Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in reply to the Governor-General's speech, which was made some several months ago now. It was a great pleasure to sit in the Senate and to listen to the Governor-General spell out the plans for this coalition government's term in office. I would like to start by thanking the electors of the seat of Hughes for putting their trust and their confidence in me to represent them in this place, in our federal parliament. I give my commitment to the people of Hughes that I will not let them down and I will stand up for issues that are important not only to our national economy but also to our local area.

In doing so, I take this opportunity to reflect on what we learnt over the 5½ to six years of Labor government. There is a thing called Mauldin's law, and I think it is something we should reflect on and learn from. Mauldin's law states that, for every government law hurriedly passed, designed to fix some perceived crisis, there will be at least one unintended consequence which will have equal or greater negative effects than the problem it was designed to fix. It goes on:

A further corollary is that laws passed to appease a particular group, whether voters or a particular industry, will have at least three unintended consequences, most of which will eventually have the opposite effect than the intended outcomes and transfer costs to innocent bystanders.

Mauldin's law, those unintended consequences having negative effects, is actually a way of summing up the last 5½ or six years of the previous, Labor, government. That is something we should learn from.

Something I see in my own electorate to which Mauldin's law about unintended consequences applies is the proposal to build an intermodal freight transport hub at Moorebank. To quickly explain, the perceived problem is congestion at Port Botany in moving containers to and from the port, from Sydney and elsewhere in New South Wales. But the problem is not at the port. The port currently has two stevedores, and a third stevedore is due to open within the next few weeks. So the congestion is not at the port itself; the congestion is at the roads around the port.

The concept of the intermodal is that those containers which are now transported by truck to areas in Western Sydney would instead be put on a train. There could be 30 to 100 containers on the one train. They would be shuttled out to Western Sydney and then distributed from the proposed location, Moorebank. The concept that is being promoted around the Moorebank intermodal is that it would take trucks off the road. That is actually a completely flawed concept. Unless you have a rail siding where the containers are taken off, you are not taking trucks off the road. At the very best, all that relocating to the west of Sydney would do would be to reduce the distance trucks had to travel by road.

Very careful analysis needs to be undertaken of where those containers go. When that analysis is done—and it has not been done in any of the modelling by the Moorebank Intermodal Company or the private sector—it will show that the Moorebank is not where they end up. Most of the containers that would go to Moorebank to be redistributed would end up at Wetherill Park or the Eastern Creek area. To get them to those areas from Moorebank would require a 20-kilometre trip via truck. So the entire concept of the Moorebank intermodal is flawed. All it would do would be to slightly reduce truck mileage.

Secondly, the intermodal concept adds another step in the distribution chain. A truck can pick a container up from the port and take it directly to the warehouse, factory or other location where it is to be unloaded. It is simply a straight transfer. An intermodal would put an extra step in the way. Instead of a container being loaded on a truck at the port, the container would be loaded onto a train. That train would then go out to Western Sydney. The container would then be unloaded from the train onto a stack and then put onto a truck. So it is an extra handling process, and that extra handling process has additional costs. The only way that those additional costs can be offset effectively is if you actually move the intermodal far enough away from the port and close enough to where those containers need to be distributed from, and when you look at the analysis of the location of Moorebank it fails on every one of those terms.

The other issue is that this is simply transferring a problem of road congestion at Port Botany to the Moorebank-Liverpool area. Our roads around Liverpool—the M5, the Hume Highway and the surrounding roads—are the most congested in Sydney. They are equally as congested as the M5 around the Port Botany area. In fact the section of the Hume Highway around the back of Liverpool, where it is estimated that 80 per cent of these truck movements will head through, is voted by many agencies as one of the most dangerous and accident-prone sections of all roads in New South Wales. This is an area through which the plans are to divert over 10,000 trucks a day. If an intermodal were to be built at Moorebank, there would be billions and billions of dollars' worth of costs for road upgrades.

The third problem with the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal suggestion is the idea that it will reduce air pollution in Western Sydney. There is an ounce of truth in that, because if you are moving a container via rail as opposed to road you are actually using half the amount of diesel fuel. With steel on steel, moving goods on rail as opposed to road is actually more energy efficient, by half—you are using half the diesel fuel to start with. So you do have a reduction in the emissions of carbon dioxide. But what is missing from every single analysis on moving the containers by taking them off the road and putting them on to rail is the amount of particulate pollution that these locomotives actually spew into the atmosphere. In fact, if you compare the particulate pollution from a modern truck engine that has been built from 2007 onwards with the current locomotive fleet you are talking about an eight- to 10-times increase in particulate pollution from the locomotive engine.

So even though you are saving half the diesel fuel, because that diesel fuel is spewed into the atmosphere and burnt in such old and dirty locomotives you are still ending up with eight to 10 times more particulate pollution in our atmosphere in Western Sydney. And I do not know of anyone in Western Sydney who has become sick or ill, or who has died, from the emissions of CO2. But there are hundreds of people every year in Sydney who die from particulate pollution. The models are simply flawed on this; they do not look at the correct pollution that is causing harm to people in Western Sydney.

