Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I only have a little bit of time left because the Labor Party decided that it was going to shut me down. I wanted to say a big thankyou to the people of Solomon for re-electing me. They can be assured that I will continue to fight for them. Now that we are in government we can do some really good things.

We announced last week that another 2,300 houses will be built in Solomon over the next five years, which is great. When the Minister for Justice came, he said there is going to be $300,000 for CCTVs in crime hot spots in Darwin. That promise is still going to be delivered, along with $13,000 for the Darwin Table Tennis Association, $5,000 for the Berrima riding school and $8,000 for the Palmerston Football Club. One of the biggest announcements that we made was the $110 million for the Palmerston Regional Hospital. The minister was in Darwin last week confirming the scoping study. We are going to be working with the Giles government to deliver a hospital for Palmerston.

The other very important election promise that I made was to abolish the carbon tax. I voted to get rid of the carbon tax. Labor, particularly Territory Labor, are still voting to keep the carbon tax—a tax that affects every angle of life in the Territory. I cannot believe, when there was resounding support for getting get rid of the carbon tax, that Territory Labor and federal Labor still want to keep the carbon tax. Territorians do not want to keep the carbon tax. Territory Labor should listen. Territorians are very, very clear—they do not want the carbon tax. Thanks again to the people of Solomon. I will not let you down. (Time expired)

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is customary in an address-in-reply to talk about the federal election, to thank people who helped in the campaign and to talk about present policy settings and the future direction of our nation, and I will do so in this speech. In September 2013 the people in my rural and regional South-East Queensland electorate of Blair voted for me as their federal representative for a third time. There was a substantial swing against Labor across the country and for a second election in a row in my home state of Queensland. Against the odds, we held on in Blair with a small swing against us in 2010. This time, against the trend, Blair swung to Labor, resulting in an increase of over one per cent in the two-party preferred vote, the final margin being 5.3 per cent.

It is an enormous privilege for a working-class boy from Ipswich to be elected here three times. I am honoured to have the support of the people of Blair and I will not let them down. I went into this campaign, my fourth, as I always do, with a Labor Party membership ticket in one hand and a union ticket in the other. Labor achieved this result in Blair because the people of Ipswich and Somerset decided. It was the federal Labor government that helped them with their cost-of-living pressures, jobs, roads, schools, health and community infrastructure, and it was the federal Labor government that stuck with them through the trials and tribulations of the floods of 2011 and 2013, and they remembered.

In the three years leading up to the September election, I held 325 mobile offices, from shopping centres to shows, from roadsides to rural events. The feedback I heard from people again and again was about issues related to what they wanted: jobs, schools, roads, community infrastructure and health funding. Locally, the former federal Labor government, after years of coalition neglect, delivered everything from the Ipswich Motorway Dinmore-to-Darra section to the Blacksoil Interchange upgrade, to upgrades in schools and health services and community infrastructure projects, from Springfield to Somerset. We reminded people constantly of what the federal Labor government had done and would continue to do in their suburbs and country towns.

I could not have achieved this great result without the support of so many volunteers—some of the most dedicated and determined people I know—such as Dot Hogan, who single-handedly canvassed over 9,000 constituents. In fact, Dot spoke to so many people that her name became quite well recognised, with people telling me they had talked to Dot so they no longer needed to talk to me! Janet Butler is another good friend and supporter of mine and of the Australian Labor Party. She lives in the rural Somerset region and attended many shows, mobile offices and events. She phone-canvassed thousands of people and gave us one of the best and most impressive election night cakes I have ever seen! Somerset has booths that were once in Joh Bjelke-Petersen's state seat and had never been won by Labor. We polled solidly in those traditionally conservative areas, and I attribute much of our success there to the work done by Janet and the Somerset branch of the Labor Party.

Brian Hall is a local long-term Labor Party member who gives his support to many voluntary organisations. Brian is a remarkable man, whose humility hides a wealth of knowledge, wisdom and common sense. He managed to organise and oversee the erection of signs at over 400 sites in Blair, many of them with more than one sign installed. I want to thank also the former member for Forde, Brett Raguse, and Rosewood Labor Party branch members Steve Franklin and Al McMillan, who erected many signs in their area. Lucas Bird, Kaitlyn Clancy and a public servant known as John worked hard putting up many signs. John knows who I am talking about.

