the significance of this program and the work that it is doing in this nation and right throughout the developing world.

As I said, GAVI work on building a commitment with countries who are being provided with this assistance. GAVI are doing this by ensuring that they determine jointly what the needs are, they applying for funding and they oversee the implementation of their programs. They also work through innovative finance mechanisms to ensure that money can be provided. Through one particular international finance facility for immunisation they have raised more than $3.6 billion over the last few years by tapping into the capital markets—and this was on top of the work being done by a range of nations, including Australia.

It is also all about a private-public partnership developing advanced market solutions—commitments that actually ensure that we do things that can be done, we use markets effectively and, in that way, we maximise the value of the dollar. That is what it is about: ensuring that we maximise the value of those dollars, because there are many millions of children who are in danger; there are many millions of children who need assistance. The GAVI Alliance is providing assistance to many of those children, and it has been doing so over the last few years and it will be doing so in the years ahead.

Myanmar, which I mentioned, is very much a country that is moving out of international isolationism and, hopefully, is seriously looking at how it engages with international society. I think GAVI and its programs are part of that and are showing the way in which the authorities in Myanmar are prepared to consider new approaches in providing for the needs of their communities and, through those processes, providing real and lasting solutions to some of the health crises that they face.

I was joined on the delegation by a number of colleagues, including the honourable Teresa Gambaro, the member for Brisbane; Stephen Jones MP, the member for Throsby; and Senator Anne Urquhart, from Tasmania. We were also joined by two New Zealand MPs, Ms Katrina Shanks and the honourable Maryan Street, National and Labour MPs, as well as a range of international organisation representatives—Marc Purcell, the Executive Director of the Australian Council for International Development, and Mr Bill Bowtell, the Executive Director of Pacific Friends for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

I would particularly like to put on record my thanks to the GAVI people who looked after us and who accompanied us on this trip, particularly GAVI board chairman, Mr Dagfinn Hoybraten—who luckily is not here to hear me mispronounce his name! Dagfinn was a very gracious host and an excellent leader of the delegation and ensured that we got a real hands-on understanding of what GAVI is doing in this developing market. He is a Norwegian member of parliament—and a very dapper dresser. GAVI Secretariat Deputy Chief Executive Officer Ms Helen Evans was also of great assistance in ensuring that our questions were answered and our understanding of what is being done was complete. They were assisted by a number of others, including Ms Nilgun Aydogan and Ms Li Zhang, as well as Phil Davey, a media consultant acting on their behalf to ensure that these messages got out back here in Australia—that the message of the excellent work that is being done was understood in the broader Australian community.

We were also joined by Mr John Hill and Mr Peter Mullins, a reporter and a cameraman from Channel 10. They sent back some really interesting segments for Channel 10 news, which went to not only the issues facing Myanmar as a society that is in transition but also the nature of the excellent work that is being done through the GAVI programs to ensure that children get access to the medications they need. Through that and through a range of meetings with local officials, as I said, as well as with officials from international organisations based in Myanmar, we had the opportunity to really get an understanding of the excellent work that is being done.

There is no doubt that this is a commitment that the Australian government should maintain, and it is a commitment that the international community must maintain. I note that Australia announced, from June 2011, new multi-year funding of $200 million over 2011 to 2013. I think this shows that, as per that aid review, there is absolutely no doubt that this is a program that ought to be supported strongly and that this is an alliance that we should all be very proud to be part of. I would say this to members who are out there in the community when people ask: 'Do we really get value for money when it comes to aid dollars? Are we really helping the people who really need it? Are we in a situation where all the money is going on administration?' The fact is that there are programs like this that show that there is excellent work being done, and that excellent work is work that we should all be supporting.

The international circumstances around this particular area have been congratulated by many throughout the world. Just to give you a few quotes, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, said on 15 November 2011:

These funds … can deliver a promise of a future free from the threat of cervical cancer to millions of young women thanks to the HPV vaccine. This is critical to the Every Woman Every Child campaign.

The Hon. El Hadji Malick Diop, an MP from Senegal, said:

Pneumonia is a leading cause of death among children under five years in Senegal. Thanks to the support provided by the GAVI Alliance and its donors, my country will soon be able to introduce the pneumococcal vaccine and contribute to saving the lives of thousands of children. A big thank you for your support.

And Bill Gates, whom I mentioned earlier, said:

GAVI is a great investment because it really gets into the countries and gets these new vaccines out there. It is now that we are going to start to get the last two vaccines that rich kids take for granted—the pneumococcus and rotavirus—and over these next five years get them out to every child everywhere. That means, for the first time ever, that we have equity in vaccines.

That gives the children of the developing world the chance to be all that they can be.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-13 this evening because I have much to say. It is always difficult to follow a quality contribution by the member for Bruce, so I will do my best to bring to this chamber an examination of some economic issues that are very relevant to my state of Western Australia.

At the outset I want to cut to the chase and say that this Labor government is intent on damaging Australia's mining sector. Why is it intent on doing that? Because it wants to tax it out of existence. I will explain this as we go. Any responsible government should support rather than hinder the nation's most important industry and Australia's unique economic advantage. However, the policies produced by this government have made it abundantly clear that they are uninterested in supporting this industry in any meaningful way. Furthermore, both the Rudd and Gillard governments have shown a preference to do backroom deals with multinational miners BHP, Xstrata and Rio rather than dealing with Australian people who have produced mines and resource companies from scratch such as Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest. They should be applauded rather than the disgraceful attacks that have been made on them by the Labor Party, particularly the Treasurer, the member for Lilley, Wayne Swan. They should be applauded rather than scorned.

We have spent a lot of time in this place exposing the flaws associated with a carbon tax so I will not spend too much time on it tonight other than to explain to this House that this carbon tax is a direct assault on the mining and resources industry of Australia and particularly Western Australia, as that is where most of the action is happening in terms of resources and mining. We are all aware today that the West Australian Labor leader, Mark McGowan, has tried to dissociate himself from the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. He does not want her in the state for the state election and he does not want her over there at all in relation to her policies. In fact, he has made it quite clear in the last few days that he does not support a carbon tax. He is also dissociating himself from federal Labor's mining tax. Federal Labor's taxation policies take a direct aim at our mining sector. Indeed, Mr McGowan has made it clear that he is very aware of this and this tax is a taxation of envy on states like Western Australia and dare I say Queensland.

As Kevin Rudd, the member for Griffith, has pointed out today, this was a tax generated by the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, as a result of Ken Henry's investigations into taxation. He sold it to the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and Kevin Rudd today has said that this is a tax that Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, sold to him in a flawed way. We will not go through the whole details because it has been enunciated beautifully by the shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, today in the fact that it has raised only 10 per cent of its income predictions. They said that in the first 12 months on their modelling it would raise $2 billion. They attached to it a whole lot of programs that will be paid for by this $2 billion. Those include not only superannuation and a whole lot of other wages support but in Western Australia, dear to our heart, there is a program to produce roads to the airport and in association with the airport which is going to be one of the largest road projects in Western Australia, closer to a billion dollars than half a billion dollars, which they are going to open in July this year. It is all dependent on the mining tax. Let us take a middle figure of $700 million and it is based on the mining tax and that has only raised $126 million in its first six months, who is going to pay for it? Not the mining tax, the taxpayers of Australia are going to pay for it. They have fallen short in their estimates by anyone's measure. It is just ridiculous that they would come out and suggest they would raise this massive amount of money from a mining tax which they now put this florid language on, saying it is a variable tax so it will go up and down.

When it went down, I could understand that. But it is at $170 a tonne now, which is almost at record heights, and the spot price is up to $190 a tonne. So forget the business about it being variable and not raising the money; it is raising the money.

So at the end of the day, yes, Kevin Rudd was quite appropriate in saying it was a dog of a tax. It is the responsibility of the Treasurer and the responsibility of the negotiation by Prime Minister Julia Gillard with the three major mining companies. Forget the juniors; forget the mid-caps. Fortescue Metals is a company that has been targeted and vilified. Twiggy Forrest has been vilified by this government because he is successful and is doing great things in the resources industry. But you hear the Treasurer stand up and lambaste someone who is successful like Gina Rinehart. He lambastes Twiggy Forrest, even though he is doing a great thing by employing Australians, paying a lot of tax and employing a whole lot of Indigenous people in the mining sector. But, no, this is the class warfare you expect from the other side. This is what is happening in a perverse way.

They see Western Australia as a cash cow. They see us as a place where they can come and rob us because we are actually successful in producing not only income in terms of the Australian terms of trade but also income in terms of taxation and jobs. This is going to have a big impact on Western Australia. This sort of attack on Western Australia will cost Labor dearly. They hold only three out of the 15 seats in my state. Dare I say the member for Brand—and he is a good friend of mine—is looking at this carefully because he holds the seat which has the highest number of fly-in fly-out workers of any seat in Western Australia. He is cognisant of that. That is probably why he made the comments he did today.