The fourth major flaw with the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal is the financial analysis. If we look at the headlines they say that this will have a $10-billion benefit to the economy. But when you actually look at it, the $10 billion is in future dollars. The value that they say in current dollars is $2.5 billion. Let us just take those through; let us just assume that all the economic benefits to add up to $2.5 billion. What is not counted in those benefits is firstly the cost to build the Moorebank intermodal. We are relocating the School of Military Engineering from Moorebank to Holsworthy at an expense of close to $1 billion. So $1 billion is being spent just to move the School of Military Engineering to give a clear patch of land. So before even a sod is turned on this development there is an extra $1 billion worth of costs, and that is not included in the analysis.

The other thing that is not included in the analysis is the opportunity cost of the land. Here we have in Sydney riverside land, right beside the Georges River. Anyone who goes there will realise what a magnificent area this is—this natural river that Macquarie first came down when he travelled from Parramatta and established the town of Liverpool. Macquarie noted in his journals what a magnificent natural site this was. This is the land that we have; it should be open to the public. It should be a prize in our estate, in our natural area. Instead, the plans that we have are to build a giant transport hub on that and to deny the public access to some of the best and most environmentally sensitive and environmentally beautiful land in all of Western Sydney.

If you add those two things in, you end up with almost zero economic benefit. And that is before one single cent is counted on the road upgrades and the road infrastructure that needs to be added to cope with up to 20,000 trucks a day. I will say that again: 20,000 additional truck movements a day are expected to be put in the Liverpool area because of this plan. We have absolute road congestion at the moment in our area; it simply cannot handle an extra thousand trucks a day, let alone the 20,000 trucks a day that are planned. So this is a deeply flawed project.

However, there is a better way; there is a better solution. If we are going to build a new, second airport for Sydney, which will actually be Western Sydney's own international airport at Badgerys Creek, it makes perfectly logical sense to relocate that intermodal transport hub for Western Sydney adjacent to that airport. That frees up the land at Liverpool to do enormous things: to build a business park—a technology park—that was planned by the local council, something that will actually bring thousands and thousands of jobs into the Liverpool area. We have to extend the rail line out to Badgerys Creek airport to make it viable. We can simply extend the Southern Sydney Freight Line, put the rail link out through Leppington and take it up to Badgerys Creek so that an intermodal transport hub will be viable there.

The other thing we must remember is that when I discuss this with so-called experts they say, 'Well, yes, we might also have an intermodal at Badgerys Creek, and we might also have one at Eastern Creek, and we'll also have one at Moorebank; therefore, let Moorebank go.' However, the one factor they overlook is that we have a capacity on the Southern Sydney Freight Line to move these containers. That capacity is a theoretical capacity of 1.9 million container movements, or TEUs—20-foot-equivalent units. So we have about a 1.9 million theoretical capacity, which they say comes down to an actual capacity of about 1.2 to 1.3 or maybe 1.4 million, absolutely stretching it. But the problem we have is that that freight line already has to accommodate 300,000 TEUs to the Enfield Intermodal, which is due to open any week now, and another 250,000 TEUs at the Minto Intermodal, which has been expanded. So we will be struggling with the Moorebank Intermodal to have an extra 1.2 million containers. We will simply saturate the total capacity of that Southern Sydney Freight Line by building the Moorebank Intermodal.

If we are going to locate this intermodal in Western Sydney we are only going to have one shot in the locker because of the capacity constraints on that Southern Sydney Freight Line. If we get this planning decision wrong, this will be a multi-billion-dollar mistake; it will cause traffic chaos in Western Sydney for decades to come. Currently I have a local group—a company called Transport Modelling—that is preparing a detailed report, which I hope to table in the coming weeks here in this parliament, to demonstrate the folly of the government proceeding with the Moorebank Intermodal and showing that it would be far more socially, environmentally and economically viable for that intermodal to instead be located at Badgerys Creek.

I would also like to address one of the big issues we saw over the last six years in which the Labor government had a detrimental effect on this country. That has been the decline in small business. Never before in our history—probably going back to the Great Depression—have we seen such a decline in the percentage and the emphasis on small businesses as we have in the last six years. We cannot underestimate the importance of small business in our economy. I hear so many times, from speakers on both sides, about the importance of small business. Often we talk about it but we introduce policies into this place that actually harm small business. Our future economic prosperity is not based on the companies we have today, or the industries we have today. Our future economic prosperity is based on the new start-up businesses—the new businesses that will bring new innovations. That is what will drive our economy in the future. But we have every single thing turned against small business.

One thing I hope the coalition quickly brings to this parliament to legislate is our promise to introduce unfair-contract terms. This is something we expected the previous Labor government to introduce. It was brought in for consumers, but at the very last minute small business was cut out. There was a coalition election commitment to bring in unfair-contract terms to apply to small business. We have already seen the High Court act on this in relation to penalty clauses. And the argument that was used by certain companies, businesses and sections of our economy—that what was really a penalty clause was in fact a fee for service—has been thrown out by the High Court. Already we have seen a decrease in some of the bank fees. We have the bank fee case going through the courts at the moment. But that decision of the High Court, combined with the coalition's legislation to be introduced on unfair-contract terms, will level the playing field a little bit more for small business.

