Senate debates
Thursday, 21 June 2007
Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008; Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008; Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2007-2008; Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2006-2007; Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2006-2007
Second Reading
Debate resumed from 19 June, on motion by Senator Abetz:
That these bills be now read a second time.
Senator MURRAY(Western Australia)(8.43 pm)—As the Democrats finance spokesperson, I rise to speak to the five appropriation bills before us. At the outset, let me make it clear that the Democrats support the passage of these bills. Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 appropriates close to $59 billion for the ordinary annual services of government—that is, for ongoing expenditure. The main provisions are practically identical to the Appropriation Act (No. 1) 2006-2007. In that bill nearly $20 billion goes to Defence. Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2007-2008 appropriates approximately $10.1 billion for funding for other expenditure and agencies. In terms of the compact of 1985, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) is meant to be for non-annual services, for new policies and other projects of government. It should be noted that the minister can determine terms and conditions for the payment of money and withhold it if the terms and conditions are not met by the territories or local government. Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2006-2007 provides for additional appropriations relevant to the 2006-07 financial year and concerns expenditures in Appropriation Bill (No. 1) of that year. The total of the items specified in schedule 1 is close to $555 million.
The additional appropriation in Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2006-07 is around $259 million. This funds an additional $250 million to the Department of Transport and Regional Services for the AusLink Strategic Regional Program. The funding increase is partially offset by savings in other programs. Both Appropriation Bill (No. 5) and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) seek approximately $840 million and the major items provided for are an increase of $66.3 million for the Department of Education, Science and Training and $435.8 million for the Department of Health and Ageing. The last appropriation bill is the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2007-08, which appropriates $170.7 million out of the consolidated revenue fund for expenditure in relation to the Department of the Senate, the Department of the House of Representatives and the Department of Parliamentary Services.
I cannot deal with all the matters in these bills so I will concentrate on a few themes. Over the last decade or so the shape of public finance has radically changed. The principal features of the new regime are output based budgeting and appropriations and accrual accounting, and the main statutory reflection of the change is the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997. There are great advantages in this new public finance system. It gives executive government a better picture of its total financial position and the resources at its disposal and facilitates government control over its total budget.
It has, however, some negative features, and these relate to the transparency of funding and expenditure and accountability to parliament. A report presented in March 2007 from the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration, on which I sit, entitled Transparency and accountability of Commonwealth public funding and expenditure represents an attempt to overcome those negative aspects of what is otherwise a positive current system. In essence, the committee was unequivocal in its recommendations to government that transparency and accountability requires improvement. It stated:
The Committee has made several recommendations and a number of suggestions which, if adopted, would go some way to restoring the Parliament’s constitutional and historical prerogatives with regard to the control of the Executive’s funding and expenditure.
This statement by the committee should not be dismissed lightly. It draws on evidence received during the inquiry from the Australian National Audit Office, the Department of Finance and Administration, academics in the fields of finance, accounting and governance, parliamentary officers and others.
The main problem from a parliamentary point of view is that the annual appropriation bills now bear a somewhat tenuous relationship with actual public funding and expenditure—much more tenuous than they did in the past. The appropriation bills do not give a true picture of the funds available to government or the purposes for which they are to be expended. In the first place, the annual appropriations now account for something less than 20 per cent of the resources available to government. Most of the money comes from so-called ‘special appropriations’ or ‘standing appropriations’, which are provisions in hundreds of acts of parliament appropriating money for particular purposes in the longer term, usually of indefinite amount and often of indefinite duration. These appropriation provisions have proliferated to the extent that government itself does not have a full picture of them. A report by the Auditor-General in 2003-2004 found significant illegalities and lack of proper management and control in these special appropriations. I stress that in many cases the illegalities were regarded as technical rather than substantive.
In addition, departments and agencies have available to them other sources of funds which are not reflected in the appropriation bills. Those sources are, firstly, advances to the Minister for Finance and Administration, which are funds for urgent and unforeseen or overlooked expenditure and which potentially amount to $390 million in the appropriation bills for the financial year 2007-08. A second source is that departments are able to carry over surpluses from their annual appropriations, providing them with cash to add to their appropriations in the future. A third source is where these surpluses are increased by building provision for depreciation into annual budgets. The next source is that revenue raised by departments may be retained by agreement of the Minister for Finance and Administration under section 31 of the FMA Act. Further, special accounts are created by the Minister for Finance and Administration under sections 20 and 21 of the FMA Act, and in 2002-03, when the accounts were last audited, this amounted to $3.4 billion into which some revenues are directly paid. Lastly, appropriations of an unspecified amount are made under section 30A of the FMA Act to allow payment by departments of the goods and services tax.
In past years the Minister for Finance and Administration could also increase the annual appropriations of departments within specified ceilings, totalling $40 million in the appropriation acts for 2006-07. Reports by the Auditor-General found problems with special accounts and the system of retaining surpluses similar to those encountered with special appropriations. As a result, it is no easy exercise to determine the total funds available to departments and agencies.
The Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee made a number of recommendations to improve transparency and accountability to parliament of public finance. In summary, these recommendations encompass: the presentation to parliament annually of a full account of expenditure from special appropriations; regular and systematic review of special appropriations to ensure that they are still required for purposes deliberately continued by government; full reporting of transfers of expenditure between different forms of appropriation, for example, between annual appropriations and special accounts; improved accounting for revenue retained by departments and agencies; retention of unspent appropriations by departments and agencies only for specific and justified purposes deliberately approved by government; accounting for expenditure from GST revenues by states and territories; reframing of outcomes to reduce their ambiguity; reporting of expenditure at the level of programs in the budget documents, including the appropriation bills; expediting the harmonisation of accounting standards; a better system for funding depreciation rather than inclusion in annual appropriations; a review of the content and nature of portfolio budget statements; and a settlement of the permissible content of appropriations for the ordinary annual services of the government.
These changes cannot be implemented without the cooperation of government. It is up to the Senate and all parties in the Senate to convince the government of the day, in this case the coalition government, that these recommendations are in its and the country’s best long-term interests, because lack of accountability does cause problems for any government, and all governments in the long run.
Some of these difficulties came forcibly to parliamentary and public attention with the government’s workplace relations advertising campaign in 2005. Some $55 million was spent on an advertising campaign for legislation which had not even been introduced into the parliament, much less passed by the parliament. This expenditure was charged to outcome 2 of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, which read ‘Higher productivity, higher pay workplaces’. Outcomes expressed in terms like these allow government enormous scope to invent and spend large sums on entirely new projects, even those which have not been notified to the parliament, much less submitted for parliamentary approval. It is now notorious that the High Court held that this expenditure was validly authorised by parliamentary appropriation and was entirely legal.