One of the things that really caught my attention today—and I just find it unbelievable—is this report that was 'leaked' on the front page of the West Australian newspaper. It was the Standing Committee on Regional Australia's report on the use of FIFO and DIDO—fly-in fly-out and drive-in drive-out—workforces. I will just demonstrate that drive-in drive-out is important. I have potentially the largest goldmine in Australia in my electorate. It is called the Boddington goldmine—800,000 ounces of gold a year. They drive into Boddington because they cannot live there—land is very scarce and the taxation issues surrounding settling a family in a town like Boddington are prohibitive. My electorate has the second-highest number, by the way. My electorate has the second-highest number of fly-in fly-out and drive-in drive-out workers of any electorate in metropolitan Perth, in Western Australia and, I suspect, in Australia.

The subtitle of this report was 'Cancer to the bush or saviour to the city?' It likened workers to cancer. The fact that it said that is distasteful; however, most concerning about the report is not its title but its contents and recommendation. The committee is set to recommend that fringe benefits tax exemptions be removed from FIFO and DIDO workers, who are at present driving the mining boom in WA.

As a young schoolteacher, I began my working life at a place called Wickham in the Pilbara where Robe River had a mine. It was a company town. It was built by the company. It is very expensive to put a place like that in situ and to transport the workers up there. They stopped doing mining towns. They stopped doing company towns like that because it just was unaffordable. If you do not believe me, look at what every commentator says—Australia is becoming the dearest place in the world to do business. To start a mine, a business, a resource project, it is the dearest place in the world. Think about South Africa, other places in Africa, South America—they are far cheaper because of the cost of workers and infrastructure. But this committee is about to ask this government to take away the fringe benefits tax exemptions.

This decision by the Labor government flies in the face of the fact that the Labor government in 1986 imposed the fringe benefits tax on housing subsidies for workers in remote communities. That has been blamed for this FIFO workforce.

What they did is they said that if you gave concessions to people who lived in north-west towns you would have to pay full tax on it; you could not get the fringe benefits tax removed. So if a company subsidised a worker's house in Wickham, Karratha or Dampier the Labor Party took it away. So it generated a proliferation of fly-in fly-out workers. As a result, we are now seeing that electorates like mine and the rest of Western Australia are dependent on these people. Good people buy a house in electorates like mine and they go up for two weeks and they come back for a week and they continually supply this incredible, reliable workforce to our resource projects, which generates billions of dollars not only for Western Australia but also for the rest of Australia.

What does this government want to do through this suggestion? They get people like the member for New England to go and do their dirty work for them. He comes up with this recommendation and they want to grab some income back but they do not realise the big picture. He is out doing this for them on behalf of his committee. He is supposed to be an Independent member of the parliament, but we know his voting pattern and, at the end of the day, this committee will recommend taking away fringe benefits from mining companies. It will take away something like $48,000 a year that a mining company can attract on a fringe benefit exemption. So why wouldn't that be sensible? Because, at the end of the day, if you take that across every mining sector, gas and the projects that are about to start up, it would be prohibitive for a company to have someone fly into and fly out of a camp, receive the benefits of the flights, the food, accommodation and care.

It has been put to us by people like Mitch Hooke from the Minerals Council that the fly-in fly-out workforce actually spreads the benefits of the boom, because you would never have got people in that region in the first place. People go up there and they spend money on developing camps, towns, roads, infrastructure and ports. It is growing the size of the cake in the north-west and other places. We should remember that the mining tax was promoted as a chief instrument for spreading the benefits of the boom; however, it has not happened. So far this disastrous dog of a tax has returned something like only $5.50 to each Australian as a result.

People in my electorate are very aware of what this government wants to do to them. The editorial in today's West Australian enunciated the argument well, saying that any debates about the development of projects worth billions of dollars cannot be started without the assumption that they are going to happen and will keep going. Bankers and investors and boards will have to be convinced that the numbers stack up, risks are well known and things can be done to mitigate most possible dangers. In other words, financiers are not going to back these things unless they stack up financially.

Just remember that, until the fly-in fly-out industry happened, we had bad towns like Shay Gap, where social problems and other problems occurred because they were just towns stuck in the middle of the desert and then after the resource ran out they just crumbled. At the end of the day, one has to understand that the banks will not lend money to people who want to go and live in these areas. For example, Boddington, the drive in, drive out area, is a postcode that the banks will not lend money to. Try to build a house in Paraburdoo and see if the bank will lend you money. They will not lend you money because it does not stack up. A 30-year loan in a town that only has a 30-year life in a mine—how ridiculous—is not going to happen.

So I say to this government and to those who are supporting this government that, if you want to go and attack the very industry that actually makes this country a unique country in terms of its resources industry, destroy the mining industry with another tax. We know that this government has not seen a tax that it does not like and a tax that it does not want to hike. It is a disgrace. As a Western Australian I say that we must stand up against this attack from Canberra—not only gouging our state but also treating us like a cash cow.

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

Australia's economy stands as a beacon of resilience in the world. Unlike virtually every developed economy, we avoided recession and we saved hundreds of thousands of jobs in the face of the worst global conditions since the Great Depression. In 2008, private aggregate demand collapsed and the Labor government had to step in with an economic stimulus to shore up demand. There were 225,000 jobs created through the government's $43 billion spending program. In fact, since November 2007 over 800,000 jobs have been created, including in mining, retail, health and skilled trades. Unemployment is well below the previous Liberal government average of 6.4 per cent. The OECD—the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development—found that Australia's fiscal stimulus measures were amongst the most effective in the OECD in terms of stimulating economic activity and supporting employment. The Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz lauded the Labor government's stimulus spending, saying:

Not only was it the right amount, it was extraordinarily well structured, with careful attention to what would stimulate the economy in the shorter run, the medium term and the long term.

…   …   …

When I look around the world, it was, I think, probably the best-designed stimulus program in the world and you should be happy that in fact it worked in exactly the way it was designed to work.

The global financial crisis wiped a massive $160 billion off government revenues. If we had not implemented a timely and targeted stimulus, we would have experienced a deep recession and much higher unemployment, with all the destruction of capital and skills that comes with that. Such a devastating blow would have set our economy and budget back for years, as we have seen occurring in other countries, particularly in Europe.

There is no serious issue of public debt in this country as a result of the stimulus. Gross debt is peaking as a percentage of GDP at 18.4 per cent in 2011-12 and 2012-13, and net debt peaked in 2011-12 at 10 per cent. Australia's net debt is peaking as a percentage of GDP at only one-tenth the level of the other major advanced economies. So, for us, that is like someone earning $100,000 a year owing $10,000. The net interest payments in 2012-13 will be 0.5 per cent of GDP, or $7.1 billion, and that is like someone who earns $100,000 a year paying $500 a year in net interest. We are paying down net debt as a percentage of GDP right now, and gross debt as a percentage of GDP falls from next year. The opposition's attempts to compare our nation's debt levels to debt-stricken parts of Europe are completely and utterly without foundation.

The government's actions have ensured that we have one of the strongest economies in the world. Australia has a AAA credit rating with a stable outlook from all three ratings agencies. We are one of only seven nations in the world to have this. We have a comparatively low unemployment rate at 5.4 per cent. We have less than half the unemployment rate seen in Europe, which is 11.7 per cent, and our rate is significantly below other advanced economies. We have contained inflation: we have underlying inflation in the middle of the RBA's target band—2½ per cent through the year to September. We have low interest rates: the cash rate is currently sitting at three per cent, lower than it was at any time under the last Liberal government and less than half what we inherited. This means that a family with a $300,000 mortgage is paying around $5,000 less in repayments each year than it was when the change of government occurred, so such a family is nearly $100 a week better off as a consequence.

More than $1 trillion of business investment has occurred in our economy since Labor came to office in 2007. A strong investment outlook remains for Australia, with a record $268 billion at an advanced stage helping to boost the productive capacity of our economy. We have cut taxes for Australian workers: we have delivered tax cuts worth over $2,000 a year for those on $50,000 and tax cuts worth $2,150 for those on $100,000, and we have tripled the tax-free threshold to $18,200. This is a terrific thing. One million low-income workers no longer have to pay tax or even fill out a tax return. But it is a great initiative at risk. The opposition would introduce the lower threshold—the $6,000 threshold—if they were to be elected.

We have instituted business tax reform—a new loss carry-back initiative which provides tax refunds worth up to $300,000 for eligible businesses.

We have increased the superannuation guarantee. The Labor government will boost retirement savings for 8.4 million workers by progressively increasing the superannuation guarantee from nine per cent to 12 per cent, starting from 1 July 2013. We are supporting manufacturing. We are investing $5.4 billion in a new car plan and providing stronger protection against unfair competition from overseas by reforming the anti-dumping system. We have introduced small-business tax deductions. Small business now gets an instant asset write-off for each business asset below $6½ thousand as well as an instant asset write-off for the first $5,000 of any car purchased.

There is the Paid Parental Leave scheme. The Labor government has delivered the first ever Paid Parental Leave scheme—18 weeks of leave paid at the minimum wage. Then there is the Schoolkids Bonus. Eligible families get $410 a year for kids in primary school, and $820 a year for kids in high school. Payment is automatic, in full and up front, but like the tax-free threshold this will be in jeopardy if there is a change of government. The opposition has said they would get rid of the Schoolkids Bonus. Then there is the Child Care Rebate: fifty per cent of out-of-pocket childcare expenses, providing families with up to $7,500 per child per year.