There are many things we need to do during this term of government. We have a lot to do. But the first thing we must do is learn from the mistakes of the past. Yes, we can criticise, but the time for criticising is over. It is now the coalition's time to move forward. But in doing so we should never forget the mistakes of the past six years—those unintended consequences and how, even though some policies may have been introduced with good intentions, they fell over.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure today to rise to give my address-in-reply to the Governor-General's speech to this place. In commencing my address-in-reply I would like to acknowledge the presence in the chamber today of the member for Corangamite. I was looking at my address-in-reply from three years ago, and it happens that the member for Corangamite then, also by coincidence, was in the chamber. The electorates of Corio and Corangamite are inextricably linked; they are the two federal electorates that represent the great city of Geelong in this parliament. Of course, the circumstances are very different now to those in which I made this speech three years ago, in terms of both the side of the House from which I am making the speech and the political representation of the member for Corangamite. I congratulate her on her election to this place. We have many differences, as you would expect given the parties we represent—and we argue those differences vigorously—but we share a passion for Geelong. We work together on matters relating to Geelong, and I look forward to working with the member for Corangamite over the course of this term of government.

We live in a time when Geelong faces many challenges. We are a manufacturing city, a car city, and over the last few months we have had very difficult news in relation to both the car industry and the manufacturing industry. It is very much my view that a country makes a conscious choice on whether it has a car industry or a manufacturing industry. It concerns me that the Abbott government clearly has made a choice not to support a manufacturing or a car industry, and I will come back to this point.

The principal basis upon which we make an address-in-reply is to thank the many people who supported our election to this place and the many people who support our ongoing participation in the federal parliament. I begin by thanking the Labor state MPs in Geelong as I work very closely with them: John Eren, the member for Lara; Ian Trezise, the member for Geelong; Lisa Neville, the member for Bellarine; and Gayle Tierney, the member for Western Province. I have worked very closely with them all in representing the interests of Geelong at every level of government, including the state level.

An enormous number of volunteers helped in my election, and an enormous number of volunteers give their time to support all of us in being elected to this place. Being elected to this parliament is a big thing, and if I have learnt one thing in my time here it is that my being here is the result of the work of an enormous number of people. It is not just about me—far from it. These people deserve recognition and I will put their names into the Hansard to thank them from the bottom of my heart for all their work and time. I thank Andrew Alexander, Desiree Balaburova, Tony Beck, John Bugge, Gorge Camorra, Chris Couzens, Ray Craske, Jim Cuthill, Paul Dabkowski, Oliver Dojcinovski and Soner Ekerbicer. I thank Sumeyra Eren, Ekrem Eren, Enes Eren—all the children of John Eren and they have been very strong supporters. I thank Damian Gorman, Ferg Hamilton, Emma Henderson, Stephen Hogg, Jeannette Johanson, Wendy Jones, Christine and Chris Kelly, Brian Kent, Jim Kontogeorgis, Richard Lewandowski, Zoli Luczo, Kate Maybin, Craig Meddings, Glenn and Russell Menzies, Justin Mills, Rita Monkivitch, Slavco Pantelic, Kathleen Pender, Adam Peterwood, Matt Podvinsek, Brett Robb, Michael Tate, Craig Taylor, Nandi Youny, Pinar Zegin and the Bosnali family, Senol and Semiha.

I thank Gail Cook, Colleen Gibbs, Cameron Granger—a longtime friend and supporter—and Joanne and Ashleigh Law. Joanne gives a lot of time to my family, and I really appreciated her support on election day. I thank Sam Lowrey and Wayne Mader—the Victorian branch secretary of the Transport Workers Union, the union at which I first worked. It was a real pleasure to have Wayne assisting on the day. I thank Joe Pavlovic, Jill Petersen, Vlad Selakovic and Leonie Sheedy. Vlad and Leonie are Forgotten Australians who were raised in institutions. They were instrumental in getting the apology to Forgotten Australians a number of years ago. I appreciate their support. I thank Roger Lowrey, a stalwart in supporting me over the years. I thank Sabrina Lewicki and Simeon Flanagan, friends of my son Sam, who did a great job to get them involved. I thank Nancy Saunderson and Lou Brazier, a great supporter. I thank Mark Donohue, a former staff member and very important supporter. I thank Darren and Natasha Lamont and Kelly Toyne. This is a large list, but not the entire list. Mentioning their support for what I do in this place is the very least I can do to thank them for all their time, energy, advice and counsel. This collection of people keeps me very grounded in the community I represent.

Many people have worked for me over the course of the last three years, both in my electorate office in Geelong and in portfolio work as the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs and the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and then the Minister for Trade. Without our staff nothing happens. They put in endless hours and get precious little thanks as they do not earn huge salaries. They work out of a commitment not just to supporting me but to serving the country and pursuing their beliefs. They deserve acknowledgement. I thank Sophie Andrew, Merric Foley, Hayley Bamford and Damian Hickey. I thank Saverina Chirumbolo, who has worked with me since 2000 when I was at the ACTU. I am not sure what I did in a past life to deserve Sav, but I am very glad that Sav is in this life, because without her I would not be able to do this job. I thank Zac Power, Geraldine Eren, Grant Dew, Vanessa Mantella, Rachael Wakeley and Jo Woodbury, who was my chief of staff as the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs. I thank Pauline Braniff, Bassel Tallal, Haykel Handal, Ella George, Kylie Nicholson, Mark Mulligan, Berna Doksatli, Chris Balaam, Karyn Murray, Maxine Parisotto and Virginia Greville, who was my chief of staff when I was Minister for Trade. I thank Trish Rowley, Ruimin Gao and Glenda Price. I thank all of them for their great effort, which is deeply appreciated and not taken for granted in the slightest.

