Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to contribute to this debate in relation to the Commission of Audit and the scope and expectation that this audit might deliver. I thank Senator Madigan for making the point so clearly that really, as legislators, we do our utmost to ensure that those who are coming ahead of us, our young people, do have the opportunities that they have in education and in access to health. And of course, as an advocate for the regions, Senator Madigan makes the point so clearly that too often it is the bush, it is rural and regional health, that really gets a whack because it is a small voice; it is not a squeaky wheel. Those regional services step up above and beyond the capacity of most providers in the cities and do amazing things with very little, and we should not be expecting them to do an amazing lot with a lot less.

But, just coming back, I think it is really important to go to the issue of what the coalition's Commission of Audit actually has been established to do. Let us just put aside what happened under the Kennett regime and what happened in Queensland and think for a moment. It is quite a daunting task for the commissioners to deliver the outcome that has been proposed to them, and that worries me in many respects. There is a massive wish list.

With a lack of information, of course people start to speculate and get very anxious. We have already heard the discussion about Medibank Private. We have seen the cuts to AusAID and the dismissal of next year's graduates, who had all made arrangements to start in that program, who have been fired, basically, by email. We start to think about what the rolling implications are, where this wish list might end up, and what the consequences of going for low-hanging fruit in the first instance will be. I think that is where people are really worried. They are worried about the commitments that have been made.

I had a meeting in my office yesterday with an organisation who are party to an intergovernmental agreement which is about access to disability services. The finances have not been signed off by the Commonwealth for this financial year, and they are waiting in desperate anticipation for those unexpended moneys to be delivered to their state government so that the program can be delivered—and half the year is gone. They were really concerned that that is quite a large amount of money for disability services that might just get evaporated as unexpended funds and be clawed back because they did not get the money in time to spend it.

So there are really realistic concerns in the community about health, education, disability services, aged-care services and community services, as well as the commitments to infrastructure. We have had the discussion too about the RDAF funding, round 5 of funding, to all of those local government organisations which had made commitments—contracts had been signed with their partners, which is part and parcel of the RDAF process—and, when it came to the government signing off on the contracts, they were all written off. Just in my home town, that is a significant amount of money, several millions of dollars, that local government had committed to partner in projects that now have gone by the by. Some of them were very significant community infrastructure projects, and that seems to be another one of the local government concerns about what this Commission of Audit might actually do.

But the first part of the audit, which is a huge challenge in itself—and they have to report by January—covers the scope of government, the efficiency and effectiveness of government expenditure, the state of the Commonwealth's finances, the medium-term risks to the integrity of the budget position, and the adequacy of existing budget controls and disciplines. That is by the end of January, and we are at the end of November now.

Phase 2, which is by the end of March, will examine the Commonwealth infrastructure and Public Service performance and accountability. I make that point because a lot of the discussion—and realistically, because we are here in Canberra, we hear the discussion—is about Public Service job cuts, but in fact that is one of the lower-order priorities. It is the very last thing on the list, and that is the thing we see. The very visible, tangible thing is job cuts, but what we do not see is changes to machinery of government; the impacts that might have; the announcement that was made last week by Senator Abetz about non-ongoing staff; how the public sector actually works; and what the role of non-ongoing staff and contracted staff is. Unless you are immersed in public sector management, you do not really get to understand that those non-ongoing staff can be quite critical linchpins between government programs and service delivery. If you do not have someone to manage the grants program or you do not have someone to ensure that the training is being rolled out for some kind of health program, the program does not happen. The program becomes underexpended, and the money is wrapped back into consolidated revenue.

I think that Senator Gallacher, from South Australia, belled the cat because he said exactly what we are seeing is happening: if funding is taken in an umbrella program, if one childcare centre closes because there is underenrolment or underparticipation, that money is clawed back. It is not seen to be a cut; it is seen to be a reassignment, but in fact on the ground, in that little community, it is a cut. A cut is a cut is a cut. A service is gone. Re-establishing that service, trying to recruit people into those services, just exacerbates the challenge.

When we are trying to think about the issues of early childhood education, when we are thinking about child development, occupational therapy, playgroups—those kinds of things that are all immersed now in a kind of seamless way in which we are looking at our early childhood development framework—these things do not just come systematically as school education or community education. A lot of it is integrated. A lot of it is community fundraising, with the participation of local organisations ensuring that a service can exist and can be supported in a small community—life education, for example. It does not happen unless there is local community support and engagement. It is funded partly by state government funding through the Commonwealth, but if that money is not taken up and is not matched, it is lost. That is the critical thing we have to think about in this commission of audit.

There is a lot of angst in communities, in organisations and in the Public Service about the commitment they have to very significant research which may no longer be continued. We have international longitudinal studies involving students in schools, health departments, research institutes and international organisations. None of these things are out of the ball game; everything is up for grabs. The anxiety we have is that the kinds of things the government will look to cut, the low-hanging fruit, are the critical voices. That is what they did very effectively in 1996 when they basically cut out the advisory groups. They stopped funding the organisations that were trying to give fair, free, frank and fearless advice, contrary to government policy explaining what the impact of changes might be. That was very low-hanging fruit. Hundreds of millions of dollars went from supporting advisory bodies and advocacy bodies.

Let us have a think about the things that are proposed because people are speculating in the absence of any kind of detail. Maurice Newman, close confidant to the Prime Minister, speaking only last week at a dinner, raised the flag about the Gonski reforms—that we cannot afford them. Basically he said we are overcommitted, that we do not need to have this investment in our schools. If you had been listening to the first speeches of many of the new members of the House of Representatives, you would have heard many of them talking about the impact of our better schools program and the investment in schools over the last six years, and the commitment we had to future changes.