We are building an economy based on clean-energy jobs, technology and skills. We are doing this by rolling out the NBN, which will make businesses more productive and deliver better government services by increasing our skills base through trade training centres, historic reforms to our skills system and an expanded education system from primary to tertiary, equipping Australians for current and future jobs, and by continuing to improve our schools and early childhood education.

The government is reforming the transfer system to ensure that people with a weaker attachment to the workforce have the incentives and the capabilities they need to participate. For example, the government has reduced the taper rate for sole parents on Newstart allowance to 40 per cent, meaning a single parent will be able to earn almost $160 per fortnight in additional income. The government has increased the number of hours that a person on the Disability Support Pension can work and retain access to their pension from 15 to 30 hours per week. Tripling the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to over $18,000, and then further to $19,400 from July 2015, together with these transfer reforms, reduces the negative incentives created by the interaction of the tax and transfer systems, so as to ensure that low- and middle-income earners see more of the rewards from their work. This in turn encourages greater workforce participation.

Manufacturing is an essential part of Australia's economic success. It employs nearly a million Australians and provides all sorts of knock-on jobs and skills right throughout the economy. A key part of our manufacturing base is the car industry. Fifty-five thousand Australians are directly employed in the auto industry, spread across over 200 companies. It trains the engineers, pays for the machinery and drives the innovations that support other manufacturing industries. There are some 200,000 jobs relying on business created by the auto industry in fields from metal manufacturing to scientific services. Four in 10 of Australia's top-selling cars are locally made. Only 13 countries have everything it takes to model, make and market a car. Australia is one of them. People talk about the cost of co-investment. The per capita cost of co-investment in the car industry for Australians is $17.40. This compares with $90 in Germany and $264 in the United States.

Labor's $5.4 billion new car plan saw the industry through the GFC. Our future investment to support the development of new models will come from within this commitment and will give the car industry the policy certainty it needs to attract long-term investment in the 2020.

At a time of ongoing global instability, the opposition's flawed economic vision is based on the discredited market fundamentalist world view and, along with their $70 billion budget black hole, represents a huge risk to our nation's economic future. Despite everything we know about the global financial crisis and what caused it, the Liberal Party are still devotees of free-market fundamentalism. They believe that cuts to government services, the so-called austerity measures, are the way forward from Australia. In January this year, the Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote that neoliberal economic policy is just a get-rich-quick afford which brought the developed world to its knees in 2008:

Last year's annual report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development should have been an obituary for the neoliberal model developed by Hayek and Friedman and their disciples. It shows unequivocally that their policies have created the opposite outcomes to those they predicted. As neoliberal policies (cutting taxes for the rich, privatising state assets, deregulating labour, reducing social security) began to bite from the 1980s onwards, growth rates started to fall and unemployment to rise.

The remarkable growth in the rich nations during the 50s, 60s and 70s was made possible by the destruction of the wealth and power of the elite, as a result of the 1930s depression and the second world war. Their embarrassment gave the other 99% an unprecedented chance to demand redistribution, state spending and social security, all of which stimulated demand.

Neoliberalism was an attempt to turn back these reforms. Lavishly funded by millionaires, its advocates were amazingly successful—politically. Economically they flopped.

Throughout the OECD countries taxation has become more regressive: the rich pay less, the poor pay more. The result, the neoliberals claimed, would be that economic efficiency and investment would rise, enriching everyone. The opposite occurred. As taxes on the rich and on business diminished, the spending power of both the state and poorer people fell, and demand contracted. The result was that investment rates declined, in step with companies' expectations of growth.

The neoliberals also insisted that unrestrained inequality in incomes and flexible wages would reduce unemployment. But throughout the rich world both inequality and unemployment have soared. The recent jump in unemployment in most developed countries—worse than in any previous recession of the past three decades—was preceded by the lowest level of wages as a share of GDP since the second world war. Bang goes the theory. It failed for the same obvious reason: low wages suppress demand, which suppresses employment.

As wages stagnated, people supplemented their income with debt. Rising debt fed the deregulated banks, with consequences of which we are all aware. The greater inequality becomes, the UN report finds, the less stable the economy and the lower its rates of growth. The policies with which neoliberal governments seek to reduce their deficits and stimulate their economies are counter-productive.

  …   …   …

Relearning some old lessons about fairness and participation, the UN says, is the only way to eventually overcome the crisis and pursue a path of sustainable economic development.

The International Monetary Fund has also publicly acknowledged the failings of austerity and the deep cuts to government spending which we have seen in Europe. Olivier Blanchard and Daniel Leigh of the fund published a working paper entitled 'Growth forecast errors and fiscal multipliers', which conceded that they underestimated the negative effects of the fiscal consolidation in the eurozone. So rather than things getting better as a result of these cuts, things got worse.

In conclusion, the Labor government is building on economic fundamentals that are the envy of the world. Solid growth, low debt, healthy public finances, contained inflation, low interest rates and a AAA credit rating. We are not done yet. We are investing in Labor reforms for the future—the NDIS, education, the NBN, superannuation and clean energy. We stand for an Australia where every child can get a quality education, where their parents can have a decent paid job and where their grandparents can retire with a dignified income.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I pass some comments on the very important issue of the appropriation bills, and with your concurrence and that of the minister, I will just rise quickly to acknowledge the student leaders of the northern Gold Coast in the electorate of Fadden. I believe it is important for us all in this great place to recognise our young leaders, as many of us do. It is they who leave a lasting impression in their schools, their communities and, ultimately, our great nation.

These young leaders, who we all recognise, play an important role in setting an example through their actions, making positive choices, collaborating with others, listening and encouraging those they lead, especially in challenging and difficult times. They have the potential not only to leave a lasting impression but ultimately to change our world—which is what we are all here to try and achieve—and, of course, to make the world a better place. Such roles should never be understated, and I know that we do not do that here.

Let me urge these new student leaders to strive to achieve their very best in their current roles, as through their influence they now carry a torch of great responsibility. The great leader never sets himself or herself above their followers in carrying responsibilities. So I say to all of our young leaders: do not rely on your position to convince people to follow you. Instead, build relationships, care for people, show compassion and thoughtfulness, listen to and develop others and leave a legacy that we can all be proud of. Do not raise your voice and prove your argument.

I am pleased to seek leave from the minister to present the names of Fadden student leaders, knowing that their leadership journey will take them to considerable heights and potential.

Leave granted.

Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker, and thank you to the minister at the table.

This brings me on to the issue we are addressing tonight, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2013. I wish to confine my remarks simply to Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2013, as it deals with $666.36 million of expenditure, which includes an equity injection of $468.77 million within the Department of Defence to support its work program, including operations.

I note the injection is to be offset through a reduction in the defence department's appropriation. Of course, the challenge is that there is no further detail in the explanatory memorandum as to the basis of the appropriation. I can only assume it will cover the cost of capital works, and that there will be some injection in terms of our operational requirements for our nine overseas missions. The largest, of course, is Afghanistan. But there is no wider information and I will seek that through the proper process, through the minister.

I also note that it will be offset in the reduction of the departmental appropriation and, again, I will seek the advice of the minister. But what that generally means is, 'We'll give you the money now, but we are seriously going to take it off you at the next budget round or before.' We will be watching that very carefully, and put the minister and his department on notice that we will not accept any further reduction in the defence budget. Once more, I put on the record very clearly that the coalition will not make any cuts to the defence budget. No cuts; it will be quarantined—guaranteed. We will commit, once we understand the budgetary horror we may well inherit—if indeed we are entrusted with the government's finances—to increase the defence budget at the appropriate time, depending on the budget, by a three per cent real increase per annum, back towards two per cent of GDP.

It is important at this stage of the appropriation debate to recognise that on 650 occasions—it is a staggering number—the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the finance minister repeated their promise to deliver a surplus in this financial year, 2012-13. Six-hundred and fifty times, the three top ministers responsible for the nation's finances promised, including 150 times by the Prime Minister, only to junk it a few days before Christmas.

What is tragic is that this government has overseen the four biggest budget deficits in the history of our nation, with accumulative value in net terms of $172 billion. The government does like to boast that it has offset all new spending since 2009, yet it has been unable to pay for its existing commitments. Net debt has hit an unprecedented level of $147 billion and gross debt of over $261 billion.

But the issue is not revenue, as the government likes to say. It is expenditure. The government is now, as a statement of fact, spending $90 billion per year more than the Howard government did in its last year. The government now is spending $70 billion more compared with its first budget when Labor took office. In the first four months of this financial year, as a statement of fact, government revenues were 4.2 per cent higher than the previous year. Despite crying poor, the government has benefited from a mining boom that has delivered the strongest terms of trade in 150 years: fact. Unfortunately, the government has proven incapable of living within its means. Respected independent forecasters Macroeconomics believe that the budget should already be in surplus by at least $15 billion, or one per cent of GDP, this far in the economic cycle.