I do not think here is the place for analysing that judgement in detail, except to say that I agree with the minority justices that it did overthrow established High Court precedent and it did allow any government to spend money pretty well on whatever it pleased, providing the original appropriation was in the appropriate bill, even though it was expressed in the widest of terms. I quote two passages in the separate judgement of the Chief Justice:
If Parliament formulates the purposes of appropriation in broad, general terms, then those terms must be applied with the breadth and generality they bear.
The higher the level of abstraction, or the greater the scope for political interpretation, involved in a proposed outcome appropriation, the greater may be the detail required by Parliament before appropriating a sum to such a purpose; and the greater may be the scrutiny involved in a review of such expenditure after it has occurred.
I think the High Court were right in that they threw the ball directly back to the parliament. It is up to the parliament and parliamentarians, it is up to the political parties, not the courts, to ensure that government expenditure is sufficiently transparent and accountable.
This difficulty is nowhere more apparent than with the new heights the coalition government has scaled in recent government advertising expenditure. Consider these figures: The 2005 report of the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee, Government advertising and accountability, revealed that ‘media spend’ between 1996-97 and 2003-04 was well over $1 billion on advertising placement alone. I say alone, because this figure excludes production and advertisement agency costs and related market research, otherwise known as ‘below-the-line’ expenditure. It also excludes the whopping $55 million expended on the 2005 Work Choices advertising campaign. Consider also current government expenditure. We have $40 million being spent on advertisements spruiking its Work Choices legislation; we have the $69 million superannuation ‘information’ campaign; and we have the upcoming multimillion dollar ‘climate clever’ campaign to be funded out of the $52.8 million assigned to climate change awareness in the budget.
The Labor Party and others estimate that the Howard coalition government over the last 11 years has spent a colossal $1.7 billion of public funds on government advertising since coming to power. If you add the below-the-line costs it would be more, because reporting on ‘communications’ expenditure is very loose and difficult to pin down, a cause of complaint from Dr Sally Young, a leading academic researcher and commentator who has tried to analyse this area.
The public purse is not there to be used to prop up a government’s electoral campaign. It is there to provide essential services. In the finance committee’s estimates in May, I cited the Australian’s Steve Lewis. He wrote:
The Coalition’s exorbitant use of taxpayers’ money to advertise government propaganda represents a multi-million dollar swindle.
Steve Lewis is a very senior journalist but he is not exactly a radical lefty. He continues:
There is little justification for the advertising blitz, which is filling the coffers of Australia’s media companies but making a mockery of the Coalition’s pretence to be guardians of fiscal prudence.
There is substance to this view. For the financial year 2005-06, Nielsen media research listed the Howard government as the second highest advertiser in Australia behind the Coles-Myer group. Critically, this abuse of budgetary discretion by the executive to promote partisan political material is part of a much larger argument. It is part of perhaps the most profound of all political issues in the history of our democracy, and that is the decline of parliament’s ability to control executive spending.
The Senate committee’s Government advertising and accountability report that I referred to earlier makes this patently clear. I remember well the regret I felt when speaking to this report’s tabling. That regret was because, quite apart from exposing the aggressive misuse of public moneys by the coalition government, it also revealed a disregard for accountability measures—a disgraceful disregard, in my view. It laid bare how executive power can render the parliament powerless to control or even restrain government spending on politically contentious advertising activities. It revealed how the appropriations process has been perverted to permit almost ‘anything goes’ in spending in this area. The critical point to recognise is that the High Court has told us that this is perfectly legal and legitimate. So it is a moral, ethical and accountability problem; it is not a problem of law and legality.
The essence of the matter is this. We now have a parliament as an adjunct to, or even the creature of, the executive—a situation that has escalated and does need to be addressed. The Work Choices advertising campaign amply demonstrates the tussle between the executive and the parliament and that tussle now continues through the current stronger safety net for working Australians campaign. It is typically characterised as a tussle between two political parties, namely those contending for the right to be the government of Australia. But it is much more than that. It is fundamentally a tussle between the executive and parliament. Of the current IR campaign, Jack Waterford in the Canberra Times on 23 May wrote:
By any standards, the ads are beyond the pale in abuse of incumbency.
Respected academics in this field Graeme Orr and Joo Cheong-Tham wrote in the Age on 17 May:
Leaving aside the fact that there are no details until a bill is drafted and Parliament debates it, the style, content and timing of the ads give away their partisan intention. Their purpose is to attempt to neutralise an issue on which the Coalition is vulnerable. If the aim were purely informational, the Government would wait until the law was settled.
I must stress that the Democrats take no issue with government advertisements that inform Australians about taxpayer funded government programs and services, or that are directed to issues of public health and safety, or that are otherwise in the public interest. However, we oppose outright governments misusing public funds to pay for partisan ads under the guise of legitimate government spending. It is and always will be a thoroughly corrupt process. It borders on fiscal fraud and it should cease. Australia should catch up with the other democracies that have imposed constraints on the use of public resources for electoral campaigning. The amendment we are once again jointly moving with Labor seeks to impose far tighter rules on government advertising. I welcome federal Labor’s commitment to much greater accountability in this area.
The last and very current issue is whether the Prime Minister’s taxpayer funded official residences should ever be used for party political fundraising, either directly or indirectly. The answer from the Democrats and Labor is an unequivocal no. It is totally inappropriate for Kirribilli House ever to be used for formal party political matters by any Prime Minister or political party. It does not matter what the cost or imputed cost is and it does not matter if the Liberal or any other party pays for part or all of the cost. The point is that the principle is just wrong and the practice should be prohibited. The Labor/Democrats amendment tries to do just that. Kirribilli House or the Lodge definitely should not be used to raise campaign funds for political parties, either directly or indirectly.
The last point I make—and I ask for your forbearance briefly, Mr Acting Deputy President, because we are bound to get a bill seeking appropriation for this a little later—is the government’s announcement today of its intended actions with respect to the Northern Territory issues. For my part, I welcome the Prime Minister of Australia taking leadership in this area. We have to pay very much attention to the future, and to do that we have to deal with the present. I know it is going to be an extremely contentious area; I have already seen some remarks which are suggesting racism and authoritarianism. I do not leap to those judgements. I think that if you continue to argue, as I do, that excessive alcohol use and alcohol abuse is bad for the community in any shape or form—black, brown, white or yellow—you have to do something about it; you cannot just tut-tut on the side. And if you feel the same way about the sexual assault and abuse of children you have to do something about it. So I for one am glad the Prime Minister of Australia is getting onto this issue. Of course, that is not to say that his proposals should not be carefully examined, and those which are inappropriate or maybe wrongly phrased will not be immune from criticism. This issue of great national importance deserves to be examined with care, but I think leadership is necessary in this area and I am glad that that is about to occur.