Many local people helped on my campaign, including Greg Turner, my mobile office offsider, and Peggy Frankish, who has had a difficult year, losing her husband and fighting a serious illness of her own, but who still gives freely of her time to give me support. We had help from wonderful people such as the former Mayor of Ipswich Des Freeman and his terrific wife, Colleen; Tracey Clark; Ron Careless; Margaret Doran; Rhonda Nolan; Shaun Nancarrow; Jacinta Benson; Allistair Smith; Doug DeWitt; Janet Patterson; and Steve Leese, just to name a few. There were so many people that I could go on naming them for the rest of the day.

The Blair campaign was all about returning to a 'grassroots' strategy. I thank Chris Forrester, whom I described in The Australian newspaper on 13 September 2013 as follows:

Chris is the best in the business, he is a brilliant campaigner. It is all about talking with people, engaging in transactional politics in serving like a local councillor and getting things done, rather than as a party politician …

I thank the following unions for their wonderful support: the Services Union, my union; the Plumbers Union; the Queensland Teachers' Union; the CFMEU; and, particularly, the SDA for their terrific support in the campaign.

Peter Johnstone kindly agreed once again to act as my campaign director, and he did not let me down. His sage personal and political advice has held me in good stead for many years and I am proud to call him my friend. The Blair electorate office is staffed with terrific staff. Wonderful people such as Jenny Howard and Kylie Stoneman have been with me since I was first elected in late 2007. Both of them are seasoned campaigners and have been involved in many elections locally in Ipswich. I thank them for the work they have done. They complement each other and provide an efficient, professional and friendly workplace.

Sue West, Madonna Oliver and Eliza Atkins—the self-described 'Shayngels'—kept me fully informed about what I was supposed to be doing, particularly in my role as parliamentary secretary. Sue has recently left my employ due to family commitments and will be—and already is—sadly missed. Janice Cumming joined our team a few years ago and has a wealth of experience working in electorate offices. Janice regularly receives chocolates and flowers from grateful constituents, and we are pleased with her generous and warm manner. We love her, not just for her work but for the fact that she shares those chocolates with us, which we really appreciate! Fairly new to the team are Nick Hughes and Wayne Gaddes. Apart from their valuable professional skills, they are great campaigners in Ipswich.

Last but by no means least, I acknowledge the support of my family: my wife, Carolyn, and my two daughters, Alex and Jacqui. I thank them for their love and support over many years. I also thank them for their votes, by the way! None of us could do the job we do without the support of our family. I also want to thank my mum, Joy, and her husband of many years, Rob. They worked alongside me in the campaign and stood beside me on cold winter mornings at railway stations, handing out flyers to commuters catching the train from Ipswich to Brisbane. And of course I thank my brothers, Regan and Darrin, who along with others staffed the Kilcoy booths again. We call them the Kilcoy kids.

Over the past three years, I have made many good friends throughout the region and met some truly amazing people. I have enjoyed visiting local schools, workplaces, community groups, homes and sporting games. Continually, I have been touched by the hospitality and friendship I have encountered as the local federal member.

The Blair electorate covers 6,400 square kilometres in South-East Queensland. It is a regional and rural seat. It is based on central and rural Ipswich—about 70 per cent of the city is in my electorate—and the rural area looked after by the Somerset Regional Council. I have travelled my electorate on many occasions. It has to be home to the best jam, coffee and produce in the country, certainly at country shows and particularly at the Fernvale markets.

Without political opponents, there would be no need for elections. I would like to formally acknowledge my political opponents and thank them for their contribution to and participation in our great democracy. I thank the Australian Electoral Commission for the work they have done locally. We change governments in this country with ballots not bullets and we campaign with words not warfare. We should always cherish our democracy.

There is much to be done in Ipswich and in the Somerset region. Sadly, many projects which were budgeted for by the former Labor government have been stripped away. TheCourier-Mail reports that $15 million has been taken away from the Ipswich City Council and no cash for Springfield—the Brisbane Lions have to look elsewhere. The sports hub would have been a wonderful relocation site for the Brisbane Lions AFL team close by my electorate in Oxley and would have benefitted my electorate tremendously. There was also to be $349,00 for the upgrade of Willowbank Raceway, a $219,000 upgrade to the Lowood pool, additional funding of $100,000 for Ipswich Hospice Care, $250,000 for Ipswich Rugby League and $132,000 to Riverview Neighbourhood House—all taken away by the current coalition government. Even more egregious, outrageous and disgraceful is the $2 million they have taken, which we budgeted for, for the upgrade to St Joseph's Catholic Primary School flood evacuation and recovery centre. This will leave 30,000 Ipswich residents without a proper flood evacuation centre, having experienced flood as recently as 2011.

