Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I delight in the opportunity to speak in this matter of public importance debate because I think it is a great time to remind the Senate that Australians are actually really sick and tired of the constant carping between state and federal governments. Those opposite have put a matter before us that actually draws attention to the fact that indeed things are now taking shape in a far more constructive manner—and you are complaining about the lack of complaining, when in actual fact this is exactly what Australians wanted. This debate is a desperate attempt to get a political kick. The WA Liberal opposition cannot get any traction on these issues and that is because state and federal Labor are getting on with the job.

Back last year when COAG first met, there would have been 19 previous COAG meetings where we had leaders come away pretty unhappy with what they got. They were always largely complaining about money. What we have seen since then is a new COAG agenda, where in actual fact we have got state and federal leaders—not the bureaucrats, because previously it used to be the bureaucrats—getting together, putting job lists together, with ownership of achieving the targets set in them. So we have got an absolute transformation of state and federal policy.

We had all that carping about state and Commonwealth funding agreements, but now we are really bedding down special purpose payments and the benchmarks and outcomes attached to those payments. Labor have promised extra cash for states and territories because they have agreed to unprecedented federal involvement in their affairs, embracing a gruelling work program that is going to deliver major national reforms over the next few years.

Chief ministers and premiers have all got their sleeves rolled up and got stuck into an ambitious program of work. We have ministers chairing these working groups, with state ministers being the deputy chairs. They are really on all the key issues of the nation, including the key issues for Western Australia. Western Australia has also got its sleeves rolled up and is well into this program of COAG reform. We have various kinds of working groups. There is the heads of Treasury SPP working group, and they are getting right into the nitty-gritty of the financial frameworks that are going to deliver these new outcomes. That is core to the program—that is, the special purpose payments. To quote Kevin Rudd, they are:

… are part of the deep structure, folklore and mysticism of Commonwealth-state relations.

But, in fact, we are demystifying that and putting some real programs together to make these things transparent and accountable.

The kinds of things that we are getting on and doing include the Indigenous issues across working groups. In fact, Indigenous issues are a theme across all the working groups so that we can start to get real outcomes and cooperation on the kinds of issues that we all know are so important: health, aged care, housing, early childhood education and care, schooling, skills and workforce development and assisting people with disabilities. So Indigenous issues are now a core stream through all the different working groups.

We have climate change and water. We know how significant climate change issues are to the nation, and they are particularly important to Western Australia. Western Australia has a drying climate, and we are highly vulnerable to climate change. On that basis, Western Australia is playing a leading role in looking at plans for adaptation, because we need to put together real plans and build our capacity to adapt to climate change. We also have the energy efficiency subgroup, where we can start to get some cooperation across state and federal governments on fantastic energy efficiency measures. I am quite used to this. There are an endless number of federal energy efficiency measures and an endless number of state energy efficiency measures, but there has historically been very little coordination across these things, and now we will be able to coordinate these issues and they will be able to feed into things like the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. We will have far more coherent policy approaches to these issues.

There are significant things that we all know are important, such as early childhood development, and that is getting on with the National Quality Standards Framework and an early learning years framework. On public housing, we have been looking at a new housing agreement and also at the National Rental Affordability Scheme. State and federal governments have been working together to hold cooperative stakeholder meetings, so it is not only engagement between governments; it is actually engagement with the Australian public—the Western Australian public in this case.

We have also seen renewable energy target design options coming together from the Department of Climate Change, consulting and meeting with WA stakeholders. We have been working on adaptation plans, renewable energy and feed-in tariffs, energy efficiency, water and, indeed, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I think nothing speaks louder than the progress that is finally being made towards the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. States were really going it alone and putting in a lot of the groundwork before we finally came together, under the leadership of Senator Penny Wong and Prime Minister Rudd, to see a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme really begin to come to fruition, which we are finally on the cusp of seeing happen. States really had to go it alone for a very long time in trying to get these issues— (Time expired)