9:03 pm
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I rise to speak briefly on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills and to address myself to the two sets of amendments that Labor, in conjunction with the Australian Democrats, intends to move in the committee stage. The first issue I address is government advertising. We have seen from the government an extraordinary propensity to treat taxpayers’ money as its own. Over this last period, particularly through Senate estimates, it has been disclosed that this government proposes to spend millions of dollars prior to the next election. We have had the extraordinary example of around $4 million being spent in some six or seven days on the latest tranche of the industrial relations campaign, the Work Choices mark 2 campaign. We saw around $24,000 an hour being spent by this government on advertising Work Choices mark 2. I remind the chamber that this second tranche of advertising is on top of the $55 million of taxpayers’ funds that the government has already spent on advertising Work Choices mark 1. One of the most telling examples of the wastage associated with this campaign and the way it has been all about propaganda is the example of the booklets. I am sure all parliamentarians would remember the very pretty yellow Work Choices booklet, and that millions were—
Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Excuse me, Senator Chapman—
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
printed by this government at taxpayers’ expense.
Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
It’s all right. I haven’t gone between you and the speaker.
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I thought he was coming at me. I thought, ‘Do I have to duck or something?’ I know the government is embarrassed about how much advertising money it is spending, but really!
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I cannot remember how many millions of booklets there still are. The government printed millions of these booklets as part of its propaganda campaign and, of course, it could not get rid of them all. So for the last X number of months the government has been paying thousands of dollars a week to store 3.5 million booklets or thereabouts, which now become obsolete because it has changed the law. So this has not been a very effective or intelligent use of taxpayers’ money—this is fiscal conservatism of the other side of the chamber.
As I said, we determined through Senate estimates an extraordinary spend. What we know—and this is only what we know, because there are a number of campaigns the government refuses to disclose the cost of—is that the government has either spent or has budgeted to spend prior to the election around about $1.8 billion over the life of the Howard government. So, if you take what we know they spent since they were elected and what they are able spend through what they have budgeted for between now and the next election, it is about $1.8 billion—nearly half of that since the last election. This is unprecedented expenditure of public moneys on political campaigns. This is a government that, frankly, treats taxpayers’ money as its own.
Together with Senator Murray, we are moving an amendment and a request for amendment in the bills before the chamber which seek to impose some discipline, some propriety and some accountability on expenditure of public moneys for advertising purposes. The amendment being moved is consistent with the policy commitment that Labor has made: that advertising projects in excess of $250,000 must be assessed against clear and transparent guidelines and that such assessment should be undertaken by the Auditor-General or their delegate. That is a very significant commitment. In addition, the Labor Party has indicated that we will work through the COAG process to try and achieve consistent principles in relation to government expenditure on advertising across jurisdictions. We think the Australian people are tired of having their taxpayers’ funds used in blatant political advertising, and the commitment that a Rudd Labor government will make, and has made in opposition, is to lift the standards of government integrity when it comes to a range of matters, and in this instance when it comes to advertising. The Australian people are ready for this and there is a very strong case for lifting the standards of government. We can do far better than this government has done when it comes to accountability and integrity.
The second amendment we are moving, also with Senator Murray, is in relation to Kirribilli House and the Lodge. From what has been disclosed in the public arena in recent days, we know about the ‘cash for canapes’ affair, as it has come to be called, and we know the Prime Minister has hosted a range of functions associated with the Liberal Party Federal Council at the Lodge and Kirribilli House. We say that using taxpayer funded official residences for the purposes of political fundraising is inappropriate and I suggest that Australians regard it as inappropriate. These are not premises which are someone’s private home—they are official residences funded by the taxpayer and they ought to be treated as the privilege they are. They are certainly not a private fundraising playground for the Liberal Party of Australia. Those are the two amendments that Labor is proposing to move in conjunction with Senator Murray. Unless it is necessary, I will not address these issues in substantive detail again in committee, but I am happy to do so if the government wants the debate.
9:10 pm
Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Tonight in the context of the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills I had intended to address the lifeblood of the Australian economy: the skilling of our nation and putting our most precious resource—people—at the core of the debate through the government’s very strong focus in this budget on education. I was also going to contrast those government initiatives with the sham education revolution put forward by the Labor Party, which is really simply a poor reproduction of the then British opposition leader’s education revolution. But in view of the lateness of the hour, and the fact that there are other matters to deal with at the committee stage of this debate, I seek leave to incorporate those remarks in Hansard.
Leave granted.
The incorporated speech read as follows—
Mr President, tonight I wish to address the life blood of the Australian economy—the skilling of our nation and putting our most precious resource, people, at the core of the debate.
A well-educated and skilled population increases workforce participation and allows every Australian to make a contribution to themselves, their families and the broader Australian community.
Before turning to the Howard Government’s continuing commitment to this critical concern, we need to know the real story behind the Leader of the Opposition’s “Education Revolution”.
A widely reported fact regarding the launch of Mr Rudd’s “Education Revolution” is that it is simply a poor reproduction of the then British Labor Opposition Leader’s “Education Revolution”.
What has ensued over the succeeding months to-date has reinforced this fact.
Having had many months to fill the policy void with substance, Labor has instead put up a motley set of weak and irresponsible policy responses attended by a selective and misleading use of statistics to discredit the Government’s demonstrated long-term commitment.
The Labor Party prefers to spend its time fishing for deception rather than putting forward responsible policy platforms which build strength and capacity into the Australian economy over the long-term.
In this context, it is important to correct a few of the misleading and blatantly misrepresented statistics Mr Rudd has put forward to artificially bolster his empty policy slogans.
Australia’s public spending on tertiary education has NOT declined by 7 percent between 1995 and 2003 as Mr Rudd claims.
The OECD figures used by Mr Rudd exclude 75% of funding for vocational and technical education, which is included for other countries.
When comparing apples with apples, OECD figures show total Australian expenditure on tertiary educational institutions actually increased by 25% in real terms between 1995 and 2003.
Also, Australian Government investment in Australian universities increased by 7.7 percent in real terms over that period.
In more recent months the Labor Party and Unions have been running a public misinformation campaign, deliberately misrepresenting the true nature of funding for schools.
The fact is, State and Territory Governments own, operate and have primary funding responsibility for State Government education systems.
The Howard Government takes its financial responsibilities in supporting the state-based school system very seriously, as demonstrated by a record 70% funding increase in real terms since 1996.
