Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in continuation on the address-in-reply. When I left off, I was talking about the cost of living and how Australians are really feeling it and have been doing it tough. That's why this government, the Albanese Labor government, is helping by making child care more affordable. The rising cost of child care has put a lot of pressure on families and is continuing to drag on economic participation and productivity. We know that a lot of parents may choose not to go to work, because it's just not economically viable for them because of the cost of child care. This is a key election commitment that will reduce the cost of child care for more than a million families. I have been speaking to parents in my electorate who have been saying that this will ensure that their home purse-strings will be lightened by this because they will be able to participate in the workforce or work that extra day or extra few hours that will make the difference.

We are also instructing the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to design a price regulation mechanism to drive down out-of-pocket costs. The ultimate goal is to add affordable child care to the list of universal services alongside Medicare, the NDIS and superannuation, which Australians cherish and which are all Labor reforms. This is what Labor governments do best.

Another area that this government is acting on is a fair go at work. The nature of work has changed enormously over the years, with the gig economy, increased casualisation and stagnant or declining wages. We saw under the former government declining wages—absolutely stagnant wages—with the lowest wage growth in the history of this nation. All that means is that workers today face much more precarious working conditions than they did in the past decade. So not only are we supporting an increase in the minimum wage—one of our first acts when we formed government in May last year was to write to the Fair Work Commission—but we will seek to ensure that Australia's laws catch up to this reality and protect people from exploitation and unsafe working conditions. This Labor government will aim to make secure work an objective of the Fair Work Act and legislate to make wage theft a crime.

We on this side of the chamber take manufacturing seriously. The government will seek to rebuild Australia's proud manufacturing industry through a commitment to a future made in Australia. This is particularly important for my home state of South Australia, which was a manufacturing state. We had everything from Chrysler and Mitsubishi to General Motors Holden—all gone now. This manufacturing gave good, solid work to people for many, many years. It provided them with income. It provided for their families. It was solid work. It was consistent work. But unfortunately in 2013, when the Liberal Abbott government came to power, we saw how they treated General Motors Holden, just with the speeches made in this place. I remember very well how the then Treasurer, Mr Hockey, got up and basically goaded GMH. The following day, there was a front-page article in the Advertiser in South Australia saying, 'We're shutting our doors.' That speech had a lot to do with it. We had a company in South Australia manufacturing vehicles—one of only 13 places in the world where it was done from design to showroom. It was done in South Australia, and we've lost all that.

That's why we're taking manufacturing seriously. It's very important to my home state, and we need to ensure that the investment in skills does not go to waste. We need to ensure that all those skills in car manufacturing and other manufacturing do not go to waste and that future submarines are built in Australia—and we're seeing work already being done down there. We also need to support and foster our wonderful space industry. I'm very proud to have the Australian Space Discovery Centre right in the middle of my electorate, in Lot Fourteen in Adelaide. It's providing, already, great research and great jobs. I'm glad that the Minister for Defence Industry is here in the room. We've visited it a few times together, down at Lot Fourteen, and seen some of the great work that's being done in conjunction with Defence and the University of Adelaide. We've visited some incredible companies based in SA that were attracted to our state because of the investment commitment that we have shown to this industry.

So I truly welcome this Labor government's proposed $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund to grow and diversify Australia's industrial base. The fund will take, as its mission, supporting new and emerging industries. It will help our economy transition to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and create secure, well-paid jobs for Australian workers, driving regional economic development and building on our sovereign capability.

I am also proud of the achievements in my electorate of Adelaide. I spoke briefly about some of them. We've been able to assist many schools and organisations in my electorate. I am really pleased about the Challa Gardens Primary School, St George College and Richmond Primary School being successful in receiving funding commitments, which are being rolled out currently. Each of these schools were successful in their applications for funding as part of the $440 million the government is investing in local schools around Australia. Challa Gardens Primary School will receive $50,000 towards the establishment of an outdoor learning area. This funding will be used for the construction of a veranda to connect the school buildings. St George College has been allocated $50,000 towards their classroom upgrade project, and Richmond Primary School has been allocated a combined $40,000. Ten thousand dollars of this investment is for the establishment of an outdoor learning area, specifically for the purchase of settings on the southern side of the school, and the remaining $30,000 is for upgrading of laptops and a charge, store and secure station. I was down there before the last federal election, and they showed me where they would go in the current facilities that they have. They are due for upgrading, so I'm very pleased that Richmond Primary School will be receiving this grant. I'm certain that the children attending the three schools that I've just mentioned will enjoy these new facilities.