I am pleased to see some projects have not been cut by those opposite. These include the Toogoolawah Condensery Arts and Cultural Precinct and Kilcoy Futures project and Kilcoy showground upgrades. Thank goodness they have survived the cuts. Improving infrastructure and services has always been a priority for me. I will agitate, irritate and even annoy people to get funding for these types of projects and for my electorate.

During the election campaign, my LNP opponent publicly declared that, if elected, the Liberal-National Party would match the commitment of the federal Labor party to provide $279 million to upgrade the final stage of the Ipswich Motorway from Darra to Rocklea—mostly located in the electorate of Moreton but used by tens of thousands of my constituents every day. It came as a bit of a shock to people locally and certainly to me that the fiscal budget impact of federal coalition policies, released just prior to the federal election, states at 7.9.13 that a mere $65 million has been allocated to this vital piece of community infrastructure across the forward estimates. The LNP was disingenuous on this issue. Their state colleagues Campbell Newman and co, who should learn the lesson of the Redcliffe by-election on the weekend, opposed the final stage of the Ipswich Motorway upgrade from Darra to Rocklea and will not put a brass razoo towards it.

The Prime Minister has freely admitted that his policies will hurt people. Well, Prime Minister, that is an understatement because I can tell you that in my Blair electorate alone, around 15,900 eligible families will miss out on the schoolkids bonus, which helps them with cost-of-living pressures, to buy school uniforms, books and IT for their kids. We will see 46,300 people lose years of super savings. Around 20,900 people, mostly women, will lose up to $500 every year because the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have slashed the low-income superannuation contribution. And that is just the beginning.

According to the South-East Queensland infrastructure plan and program, we need $134 billion investment in infrastructure. South-East Queensland will grow from 2.8 million people in 2006 to 4.4 million by 2031. Sadly, we are seeing locally the consequences of what coalition governments have done and I expect will do. The front page of The Queensland Times on the weekend said that the Ipswich unemployment rate—and that covers up to Esk in most of my electorate—now is 11.5 per cent. That is a 2.1 per cent increase since December last year and a staggering 7.3 per cent higher than in 2008. State Labor MP for Bundamba Jo-Ann Miller clearly laid the blame on the Queensland LNP government, saying that it ripped out funds and jobs from the area in the last two years. I agree with her, but under this government we have seen nothing that will reduce the unemployment rate in Ipswich.

When we were in government, when the global financial crisis hit this country, what we saw from those opposite was inertia, idleness and ignorance. We even heard members across the chamber who denied that the global final crisis impacted our regions, our country and world wide. We kept jobs going. We provided stimulus funding, which kept the economy going. We kept people in jobs, we kept inflation low, we kept growth going and we had one of the lowest debt-to-GDP ratios in the OECD. We lowered the tax to GDP ratio from the time the big-spending Howard government got in to the time we left office. And not just that: we left the legacy of a AAA credit rating. That is what we did when we were in government. So far from those opposite we have seen 63,000 jobs lost—so much for the million jobs that were going to be created.

In our electorate of Blair, we had to endure the failings of the Howard government and we are seeing them repeated here by this government. We have seen it with the National Broadband Network, with 1,000 local towns—Minden, Kilcoy, Toogoolawah, Lowood, Esk and Fernvale—getting fibre to the premises under a Labor government but nothing under the coalition government. They call it the NBN. What the coalition are doing is not the NBN at all, and they will leave areas like these without adequate fast and affordable broadband. LNP members in my home state who represent regional and rural areas should hang their heads in shame.

In addition to my responsibilities as a local member, I am pleased to have been appointed to the shadow cabinet as shadow minister for Indigenous affairs and shadow minister for ageing. I thank my caucus colleagues for the opportunity to serve in this way and the Leader of the Opposition for appointing me. The former federal Labor government made a huge investment in Indigenous affairs. We had the Closing the Gap strategy and we put a huge amount of effort into that. Sadly, there is a lot more work to be done. Work is needed in a whole range of areas by 2031 before we will see many of the targets being achieved. Since the coalition came to government, the Prime Minister rolled the area into his department and we have seen slashing, cutting and burning across Indigenous affairs.