This is while enrolments in public schools increased only by 1 .2% over that time.
Further, 67% of all students are in State Government schools and receive 75% of total taxpayer funding.
I also highlight that under long established funding arrangements, Federal Government funding is linked to State Government funding, with any increase in State Government funding to schools automatically matched by Commonwealth funding.
Realising more is needed; the Howard Government continues to go well beyond this agreement as demonstrated in the 2006 Budget, increasing total funding to State Government schools by 11% while State Governments only increased their funding by an average of 4.9%.
If States had matched the Federal rate of increase there would have been an additional $1 .4 billion for State Government schools.
In addition to the recurrent funding that is linked to the State Government level of investment in schools, the Australian Government also provides funding for specific purposes, such as the $1.2 billion Investing in Our Schools Programme and the $1.8 billion Literacy, Numeracy and Special Learning Needs Programme.
Lastly, the education of children in Catholic and Independent schools represents a saving to State and Territory Governments of more than $9 billion each year.
The bigger picture represented by these facts shows a Howard-led Government which is committed to working with all States in ensuring the provision of the highest quality education for all students and schools.
In the Leader of the Opposition’s Budget Reply speech, Labor demonstrated that the “Education Revolution” is being offered is an abject policy failure.
The speech made no mention of any new funding or initiatives for our universities. There were no initiatives for higher standards or quality in our schools.
There was no commitment to schools, literacy and numeracy or universities.
Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric, in truth, there is no “fresh thinking” from the Leader of the Opposition and it is time to start taking a harder look at Labor’s deceptive political slogans to see the extent to which they are short changing the Australian public.
Furthermore, in the rare instances where Mr. Rudd does put forward fresh alternatives, such as in the areas of trades and apprenticeships, they are fundamentally flawed and looking more like policy on the run than a party that is equipped to responsibly run the Australian economy.
In this year’s Budget the Howard Government announced an unprecedented investment in higher education through the establishment of a new, continuing, $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund, which will be used for capital works and research facilities with individuals able to make tax deductible donations to the Fund and further investments to be made from future Budget surpluses.
In addition, we are spending $4 billion over four years, including the $3.5 billion ‘Realising Our Potential’ package.
Together these investments will fundamentally reshape the university landscape, drive quality improvements in Australian schooling and re-establish trade apprenticeships as an opportunity of first choice for high school students.
The package will provide unparalleled support for a range of initiatives that will go to the very heart of ensuring Australia’s future economic prosperity and will allow Australians to realise their potential through life-long learning.
The 2007-08 Budget puts in place a blue print that will deliver a responsive, flexible, high quality and targeted education system to equip Australians for the workplaces of the future.
This is strengthened and supported by the $6.5 billion investment in 2007-08 in science and innovation, marking the highest amount ever spent by any Australian Government and continues the $5.3 billion commitment made in 2004 through the Backing Australia’s Ability—Building our Future Through Science and Innovation package.
Parents are entitled to expect their children will receive a high quality education—learning the skills they’ll need throughout their lives.
Through responsible and disciplined economic management the Coalition Government is now able to invest even more to ensure better education standards for our children and securing high retention rates through offering early options for high school students who do not have an ambition to go through to University.
That is why a major package of initiatives has been introduced in this Budget, building on the $837 million Skills for the Future package introduced in 2006.
Among a broad sweep of educational reforms aimed at skilling Australia, the new measures will support the Australian Government’s objective of ensuring a high quality technical qualification is as prized as a university degree.
This objective directly reflects some important market trends in the years ahead.
It is estimated that in the future, over 60 percent of jobs will require technical or vocational qualifications, yet, currently, only 30 percent of the population have these qualifications.
In contrast, the estimated demand for university level qualifications is expected to be just over 20 percent of the workforce, which is roughly what it is already.
If this imbalance is to be corrected we must start by restoring the status of technical and vocational training.
To stress the point, we need a nation that values a high quality technical education as much as a university degree.
That is why, two and a half years ago the Howard Government outlined a bold $484 million plan to re-open technical colleges across the country.
20 Australian Technical Colleges have already opened, another 3 expected to open this year and 5 more planned in the coming few years.
These Technical Colleges are lighthouses both in a social and economic sense and have an unparalleled link to local industry, while providing training on state-of-the-art equipment.
They will set the standard for technical and vocational teaching and will lead the way in restoring a technical career as a career path the equal of any.
Already several state governments have announced their intention to follow suit and to open an estimated 30 State-funded Technical Colleges, in addition to the 28 Australian Technical Colleges being opened by the Federal Liberal Government.
The State-based initiatives are a great thing if they meet the standard being set by the Australian Technical Colleges. Collectively, this means that by 2009 there will be around 60 new dedicated technical colleges with enrolments of close to 20,000 students, providing year 11 and 12 students the dual option of starting a trade apprenticeship while completing their year 12 academic studies.
In working against both the Federal Coalition and the State Governments, Mr Rudd’s policy proposal is to spread the vocational education investment thinly across all academic high schools around the country.
If, however, he had promised to dedicate the money that he talked about in his Budget Reply address to establishing new technical colleges, we could have close to 200 more technical colleges and between 60,000 and 100,000 students completing a specialised technical training qualification.
Mr Rudd’s policy ignores the fundamentals of scale-economies, commitment to quality and basic economic commonsense.
While the Howard Government welcomes any belated interest shown by Labor in technical education, sadly they have presented no plan to address the skills crisis but instead have irresponsibly put forward a blatantly wasteful and illogical proposal.
It’s obvious that Labor’s Trade Training Centres proposal hasn’t been thought out and it smacks of policy on the run. Adding a technical classroom to thousands of academic secondary schools across Australia won’t set-up those students with strong technical and vocational talents for a career in the 21st Century.
It will, instead, encourage young people to understand technical education as an elective subject of little relevance and supported by a budget plan which provides poorly equipped and poorly maintained workshops in every high school across Australia.
This is clearly seen in Mr Rudd’s one-off proposal of $1 million per school, through to 2018—with no provision to meet the substantial recurrent costs of staff, maintenance and administration.
I stress again, this will deliver no more than small technical ‘add-ons’ to existing secondary schools, doing nothing to raise the status of technical training.
The Howard Government’s Australian Technical Colleges initiative, in contrast, creates the environment where the interests of secondary students can be effectively captured through the early provision of high quality technical education in specialised professionally focused colleges.
The Government’s budgeted 28 dedicated Australian Technical Colleges demonstrate our vision to see students trained on state of the art equipment, supported by an industry-based experience.