My electorate of Adelaide also has many deserving sporting and community clubs. I was pleased to support a number of social groups, community clubs and sporting clubs in my electorate to receive funding to help them undertake much-needed upgrades for their communities. These included the Adelaide Omonia Cobras Football Club and the Adelaide Bowling Club. The Adelaide Bowling Club is one of the oldest in South Australia. In fact, its first premises were on the site where today's South Australian Government House is. When they built Government House and expanded its land, they had to move, and they're now on the eastern Park Lands. The Cobras football club plan to build a new electronic scoreboard which will have video and audio broadcasting capabilities. They also need perimeter fencing at their soccer precinct at Weigall Oval in order to be able to go to the next level in the competition.

They're a great club. They have juniors from under 8s to under 10s right through to seniors first division football, which are doing quite well. They're a great community club that works to promote football but also reaches out to the community to get kids to participate. We know how important it is for kids to participate in sport. It's wonderful to go down there on training nights and see families with kids of all ages participating.

The Adelaide Bowling Club, South Australia's oldest lawn bowls club, is in dire need of new kitchen facilities to meet the club's growing needs. One of the best aspects of my work as a member of parliament is to assist and help such deserving clubs in my electorate, which all of us try to do. I'm very pleased to support these funding requests.

My electorate will also benefit from a significant funding injection in the health space—$77 million will go towards comprehensive cancer centres in my electorate. These cancer centres will be co-located at the Australian Bragg Centre for Proton Therapy and Research and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institution. These cancer centres are expected to result in 2,000 cancer cases prevented, diagnosed early and treated in South Australia annually. The centre will also assist patients from the NT. This is fantastic news for South Australians and our world-class research and medical services.

In addition, one of the 50 urgent care clinics that were announced will be located in the electorate of Adelaide. These urgent care clinics will take the pressure off emergency departments. In 2020-21, 47 per cent of presentations in emergency departments were classified as semi-urgent or not urgent. People end up going to emergency departments because they often do not have an alternative. The urgent care clinic that will be in my electorate will provide an alternative so that people can access the urgent care they need. Urgent care clinics will provide a place where people can get timely and appropriate care and take the pressure off our emergency departments.

We have also announced an additional 1,645 university places for South Australians to train as teachers, nurses and engineers. This corresponds to an investment of $48 million in South Australian universities, the majority of which are located in the electorate of Adelaide, including the University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide. This represents a real commitment to education and training and also addresses the skills shortages our economy is currently facing.

Finally, the Albanese Labor government has invested $200 million into an upgrade at the intersection of Marion Road and Cross Road, which is also the intersection between three electorates, the electorate of Boothby, the electorate of Hindmarsh and my electorate of Adelaide. I'm pleased that the member for Boothby is here. She will have much more to say about this in the future. The project will see grade separation of the tram level crossing and the widening of the Anzac Highway-Marion Road intersection. This is a significant project that has been called on by the people of the federal seat of Adelaide, the federal seat of Boothby and the federal seat of Hindmarsh for many, many years. I'm very pleased that it will improve congestion and safety for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.

There's a lot to do for this Labor government. We have a long way to go. We are doing everything we can to take the cost-of-living pressures off families. Today we saw paid parental leave. We've put child care in place. These are things that will really have an effect on families. On 1 January, we lowered the cost of medicines—a real drop in the price—which will affect people's pockets in a good way. You will see many more things coming out of this Labor government, because it's only Labor governments that really help and support working families and assist people in having a future to pay their bills, to pay their mortgages, to send their kids to school and to ensure they have a good health service. These are the things that Australians are crying out for; these are the things that we will be doing.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate of Forrest is a beautiful part of Australia and a wonderful place to live, to work, to invest, to raise a family and to retire. It is also one of the most diverse electorates in Australia, with mining and resource manufacturing, agriculture and horticulture, forestry and fisheries, tourism, building construction and significant civil works companies in the logistics space and also in retail and hospitality.