One of the nice things about running for public office is to have old friends involved who stand by you—in my case, people whom I went to school with in Geelong. I feel nervous about admitting this 30 years later, but that is the number. In fact, it is the 30th anniversary this year of my leaving school, a fact that I am struggling with and quite significantly resent! It is wonderful that those people were able to support me on election day. To Clare Lawrence and Ninian Lewis and William Reeves, and Peter and Gitte Little and Darren and Jo Fox, who were not able to be there on the day but have been long-time friends of mine, I very much thank them for the personal friendship and support they have given me over the years. Having known each other from childhood, we are genuinely the witnesses of each other's lives and I cannot think of a better group of people to witness mine, and I hope I honour them in witnessing theirs.

To my extended family. My parents Faye and Don Marles were there on the day, which was great. I thank my sisters Liz Marles, Vic Marles and Jenny Green for being there. I thank my brother-in-law Geoff Westcott and my nephew Alex Marles for the effort they made. I thank all my family and extended family who have contributed so much to my life over the years. It was a wonderful thing that they were able to help me on the day. I also acknowledge my nieces and my nephew Katie and Angus Quail and Evie Green, who live in Sydney and were unable to be there on the day. They too give me enormous support.

There is of course my own direct family: my wife Rachel Schutze and my children Sam, Bella, Harvey and Georgia—all of whom were conscripted to help in my campaign commensurate with their age and ability. I thank them for being with me. In relation to Rachel, it would be impossible to do this job without her support, particularly over the last three years. Being involved in a foreign affairs portfolio, particularly in the lead-up to Australia's successful campaign to be elected to the UN Security Council, involved an enormous amount of travel in addition to being here in this parliament. She was really heroic in the role she performed not only in pursuing her own career, which she does very professionally, but also in keeping our household and our lives together. I am deeply indebted to Rachel for that.

I would also like to mention four other people who have been real supporters and advisers to me on the work I do in Geelong: Peter Dorling, Andrew Balaam, Frank Costa and Brian Cook. The member for Corangamite knows all those people. I am sure they give the member for Corangamite sage advice as well. They have been the elders of our community—in experience if not necessarily in age. If any of them are listening, you are very young people! They provide us with a lot of guidance and our city has been incredibly well served over many years now by virtue of those people contributing to the civic leadership of Geelong. We hear a lot about the football club which is deeply important to Geelong and a lot of us here. You cannot be involved in Geelong without being involved in the football club. Brian Cook is the CEO of the club and Frank is a former president of the club. The success of the club has been emblematic of the development of Geelong and each of those individuals has been a really important part. If you wind back the clock, say, 15 years, we were known as sleepy hollow. No-one uses that term about Geelong today. I think the football club has had a bit to do with that. The contribution that those four people, and indeed a lot of others, have made to Geelong has gone a long way to changing the nature of Geelong and the positive way in which Geelong is seen. I thank all of them.

Those are my thank-yous. There are many more people whom I also could have mentioned, but in mentioning that list please see it as representative of the enormous number of people who have given me support and provided help in what I do, and I am deeply thankful to all of them.

The election campaign in Geelong involved a number of issues. On some specific issues: I was pleased that Labor was able to commit to the beginning of work to build a hospital in the northern suburbs of Geelong. I am glad that we were able to commit to providing initial funding to begin the process of stage 4 of the redevelopment of Kardinia Park, Simonds Stadium. I was pleased that we were able to commit to the building of bike paths because unfortunately Geelong has a sad recent history of bike rider fatalities and injuries. We are not a particularly bike friendly city and we need to be more so. I was also pleased to be able to commit to funding towards the redevelopment of the Leopold Sportsmans Club. None of those commitments will see the light of day. It is of deep concern to me that the Liberal Party in its candidacy in Geelong made no promises to the people of Geelong. Two of those projects will not come to fruition even though money had been allocated in last year's budget. The Liberal Party came to the seat of Corio and promised to take federal government interaction away from the seat. That concerns me.

Putting aside the specific projects, at the time of the election in Geelong I felt that it was a choice about the future of manufacturing in Australia. As a manufacturing city that necessarily means it was a choice about the future of manufacturing in Geelong. Labor went to the last election with a billion-dollar different proposition in relation to the car industry than the coalition.

We promised to increase funding to the car industry by $500 million; the coalition went to the election seeking to decrease funding from the status quo by $500 million, a difference of $1 billion in the two propositions that were put to the people of Corio at the election. I had no doubt at the time when I said that would make the difference between whether or not we have a car industry in this country. I also made the point that the making of automotive vehicles is the highest technical manufacturing that we do in Australia, that if we took the car industry out of Australian manufacturing we dealt manufacturing an enormous blow and that that would affect other forms of manufacturing not only in Geelong but also around Australia. I did not expect that within six months of the election we would have seen both Holden and Toyota make announcements that they would be ceasing the manufacture of cars in Australia. I did not expect that we would see at the end of last year the Treasurer of this country effectively goad one of those companies to leave the country, making the continued operation of the other impossible, but that is what we have seen.

The darkest prediction of what was at stake in the election has come to pass and we now have a government which is making a conscious decision not to have a car industry in this country. I want to make the point that in countries around the world which have a car industry it is always a public-private partnership—it is in Germany, it is in Britain, it is in Japan and it is in the US. Indeed, the amount of subsidy being provided to the car industry under the then Labor government and under the Howard government was less than the subsidy you would find in the countries I have just mentioned. The idea that you cannot make automotive vehicles, the idea that you cannot engage in manufacturing in a First World economy is absolutely wrong. Advanced manufacturing, of which making cars is the single best example of our highest technical manufacturing in Australia, is emblematic of what it is to be an advanced economy. The fact of the matter is that, with the car industry now leaving Australia, we are skilling down in our manufacturing. That is a really big concern when I stand in this place representing a car town and a manufacturing town.