These Howard Government’s Technical Colleges build for the future by skilling Australia for the world of tomorrow. However, Mr Rudd has tried to sugar his shoddy policy with a few slogans stating that Labor’s proposal provides a ‘job ready trade certificate’ (ABC Radio, 12pm News, 7 June 2007).
Well Mr Rudd, it certainly does not. A one-size-fits-all solution, where vocational training is an elective in every secondary school, is extraordinarily wasteful and ineffective.
Labor wants to be seen to be doing something but their proposal owes more to their desire for an appearance of substance, than to a real commitment to technical and vocational training in Australia over the long-term.
The Howard Government is spending serious money to bring a strong and dedicated technical focus to Australian schools in the 21st Century, while supporting and encouraging the shift in attitude in the value placed on taking up a trade apprenticeship.
Labor has failed this test of policy substance and peddles it’s seriously wasteful proposals as a legitimate national interest solution.
Labor must not get away with this irresponsible policy side-show.
We are now seeing about 140,000 Australians each year complete apprenticeships.
This compares with an average of 30,000 completions a year throughout the 13 years of the last Labor Government.
The Labor Party keeps saying that was a long time ago, so why bother about it.
Well, as a Government we have to bother about it because the fact that for well over a decade the Hawke/Keating Governments trained 100,000 less apprentices each year than are being trained today means that there are now more than a million Australians who should have technical training, who don’t.
This is the Labor Party’s lost generation of tradesmen and women.
These one million Australians are today either in their late 20s, 30s or into their 40s.
They should be at the peak of their productive lives with 10 to 20 years experience, and could now be in high demand if they had had high quality technical training.
The irony is that the Labor Party, the self professed party of the worker, obsessed about university education during their years in government, while failing to provide more than one million Australians with vocational and technical training.
And it continues today.
In Kevin Rudd’s 27 page so-called ‘Education Revolution’ manifesto, a lonely four paragraphs were devoted to vocational and technical education.
This Labor legacy of one million untrained Australians are part of the 3.4 million adults in the workforce who have either not completed a full secondary education or have no significant skills training.
Too many adults don’t have the school qualifications or the skills training for effective participation in the modern workplace.
This is why the Australian Government last year committed $837 million to boosting skills and qualification levels among both older Australians and those in mid-career.
The vocational workforce in the 21st century requires the extensive and strong support of industry in shaping the content of vocational and technical training.
The Howard Government has reflected this need in the Board of Management of each Australian Technical College, with local industry leaders and experienced educators contributing the wealth of their knowledge to ensure relevance and quality through overseeing the curriculum, the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment and fostering close industry contact with the students and teaching staff.
This principle, having been successfully demonstrated through the Australian Technical Colleges, must be extended across all training organisations in Australia, particularly the TAFEs.
In this context, Australia’s TAFE sector would benefit from greater microeconomic reform.
The Federal Government is actively working with the State Governments, through COAG and the Ministerial Council for Vocational and Technical Education, to create shared understanding of the priorities for the National Training System and affect long-term structural change to drive rigour and industry-focused relevance throughout the TAFE system, while providing the lead direction for State-based technical colleges.
Mr President, I conclude by reinforcing the aptly popular depiction of Labor as the party of me-too’s:
Labor fought uranium mining, then agreed to it.
It fought the end to the three-mines restriction, then agreed to it.
It fought deregulation of labor markets, then agreed to it. It fought the GST, then agreed to it.
It fought privatisation, then agreed to it.
It fought the full sale of Telstra, then agreed to it.
It fought secret ballots for strikes, then agreed to them.
It fought an easing of unfair dismissal rules, then agreed to it.
Perhaps that they will one day march the line of common sense and give up their Vocational Education swindle and agree to stay the course and support the further funding of many more Australian Technical Colleges.
So I invite Mr Rudd to begin the march of policy substance now but I will not hold my breath.
9:11 pm
Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I seek leave to incorporate speeches by Senators George Campbell and Bishop.
Leave granted.
George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The incorporated speech read as follows—
This is a government well past its best. The Government is not governing to a plan, or to a vision of what Australia should be. Instead it’s governing by press release, pamphlet and advertisement. They are not concerned with good policy. They’re not planning for the future; they’re simply looking after number one. This is a government that consistently confuses the national interest with their short-term political interests.
The Prime Minister claimed earlier in the year that he’s got no rabbits to pull out of hats, but that doesn’t stop him reaching down and furiously grabbing for anything he can. This year alone, in desperation because of the polls, they’ve pulled the following stunts:
- The greenhouse mailout
- More WorkChoices ads, and
- The broadband package that won’t work.
But they can’t stop the fact that this Government is out of time, and out of ideas.
A history lesson
Let’s take a trip back in time. Let’s go back to the heady days of March 1983, with a combed over John Howard as Treasurer of a country on the skids.
Now, Mr Howard being such an impressive economic manager (or so we are told), wouldn’t one expect to have seen some very impressive economic statistics?
Let’s look at the key stats:
GDP Growth: 2.6%
Unemployment: 10.7%
Consumer Price Index: 11.0%
Standard Variable Mortgage Interest rates: 12.5%
But this mortgage interest rate figure was a capped figure under the system of rationed credit that existed at the time. The cash rate is a better indication and it stood at 16.73%, having fallen back from the record of 20.77% in August of 1982. Wages were also frozen, so in real terms wages were falling rapidly with such enormous inflation and interest rates.
That was the situation under Treasurer John Howard, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. You think we have forgotten but we haven’t.
Let’s also look at the situation when the Labor Party left power after 13 years of reform:
GDP Growth: 4.0%
Unemployment: 9.1%
Consumer Price Index: 5.1%
Standard Variable Mortgage Interest rates: 10.5%
Unemployment, interest rates and inflation were all trending downwards, growth was trending up and the basis had been laid for a long economic boom, the results we have seen over the last fifteen straight years of economic growth. And under the competitive lending environment we created, there were non-bank lenders offering rates much less than the standard rate, down to rates that would be competitive in today’s market.
We’ve had 61 straight quarters where the country’s Gross Domestic Product was greater than a year before that. We’ve been growing constantly since the March quarter of 1992, a full year before even the 1993 election.
When you look at the trends of strong economic growth, of growing employment and falling unemployment and of low inflation and historically low interest rates you see that it really started back then in 1992 with the reforms that Labor undertook putting the bite back into our economy and ending the boom-bust cycle that had existed before. In the end it’s no mistake to pin much of this stability and success down to the years of hard work and reform by the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments.