As I start my speech, I just want to acknowledge the work that's ongoing in my electorate by our voluntary and professional emergency services people. They do an extraordinary amount of work. Right at this moment, throughout my electorate and other parts of Western Australia, there has been a great need for the work of our voluntary and professional emergency services, from the floods that we've seen in the north to a range of bushfires right throughout our part of the world, including my own electorate of Forrest. So I want to say a special thankyou to those people.

And it's not just those people. When there is a bushfire, and it affects a neighbour, often it's our local farmers with their own fire units on the back of their utes who will front up for their neighbour. This is how the small regional communities and the farming sector work together and constantly contribute to the community. So I want to acknowledge and thank them for that. I've seen a fair bit of it, with the significant lightning storm in our part of the world.

In government we had a very effective and clear regional, rural and remote set of programs that delivered real, sound results, not just in Forrest but right around regional Australia. One very strongly supported program, particularly by local governments—it is the one that they have been seeking most—was the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. The City of Bunbury was able to put the funding that they received towards a fantastic skate park for young people in the city itself. It is so popular, but it wouldn't have been done without those funds. We supported a sports precinct in Dunsborough and the pump track in Egan Park in Donnybrook. These are just a few examples of how this fund was used by local governments to provide wonderful infrastructure for local communities and things that the community really needed and wanted.

It is the same with the Building Better Regions Fund for the Apple Fun Park in Donnybrook, which is visited by people from right around the state and even international visitors. It's a great place for families to stop at. The South Bunbury Football Club saw a benefit out of this with their improvement of Hands Oval. In the aged-care sector, we supported the Armstrong Village in Dunsborough itself.

The Bridges Renewal Program has been really important in rural, regional and remote Australia, particularly for small councils that have an extraordinary amount of road and a huge number of bridges, often key export and logistics connections. They really benefited from and needed this funding.

The road Black Spot funding program has been so important in rural and regional Australia. And in the telecommunications space I was so proud of the first Mobile Black Spot Program, because there wasn't such a program previously. We were able to get so many of these on the ground in rural, regional and remote areas, and that is so important in our part of the world. That's what we heard back so often from right around Australia.

We funded key infrastructure from enablers around the Busselton Margaret River Airport and the Busselton Jetty. It's the longest jetty in the Southern Hemisphere; I encourage you to go and have a visit. It has a beautiful underwater observatory at the other end. There is a significant 80 per cent federal government investment for the Bunbury Outer Ring Road. This is also about linking the Busselton Margaret River Airport with the greater southern region and the south-west for freight and logistics—a really important task—as well as servicing and linking the port of Bunbury to gain all the access that's needed.

Equally important was the funding we put into dualling the Bussell Highway from Capel to Busselton. For anyone who travels that highway regularly—from people completing all the heavy freight tasks to the massive number of tourists who come through our region, heading further south for holidays and weekends—it's really critical to road safety.

We supported aged-care facilities in those areas where aged care is really difficult and challenging and often very expensive to provide, especially investing in infrastructure, when often it's a community group engaged in this, whether in Harvey, in Donnybrook or in Dunsborough, as I mentioned. I was able to secure a designated migration agreement for our area, given that we'd key shortages for many years. This is something that was very useful to business and individual small businesses.

Another plan that I was really happy with was the first-ever National Plan for Endometriosis, for those one in 10 women who are affected by this condition, and the significant funding we put in to research in the pelvic pain space and to the plan itself, as well as more education for schools and programs to run. I will continue to have an absolute focus on the ongoing investment that will be needed in the National Plan for Endometriosis and for pelvic pain education and pelvic pain clinics. I really want to see one of those in the south-west of WA.