We have seen $13 million taken from Indigenous legal services, ATSILS. I have spoken to Shane Duffy, CEO in Queensland and involved nationally at the leadership level, about the impact of that. The government have made no commitment and have backed away from the targets in regard to incarceration rates. If you are an Indigenous young adult, you are 25 times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-Indigenous young adult. An Indigenous man or woman is 15 times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-Indigenous person. That is shameful. We have to do more. We have a bipartisan commitment from both sides of politics, but we are seeing that those opposite are not taking the same approach that they said they would take. They are not the government that they said they would be on Indigenous affairs. We have seen $15 million cut from the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, the peak representative body for Indigenous people across the country. Bringing in a paternalistic, ministerial advisory council is not the way to go. They should be funding the peak body that represents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The former Labor government budgeted for that funding and those opposite are tearing it away. The consequences are that jobs will be lost in the congress. That should never be allowed to happen.

We have seen nothing about disability targets and nothing about higher education targets in Closing the Gap from those opposite. On the sixth report, we saw that they produced a 16-page pamphlet. We produced 150 pages of data and analysis when we were last in government in terms of Closing the Gap. I am not confident at all that the expectations raised by those opposite will actually be achieved. We have seen the Prime Minister comment on recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution. My concern is that it will be preambular and symbolic. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across this country want substantive change to the Constitution that recognises their land, their culture and that they were the first people of this country. I hope those opposite do not back away from that.

In terms of ageing, we saw what those opposite really think of the aged-care sector on the last day of parliament last year. It took them 32 minutes in this place to get rid of $1.1 billion in relation to the workforce supplement, funding that we had provided for. It was agreed within the sector—the aged-care providers, the not-for-profit sector, the for-profit sector and the unions—to roll out funding to increase workforce numbers across the sector and to reduce the disparity in funding, salaries and entitlements between the health system and the aged-care sector. If you are a nurse, you are more likely to earn $300 or $400 more a week, say, in my electorate at the Ipswich general hospital than at the Nowlanvil Aged Care Facility. That is just one example. We provided that as part of the Living Longer Living Better package. Central to that package that those opposite said that they would support was the workforce supplement, but they have taken it away. It is an easy save for them. I call on them to do the right thing and reinstate it. The sector wants it and the government should do the right thing. This is important as the ageing tsunami hits this country. I call on those opposite to do the right thing. Two weeks before Christmas, the coalition, the Grinch, took that money away from the aged-care sector.

There is much that I will bring to this parliament and there is much more that I can say about these sectors. I want to keep the government accountable. They have made many promises in the area of Indigenous affairs and ageing, and they should do the right thing by both sectors.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a privilege today to speak on the address-in-reply to the Governor-General's speech. It did not take long for the member for Blair to dump bipartisanship in relation to Indigenous affairs policy in Australia and to bring forward the divisive points that he just made. It is an area that should be the subject of bipartisan concern and pursuit, and the Prime Minister has extended his willingness to make it an area of bipartisan concern and pursuit. If the people of Blair want to know what is hurting people, and the member for Blair commented on this, it is the reckless spending of the previous government that has damaged the underlying state of the budget in Australia today. We have $123 billion in cumulative deficits and gross debt is now projected to be $667 billion. I know it will be hard for a lot of people to fathom how much money that is, but that is an enormous amount of money for any government or any set of taxpayers to have to pay back. The member for Blair says, 'Why are we cutting the schoolkids bonus?' I can answer that: we have a $127 billion deficit. We have up to $667 billion of gross debt that was accumulated by the previous government. In that context and in this economic environment that we now live, no government can afford to borrow money to make cash handouts for anything. The member for Blair and the people of Blair should understand that it is because of their member's behaviour in the last government that we cannot afford to do many of the things that the government would like to do from now on.

For my own part, I am very grateful to my electorate of Mitchell for the privilege of representing them in a third term in this parliament. The last election was one of the most important that I have seen in my lifetime and I know it will be one of the most important for many, many years to come. We had possibly the worst government in Australian history—in fact, I would say, as a student of politics at university and high school and a lifelong adherent to political studies, it probably was the worst government in Australian political history. The government was marked by chaos and confusion. It lost control of the very basics of governance. I was pleased to receive from the people of Mitchell support to become the member for what they tell me is the safest Liberal seat in Australia. I put it this way: there are more sensible people in my electorate than in any other electorate in Australia, because they understood that the last government was the worst government in Australian history.