What we saw under the Labor government was a willingness to support manufacturing and an attitude where we sought to keep the car industry here. What we did not do with Ford and what we saw the government do with Holden was to goad the company out of the country. That is the huge difference. A billion dollar difference in the proposition that we took to the last election is the difference between whether or not we have a car industry in this country.

We stand here today awaiting a very difficult decision by Alcoa about its future. One thousand people are employed at Point Henry in my electorate. There is a huge difference today between Labor and the coalition when it comes to manufacturing. It is a difference that needs to be debated and articulated at a human level.

Whatever decisions are made by virtue of whatever policy, it is important that everyone in a community that is affected comes together to help and I very much know that the member for Corangamite and I will do that. I know that the Mayor of Geelong, Darryn Lyons, is doing a great job selling an optimistic view of Geelong at a very difficult time and I take my hat off to him for everything he is doing. He will be in this place tomorrow to support manufacturing in our city.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to congratulate the Hon. Bronwyn Bishop, member for Mackellar, on her appointment as Speaker of the House. In speaking about the campaign, I would like to thank the voters of the electorate of Boothby for the privilege and honour of representing them for a seventh term in parliament. Representing the most marginal coalition seat in a hung parliament meant there was always a lot of interest in the campaign and in the seat. The previous parliament was a tough three years where every vote was important and the difference between being in government and being in opposition was only one seat. This was my seventh election campaign. The way everyone combined—the staff, Liberal Party members, my supporters, state members and candidates and state and federal secretariats—was exemplary. It was a model campaign.

I would like to thank my electorate staff who really put in the hard yards and went the extra mile during the campaign: Ann de Cure, Ryan Post, Matthew Hee, Marion Themeliotis, Zoe Darling, Tom Schinckel and Courtney Nourse. Of my volunteers, again who gave up hours and hours of their own time and who were so keen to see a change of government, I would like to mention a couple in particular: Bill Heycox, Fran Southern, Paul Gesti, Matt Shilling, Graham Copley, Ralph Walker, Sam Croser, Kathy Hee and Janet Hillgrove.

The campaign relied on hundreds and hundreds of volunteers—old friends, new friends and people who were desperate to see a change in government. I would like to thank the state and federal secretariats, state director Geoff Green and deputy state director Matt Halliwell for their assistance throughout the election and for their prompt guidance when it was needed. I would like to thank Brian Loughnane and Julian Sheezel for their interest and for their words of advice.

I would like to thank the state members and candidates, all of whom played a role in the campaign: Iain Evans, Duncan McFetridge, Martin Hamilton-Smith, and the state candidates David Speirs, Caroline Habib, Sam Duluk and Cory Wingard. I would like to thank the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and Minister for Foreign Affairs, all of whom visited the electorate last year and who greatly assisted the momentum in our campaign. I would like to thank all of the other ministers who visited over the previous three years.

Lastly, I would like to thank my family. I thank Kate for her enormous support over the last 15 years, and I thank my two youngest volunteers, Henry and Georgina—Henry at 11, and Georgina at nine—who again were very much our secret weapon.

This was an important campaign. The 2010 election had been close, so we knew that every vote counted. The electorate of Boothby is a great electorate to represent. It has terrific institutions and schools—including Flinders University and Waite Agricultural Research Institute—and important hospitals like Flinders Medical Centre and Daw Park.

One of the major issues was the lack of investment in infrastructure that we saw in the south. I had been fighting for six years to see South Road become a non-stop north-south corridor. One of the issues in Adelaide is that unfortunately the state made a decision 40 years ago not to invest in expressways or freeways. When you travel around Australia you realise that the road infrastructure in Adelaide is particularly poor. We do not have the expressways or freeways that other capital cities do. One of the things that Adelaide desperately needs is a non-stop north-south expressway. The RAA identified this in their 2005 report.

There have been various promises made over the years. One that I have been particularly focussed on which has been promised since 2006 is having a grade separation at South Road and Sturt Road. All the traffic surveys show that this is the major cause of delay on South Road now that Grand Junction Road and Cormack Road have been dealt with by the superway.

In my regular surveys, doorknocking and listening posts, traffic congestion is often at the top of my constituents' concerns. Adelaide used to be known as the 20-minute city. Now what we see is increasing traffic congestion because of a failure to invest in infrastructure going back decades. So I was particularly pleased in late April when the now Prime Minister Tony Abbott made an announcement that, working with Infrastructure Australia and the South Australian government, we would invest $500 million in federal funding to improve South Road where it connects to the southern expressway—that is, having an interchange of the southern expressway going onto South Road and grade separations at Flinders Drive and Sturt Road.

We are also providing the funding for the South Australian government to complete the business case for the Darlington Interchange project. This is a project that state Labor first promised in 2006—eight years ago—and there has been no progress on it since. It is very important, if we are to build the roads of the 21st century, that we start to address the major bottlenecks on South Road. We need to see this project underway as soon as possible. As I have already said, we are allocating $500 million to complete the Darlington Interchange and the Darlington project as a priority.