Floating the dollar was something only Labor was game to do. Deregulating finance and opening up credit was something only Labor was game to do. Breaking down tariff walls and forcing Australian industries to work harder and above all work smarter was something only Labor was game to do. Decentralising industrial relations and moving to a flexible, modern and above all fair system of enterprise bargaining was something only Labor was game to do.
But it wasn’t all technocrats beavering away on macroeconomic reform, Labor made huge strides on social reforms.
- Today Medicare stands as one of the great monuments to good government policy delivering benefits to all Australians.
- Labor’s investment in and opening up of the education and training system allowed more students than ever before to go to university and opened up more opportunities than ever to undertake vocational education and training.
- Our labour market programs, headlined by Working Nation, helped underpin a period of rapid employment growth.
- Our embrace of land rights and native title through the native title act was arguably the greatest step there has been towards reconciliation, on both a practical and symbolic level.
As Treasurer, John Howard did none of these things. As Prime Minister, he can point to very little in the way of economic reform. He has implemented a new tax, and he has made it easier for workers to have their wages and conditions stripped back to the bare bones. That is it. He twiddles his thumbs for three years and tries to keep out of trouble and then in the election year he goes into all-out vote-buying mode. With an ear carefully tuned to opinion polls he can be relied upon to pull out the stops to try to swing the election in his favour, with taxpayer funded advertisements helping along the way. This year the polls are particularly bad, so he’s especially desperate.
He’s throwing everything he can:
- His Johnny come lately greenhouse package;
- The fake fairness test to patch up WorkChoices;
- His broadband package that won’t work in bad weather, if you live on a hill or if you’re using your microwave;
- His private health changes;
- His superannuation changes, and;
- The water plan.
He’s had a once in 50 year economic boom dropping billions of dollars in his lap, the bulk of which he’s spent. Remember the quote from Saul Eslake, chief economist for ANZ. He said:
“The resources boom has dropped $100 billion into the Government’s lap that they hadn’t expected in 2002 and they’ve spent all of it and a bit more, and I honestly and genuinely struggle to find anything that has been done with it bar win elections.”
That was quoted from The Age, May 7 last year.
Imagine that—$100 billion of extra revenue. That number will have grown, with the boom continuing for another year. The rivers of gold flowing into the Treasury are in return for our outgoing rivers of coal, iron ore, bauxite and so on.
But the boom won’t last forever and the Government aren’t planning for the future. Mr Howard accuses Labor of being defeatist, and that there’s plenty of room to grow as China and India continue to develop. When Mr Glenn Stevens, Governor of the Reserve Bank suggested that yet another interest rate rise might be needed, Mr Howard was quoted in the press asking:
“Why shouldn’t the nation’s approach be that we should keep the mining boom going indefmitely?”
I’ll answer him with two points:
- First, the Treasurer clearly disagrees—he told The West Australian that:
“The high prices probably lasted longer than a lot of people were expecting and I think that’s because the increased capacity has taken longer to get. But it will change”
- Second, isn’t it the best time to fix the roof when the sun is shining? There is no point waiting until the boom finishes and then trying to work out how to kick-start a slowing economy. We have the capacity to invest in the things that can sustain the boom and keep it going beyond the inevitable fall in resource prices.
Productivity
Labor’s plan for industrial relations will take us forward to a high wage, high productivity future. Labor will restore the balance in workplaces. Our plan will unpick knots of complexity and rigidity that the Government tries to pass off as flexibility and freedom. Our plan will ensure that where workers want to collectively bargain, they can. Because we are restoring the balance in the workplace, Labor will ensure that workers and their employers get to genuinely negotiate—each will put their case and a negotiated outcome will be the result.
Labor will back this up with investment in education, training and essential infrastructure like our broadband package. We are going forward with a plan to build up our productivity and set a platform to keep the boom rolling on. This is the only way to guarantee future productivity growth.
How do we know? We know by our experience with the first wave of industrial relations reforms in the early 90s. For the three years from the start of the 93-94 financial year to the start of the 96-97 financial year jobs grew at around 19,000 jobs per month. Jobs boomed under the enterprise bargaining system that we put in place. Jobs grew faster then for three years than they have in this much vaunted post WorkChoices period.
When you look at the graphs, the period from 1993 to 1996 was a very strong period of recent history of sustained strong employment growth. And we did it without a wages breakout. That was because productivity boomed as well.
When you look to the present, you see that employment is growing, but productivity is stagnant.
Productivity growth is the only basis on which you can build future growth, future competitiveness, future jobs, wages and conditions.
And have a look at the productivity curve—steep climb for most of the 90s, with enterprise bargaining at the heart of it. We grew and we earnt more because we worked harder and smarter and made the best possible use of what we had.
We had to work smart because you don’t have the option of just slashing wages to boost your profits or boost your competitiveness; you have to find a smarter way. Australian workers and business did this and grew like never before.
Go and look at the ABS report titled Australia’s System of National Accounts. Look at what it says about Multifactor Productivity cycles—on page 13 it says:
“It is worth highlighting the cycle from 1993–94 to 1998–99, as it represents the largest average increase in MFP in the series.”
The accompanying graph shows you how from 1993 to 1999 productivity boomed. Multifactor productivity grew at 2.3% per annum, Labour productivity at 3.3% per annum. This was with enterprise bargaining at the heart of the system, and with the returns on Labor’s investments in skills, infrastructure, education and training all still flowing through.
But the Howard Government’s laziness caught up with them, and it’s flattened out.
The Treasurer’s intergenerational report confirms it—over the 90s labour productivity grew at 2.1% and for this decade it’s forecast to be 1.5%. His own report condemns the Government’s failure to act on productivity, their policy laziness and the absence of reform over the last eleven long years.
We’re not the only ones saying it either—the Business Council of Australia’s budget submission said:
“More worrying, labour productivity growth has slowed sharply in Australia... this deterioration in productivity performance is a real concern”
When you go on this long with no effort at all being made to address the productivity problem, you light the wick under inflation and interest rates. And interest rates don’t need to go far to cause serious problems for Australian families and also for Australian business.
When you add the weight of four interest rate rises since the last election to the pressure already on workers’ wages and conditions thanks to WorkChoices, you can see why Australian families are feeling the pinch even in boom time.
Look at house repossessions—in my home state of New South Wales, Supreme Court data show mortgage repossessions are two-thirds higher now than they were at the height of the recession.
The Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia tell us that personal insolvencies are up 83% in the inner west of Sydney and 71% in the outer west. Families now need an income of $145,000 to keep up with mortgage payments of a median priced home in Sydney.
Mortgage interest rates are now pushing average interest payments up to record levels—55% above the highest levels under Paul Keating. They have risen to 9.5%, much higher than the peak of 6.1% under Paul Keating, a rise of 0.2% just this year and up 80% from when interest rates started rising in 2002.
