Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to speak to this motion and, in doing so, want to confirm on the record that the Labor government has failed to deliver. We have the same horse but a different jockey. We have, as Mr Abbott said at lunchtime, the same dud product but a different salesman. Ms Gillard was responsible for four programs in education and child care, and she has manifestly failed in each of them. She has failed to deliver, and I want to mention those four before I move to the area of Indigenous policy. Those four areas in particular relate to Building the Education Revolution.

Ms Gillard was responsible for the school hall rip-off—$16.2 billion was spent on schools, there was a $1.7 billion blow-out and at least $5 billion was wasted. That is $5 billion of taxpayers money that has been wasted through mismanagement, gouging and state government substitution. There was no requirement for value for money. That is a disgrace. Non-government schools, of course, were allowed to self-manage their projects, and they did well. They did get value for money, while government schools were ripped off.

Ms Gillard was also responsible for the computers in schools program, a $1.2 billion blow-out in which 300,000 laptops were delivered out of 970,000 promised. Goodness! She was also responsible for the abolition of the Australian Technical Colleges and the introduction of the trades training centres. There were 2,650 promised in every government secondary school. How many were delivered? Thirteen were delivered, and the program has blown out for longer than it took to prosecute World War II. That is just ridiculous; it is hopeless.

Ms Gillard was responsible for implementing the childcare policy ‘to end the dreaded double drop-off’. That was the policy of Labor in 2007; that was what they said they would deliver. They said that they would deliver 260 childcare centres. How many were delivered? There were 38 delivered, and the promise has now been junked by federal Labor.

Ms Gillard, who is now the Prime Minister, is responsible for those four programs. She has been and is responsible for education and child care, and she has manifestly failed to deliver. So why would you now make her Prime Minister, running this country? I am very concerned for and on behalf of the Australian public. I am very concerned because of the shocking waste and mismanagement that continues to persist throughout this Labor government. Yes, the horse is the same. The Labor government is the same, but we have a new jockey—that is, Ms Gillard. I welcome her to that position but I am very concerned for and on behalf of the Australian people.

This week, with respect to Indigenous policy, the now Gillard Labor government had an opportunity to follow through on passing Mr Abbott’s wild rivers bill. I am very proud to say, as Deputy Chair of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, that this Senate supported our recommendation and passed the wild rivers bill earlier this week. That is great news, so I am now calling on Ms Gillard to immediately pass the Wild Rivers (Environmental Management) Bill 2010. There is still time. She can do it. That was passed in the Senate on Tuesday night, and it provided hope for Indigenous people in Far North Queensland. That is good news for those people in Far North Queensland.

The coalition’s report to the Senate—and I have it here in front of me—is dated June 2010. It is a very good report. Specifically the coalition senators’ report is excellent, because the report and its recommendations in that regard have been accepted by the Senate. Our report argued that there was a breach of statutory process by the Queensland government in 2009 and it confirms that they still have serious questions to answer in Queensland. I will come to that further in a minute.

The current Queensland Wild Rivers Act severely restricts the capacity of Indigenous communities in wild river areas to use, develop and control their land. If the bill is passed by the House of Representatives and supported by Labor it will ensure that Indigenous communities are properly consulted and given the opportunity to achieve a consensus before consenting to the making of any wild river declaration affecting their land. This will certainly increase opportunities for Indigenous people in Far North Queensland. It will give them opportunities to engage in the real economy and to address their related social issues, such as welfare dependence and unemployment, consistent with the objective of closing the gap. The bill, if it is supported by Labor, will provide opportunities for the Indigenous people in these communities to be economically and socially prosperous.

I just want to put on the record my thanks to the coalition senators who participated in this report—my colleagues Senator Russell Trood, Senator Stephen Parry, Senator Ian Macdonald, who has been very feisty in his vigorous support for people in Far North Queensland, and of course National Party Senator Ron Boswell. The bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Nigel Scullion, and he should be congratulated for his efforts in steering the bill through the Senate so successfully.

Amazingly, I have learnt just today through a report in the Australian that the Queensland government have apparently advised that another seven river systems will be added to the wild rivers register.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Another seven. That is what they are trying to do.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Another seven, Senator Boyce. This is a disaster. It is going to inject fear into the hearts and minds of people in Far North Queensland, particularly in Indigenous communities. It is very wrong, because the Queensland legislation does not just cover rivers. It covers river systems, catchment areas and basins, and they are being used to greatly increase the size of protected areas. The current situation is certainly worse than what many people ever accused Joh Bjelke-Petersen of creating. The facts stand there for everyone to see. It is not just about a river; it is much broader and the consequences are huge.