We are committed to upgrading the entire South Road within a decade, and it is expected that more funding in the coming years will be allocated to get the Torrens to Torrens project completed and additional upgrades underway. However, the Darlington upgrade is the priority. This is what we need to improve our productive capacity in the future.

One of the other major issues during the campaign was the issue around cost of living. One of the most important things this parliament could do is abolish the carbon tax. We are trying to abolish the carbon tax, and this is an important thing. All families bear the cost of the carbon tax. It is our bill to cut your carbon tax bill. Scrapping the carbon tax will mean that families on average will be $550 better off next financial year. Electricity bills will be $200 lower a year, and gas bills $70 lower a year. Abolishing the carbon tax will provide a stimulus to jobs, it will provide a stimulus to the economy, and it will reduce the pressure on families' costs of living. I saw in my electorate how the carbon tax was damaging to businesses. When the Belair Hotel was hit with their first electricity bill under the carbon tax, they saw their off-peak power rate increase by 45 per cent as a direct result of the carbon tax.

Another initiative that I am particularly pleased to see come back is the Green Army. The Howard government implemented the Green Corps program as a way of employing young people in environmental projects to preserve and restore our natural and cultural environment. Green Corps provided young people with improved career and employment prospects through accredited training, on-the-project training and personal development, while participating in environmental and heritage projects. Over the life of the Green Corps program, participants propagated and planted over 14 million trees; they erected more than 8,000 kilometres of fencing; they cleared over 50,000 hectares of weeds; and they constructed or maintained more than 5,000 kilometres of walking tracks or boardwalks.

The coalition will create a standing Green Army that will gradually build to a 15,000 strong environmental workforce. We will create and properly resource the Green Army as a larger and more lasting version of the former Green Corps. It will be Australia's largest ever environmental deployment. It will mark the first time Australia has approached environmental remediation with the same seriousness and level of organisation that we have long brought to bushfire preparedness and other local and regional priorities.

I have had a number of projects submitted to me as possible Green Army initiatives: the removal of weeds and olive trees in Marino Conservation Park; maintenance of Belair National Park, including the creek which runs from the park through Glenalta, Hawthorndene and Coromandel Valley to Sturt Creek; the creation of a wildlife corridor between parks and open spaces to plant native trees and provide nesting boxes for wildlife; the removal of weeds along main roads and railway lines; and installing benches along trail walks to encourage people to go out and enjoy the parks of Boothby.

Mitcham Hills will be one of the first sites nationally to benefit under the coalition's Green Army. The Mitcham Hills has a lot of undergrowth, a lot of woody weeds, which lead to a fire hazard. The Minister for the Environment has announced that a coalition government will undertake feral olive and woody weed eradication in the Mitcham Hills as part of its commitment to build a 15,000-strong Green Army nationwide.

Woody weeds and feral olives create significant amounts of bushfire fuel throughout the Mitcham Hills. Last weekend we saw how one spark can start a bushfire when on Saturday morning a blaze started in Belair, an 850-hectare national park. Fortunately, the CFS, the SES and SAPOL responded promptly and the blaze was contained to three hectares.

Another major issue that the state of South Australia faces is the economy. We continually lag in all measures compared with other states. We have seen 27,000 jobs lost over the last four years. We need to create an environment whereby businesses feel confident to invest, grow and employ new staff. Abolishing the carbon tax will help that. Reducing red tape will help that.

Building our infrastructure such as South Road will improve the productivity and the economy of our state. I am pleased that, while the news was very bad that Holden has decided not to continue manufacturing in Australia, the Prime Minister has acted promptly by establishing a South Australian review panel, including some eminent South Australian businessmen such as Raymond Spencer and Robert Champion de Crespigny.

The Waite Institute in my electorate is an area where we have a competitive advantage. South Australia has always been good at exporting grain—wheat—and wine. The Waite Institute is a world-best scientific facility in the areas of ag science and genomics which is providing an enormous competitive advantage. The approach the government will take is: backing our strengths.

With the new SAHMRI, South Australia has the potential to develop a biotech precinct in the North Terrace area in the same way Parkville in Melbourne is a long-established biotech precinct, and in the way Brisbane is. Adelaide has the opportunity to build on our existing strengths—Australia's renowned excellence in research, in clinical trials—and we need to foster a climate where that can occur.

In my electorate of Boothby, the former site of the Mitsubishi car plant at Tonsley Park offers enormous opportunities. Flinders University have moved a number of their functions—computing science, engineering and maths. Flinders University have existing strengths in the area of medical devices—and this is another area where South Australia could become a centre for innovation and, again, focus on something that we do well.

In the area of health I was very pleased in the last parliament to focus very much on primary health care. The GP superclinics were something that I was heavily critical of, because I believe it was a misguided policy. It distorted the whole market for investment in general practice.

When we look at Australia's primary healthcare system, we have a good system but I believe that we can do much better in areas like diabetes, cardiac failure and COPD. There are a number of chronic diseases where we could have better incentives to make sure that people get the gold standard. We have a good primary healthcare system, but I believe it could be better and that is something that I will be focusing on in this next term of parliament.

In the area of PBS listings, Australians should have timely access to innovative new treatments that are safe, effective and cost-effective . Subsidisation of new medicines through the PBS was for a long time a stable, bi partisan process that was widely respected here and abroad. It was understood by all the participants.