Mr Howard’s policy and reform laziness is leaving people under worse pressure than during the recession, while he claims that “Australian families have never been better off’.
Climate change
This Government’s policy laziness is shown up most starkly by its lax approach to climate change. Years of professed scepticism have worn thin. In spite of the oft-repeated boast that Australia opened the world’s first Greenhouse Office, this Government has a very poor record on climate change.
This Government railed against the Kyoto Protocol from the start—first by watering down our commitments and then by refusing to ratify the Protocol. This Government gave away the opportunity to be taken seriously on this through its own actions.
The Government, and particularly the Prime Minister, has spent the last eleven years deriding serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, citing a caricature of our national interest as a reason to not act. What the Government has achieved has simply been a delay in the inevitable. Excuses and hand-wringing don’t stop problems, hard work and practical solutions do.
But the polling is in, and the Government has belatedly discovered the truth—Australians know that the climate is changing and that it’s up to all of us to do something about it. They don’t believe it exists, but they’re willing to say whatever it takes to win.
So what does the Government do? Organises an in-house report to provide pre-approved conclusions, and puts off setting targets until after the election to avoid scaring the horses. Then secret plans are put in place for a multi-million dollar mailout paid for with taxpayers’ money to convince the electorate that they cared all along.
We keep hearing about this ‘greenhouse office’ being the first in the world. In reality this Government has been a leader in denying the existence of dangerous climate change. This Government has been a leader in resisting efforts to make meaningful steps to addressing the problem. This Government has in fact been the leader from the back—watering down our commitments then refusing to ratify Kyoto, always professing some confected notion of self-interest when it’s in everyone’s interest to take real action.
Had this Government taken real steps to address climate change when it came in we wouldn’t be arguing self interest in avoiding obligations. We could have made real ground by making real investment in clean and renewable energy, by adopting a carbon cap and trade system and in doing so giving businesses the certainty they need to develop a low carbon future. Our national interests would have been best served by leading from the front and sell low-carbon technology to the world.
A little bit of foresight, a little bit of imagination, and this country could be looking at the opportunities that come from a low-carbon future, not the threats.
Conclusion
But there lies the problem for this Government. There is no imagination. There is no foresight. There is no planning for a future other than the short term political future. There is no commitment to anything longer term than the next election. No problem is worth acting on unless it might cost us votes in the marginals. No issue is worth leading on unless it’s going to go down well in voterland. There is no leadership there. There is no plan there. This Government doesn’t look out for our future; it’s looking after its own.
Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The incorporated speech read as follows—
The appropriation bills allow us an opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s recent budget.
We can look at macro economic management, as well as at the particulars.
We can also reflect on our findings in all the committees at Senate Estimates.
Today I’d like to do both, but with a focus on the Defence budget.
To put this budget in perspective, it must be said that it’s little more than a statement of accounts.
It’s certainly not a platform of economic reform or a strategy for the future.
Indeed it seems those days are well past. Or are they?
The boom in world economies, I suspect, is masking what we all fear ...
We are living in a lotus land.
Managing the economy is a doddle. It manages itself.
The credit being claimed for economic management is empty spin, taken as gospel as a measure of competence.
It’s nothing of the sort.
In fact, underlying indicators are a serious worry.
At the macro level, current circumstances could never be imagined.
The three levers of economic management have been surrendered.
First interest rates have been delegated to the central bank.
That’s a good idea when there are conservative treasurers around who like to tinker, or who won’t make the right decision in time.
The history of economic management under Tory governments since World War Two has been one of fumbling on that issue.
So there are good reasons for that delegation and it’s probably contributed to economic stability.
Nothing to do with the government, though.
Second, the use of taxation as a control over the economy has also diminished.
Taxation’s now seen as a burden, rather than an economic control device.
Conveniently, the economy’s so strong—as part of the growing international economy—this government’s awash with revenue.
Were it not for the inflationary fear of putting too much cash into the economy, much bigger tax cuts should have been made by now.
The test of this will come of course, if and when economic circumstances turn.
That is, if China sneezes.
Similarly for the third lever, government spending.
It appears government spending has become much less influential in the health of the economy than it once was.
That’s because the private sector is also awash with funds.
It’s always on the look-out for higher levels of return, high income-
producing businesses, or just fat assets to strip.
The recent emergence of private equity funds and investment banks are good examples.
I also note the nature of government investment has changed.
Sometimes, to our detriment.
It’s notable, for example, the government no longer invests in much at all.
Increasingly, budgets are made up of a large proportion of administered funds.
That is, health, welfare and payments to the states for education.
In a narrow sense this is investment, but it doesn’t generate a return on funds.
It’s not capital investment.
For ideological reasons, capital investment is now seen as the prerogative of the private sector.
The equation for the government is all capital investment warrants an economic return.
Otherwise, the investment is not an investment.
But as we know, economic returns from such investments are limited to certain parts of the economy.
That’s why toll roads only get built in high traffic areas of our cities.
That’s why country roads are built by the National Party in the bush.
And unfortunately, that’s why railways and increased water storage don’t get built at all.
Infrastructure investment by government is where it suits the National Party mentality for an “indirect subsidy”.
The old adage is as true today as always.
Socialise your losses and capitalise the gains.
That’s why the budget’s pretty much a non-entity.
There’s little, if any, long-term investment ...
But plenty of short-term payments providing flexibility and avoiding long-term lock-in.
And we haven’t seen most short-term payments.
That’s because they’re the election give-aways and barrels of pork which will be announced later.
So in summary, the budget did little in terms of long-term investment.
Another massive surplus was predicted, adding to all the other surpluses.
Which says either the government’s not spending where it ought, or it’s collecting too much.
And that’s what the future fund is; a contrivance of masterful spin which appeals to the piggy-bank mentality.
In fact it’s a device to store excess revenue —the debt reduction commenced in the early ‘80s has now matured.
There are no debts to repay.
Unfortunately, the ideological bias against public investment means spending which once took place on vital infrastructure is no more.
That’s why we’ve invested nothing in water storage for 20 years.
That’s why roads, bridges, ports and railways are becoming less efficient.
And that’s why schools, hospitals and other services can’t cope.
Once again, the private sector has to pick up the task.
And it’s it at a cost ... for those who can afford it.
Mr Acting Deputy President, having painted that context, let me turn to the Defence budget.
Defence is a great place to spend lots of spare cash.
To buy $6 billion on fighter jets is dead easy.
There’s no economic downside.
All this spare cash is exported.
In this and many other cases, it’s the US economy which benefits.