One of the areas to feel the greatest pinch of a government desperately trying claw back its finances, but proving unable to despite having revenue of more than $90 billion in the last Howard years, is defence. Defence now has weathered a crushing storm of cumulative cuts, deferments and delays of over $24.5 billion. Let's call it $25 billion since Labor came to power. In this budget alone, 2012-13, $5.5 billion has been cut over the forward estimates; 10.5 per cent has been cut from the defence budget this financial year, and a further $1.66 billion in absorbed costs through the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. That $1.66 billion was for a 6C17, 240-odd Bushmasters and, of course, the conversion of 12 Super Hornets into advanced electronic weapons, the Growlers—three areas of technology and expenditure that, on the surface, are good sets of equipment to purchase. But rather than providing the funds, they said to Defence, 'You must find the funds'; that is, 'They are absorbed; you must find savings.' Therefore, this financial year there is $5.5 billion in the forward estimates from the May budget and a further $1.6 billion from MYEFO—$7.1 billion in cuts, deferments or delays.

What does that mean in real terms? They are just headline numbers. In real terms, you are seeing ADF Reserves' salaries and payments now being cut by 20 and 30 per cent, where many reservists on face value may not be able to achieve their 20 days, which will disadvantage them in terms of their housing, their loans or their health benefits. It is incumbent upon the minister to guarantee that all reservists will have a minimum of 20 days, noting that a competent and capable reservist needs about 35 days to be an effective reserve soldier, especially in Her Majesty's loyal army.

Thirty-seven per cent of all defence projects have been cut, deferred or delayed—including phase 2 of the counter-IED, the improvised explosive device project. If there was ever a catchcry of a project that highlighted the difficulties that we are in now in terms of the budget cuts, it is cutting a counter-IED program. If there was ever a challenge in terms of what our soldiers, sailors and airmen and women face in combat operations in Afghanistan, it is the existing and all-pervasive threat of improvised explosive devices. In terms of further supporting the weapons intelligence teams and the technology on the ground, for phase 2 a delay of 12 months is unacceptable. I have informed the minister of this personally and asked him to look into it when we addressed the ministerial response in the House last week.

Funds for cadet units have been savagely cut, so that there are no longer entitlements to ration packs, there is no travel overseas, there is no subsidised travel to other annual camps and the like. Budgets for existing units in terms of the signal squadrons, the engineering regiments, the cavalry regiments, existing operational budgets in terms of the training activities on a day-to-day basis have been cut by up to 30 per cent. A report by John Kerin in the AFR on Monday indicates that Defence may well be short by up to $1 billion just in doing its day-to-day functions here.

I take at face value what the minister has said, that our operations and our operational tempo have not been impacted by the defence cuts, but I can tell you absolutely everything else within our Defence Force has been impacted—in many cases, significantly. The logistics program, in terms of pulling logistics together and saving money over the long haul, has been thrown into disarray, with a cut of $145 million to the logistics program at Lavarack Barracks in Townsville. It was delayed just before Christmas, found out by the Townsville Bulletinand, again, the minister still has not confirmed it, yet everyone knows what has happened. The cuts to defence are palpable.

The Prime Minister tries to assure everyone it is business as usual, going down to DSD, no less—only the second time a media event has been held in such a sensitive place, which looks like recklessness in terms of using a defence establishment of that sensitivity as a media stunt—to announce a new cybersecurity centre. But she cannot say where it is, what it is going to cost, what it is going to do that is different from the DSD Cyber Security Operations Centre, when it is going to open and who is going to run it. Smells like a media stunt, looks like a media stunt; perhaps it is a media stunt.

This year's total spending will be 23.8 per cent of GDP. The Treasurer, in full flight, said Labor has always had budgets that are a lower percentage of GDP than the coalition's, which is odd because the Howard-Costello spending in their last year was 23.1 per cent of GDP. So I am not too sure where the Treasurer's mathematics came from.

Twenty-seven new or increased taxes are what this government has brought about since coming to power, and the impacts are all too easy to see: a 10.5 per cent reduction in the defence budget this year—10.5 per cent. I served in the Defence Force in the 1980s, during the last, long period of Labor government, and watched the defence budget cut to the bone then. The impact of that was not seen until 1999, when we deployed 5½ thousand of our combat troops to East Timor on stabilisation operations. We were poorly equipped. We were well trained and we were well led, but we lacked the necessary capability and resources. The Howard government swore that would never happen again and went on the greatest re-equipping, modernisation, hardening and networking of our Defence Force in the modern era, to the point where, in their last six budgets, the defence budget increased in real terms by 3.9 per cent.

Labor came to power promising a defence increase of three per cent in real terms, up to 17, 18 and 2.5 per cent thereafter. In fact, before the last election in 2010, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence promised on no fewer than 38 occasions that they would increase the defence budget in real terms by 3.8 per cent. But all we have seen are cuts; that is all—10.5 per cent this year alone and over the forward estimates, or $5.5 billion. When you add in the MYEFO absorptions of $1.6 billion, it takes you to a staggering $7.1 billion. You cannot cut a military force by that enormous quantum over five years and not expect to see an impact. Over the last five years, a cumulative $25 billion has been cut, delayed or absorbed. That is the equivalent of an entire defence budget—an entire defence budget—for a year that has been taken out. If the government think that has no impact, no adverse consequences, they are kidding themselves. The impact is only too obvious and ready to see.

The good news is that the coalition guarantees there will be no cuts—quarantined, guaranteed. I simply ask the Minister for Defence to provide the same guarantee. Provide it. The problem is, even if he did—notwithstanding I think he is an honourable man—Labor said 38 times before the last election that there would be a three per cent real increase, but we have seen a 10.5 per cent decrease. Six hundred and fifty times, the top three finance leaders of our nation—the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation—said we would have a budget surplus this year. They said it 650 times and that promise was broken before Christmas. Then of course we have the ultimate betrayal of 'there will be no carbon tax in the government I lead'. So I fear that, even if the Minister for Defence were to make that promise, when trust has been betrayed to the extent it has, it would fall on deaf ears within the nation.

The coalition will not allow this to happen. We will rebuild our Defence Force. We will rebuild the nation's trust in our defence capability and we will not sacrifice future operational capability for a budget surplus for a political fix.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2013 in this cognate debate. With an additional appropriation of just over $1.27 billion being sought through both these bills, there are a range of topics and subjects. Some are things which are quite local to me and others are, I suppose, quite out of the box.

One of the first things that I picked up out of these bills when looking at them was the additional expenditure for the now superseded General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme, GEERS, which, although closed as from 5 December last year, is being topped up by $48 million to cover claims that were made later in the year. It is very fair to say that I have been a critic of GEERS for many, many years, and there are very good reasons for that. What we have done now with the changeover to a legislative solution through the Fair Entitlements Guarantee is put in a system that picks up on the deficiencies that were embedded within the administrative scheme that was GEERS. We should not forget that this scheme was introduced by the current opposition leader, the member for Warringah, in his time as Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business in September of 2001—the very same member who proclaimed himself the workers' friend. As a worker, I would not like to have him as my friend.

As I said, I have long been critical of GEERS, as it has never had a legislative basis and it has always been difficult for some employees to access the scheme. It was back on 20 February 2008, in my first speech to this place, that I spoke about the deficiencies of GEERS and my belief that there could and should be a better solution. So it was that during the 2010 election campaign Labor released a policy called the Protecting Workers' Entitlements package. This policy foreshadowed three areas: protecting workers' entitlements, strengthening superannuation compliance measures and targeting phoenix company arrangements, all of which are very important when it comes to someone who is suddenly out of a job and wants to know where their entitlements are.

It has happened so many times—not only in my role as a member of parliament but also in my previous roles over many jobs—that I have had to deal with employees who have gone to work one day and found a padlock on the gate and also found that their tools and possessions inside the facility, the factory or the site having been taken over by a receiver. They have also found, of course, that their accrued entitlements are now in the hands of someone else, and the process of getting through that is always long and tedious. But, of course, it is even worse if you as a worker were relying on that week's pay to pay off a mortgage or a debt or just to meet your basic day-to-day living expenses.

The Fair Entitlements Guarantee covers workers entitlements if they lose their job as a result of their employer becoming insolvent, and it now covers—better than GEERS—unpaid wages of up to 13 weeks, including allowances, loadings, amounts payable for overtime and amounts paid at penalty rates. With an initial maximum weekly wage of $2,364 as a continuation of the threshold under GEERS, there is provision for that to be adjusted as costs of living and wages go up over time. There is redundancy pay of four weeks pay, at a rate relevant to the pay for which the employee was working, paid for each full year of service depending on the industrial instrument, along with pro rata provisions, and there is payment in lieu of notice not exceeding five weeks pay at the relevant rate. The Fair Entitlements Guarantee also provides for the Commonwealth to pursue advances made to employees through the winding up or bankruptcy proceedings of their employer. The important part about that is that it can speed up that process of recovering moneys that are legally owed to the employee who has put in the hard work and done the job. The Fair Entitlements Guarantee—legislated by Labor and voted against by the Liberal Party—provides a higher level of certainty for those employees whose employers cease trading due to insolvency.

Also within these bills is an amount of approximately $50 million to be provided to the Attorney-General's Department mainly as funding towards the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Although there has been a lot of media coverage about this, the important thing is that it has to have funding. It is good to see it here in black and white.