We also supported so many new medications—almost one a day in our time in government, and there were over 2,000 listed on the PBS. What a difference that has made to people's lives. In my part of the world, too, I have no doubt that the university department of rural health that we secured to help workforce training will become a key part of meeting the ongoing need in what is one of the fastest-growing areas and an area where people choose to retire. But I think an enduring legacy for all Australians was our investment and creation of the Medical Research Future Fund. All you have to do is look at where the funding in that has been allocated to universities right around Australia, for a wealth of research, such as into chronic disease and so many other conditions and issues. This is an enduring legacy that I am very proud that our government delivered for this nation, and it will deliver benefits right around Australia and, I suggest, globally as well.

In regional education we had much to do when we came into government, especially around youth allowance and access to this allowance for young people from rural and regional areas. We'd seen what the previous government had done in that space, especially around the lack of access to youth allowance for young people from inner-regional areas. In WA we still have a lack of teachers, particularly in rural, regional and remote areas. Both of these are important matters, particularly around teaching and access to teachers and what the education sector is dealing with.

One of the things that has had effects more broadly, not just in my part of the world, has been the changes Labor made in relation to the sourcing of general practitioners. The Distribution Priority Area identifies areas where there are shortages of doctors, especially GPs, and where international medical graduates have to work in a DPA to be eligible for Medicare. The changes have seen those area boundaries expand to include outer metro areas, which of course, when we've got shortages of GPs, puts more pressure on regional areas in trying to compete with outer metro areas for GPs. And gee that makes it hard—even harder than it normally is.

I also want to touch on some of the great work we did around cybersafety and the various laws we introduced around online safety and image-based abuse. Members would know that I've spent a lot of my time in this parliament and in the community focused on cybersafety, particularly for young people. I've provided sessions and presentations for young people in schools in the community and in business. We established the Office of the eSafety Commissioner. It's a global leader, and I'm really proud of that.

But I want to see more people accessing the services and supports that are available through the Office of the eSafety Commissioner. And I would have to say that in all my years of doing this work I have seen a marked deterioration in the mental and emotional health and wellbeing of young people through what's going on online. I struggle to find the time to deal with all of the issues that come from this. I see so many young people affected. Recent information from the eSafety Commissioner shows, for instance, that 30 per cent of young teens have been contacted online by a stranger, and that's beside the basic bullying, body image issues and also the challenge for them in this space of simply managing to get enough sleep. They're often gaming for many hours during the night. One principal, when I asked him what was affecting the mental health and wellbeing of his students the most, held up a mobile phone and said, 'My young people are simply not getting enough sleep, and it's affecting how they manage everything else in their lives.' Whether it's relationships, school or the challenges that young people have to manage, if they're not getting enough sleep, everything is so much harder. Even adults find the same thing. I have a challenge for anybody watching. My challenge to you is this: what are you going to do to be your very best self online all of the time? Because that's what's needed from all of us. All of us need to be our best selves online all of the time.

When I look at the challenges currently existing and emerging in my part of the south-west of WA, like so much of rural and regional Australia, it's struggling with the shortages of workers and accommodation. The current rental availability in WA is about 0.6 per cent—I think that's right. We've got so many businesses, small businesses as well as larger ones, including aged-care providers, who've had to buy homes simply to house their workers, if they can get them, or provide their own on- or off-site accommodation. That goes right down to vegetable growers, who've had to invest significantly. Simply, they need the workforce and they need somewhere to house them, so they're investing in this space. I know that that problem exists whether you are the lithium producer Albemarle, in the Kemerton light industrial area, or in agriculture or horticulture or a small business in the hospitality sector. There's a real shortage of workers and tradespeople with what's happening in our south-west.