The Catholic education system tell you how important the Gonski reforms are and the agreements that they signed up to for improving access to education for children, particularly those with disabilities and special needs and gifted children. These are the kinds of programs which very clearly might be under the gun if the advice of people like Mr Newman—as I say, a close confidant of the Prime Minister—is heeded. We think about his concern about the NDIS—that it is too expensive a system, that we should be looking for something cheaper. We do not want a cheap and nasty dependency scheme; we want something that gives dignity to people with life-long care needs and to their parents, families and carers. We do not want a cheap and nasty version of the NDIS just to save some money in the short term. We do not want to think that a government will holus bolus decide to slice 225 research positions from the CSIRO because climate change is a nonsense, which, again, is Mr Newman's view. He does not believe in climate change and he does not believe in funding climate change research. When you think of the anxiety about how this rolls out, those three things—the Gonski education reforms, the NDIS and climate change research, highlighted in that seminal speech by Mr Newman—immediately send signals because they have impacts right throughout our social services system and our education system, into our higher education system and into our research capability. We want to be an innovative, forward-thinking, 21st century creative nation. How can we be if we clamp down on so many of those things?

Look at what is happening in AusAID. I am appalled by that decision, which was taken unilaterally, without any consultation and without any notice. Talk about no surprises; it was a big surprise that the government would do that unilaterally to that whole organisation. AusAID is a proud organisation, admired around the world for the way it integrates our foreign investment, our foreign development, our diplomatic relationships especially with developing countries, and leverages our goodwill by investing in aid projects. We are going to see very different investment in future. The graduate program harnesses the enthusiasm, the commitment and the idealism of young people to work in the AusAID programs, to be engaged in a post working on development projects. I have lots of them as interns in my office and they come back having transformed the world, in their eyes. You have to allow them that enthusiasm and sustain them by giving them the opportunities which now, sadly and desperately, will just disappear, and we will lose the intellectual development they bring with them as well.

Senator Madigan says he does not want to see public assets sold—one of the things widely speculated. We could sell off defence assets, we could sell off land, we could sell off buildings, we could privatise the HECS debt, the $40 billion. That would be a very effective saving. We do not know what that might do to any student who is unable to meet the private sector conditions of repaying their HECS debt, who would suddenly have a credit-rating problem. How could that possibly work? We could consider the contestability of services, as we have seen in Queensland where the government have gone right down deeply into community services

They have looked at contestable community health services, at disability support services. They have closed schools and preschools and childcare centres. They have increased class sizes—something that we know can have a really damning effect on education outcomes.

We can look at cuts to funding for support programs that are non-ongoing—pilot programs. Sometimes the criticism from a government coming in is: 'Well, you know, the previous government had more pilots than Qantas.' I have heard that so many times, but in fact you are testing ideas. You are actually saying that one size does not fit all. That is exactly what Warren Mundine is saying and it is exactly what Noel Pearson was saying: you have to have fit-for-purpose programs, particularly in the social services area. We would want to see that those kinds of commitments are not going to be the low-hanging fruit that the Commission of Audit brings.

We could look at means testing. There are several people saying, 'Let's have a look at means testing our welfare and social security payments much more closely.' There are those, of course, who say, 'Let's go to the issue of corporate welfare and the substantial subsidies and provisions that are being given to a range of industries.' We could sell off the NBN. That is on the cards. We know that is probably going to happen. What is happening about the privatisation of Australia Post? That is an issue of huge concern to people and one we know will be identified in the list of things. What happens if you sell the local post office? We know already what is happening there.

We have had suggestions that maybe this government might like to think about revisiting the Australia Network contract that was given to the ABC. We know why they might want to be interested in going down that path because we know who owns the alternative network providers. We can think about the issue of reviewing the DGR status of NGOs that are providing dissenting voices. That was proposed several times. In particular, we know that that proposition has been put around in relation to human rights organisations and environmental organisations that are critical of the government. In many ways it is about silencing dissent.

Let us think about industry assistance packages. We heard from the other side yesterday that they do not want to support the Australian automotive industry, but what about the mining industry or smelting or gas production or the futile research that is being promulgated around the place? Let us think about the support we give to first home buyers. We could take that away. How about we revisit the issue of negative gearing for investment properties? That is going to affect a whole lot of different people in the scheme of things.

The Commission of Audit might go one step further. We have heard the Prime Minister say, 'We have a whole federal Department of Health and Ageing that does not deliver one health service.' Why not go the whole hog and axe the whole department? That could be the path that we are travelling down.

At the time that the Commission of Audit is having an unmanageable and unprecedented challenge for them—I wish them luck in their endeavours to do this—we have talked about the 12,000 public servants. I know that Senator Seselja is going to speak in a moment; I guess he will have some concerns about that. But let me first put something on the record. The machinery of government changes that are bringing together to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet everything around Indigenous Australian service provision are going to quadruple the number of staff in that central agency and create a range of problems. It is going to bring together services provided by nine agencies in a new model that is going to be incredibly challenging to manage. In those machinery of government changes, what do we see? We see that the services we want to get to those Indigenous communities and those Indigenous people are all in hiatus. They are all kind of hanging. Nobody knows what to do or where to go. Money is not flowing; issues are not happening. This is the real challenge for the Commission of Audit. If we want our Public Service to be lean and mean and effective we have to make sure that we are not putting around mixed messages and weird challenges, and we definitely have to ensure that the unintended consequences, or the unstated consequences, are not cuts to the critical issues of health and education.