On another issue, also included in Appropriation Bill No. 4 2012-2013 is an allocation for an equity injection of around $45 million to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation to complete the detailed engineering design for the construction of a nuclear medicine manufacturing facility and a waste treatment plant at Lucas Heights. While the total project cost is estimated at $168 million and it will take several years to build, that facility also includes a co-located Synroc waste treatment plant. During construction, around 150 jobs will be created. Once finished, there will be 100 new operational jobs in addition to ANSTO's current workforce of around 1,200 people. Of interest, this facility will produce molybdenum-99, a radiopharmaceutical that is used in 80 per cent of procedures for the treatment and diagnosis of heart disease and cancers. World wide, 45 million patients receive a diagnosis or treatment using molybdenum-99 every year and the new nuclear medicine project will provide a steady supply to this demand.

Over 200 hospitals in Australia and New Zealand use molybdenum-99 for patient treatments. It is used particularly commonly because it is particularly useful. Currently, ANSTO supplies molybdenum-99 for the one in two Australians who require this radiopharmaceutical during their lifetime. The new facility, which is expected to be completed in 2016, will meet not only Australia's demand but demand beyond our borders. Each year around 550,000 people in Australia receive a diagnosis using molybdenum-99.

I recently took the opportunity to visit ANSTO's Luca Heights facility and found it a great learning experience. Not really knowing a whole lot about what went on inside the gate before I got there, when I arrived I found a fairly large fence and a Federal Police post and various other security measures. But once inside it was a completely different picture. It is a facility that has a commercial arm and a research arm. It was highly interesting to find out that they run public tours at such a place, and around about 11,000 people, including school children, a year go down there to see what is being done. The research fields in particular are wide and varied. ANSTO provides the facilities for many researchers to be able to do research that cannot be done anywhere else in Australia.

My tour was hosted by Nadia Levin, the general manager of government, international and external relations at ANSTO. In the time that I was there, I viewed the OPAL multipurpose research reactor, the neutron beam facilities and the Centre for Accelerator Science. I also met with the chief executive officer, Dr Adi Paterson; Shaun Jenkinson, the general manager of commercial operations; Sam Moricca, the director of technology at ANSTO Synroc; Dr Richard Garrett, senior adviser of synchrotron science; and several other experts in the field. I happened to learn while I was there that ANSTO have also taken over operation of the synchrotron, which is based in the suburb of Clayton in my home town of Melbourne. The synchrotron was built by the Victorian government. In recent years, it has had funding issues. Even though it is world class, without recurrent funding—and it is now jointly funded by the state and federal governments—that fantastic facility would not be available not only to Australian researches but to so many researchers from around the world who come from overseas to get access to this great facility.

At ANSTO, I learnt that the supply of nuclear medicine in the medium term is under threat, as some 70 per cent of the world's current supply of molybdenum-99 comes from reactors that are due to be decommissioned between 2015 and 2020. I also found it interesting that currently most of the world's supply of molybdenum-99 is produced in reactors fuelled by highly enriched uranium. By contrast, the OPAL research reactor at Lucas Heights is powered by low-enriched uranium, which is almost impossible to repurpose for use in nuclear weapons.

I was also briefed on the new Synroc facility at Lucas Heights. It will be the first of its kind in the world, with the ability to treat and contain, in a permanent way, the by-products from past, current and future manufacture of nuclear medicines. Although Synroc is a great Australian innovation, a separate debate must still be concluded as to where the waste should be stored. Many people are unaware that low-level radioactive waste from medical and industrial purposes is stored in many metropolitan locations across Australia, quite often with very minimal security or tracking systems. To me, it is a great worry that that exists in our cities. I know the debate has been going on for a long time, but it is something that Australia will have to deal with one day, and I think the invention and application of Synroc technology helps it along its way. It is one of the things that needs to be done.

In the debate on last year's Appropriation Bill (No. 3) and Appropriation Bill (No. 4), I spoke about several programs from the Clean Energy Future package. I highlighted the ones that are of great benefit to community organisations, local governments and low-income residents, not only in my electorate of Deakin but in electorates right across Australia. In particular, I spoke about the Community Energy Efficiency Program that is investing $200 million, in partnership with local councils and community organisations, to improve energy efficiency in council and community buildings and facilities. With dollar-for-dollar matched funding, this program is a great opportunity for councils and community organisations to save energy, particularly electricity, and of course save on the costs of that energy.

The Community Energy Efficiency Program is now at its round 2 stage, with round 1 having already been awarded, and I know there are councils in Melbourne that have already started on particular projects to change over street lights. The two local government areas that I cover in the seat of Deakin—Maroondah City Council and Whitehorse City Council—have both applied for funding under round 2 of the Community Energy Efficiency Program, and both have put submissions in to replace old street lights with new. The energy savings are quite staggering—as is the initial outlay—but for both councils the projected costs will be returned in a small number of years. And they will have got rid of old, inefficient mercury vapour light fittings—and in some cases even old fluorescent light fittings—and replaced them with new compact fluorescent fittings.

In the near future I think the opportunities that will come from the changeover of lighting from old to new will become even greater, as light-emitting diode technology becomes more and more common for lighting, internally and increasingly externally. Instead of achieving an energy saving of 50 per cent, energy savings of 80 per cent will be quite easily available for a fairly small investment. When it is thought about like that, it almost becomes something that cannot be argued. The capital cost of changeover versus running cost pretty much drives that equation by itself. So, it not only reduces energy costs, as I said, but, importantly, reduces carbon emissions—in Victoria's case, from our brown coal power stations down in Latrobe Valley.

Programs like this cannot just be a one-off; they need to continue. And it is important that they do continue, because both our councils and community organisations need to be community leaders in this field. I would hope that by showing individuals that it is easy to change over, that there is money to be saved and that there are environmental advantages to be had, programs such as the Community Energy Efficiency Program will convince or persuade householders and businesses of the value and the benefits of changing over to low-energy lighting.

In my home state of Victoria the price of electricity has been rising at close to 10 per cent per annum—sometimes more, sometimes less—and the current retail tariff in my local area is now around 27c to 28c per kilowatt hour. That really has an impact when a household or a business receives an electricity bill, and it has been going up at that rate for many years. Indeed, I actually went back through some old electricity bills not that long ago, and I did not have to go back that many years to find one on which the rate was but 14c a kilowatt hour.

I commend both councils for applying for funding under the CEEP. I think it is a great example to the community, and I commend these bills to the House.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to address the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013, I want to focus on two issues: the cost of electricity and the government's contribution to adding to that cost through the carbon tax; and the government's latest figures in relation to carbon tax advertising, which is being paid for by taxpayers, using taxpayers' funds and, as we have now seen through the Auditor-General's advice to estimates, without appropriate acknowledgment, without appropriate preparation and through documentation which was destroyed for the first and only time in the Auditor-General's 20-year career.

Let me make these points to begin with. I agree with the member for Deakin. The member for Deakin was bemoaning electricity prices. What he failed to do was to acknowledge that the purpose, the intent and the effect of the carbon tax has been directly and deliberately to increase electricity prices. Since 1 July, for families around the country the carbon tax has been two-thirds of the 15 per cent increase in electricity prices; for small and medium business, according to the Australian Industry Group, there has been a 14½ per cent increase in electricity prices attributable exclusively to the carbon tax. So its purpose, its design and its intent is to increase electricity prices. The problem with that, of course, is twofold. The carbon tax does not work on the supply side—we know that the government's own estimates see Australia's emissions going up from 560 million to 637 million tonnes. And it does not work on the demand side—it causes considerable pain.

In Western society, electricity is close to the most inelastic of goods. It is an essential service. What does that mean? It means that people pay higher prices but, in the vast bulk of cases, they are not in a position to make significant changes to their overall consumption. This means that it is the pensioners, the small-business owners, the low-income families, the single parents and the farmers—those most vulnerable—who suffer the most because electricity is a much greater part of their expenditure than it is of those on higher incomes.

So this is a tax which not only fails to achieve its fundamental purpose—it does not reduce emissions according to every one of the government's own estimates, which show that Australia's emissions go up—but it also specifically targets low- and medium-income earners. Again, there is no debate or doubt about that. It is the low- and medium-income earners who pay a far higher proportion of their income or their payments to government on electricity. That is the nature of it. It is impossible to design a form of electricity payment which does not target the low- and medium-income earners. That is its design, its intent, its objective. We only need to go back to all of the papers which set this out, whether through the Garnaut review or the government's own analysis.

So, against that background, we have heard Professor Warwick McKibbin, in the last 48 hours, pointing out that this tax does have an impact, that there is a direct correlation between where jobs are being lost and where the carbon tax is being put in place. We are seeing steel job losses and aluminium job losses. We are seeing jobs in brickmaking and cement making being lost. We are seeing jobs in the chemical industry go. There is a direct correlation here, according to Professor McKibbin.

But let us go a step further. In the last 24 hours we have heard the Queensland Master Builders Association saying that their builders are either copping it in the financial hip-pocket or having to pass the costs through to new homebuyers. It is either builders or homebuyers who are absorbing the costs. There is no great compensation package for the builders. There is no compensation package for the new homebuyers. It is this inequity which shows that this tax does not change practice but does change the viability of Australian business.