The PBAC was put in place to advise governments and make recommendation on new medicines. Yet what we saw under the previous government was a chaotic process. They signed a memorandum of understanding with the sector to provide policy stability in return for savings and then, within months of signing that memorandum, they deferred the listing of seven medicines and a vaccine that had been recommended by PB AC and would have had to have gone to c abinet for approval. It was chaotic decision making. There was no clarity for businesses. There was no clarity for consumers.

The coalition has said we will restore the PBS process to a stable, apolitical, evidence based approach. The PB AC will return and its recommendations will not be ignored . The health minister will have authority to list lower cost treatments that have been recommended by the PBAC without cabinet approval f or medicines that do not cost more than $20 million in any year over the first four years of listing s. Priorities and accelerate d clinical trial reforms will a llow new medicines to be tested and will provide faster access to treatment for patients . We need to restore transparency, certainty and confidence to the process for listing medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

In the area of private health insurance we see that private health insurance plays an important role in taking pressure off the public health system. We will reinvest in private health insurance once fiscal circumstances allow . The current g overnment understand s that private health insurance plays a key role in reducing waiting lists and keeping pressure off the already struggling public hospital system. It allows people to have a choice of doctor, a choice of specialist, a choice of surgeon, a choice of anaesthetist , a choice of allied health practitioner and a choice of hospital. The coalition has always recognised this and will continue to fight for the role of private health insurance in our health system.

In my electorate this is a key issue. Seventy-six per cent of voters hold some form of private health insurance, and this has always been a big issue in every election that I have fought. Two thousand residents in my electorate petitioned to have the private health insurance rebate retained intact. This is something that the previous government promised to do and then broke its promise in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the voters in Boothby for the opportunity to serve them in parliament. It is a great honour, and I look forward to representing them over the next three years.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is indeed a real privilege to be here to speak in the address-in-reply debate. When the Governor-General gave her speech on the new government in this parliament on 12 November this year, there was much rhetoric about a change of government and, indeed, there were many slogans and repetition of some election commitments. But it has now been five long months since the election and since the coalition came to office and what we have seen can only be described as one of the worst starts to a new government in political history.

Far from having a honeymoon period, voters are now experiencing a bit of buyer's regret. The election promises and commitments are being broken one by one and the rhetoric they held in opposition was thrown out the door on day one. The rhetoric has changed and is sometimes even the complete opposite of what they said when they were in opposition trying to achieve government. Indeed, we have seen major policy failures, blatant mistruths, missteps and many backflips. We have seen this in almost every portfolio area—from the economy, to immigration, to foreign policy with our closest neighbours and to education, healthcare and even of course government debt. The new government have already broken a shopping list of promises, contradicted themselves at every turn and showed the public that they do not have what it takes to run this great country.

The worst aspect of all of this is that the government is saying one thing and then doing another. There are millions of Australians who are now worse off because of decisions of this new Abbott government—with many more to come. As a Labor member of parliament, the most unsettling thing is the disregard for jobs, especially in regional areas. Jobs that this government seems set on destroying are sadly adding up to the tens of thousands. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have used the guise of 'business must get its house in order' to punish working Australians—people who now will be without a job because this government was not there when they needed them.

The workers at Holden, Toyota, the Gove refinery, SPC Ardmona and the many smaller businesses that supply these larger companies are all now being let down by this Prime Minister and this new government. They are being let down by somebody who claimed before the federal election that he supported Australian manufacturing. But now that he is in office, where is that support? Sadly, there will be tens of thousands of workers who will be joining an unemployment queue because this government was unwilling to help secure their jobs here in this great country. We know that in coming weeks and months these workers will sit around their dinner tables wondering what on earth their next move will be. Many of them have spent a lot of their lives manufacturing a world-class automotive product and now they are being tossed aside. What will they do? Where is the support?

As the shadow minister for regional development, I am particularly concerned about how these jobs are affecting regional and remote communities. Many of the companies just mentioned have bases and suppliers in regional and rural Australia. Often the factories in these areas are major employers. Take Orange in New South Wales, for example, where Electrolux have recently announced that they will be closing their manufacturing plant. It was the last factory in Australia that produced household fridges and freezers. It directly employs over 500 people and contributes over $70 million to the local economy. How much federal government support did these workers and this company get? Where was the government?

More recently we have seen the government deny co-investment support to SPC Ardmona—a $25 million co-investment, with the parent company prepared to invest an additional $161 million, to support hundreds of direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs. This government could not bring themselves to support these jobs. They could not bring themselves to support these workers, and now we will see factory workers and manufacturing workers being laid off and we will see fruit growers and farmers pulling out trees and wondering what their options are. The government are instead spending some money on a royal commission—a political witch hunt—rather than having crime dealt with by the police. This royal commission was announced as the workers of Toyota were told the devastating news.

The government are doing this under the guise of saying that they cannot be there to prop up multinationals, that businesses must be able to stand on their own two feet. That is all right, but try telling that to all these workers and to the Goulburn Valley farmers who have worked for years to make a living from the land, who will now have no-one to supply their product to because SPC Ardmona is competing with a high Australian dollar and cheap, dumped imports. Try telling those farmers that they do not have their house in order. They will quickly tell you that government need to get their house in order.