I note that some of the serious concerns expressed in the Senate report related to the breach of the statutory process by the Queensland government. That is set out in our report. The Queensland state election was held on 21 March 2009, with the current minister, the Hon. Stephen Robertson MP, sworn in on 26 March 2009. On 2 April 2009 the governing council approved the 2009 declarations, and that approval was gazetted on 3 April 2009. There is now a High Court challenge to that declaration and to the declarations regarding the wild rivers in Queensland. I hope that it does not come to a hearing. I hope that this bill will be passed and that that litigation can be withdrawn. But it just confirms again that this is a very dicky situation for those in Far North Queensland and their economic opportunities in the wild river areas.

What did the Brisbane diocese of the Anglican Church say? We have quoted them in our report. They said:

… the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland negatively impacts the wellbeing of the Indigenous population within the Cape York Peninsula area as it reduces the ability of Cape York Indigenous communities to engage with the real economy.

This is a church group in Queensland that have put forward their views, and I hope that the Labor Party and those in Queensland consider them seriously and lobby their federal members and senators to support the coalition’s bill.

What has happened in terms of attracting investments since these wild rivers declarations were made in Queensland? It has been demonstrated recently. Five days after the making of the Wenlock basin wild river declaration on 4 June, Cape Alumina Ltd announced that it had placed its $1.2 billion Pisolite Hills bauxite mine and port project in west Cape York Peninsula under review. That means it is on hold, stalled, with no further investment, jobs growth or opportunities for Indigenous communities on the Cape York Peninsula. A day later, Matilda Zircon announced that it was relinquishing its exploration tenements and applications in the Cape York Peninsula. This is bad news for Far North Queensland. We need to turn this around to provide opportunities for the future.

We have a section in our report on the development applications lodged to date. In recent correspondence Balkanu highlighted the adverse impact on Indigenous community vegetable gardens for people with residences included within the high preservation area either side of the declared river. They said that a community vegetable garden within a high preservation area is only permissible if it does not involve clearing of vegetation. It is difficult to imagine circumstances on Cape York where a community vegetable garden could be established without some clearing of vegetation. Indeed, that is a very persuasive argument. High preservation areas have in almost all declarations been declared to the maximum of one kilometre either side of a declared wild river and its major tributaries with no scientific justification. The best soils for community gardens are within this area.

Of course, the coalition senators expressed concern about this, about the intrusion into native title landowners’ ability to use their land in whatever manner they see fit and about community vegetable gardens, particularly in circumstances where the proposed use is intended to improve physical and social wellbeing. The regulatory complexity is set out in our report, too. Under the Queensland regime it is very bad indeed. The Cape York Land Council made submissions in which they had very persuasive arguments. The scheme injected high levels of uncertainty and complexity, and it was clearly shown that Indigenous native title landowners in wild river areas had not been provided with the knowledge and resources they need to navigate and work within the wild rivers regulatory scheme. We do not want that. We do not want uncertainty. We want to provide economic and social opportunities for those in these areas. Two years ago, the Prime Minister at the time, Mr Rudd, in his apology to Australia’s Indigenous people stated that for Australians:

… symbolism is important but, unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong. It is not sentiment that makes history; it is our actions that make history.

I call on Ms Gillard, as the Prime Minister, to get behind this bill and show that action is more important than words—not just to be all talk and no action. Labor certainly has not backed its rhetoric with action and that promise, unfortunately, has not been delivered; it has not been honoured. This is an opportunity to back up that apology, which had bipartisan support from both sides of the parliament. This bill provides an opportunity to support the Closing the Gap initiative. As Tony Abbott said when he introduced the bill:

… on the same day that the Rudd government subscribed to the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Bligh government in Queensland applied the wild rivers legislation to the significant rivers of Cape York—effectively blocking Aboriginal people from developing their land in the catchments of the Archer, Stewart and Lockhart rivers in Cape York.

That is well noted and, of course, it has extended further than that as a result of these definitional issues. We in the coalition are very concerned. We have raised concerns about the full or partial abrogation of native title rights. We have noted that these buffer zones effectively become lock-up areas. We call on Labor to back up the rhetoric. We call on Ms Gillard to act in support of those in Far North Queensland—those Indigenous communities who want to have a future—and support this bill.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising today to speak on Senator Parry’s motion on government service delivery, I wish to discuss the report Enabling Australia by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration of its inquiry into the migration treatment of disability. I thank both the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Evans, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Bill Shorten, for assisting in developing the terms of reference and causing this inquiry to happen. The inquiry was developed initially in response to the well-publicised case of a Victorian doctor, Dr Moeller, and his family, which included his son with down syndrome. Because Dr Moeller’s son had down syndrome the whole family was going to be prevented from becoming permanent residents of Australia. That case was resolved quite happily amid quite a lot of publicity. There are dozens and dozens of other cases like this every year in Australia which do not get the same publicity and are resolved sometimes far less happily.