And then, to make matters worse, what we have also seen from the estimates process in the Senate is two new findings. Firstly, we have discovered that there is $2 million of additional carbon tax advertising which is available, but it has never been advertised. It has never been tendered, so the government is simply accepting proposals without ever having advertised for them. Only those who had the inside word on this funding could possibly have known about it. Only those who were in a position to make unrequested, unsolicited, unadvertised submissions would know that there was a market which they could access. So, on top of the more than $110 million of total advertising and information from the government, we see another $2 million—but reserved almost exclusively for friends.

It comes on the back of the revelation from the Auditor-General in estimates under questioning that the energy efficiency information grants, which included two out of 28 in the climate change minister's direct region, were decided without any documentation. The documents were destroyed. There is no other example which the Auditor-General can find in the last 20 years of experience where the documents were destroyed. There were clearly many different applications, but how and why these grants were made is a complete mystery. It is not something which can be solved through freedom of information. It cannot be resolved through any other activity. The documents were destroyed. The shredder was used. It is not just a failure to learn from the Home Insulation Program, from the Green Loans Program and from the phantom credits program; it is an expansion and an extension of the mistakes and inappropriate activity which were found to have occurred in those programs.

Right now, we believe that there should be a full and independent inquiry. I call on the government to provide a full and independent inquiry as to how and why the documentation proving and advising grants under the Energy Efficiency Information Grants Program was destroyed. How can these documents have been destroyed? How can no record have been taken? My message to the Prime Minister is: it is time for an independent investigation and inquiry into who authorised it, how it came to pass and why these documents were destroyed. This has every sense of being a government which has shown bad practice sliding into unforgivable practices. What we have seen with the carbon tax is rising electricity prices and a failure to achieve the government's goal, and now what we see with the carbon tax advertising and associated grants is a complete failure of probity, which deserves an independent investigation.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have always been a long-term advocate for compulsory voting because I think it is important to the whole of the nation that each person has an opportunity to cast a vote with regard to who will govern this country. Whether you are young, are of a median age or are an older person in Australia, you will contribute directly to the governance of this country. It is a very important role that each person plays: they have the opportunity to participate in the democratic processes.

Having said that, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, one of the issues that have raged over what they call the silly season in Australia has been compulsory voting, and you would have heard the debates that raged on the radios across Australia in that time. One of the biggest ironies about the debate we are witnessing, particularly in Queensland, where you come from, over compulsory voting is that the Sunshine State itself was the first in the British Empire to introduce compulsory voting, in 1915. You know that; I can see by your smile.

The second-biggest irony is that the two biggest protagonists against the Queensland government's discussion paper, Prime Minister Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan, displayed none of their current hyperbole four years ago in September 2009 when the Rudd government released its own discussion paper, asking, 'Should compulsory voting in Australia continue?'

The genesis of compulsory voting in 1915 Queensland was the then Liberal Premier Digby Denham's concern that Labor Party shop stewards were marching out their troops to vote in blocks under voluntary voting. To counter this, Denham's government introduced compulsory voting in the hope it would provide more of an electoral equilibrium.

For a modern day take on the former Liberal government's motivation, you just need to envisage thousands of activists from the extreme green movement and GetUp! swamping the voting aspirations of Middle Australia and mainstream Australia under a voluntary voting regime. Listening to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, you would be forgiven for thinking there was a plan by the coalition to introduce voluntary voting by stealth for its own benefit. I would say to you, Deputy Speaker Scott: would a government of this day promote voluntary voting or the opposite as an opportunity for their own benefit? I cannot think political parties in this day and age would do any such thing. As for the coalition conspiracy, several key frontbenchers, including Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce, as well as other coalition members, have publicly announced their support for compulsory voting as recently as last month.

The current debate offers little in new armoury of arguments thrown up against compulsory voting. The old chestnut about compulsory voting being terribly undemocratic, even an infringement on human rights, is usually at the top of the list. It has got to be put for the counterview, though, that if compulsory voting is undemocratic, so is stopping at traffic lights, being called up for jury duty and paying taxes. It is a price we all pay for living in a civilised, representative democracy. As for the human rights part, even article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that 'rights and freedoms' are subject to 'duties to the community'. In other words, we have a right to live in a free democracy and the responsibility to help uphold it.

There is genuine and well-founded risk that voluntary voting would see a dramatic drop in voting turnout at elections. This is steeped in historical reality. The Conservative Bruce-Page government was so significantly worried that voluntary voting turnout had dropped from 71 per cent of the 1919 election to less than 60 per cent at the 1922 election that it supported a private member's bill from within its own government to introduce compulsory voting. At the subsequent election in 1925 the result was self-evident, with voter turnout increasing to over 91 per cent. Since then voter turnout has never fallen below 90 per cent in an Australian federal election.

When the soap opera over the Queensland discussion paper reached one of its higher octave notes in December last year there was even a case made that voluntary voting would decrease the rate of informal voting. This is not a proven case. For example, just over one-third of the informal votes cast of the 2001 federal election had only the number '1' marked and around half that number did not complete the full sequence of numbers required—1, 2, 3 et cetera—and less than that amount had ticks and crosses.

It cannot be argued entirely one way or the other whether these votes were a case of not understanding the required voting procedure or a deliberately cast informal vote. In other words, you cannot quite tell the difference between someone who has decided to put a '1' in to say, 'This is where I would vote for the member for Maranoa, but I want to make a statement about the fact that I am upset about this voting procedure and therefore will not fill in the rest of the figures.' You do not know whether they are deciding to cast an informal vote or, as in my case in 1998, sadly, when I lost that election campaign, many of my scrutineers actually showed me that many people put '1' in the Russell Broadbent Liberal box. But they failed to put the rest of the numbers in.

The member for Dunkley is here, and he would know that one of my scrutineers was the former Speaker in Victoria, John Delzoppo. John said, 'Russell, there are enough votes in two booths in Morwell that had you in the '1' box to win the election campaign'—which I lost by 400 votes. But that is irrelevant. All these things are meant to be. What I am saying is that there were enough votes of people who put 1 next to 'Broadbent' and 1 next to 'Liberal' in the Senate vote for me to have won that election campaign. You do not know whether they were casting an informal vote or they were just saying, 'This is how I want to vote, but I don't want to be troubled with the rest of it.' That is a difficult example, but I just put that to you as one of the vagaries of our system. However, I believe the people of Australia at every election campaign have come up with the result that they chose.

One-third of the informal votes cast at the 2001 federal election had only the number 1 marked, and around half did not complete the full sequence of numbers required, as I mentioned before. It cannot be argued entirely one way or the other whether these votes were a case of not understanding the required voting procedure or were deliberately cast informal votes. Members of this place would be well familiar with the scenarios I am referring to because they would have seen many of them many a time in their own electorates.

Ongoing information and education about how Australian democracy works is more effective than the disincentive to participate in it that voluntary voting induces. In his very thoughtful and thorough paper for the Australian Electoral Commission on compulsory voting in Australia, Tim Evans demonstrates that compulsory voting has enjoyed a remarkably consistent level of support among the Australian public. Evans notes that in the first Australian election study after the 1996 election 74 per cent of Australians supported compulsory voting in federal elections. The same study after the 2004 election returned the same 74 per cent level of support, as did an Ipsos Mackay case study in 2005, and in 2005 a Morgan poll showed a level of 71 per cent support for compulsory voting.

Another point of contention is whether a particular political party—with the Liberal Party most commonly pointed to—would benefit from voluntary voting. While there is still conjecture on this, I will again refer to Evans, who wrote in 2006:

There appears to be a consensus that there would have been the same result at each of the last four elections if they had been held under a voluntary regime.

I need to repeat that:

There appears to be a consensus that there would have been the same result at each of the last four elections if they had been held under a voluntary regime.

Pollster Antony Green, in contributing to the current debate, wrote late last year that, had voluntary voting been in place at the 2010 federal election, there might have been a different outcome. My view is that, had there been a different voting system in place, Australians might well have voted with a different intention from the votes they cast in 2010. One thing is for sure, though: over 90 per cent of adult Australian citizens, of all means and walks of life, will be compelled to contribute their say on who should govern for all of us, and that is what counts the most.

I am not going to take up the rest of my time in advancing my propositions in support of compulsory voting. I remember a note from the former Prime Minister John Howard that suggested he did not agree with me on this issue. It was a very forthright private note where he noted that he was not going to appoint me to a position I had asked for and he let me know that he did not like my opinions on compulsory voting. I personally think compulsory voting is extremely important because, as each generation comes through, they are drawn to the ballot box. They do not have to vote. They can pick up a piece of paper like that. I say to the member for Gippsland, who is sitting beside me, that their name is crossed off the register, they are handed two pieces of paper and they can put a cross across them and throw them in the bin. You do not have to vote.