In a further hit to regional jobs in regional communities the new government cut support from local community development when it cancelled approved grants for local projects in communities right across Australia like parks, and swimming pools, walking paths and bike tracks—small projects that would have had a big impact on the local community both for their amenity but also for the injection of jobs in their local areas. The cutting of the Regional Development Australia Fund round 5, $150 million dollars, with funds going to regional councils will further exacerbate the situation in regional Australia.

The government walking away from regional Australia is highlighted in my home state of Tasmania. As we all know, the Tasmanian economy has been doing it tough. When the Labor Party were in government we set the agenda for growth in Tasmania—record investment in infrastructure; a $100 million jobs and growth plan—but, of course, since the Abbott government came to power in September last year I have been approached by countless Tasmanians who already feel let down by this new government.

In the coalition's plan for the Tasmanian economy—a little glossy brochure—we got lots of inquiries, committees and reviews. What has happened since? We have had two of the 31 projects committed by Labor announced by the new government. They did say they would match the $100 million of funding, but these businesses do not yet have the money and these jobs are not yet happening. High-value downstream processing jobs in areas like science, technology, agriculture and viticulture are very valuable jobs in the Tasmanian economy.

We have seen some inconsistency in how the Abbott government has been treating employers, with Cadbury receiving $16 million to keep and create jobs in Tasmania—a great project that gets our support. But where is the consistency? How is that consistent with SPC? When and how will the money flow to Cadbury? There was also a commitment in the federal election for an upgrade to Hobart airport in my electorate. Again, it was another great project which of course I support. But I do ask: how is the government providing $38 million—50 per cent is owned by Macquarie Bank—when the bank is only putting in $2 million itself? Again, it is not consistent.

We have already seen 56 Department of Human Services jobs moved out of the state. The government said at the time:

What we've said is we want to look at boosting Commonwealth presence in regional areas, not reducing the Commonwealth presence in regional areas, not reducing the Commonwealth presence in regional areas.

That is another broken promise because those jobs are gone. We had road funding and infrastructure projects announced by Labor in the last budget reannounced by Minister Briggs last week. But there is $100 million for the Midland Highway missing. I am not quite sure where that has gone, but obviously that money was not required in Tasmania.

Sadly, letting down regional Australian workers and workers in Tasmania is not the only policy failure of this government to date. I have spoken with schoolteachers and parents at some of the schools in my electorate about Labor's BetterSchools Gonski reforms. Everybody will remember the 'unity ticket' the coalition was on prior to the election. But the teachers and parents in Tasmania do not know whether the $400 million for Tasmania is going to arrive or not because much of the funding was in years 5 and 6, so another broken promise.

Parents have just sent their kids back to school for the new school year. They have gone out and bought new school uniforms, stationary, text books, lunch boxes, aprons, haircuts and new shoes—as a parent of three children, I know this only too well. Parents do this because they want their children to have the very best start in life. But we also know that these things cost money. Even with one child the costs can be prohibitive, and that is why Labor introduced the Schoolkids Bonus. We know that over a million Australian families, nearly 7,000 families in my electorate, were relying on this money to help get their kids to school. The coalition believe it is expensive and unnecessary. They even said parents could not be trusted to spend it wisely, and now it is gone. This comes on top of the cut to the low-income superannuation co-contribution affecting low- and middle-income families. The coalition seem to keep taking from low- and middle-income Australians while giving money to the big end of town.

Families are amongst those most concerned about the attack on Medicare. Australians like and respect Medicare. Since it was introduced by a Labor government, Labor has worked hard to ensure a universal healthcare system that Australians are rightly proud of. It is one of the most revered public healthcare systems in the world. The Commission of Audit has floated an additional GP levy to be paid when you go to your GP. It will be another cost for families—and not one word of this prior to the election. It will be interesting to see what the 'commission of cuts' recommends when it finally is released.

Today we have the sale of Medibank out there. I wonder if that will lead to increased premiums or reduced premiums for private healthcare cover? Pensioners, people on disability pensions and people on unemployment benefits come into my office concerned about the media reports and what will happen to their pensions and benefits. Pensioners are the people government should be supporting. We should be supporting them and their everyday costs. This announcement and the stuff in the media has them panicked and frightened. Pensioners are waiting anxiously for the Commission of Audit to see what is in it.

When I get out and about in my electorate I get a lot of questions about when people are going to get the national broadband network. It was a great Labor policy to be introduced right around the country. Before the election, Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party said that Tasmania would get the full fibre rollout. After a review and a backflip or two it seems that tens of thousands of Tasmanians will actually miss out. In my home state there will be the haves and the have-nots of communication technology. All I get in my home state of Tasmania is, 'When will I get the NBN?' People want this technology, they want it now and they want it as quickly as they can get it. My constituency want the real full NBN, not the pretend NBN. This government does have a problem with communication, whether it be technology or trying to give information to the media. We know that the government is in hiding. There has been a real veil of secrecy, not just around 'on water operations'—as they are being called—but around a whole range of matters.

Of course, one of the biggest items on this government's list of failures and backflips has been our economy. Before the election, anyone listening to the rhetoric from the coalition would have thought that our economy was about to fall apart. There was a budget crisis—then a budget emergency—that needed to be fixed. But, like everything else, this suddenly changed when the Abbott government came to power.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have five seconds to go.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In closing, I would like to say that I sincerely hope that this government improves and stops breaking its promises and commitments to the Australian people. I would like to thank the good people of Franklin for re-electing me once again.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member for Franklin will have to leave to continue her remarks when the debate is resumed.