We all know about the chaos of the previous government's policy, the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd approach and the deal with the Australian Greens, but I want to talk about their approach to legislation. Perhaps this marks them out as clearly the worst government in Australian history. More than any other area, it is why it is so important to have the new coalition government with a positive agenda in relation to legislation and deregulation. In the last government there were several ministers for finance and deregulation. We had Lindsay Tanner, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation; Craig Emerson, the Minister assisting the Minister for Deregulation; Wayne Swan, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation; Penny Wong, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation; Nick Sherry, the Minister assisting the Minister for Deregulation; and David Bradbury, the Minister assisting the Minister for Deregulation. That was a lot of deregulation and a lot of ministers responsible for deregulation.

What was this army of ministers deregulating? What did they do in six years? In fact, the record shows that the Rudd-Gillard government added 800 pieces of legislation to the books, something they describe as a grand achievement. That legislation includes nearly 21,000 new regulations and those seven or eight ministers for deregulation repealed just 104, despite whole units of government working on the deregulation agenda. When you hear businesses—small, large, medium—saying they are caught up in red tape, green tape and government bureaucracy and waste, you can think of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments and the 21,000 new regulations and 800 pieces of legislation. All this added to the burden of doing business with so little benefit. It affected our ability to cooperate, work and prosper.

One of the greatest things about the new coalition government led by Tony Abbott is that we will have a strong deregulation agenda. Not only are we going to have whole days in this parliament where we do nothing but deregulate—that is, remove obsolete instruments and obsolete pieces of legislation and give this parliament the opportunity to look at obsolete and ineffective pieces of legislation and remove them—but we are going to get rid of whole acts that have no relevance or have long become problematic for people to follow. I welcome this and look forward to 1 March. I am grateful that the Prime Minister has appointed a Parliamentary Secretary for Deregulation in his own portfolio. The member for Kooyong will be pursuing a strong deregulation agenda.

What does this mean? It means that we can allow businesses to get on with the things they should be doing. In Australia it is too hard to do business in the current era. I know businesses in my electorate that manufacture here and export globally. They are tied up in red tape, and now we have come to government we are fighting agencies to reduce this   . These companies can produce their products overseas much more easily and at much lower cost for much greater profit. Making ourselves much more internationally competitive is the key goal of this government. One way to do that is to remove shackles applying to so many businesses. It was one of the key things missing under the previous government.

The previous government not only over-legislated, having hundreds of pages of regulations where they needed a few pages and putting in so many bills that did nothing, but introduced the lowest quality legislation seen in this country's history and when compared with that of other countries. I was a staff member of previous governments, state and federal, and I have observed legislation for decades but this legislation was badly drafted and some of the worst produced legislation in scope, size and scale. It does not matter what sector you talk about—and insulation is a prime example—the previous government's legislation was poorly drafted. When it was received by parliament it looked as if it was still a first draft. It was riddled with errors and often did not make sense. The sectors affected by legislation were not consulted properly. Often we would go to representatives of the sectors and ask if they had heard about the legislation. Nine times out of 10 they would reply that they did not know that legislation was coming. They asked the opposition for advice because the government would not speak to them.

There was a breakdown in fundamental processes between government and non-government sectors, between business and government, between the not-for-profit sector and government. Not only were they not involved in the drafting; they were not involved in the production of the legislation or the first draft, the second draft or the third draft. I do not believe there were second or third drafts of much of the legislation. The rush to produce legislation produced perhaps the worst quality legislation the parliament has passed. In summary, the previous government added not only thousands of regulations and hundreds of new pieces of legislation but also legislation that made no sense, was badly drafted and produced abhorrent outcomes.

That is why the results of the last election needed to be so emphatic with that government being consigned to the dustbin of history. In New South Wales, there was a very strong result. I was very pleased to see the results in my electorate, thanks to the work of my community, sending a signal to the previous government. There were also strong results in Western Sydney, in places like Lindsay, Dobell, Robertson, Banks and Reid. In these electorates, in our biggest city, people spoke out against the complete failure of the last government. It was also great to see that nationally a strong result was sent. Whole sectors turned on the government, the small business sector in particular which had been ignored for so long. This sector had seven small business ministers in six years. It was an untenable situation for hardworking small businesses, who found it impossible to be heard by government. They constantly had to rebuild relationships with new ministers in a chaotic, divided and dysfunctional government.

This government's agenda will be very different. I understand this government is strongly pursuing a small business reform agenda. The Minister for Small Business, Bruce Billson, is to be commended. It is long overdue not just to reform competition—

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. The honourable member will have leave to continue his remarks when the debate is resumed.