Voting is not compulsory, but we are asking you to contribute to the democratic system that we have here in this nation, which is really important. If we do not say to the youngest in our communities, 'This is really important,' how will they ever know? If they are not drawn in by law or by the threat of a fine to contribute to the national debate, and therefore, quite seriously, if they know that they have to vote, they get a chance to consider how they might vote.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to say this to you, because you and I came into this House at the same time and I have the highest regard for you. I remember a time three days before an election campaign which was crucial to me in a marginal seat in Victoria. They were very difficult and rough times, which made it very difficult to win. I had to deliver some keys to one of my staff members to open one of our business stores early in the morning, and her son was there. He was going to be handing out for me the following Saturday, and I said to him, 'Dean, are you right for Saturday?' and he said, 'Who are we playing?' His mindset was on the local football. We as politicians, especially in this House in Canberra, need to remember that there is a world outside of this place that is not particularly interested in us. The only way that we can draw them in is through this compulsory voting system. Personally, I think it is crucially important that we hand on to our generations that out of Queensland in 1915 our forefathers said: 'Look, this is really important. It is not about who wins or loses. It is about everybody in this nation contributing to who runs this nation.' Both you and I have suffered the slings and arrows of political ups and downs and turbulence. We have been in and out, and the Deputy Speaker has seen more comings and goings than most members of this House. He has decided to continue in this place, which I applaud him for, because we need the experience and the benefit that he has given this place over a long time, and will continue to give. Compulsory voting has been a great benefit to this country and will continue to be a benefit to this country long after I have left this House.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As is so often the case, I find myself in furious agreement with my neighbour, the member for McMillan, and I thank him and congratulate him for his contribution, particularly in relation to compulsory voting. I concur completely with his sentiments, particularly when you consider the need to engage our younger generation in all aspects of civic life. Unless there is an element of compulsion, I agree with the member for McMillan, perhaps they may not participate in any way whatsoever and their voice will not be heard.

I appreciate the opportunity to rise tonight to speak to the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 because I want to raise an issue which relates specifically towards young people in our community. The issue that I want to focus on in my comments tonight is that of the education opportunities and the lack of opportunities for young people in regional communities, particularly in terms of the way the federal government provides a system of student income support. I have risen many times in this place over the past five years to talk about the way regional students are treated unfairly and inequitably under the current system. I have been joined by my colleagues, including the member for McMillan and several other regional members as well as, I suspect, members opposite from regional communities, to wage a battle which we ultimately won when we opposed the changes that were made to Youth Allowance by the Labor party, with the unthinking and perhaps unknowing support of some of the Independents, who perhaps did not quite realise what they were locking our community into.

Unfortunately, it was something of a hollow victory when we forced changes on the issue of inner or outer regional geographical classifications a couple of years ago. The people's voice was heard, and it was heard very strongly. We had thousands of people from throughout regional Australia signing petitions, writing letters to members in regional areas and attending rallies the length and breadth of Australia. Many of them also contributed to the review that was undertaken by Professor Kwong Lee Dow. But I fear that what has happened in the ensuing period of time has been just tinkering around the edges of the system of student income support.

I believe the system as it exists today needs a complete overhaul. We need to start by recognising the current inequity in the system. Those who live in the suburbs may think this is a welfare or social justice issue, but to me this is entirely about fairness and equity. Rather than have me stand here tonight and lecture the parliament again on this topic—anyone listening can refer to the Hansard for the many, many speeches I have made on it—I want to quote from a letter received today from a family in Geraldton in Western Australia, which is obviously a long way from Gippsland. I have quoted people from the electorate of Gippsland in this place many times before. This letter sums up the feelings of angst and despair amongst many regional people when it comes to the issue of student income support. The letter, from Steve and Kerry Cosh, says:

Firstly and most importantly—it should cost students from regional areas no more than students from city areas to access university education. At the moment this is not the case. Country students, whose families earn more than the parental income threshold, receive no help at all—no Youth Allowance, no Start-up Allowance and no Rent Assistance. How can this be fair when those families living in the city, earning the same income, do not have the relocation and rental costs that regional families are required to pay when their children want to attend university? My husband and I live in Geraldton WA which is located over 400kms from Perth. Our twin daughters attended their first year at university at Edith Cowan University last year. We decided they would need to work a gap year in 2011 after they finished High School as we could not afford the ongoing costs associated with them moving to Perth straight away. We were also of the belief that if our girls gained independence through working a gap year, as many have done before them, they would qualify for Youth Allowance.

That is an important point. It shows that regional families have misunderstood this great, confusing bureaucracy which has developed around Youth Allowance. So the students believed that by taking a gap year and achieving independence, meeting the workforce eligibility criteria, they would be entitled to some student income support. The letter goes on to say:

After checking with Centrelink, to our surprise and disappointment, even though our girls were deemed independent after satisfying the third element criteria, we were told that as from last year, we would be subject to a Parental Income Test. We were of the understanding, as are many others, which 'independent' meant students were not dependent on their families—so why is the family's income taken into account? The recent introduction of the parental income test by the Gillard government has caused a great deal of stress and hardship for us and many rural families.

The letter continues in significant detail. But the parents also make very clear a point about wealth and whether the parental income test is really relevant. They say:

We are in our mid 50's and have a $170,000 mortgage. We only bought our first house about 6 years ago and have very few assets—we do not consider ourselves wealthy at all. … Many of us are not wealthy asset rich families. … The current cost to accommodate students at the Joondalup University Campus is over $200.00 per week each, this did not include meals. … As we could not afford this we were lucky enough to find private accommodation which was very difficult to find. We spent many weekends travelling to Perth, lining up at home viewings along with 30 to 40 other people. The cost of this, including travelling accommodation, was very expensive. In the end it was just luck … we were able to find a rental property. Although we are still paying over $1000 a month just in rent, the cost of re-locating and setting them up with furniture and whitegoods was a very costly exercise. We live over 400 kilometres from Perth and the cost of travelling to visit our daughters is expensive, as it is for them, when they return home for holidays and family reasons. These are all costs that city families and students living at home do not have. After allowing a modest $100 a week for food each, the total cost to us will be over $21,000 for the first year. Many incidental costs occurred along the way as well. This does not take into account the thousands of dollars we will be paying in university fees. Regional students relocating to the city, face not only financial pressure but emotional upheaval as well. Many of these students have not been away from their home and families for long periods of time. Most will be required to find work (and work more hours than city students do) to support themselves along with shopping, cooking and household duties.

They envy their city friends who are still living in the comfort of their own homes. This makes it very difficult for them to find enough time for their studies. We know of students many last year who have returned home before completing their studies because of these added pressures. These regional students are legally adults, have worked for a year and don't live in the family home. They are looking after themselves and most have to work part-time while studying to make ends meet. They are living independently and should automatically qualify for centrelink assistance as independent students.

The letter goes on, but it ends with the point that:

It is the Australian Government's responsibility to ensure that access to tertiary studies is equitable for all students and their families, no matter where they reside.

I wanted to quote from that letter, because many times in this place I have been accused of politicking on this issue, sometimes by the Prime Minister herself when she was the education minister, and that has disappointed me, because members of the Nationals, and regional members in particular right across Australia, have been absolutely fair dinkum on this issue. We have stood up in this place on many occasions and made the point in relation to the lack of support for students from regional communities trying to achieve their absolute best by going to university.

I stand here tonight and demand from this government and from any future coalition government—and that may be the case after September this year—to find a better way and a fairer way to care for the needs and interests of regional students. There is a better way, and that is to provide a tertiary access allowance for all students who are required to relocate to attend a tertiary institution.

If we are not prepared as a nation to build universities in every regional setting—and I am not proposing that we should—then we have to help to provide access for all regional students.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear! Hear!

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for McMillan is right in endorsing my comments. We are talking about all regional students. This is a question of equity of access. In my view, a tertiary access allowance should be in the order of something like $10,000 per annum and it should not be linked to parental income.

We should not require a student to take a year off study and undertake a gap year unless that is their personal choice. The gap year provision has become somewhat anachronistic. It is unfair for students who want to get on with their studies. Some students just want to go from high school straight into their studies. But, instead, in a bid to try and fulfil some complex bureaucratic eligibility criteria, to achieve this notional status of what we call independence, they find out that their parents' income will still be counted against them.

So it is quite frankly a bizarre situation. As a government, as a nation, as a department of education, we cannot have it both ways. We cannot be telling these kids: 'You have achieved independence by working for 12 months and getting $19,500. But, by the way, we are still going to hold your parents' income against you. You are not really independent.' You cannot have it both ways. They are either independent and they get the youth allowance or they are not independent.

This is a bureaucratic nightmare. It is a mess. The Centrelink staff themselves do not understand the system. They simply cannot weave their way through the maze which exists at the moment in relation to youth allowance and the whole system of student income support. We have set up a series of hoops which we expect these young people to jump through, but then we deem them 'not really independent', because we use their parents' income to stop them from actually accessing any benefits whatsoever, if they want to actually go on to achieve their full potential and undertake university studies.

This is a topic which I and many others could talk about all night, because it is a source of enormous frustration for regional MPs. I recognise that what I am saying tonight—that all students from regional areas forced to move away from home to access university should receive in the order of $10,000 per annum—is going to have a cost to the bottom line of the budget, and it would probably be in excess of $200 million per year from the rough calculations that I have done. But there would be benefits in cancelling the current allowance, and in the reduction in staff hours of the bureaucrats required to navigate their way through the current mess.

But we have a Prime Minister who wears like a badge of honour around this nation her claims to be an education Prime Minister.

If she is serious about her claims and her ambition to raise university participation targets, if she is serious about her so-called education crusade, this is a gaping, glaring hole in her credentials and her claims to be a Prime Minister who cares about education.