And good luck to them.
Our industry might get a few scraps if they’re lucky, but in a time of a skills shortage this short-term thinking doesn’t matter.
Or so it’s thought.
Long-term planning and investment beyond the boom isn’t a priority, It seems.
Nor is industry capacity, transfer of intellectual property, self sufficiency or economies of scale.
Hence, the feature noted by many commentators: That Defence is a good place to park spare cash.
Indeed, as many have noted, Defence is already constipated.
It can’t spend what it’s already been paid.
In this financial year, $1.8 billion dollars from last year is to be carried over.
That’s a relaxation on the old rules of budget austerity, where unspent and uncommitted funds went back to the Treasury.
The surplus was already embarrassingly large, so it was left as an over-allocation in Defence.
The hope is that Defence will spend it—and no doubt they will.
But whether it’s spent usefully is another thing.
I don’t want to harp on this, but waste and Defence seem to be synonymous.
I’ve frequently, in this chamber and at estimates, made reference to Defence procurement failures in particular.
The Australian National Audit Office frequently releases reports about financial mismanagement in Defence.
Excessively generous allocations not spent in the past has led to many bad practices.
Among those has been hiding money in trust funds and paying accounts in advance.
Finding devices to hide money is an art form.
That’s because the financial discipline for everyone else has been use It or lose it”.
That doesn’t suit the government’s politics, of course.
They’re hooked on the macro figures of Defence allocations, which by apparently indicate a firm resolve to the defence of the nation.
Typically, though, we know this isn’t true.
The Defence annual report, as we examined at Senate Estimates recently, is full of projects behind time and over cost.
In other words, capability paid for but not delivered.
The instances of the Seasprite helicopters and the armoured personnel carriers, combined, represent more than $2 billion
wasted.
The list, however, is endless.
There’s a yawning gap between what the Government has said it’s paid for and what it’s received in return.
On a more positive note, however, the Defence budget does have some benefits. Though perhaps years late.
The biggest single deficiency in Defence, apart from procurement bungling, is its inability to recruit.
We know that many ships in the Navy fleet are below their optimum crewing levels.
Our submarine fleet is barely a fleet at all with respect to qualified crew available.
And the task of forming a new Army battalion seems Insurmountable, given the attrition of personnel in recent years.
This is not necessarily the fault of the forces (though their public image has been tarnished a little) but of government failure to act in time.
The tight labour market, largely to blame for failed recruitment, is not a new phenomenon.
The economy has been stretched for at least five years by labour market shortages.
And the out-turn of skills from our TAFEs and schools has suffered through funding starvation.
Education is a cost for the Howard Government, not an investment.
And the pigeons are now home on the roost.
So it’s a relief to see in the Defence budget a significant effort in recruitment, training and retention.
Sadly, for a government so wedded to the theory of market forces, it’s been caught with its pants down.
Much of the new money will be spent competing with other demands for labour.
It’s suddenly realised young people won’t sign up just out of public interest and a sense of public duty.
It’s about a career, good working conditions, rewards and a future.
Comparatively speaking, Defence hasn’t been able to compete.
So the money now available might help.
Unfortunately, budget outlays have been inflated by the need to spin.
That is, the figures are made to look impressive because they’re for a period of ten years.
Two point one billion dollars is to be spent on recruitment and retention.
This includes $113 million for Navy retention allowances $306 million for the gap year experiment $371 for recruiting initiatives, and $226 million for targeted retention measures.
Another $950 million will be spent on additional housing costs.
Enhanced technical training will benefit by an extra $71 million.
Professional development for ADF medical officers will receive $12.1 million.
Let’s hope that brings a competitive edge to recruitment.
That’s good, but remember, this is for 10 years, not the standard four years of Estimates.
Beware the spin.
Care also needs to be taken to distinguish between existing budgets and additional funding, not net funding increases.
Such large numbers always sound impressive.
The rest of the Defence budget, is dominated by additional money for operations overseas—to be expected—and for new equipment.
Labor was hopeful that soon we might see some turnaround in procurement outcomes.
We’re still hopeful, but the signs are ominous.
We note the prediction of ASP!, that $2.1 billion of new assets will be late on current estimates.
Further, approval of new projects in the 2006 DCP have already fallen behind.
What’s worse, in its eagerness to spend its enormous revenue, the Government is pumping even more into the sausage machine.
Little wonder there’re more decisions outside the due process, to buy off-the-shelf without comparative analysis.
The numbers are impressive, but the question is, will it make a difference?
We sincerely hope on recruitment it will.
On procurement we have no confidence at all.
It’s too ad hoc and reeks of panic as lost ground is sought to be recovered.
We fear a continuation of waste and the usual propaganda which seeks to make a virtue out of a perennial disaster.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
On behalf of Senator Ronaldson, I seek leave to incorporate his appropriation speech in
Leave granted.
9:12 pm
Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I thank senators for their contribution to the debate and for facilitating the progress of the debate. I am pleased to bring the second reading debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills to a close. The people of Australia continue to enjoy unprecedented economic prosperity, thanks largely to the government’s impressive macroeconomic management. Through its commitment to sound financial management, the government has put the budget in surplus, achieved a positive net asset position and commenced saving for its future obligations. This will free the next generation of Australians to meet their own challenges, unencumbered by the legacy of past Labor governments that spent beyond their means. This budget, which continues the government’s sound management of the economy, contains a program of investment in education, skill training and transport infrastructure; income tax relief for people on low to moderate incomes for the fourth year in a row; a doubling of the superannuation co-contribution to help secure retirement incomes; new funding for enhanced housing and education opportunities for Indigenous Australians; a range of initiatives to meet the challenge of climate change; measures to secure and defend our country; and a package of reforms to improve quality and choice in aged care.
There is a substantial breadth of initiatives in this budget that will help strengthen the Australian economy and community for the future. The budget bills and the supplementary additional estimates bills provide us with the means to address the significant changes being faced by Australia. The initiatives contained in the budget will help to ensure that Australia continues to prosper, will enable responses to important issues we face now and will position us to meet future challenges. They are important pieces of legislation that underpin the government’s activities and initiatives over the next 12 months. I commend the bills to the Senate.
9:14 pm
Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I seek leave to make a brief statement.
Leave granted.
Earlier I sought leave to incorporate Senator Ronaldson’s speech by error. Although he is on the speakers list to do so, Senator Ronaldson will not be incorporating his speech.
Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
So what are you seeking to do, Senator McGauran?
Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
It’s a non-incorporation!
Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
He’s just uncorporated a speech!
Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Yes, I would like to uncorporate it.
Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I also apologise to the Senate.