Many businesses, of all sizes, are paying extraordinary wages just to retain or attract workers. One hire company in Bunbury recently said to me that they're currently paying their heavy-vehicle mechanic $162,000 to keep him there, as opposed to him going into the mining sector in the north. The challenge for the business comes when the hire company—we know what's happening with cost of living and issues of inflation across business—can't actually increase their equipment hire rates to reflect those extra costs of wages and other matters. That puts that business in a very difficult ongoing position. Many hospitality and tourism operators have struggled to get staff. During COVID we saw this happening really badly. Some small to medium enterprises shut their doors. A lot of our small-business people are absolutely exhausted because they've carried the load themselves and filled the gap throughout COVID. Even now, it's ongoing for them. Some cannot afford to open on days that attract penalty rates, particularly if there are two in one weekly pay cycle. They are personally exhausted and frustrated. They're dealing with constant inflation and increased input costs, and their customers are often unwilling, or unable, to pay higher prices for items. Some of them are actually changing what they're putting on their menus so that they can afford to stay in business and the people who come to those premises can afford to pay for what they're selling.

As we know, for many local people, cost of living is a critical issue and they are making tough decisions right now. With those 800,000 people who have mortgages that are moving off fixed interest rates and onto variable interest rates, that will continue to be a focus for those individuals and families. Interest rates will also be a focus for small business. Often small-business owners have to mortgage their house or anything else that they've got just to get into small business. Each incremental increase is a cost to the business, and it depends how the bank prices that risk on that business as to the cost to the business.

There could well be further risks ahead for businesses and industries. We don't want to see the South West being overlooked for federal government investment. There are great concerns in my part of the world around the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal and how Labor applies the safeguard mechanism. There are ongoing challenges for the building and construction sector, including the increase in inflation and input costs from the time of signing a fixed-price contract to the completion of the construction, and the potential loss. The businesses most at risk in this space are small to medium, privately owned businesses—not listed companies.

I don't want to see those local businesses lost, because they're so often the ones that underpin our regional economy. They're the ones who train local people and local tradespeople who will stay in our regional communities and be wonderful. For a start sometimes these tradespeople get to a point where they start their own business. We saw a record number of apprentices come along in our time and take up the opportunities that we offered them. We want to see those young people be able to go into their own business in time and be able to train others, in the same way they've had that opportunity. That increased risk on private, unlisted companies and smaller companies—which is what we have in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia—is something that is of real concern for me in what's ahead.

I want to continue to promote the agricultural sector and the quality that we see from our farmers and our agriculture sector. In my part of the world in the South West—and as people know, I'm a very proud dairy farmer—we, and much of Australia, produce some of the best quality food and fibre in the world. I'm extraordinarily proud of the work that our farmers do, and I want to encourage every one of them.

I know for some young people trying to get into farming and trying to get into, say, the dairy industry, there are real challenges in finding a financial institution and an opportunity, because of what's required to get your foot in the door. I want to encourage great young people. Our farmers compete in a global export environment and they do it very well because often we're seeing they are low-cost producers. They have to be simply to compete, given that there is a high cost to doing business in Australia. That applies even in the farming sector, where we're expected to produce more, basically, with less land, less water and less fertiliser on one of the driest continents on earth.

I also want to focus on the importance of the South West irrigation system in my part of the world. It is a critical piece of regional infrastructure. I think it could be the only gravity-fed irrigation system that we have, certainly in WA in this way. With the dams in the hills and the way that the cooperative has piped the northern section of this so it's fully enclosed, there are no channel losses. It's very efficient. No energy is required for this water to get to the farms where it's used for irrigation for all sorts of purposes as well as, in part, some industrial and other fit-for-purpose uses. It is a fantastic system.

There's a second section in the Collie River irrigation district that desperately needs to be piped as well. Pump piping and even some desalination is needed for Wellington Dam, which provides this water. I sought support for this from the previous government and I'll be staying on this issue because this South West irrigation system and its great quality of water underpins not just much of the agriculture and food production but also much of the economy of the South West. Any of us who are from the primary sector, like me, tend to see water as more valuable than gold because, in the slogan of Harvey Water and South West irrigation, where water flows food grows. We've got a task. There's a global shortage of food ahead. We're in a prime position because we're great producers of quality product, and we need to be able to continue to be so.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an ord er of the day for a later hour.