The Prime Minister is already wearing some level of baggage in relation to education because of the $16 billion that was spent on school halls. The $16 billion on school halls, billed as the Building the Education Revolution program, did not have a single educational outcome attached to it. There were no improvements in literacy, no targets for numeracy and no targets for university participation rates tied to the spending of that $16 billion, so I will not wear from this Prime Minister or the education minister that we cannot afford to provide a fair deal for regional students when we can spend $16 billion on school halls without a single educational outcome attached to it.

There are other issues attached to helping regional students achieve their full potential in terms of participation in university. There are other issues in relation to aspiration and the quality of teaching available to them in a regional location. But the economic barrier is the single biggest factor which prevents regional students from participating in university studies at the same level as their city cousins. Unless one member in this place is prepared to stand up here in this building and tell me that city kids are smarter than country kids, there is no explanation for why country kids do not participate in university at the same rate, unless it is the economic barrier. Unless anyone from a suburban electorate is prepared to stand up and have that debate with me tonight, saying that city kids are smarter than country kids and that that explains their participation in university, the simple issue of access is the biggest factor. The biggest barrier for regional students in achieving their full potential is the economic barrier, and we can do something about it in this place.

This remains an enormous sticking point for Australian regional families. Even after students achieve their so-called independence criteria under the barriers we have established, they can be excluded from receiving any assistance whatsoever under the current arrangements which were put in place by this government. The system of student income support should be making sure that every student in Australia, regardless of where they live, has the opportunity to achieve their full potential. We have a desperately long way to go when it comes to regional areas. Regional students remained vastly under-represented at our university campuses.

This is an issue that goes beyond the individual students. It also goes to the simple concern I have about regional growth and prosperity in itself. It is a separate point that is related. We constantly talk in this place about our skill shortage in regional communities, but parents will make a conscious decision to move away from a regional community to a city because they can support their kids better in their university years, if they cannot receive income support while they are still in a regional location. This is a direct wealth transfer, as well, from regional communities to city communities, because our country parents are paying rent to support their children from a regional location.

The debate does not end here. This is a major social and economic issue. It should not be this hard to get a fair go for regional students.

Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2012-2013 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2012-2013. I want to open with the carbon tax and the MRRT because they are very important when it comes to our finances and the economy of Australia, and both are very prevalent in my electorate. 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead' is now cast in stone, and we know who said that. Basically, a carbon tax is antibusiness. It is anticompetitive for our companies when they trade in overseas markets, and it has put our cost levying through the roof.

Businesses in my electorate are directly affected—and people say to us that the carbon tax is not a big worry; it has just blown across the waves and no-one has been affected. That is wrong. I have seen abattoirs in Biggenden whose cost of power has gone through the roof. Meat works have cut back their kill rates so that they fall under the $23 a tonne for 25,000 tonnes a year.

The aluminium and alumina industries in Gladstone still cannot make those two products at a profit. There are 6,000 jobs involved with Rio Tinto in Gladstone alone. The cement industry—Cement Australia—that supplies all Queensland's cement, as well as supplying some into New South Wales and some into Victoria, is struggling with imports of clinker from China. Again, their electricity costs have gone up by an extra million dollars a year. Anyone who runs a cool room, like the citrus orchards in Gayndah and Bundaberg, is paying through the nose. A citrus farmer was telling me that an air conditioner that needs re-gassing will now cost something like $500, but to buy a new unit it would cost about $600. So, what do you do? Do you pay $500 to have the old one re-gassed, or do you buy a new one and have it fitted, which would also cost money?

Whilst the eurozone's emissions costs are coming down, ours are still on $23 a tonne and will go up as of 1 July. But it will be the end of it if we get into power, because we are going to squash it. The MRRT certainly increases our sovereign risk. It is anti-jobs, and it means anti-competitiveness for our companies. Anyone who exports minerals is now faced with this lumbering tax. It will cost the companies a lot, and it will cost the government a lot to monitor these taxes; it is not a straightforward tax. A royalty is a tax, and the benefit of a royalty is that everyone knows exactly what the companies are paying. It is done on a per-tonne basis, and everyone knows, the day they pull it out of the ground and the day they put it on a rail wagon to go to the port, that they are up for that charge. They do not have to spend millions of dollars trying to work out their tax against capital funding or write-downs—all that stuff that comes into it. Obviously our government did not know, at the time they struck this mining tax deal with the big three, the difference between capital value and written-down value, and that is where the companies led by a nose and came out in front.

The budget in six months has drawn $126 million against a budgeted $2 billion. To get to that $126 million it already cost the government $50 million, and it also cost the companies $40 million in terms of the tax they pay. So, in all, it is probably about $50 million versus $2 billion. That was the shortfall. And guess who pays the difference? That would be the taxpayer. Iron ore has actually gone up over the period, so you cannot blame commodity prices for the big disparity between what should have been made and what was not made.

The Labor government continually knocks investors like Gina Rinehart, Twiggy Forrest and Clive Palmer, but without those people willing to invest in Australia, who have we left? I wish there were 100 of those types of people who had the money and the foresight to invest in our mining industry.

If you take out our mining industry and our gas industry, we are left with struggling industries such as the motor vehicle industry, the manufacturing industry and the steel industry. Our farming industry is very critical at the moment. Dairy farmers are falling over at an alarming rate. People are working and not even getting their costs back. So, at the moment, mining is No. 1. Mining is king. Some reports you read say that coal will be king for the next 200 years. If that is the case, we must encourage it. Twenty years ago, Indonesia did not export one tonne of coal and they are now the biggest exporters in the world, with over 30 per cent of the market. We have dropped from 30 per cent down to 29 per cent.

We do pay the highest wages in the coal industry to our workers; I am not denying that. Also our gas workers are the highest-paid gas workers in the world. Unfortunately, the productivity is the lowest in the world. So you can see the discrepancy there.

We are good at exporting our mining companies and our mining staff offshore. When Kevin Rudd was the Foreign Minister, he told me that there were 250 Australian companies working in Africa. The Mongolian ambassador told a group of us only last year that there were 171 Australian companies working in Mongolia and that Leighton Holdings, a well-known Australian company, was leading the charge in Mongolia. Our companies are also operating in South America and other parts of the world. Kazakhstan is a country that is surging ahead, and they too are picking the eyes out of the mining staff; Australia is a good hunting ground for that.

Often the Treasurer has been heard to say that our economy is doing so well, when we compare it to Greece, Italy, Ireland and Spain—those European countries that are in a fair bit of financial strife. He never mentions Hong Kong, which is a part of China; China itself; Malaysia; Singapore; India; Indonesia—good GDP there; Korea; and, in the troubled eurozone, Norway and Germany are doing quite well. In South America, Chile is going very well. But we as a nation seem to have lost control of our finances. Labor has promised 650 times that there would be a budget surplus, and of course since Christmas that promise has disappeared and we are now heading for a big deficit. The size of that deficit is unknown, but we know we have got a $2 billion deficit or thereabouts, with our mining industry going down.

We started with our net borrowings, on the bank card, of $70 billion. It soon went to $200 billion, $250 billion, and now it is up to $300 billion. The current figure is running at about $262 billion as I speak. Our Treasurer says we have got a revenue problem, but our revenue is actually going up. The Treasurer has actually got a spending problem, and he is spending more than he makes. That is the crux. You can do it for one year, you can do it for two years, but you cannot continually do it. As we all know, we have not had a surplus budget since 1989. He did inherit from the John Howard government $70 billion in the bank, and now it is down to $147 billion net debt.

It is all well and good, but he inherited from the John Howard government $70-plus billion in credit in the bank. That is all gone. That is now down to $147 billion of net debt. This is disturbing in anyone's language. The mining boom helped us to have the best terms of trade in 150 years, and yet we have still ended up with gross debt of $262 billion. That is unfathomable to me.

He talked about the low interest rates that we have. The cash rate is three per cent, but I can tell you that businesses are paying eight per cent plus, and housing loan rates are more like six per cent plus. It is nice to talk about three per cent. That is if you are borrowing money. But in real terms we are paying a lot more for our loans. Business rates are eight per cent plus, and they can be up to 12 per cent or 15 per cent. That is what is driving businesses into the ground.

There has been wastage. We all know about the pink batts and the school halls. If you just look at the school halls, if you compare public schools versus private schools, you will soon see where the wastage has been. It is a mystery that the world's best Treasurer with the highest terms of trade in 150 years, who inherited no debt and who had money in the bank and a budget surplus, has brought us to where we are. In his reign, he has introduced 27 new taxes or increases to taxes. The Defence Force has been cut $5.5 billion, plus another $1.6 billion in the last 12 months. We are now down to 1938 levels of Defence Force spending versus GDP.

An opposition member: That is a disgrace.

That is a disgrace. I urge and plead with the government not to touch our superannuation funds. People my age—and younger, and older—have worked hard for our super funds. If we want people to retire under their own steam we cannot keep fiddling with superannuation. People in my electorate come to me every day and ask: 'What will you do if you get into government? Please do not touch our superannuation funds. If you want us to look after our own retirement, you must come to a steady arrangement where you do not keep changing the rules.'

Debate adjourned.