The main report of this committee contains 18 recommendations. If all those recommendations go ahead, there will be some very real and positive changes in the migration treatment of disability. I commend them to the government. We received some surprises, some shocks, in doing this inquiry. On that basis, I draw people’s attention to recommendation 15, which deals with creating a priority visa category for refugees who have sustained a disability or condition as a result of being a victim of torture and trauma. The committee was shocked to hear evidence that refugees from countries such as Rwanda and Sierra Leone were being refused visas to come to Australia because they were amputees. They are amputees because their government or other forces in their countries were amputating limbs as a way of exercising some control over the population. It struck everyone on the committee as horrific that people who had been so traumatised in their own countries were then doubly traumatised by not being able to come to Australia. Amongst the very many excellent case studies in this report there is one about a Rwandan mother who was refused the opportunity to come to Brisbane to see her two daughters because she was an amputee and because of the other very serious disabling injuries that she had received through being shot by her own government during a civil war. It is wonderful that an inquiry like this can bring out such information.

If the 18 recommendations of the main report are adopted, there will be some real and positive changes to the migration treatment of disability. But I would suggest, and I have done in additional comments that I made with Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, that we can go a lot further. Our additional comments are entitled ‘Dismantling the deficit model’. Our main recommendation is that the government remove the exemption of the Migration Act 1958 from the Disability Discrimination Act 1992—in other words, stop having a disability criterion for people who are coming to Australia either as migrants or as refugees.

There have been two arguments in the past as to why you might have special criteria for people with disabilities to ensure that they do not affect Australia’s society. The first goes back to this historic view—it is really a relic of the past—that perceives disability as a disease, as something that you might catch, something that might be infectious or certainly something that the Australian population needs to be protected from. We have come a lot further in terms of how we understand disability and how we distinguish between the very reasonable and real need that we have to protect Australia from genuine public health risks and the need to ‘protect’ Australia from people with disabilities.

The other reason given for adopting special disability criteria is the view that people with disabilities would flood into Australia and use up all the services that are currently available. Certainly there can be no argument that there is restricted access to services for people with disabilities in our society now. It is restricted for Australians. But the suggestion that there would be this flood of people with disabilities coming here is quite bizarre and was certainly spoken against by numerous witnesses to the inquiry, including Dr Rhonda Galbally, who was instrumental in developing the government’s Shut out report. She said:

We have never seen a flood to Australia. We have seen genuine families applying to come here or people in refugee situations where they happen to have a family member with a disability who they declare … I think that it is like the mythology of the yellow hordes flooding down from China argument.

Dr Galbally also described the view that there would be no services left for genuine Australians if we allowed people with disabilities to come to Australia willy-nilly as a ‘furphy’. I can only support her in that view. I think we must recognise that, if we apply the Disability Discrimination Act to our Migration Act in the 21st century, we see there is overt discrimination. It is a relic of the old days.

I spoke earlier about some of the things that shocked me during this inquiry. It was at the Sydney hearing that both Mr Graeme Innes, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, and Professor Ron McCallum, former dean of law at the University of Sydney and currently the Chair of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, made the point that, if they were not Australian born, they would not have been allowed to come to this country. To me that demonstrates how foolish it is for us to sit down and assess what a four-year-old Graeme Innes or a five-year-old Ron McCallum might be able to contribute to this country by trying to apply some sort of actuarial tables on the social and economic benefits of people with disability. The answer is that we do not know what ability to contribute to our society people with a disability have. When people with disability come from circumstances where there are poorer education services, poorer community services and poorer therapy services, we particularly do not know what their capability is.

One of the case studies provided to the committee is that of a man who was the first-ever blind person registered as a teacher in South Australia who we initially tried to send away. He successfully appealed, but he and his family went through all that trauma and there was all that cost to the government before he succeeded in being allowed to stay. There are other examples of people with severe disabilities who have come here and then, because of the treatment available, gone on to make a real social and economic contribution to the country.

I would very much urge the government to accept that we have plenty of criteria to wrap around ensuring that migration to and refugee settlement in Australia are well controlled, well within our means and safe for Australia. There are plenty of other criteria available to use. We do not need to add disability criteria to that. It is no longer reasonable to assume that, because someone has a disability, they cannot contribute or that their family, in net terms, would be a burden to Australia. It is just not the case, and we should stop pretending it is. We should acknowledge that because of all the other criteria there is not going to be a flood of people with disabilities trying to come into Australia. People will have to meet all the other criteria, and that will be reasonable.

One other recommendation that is made in the additional comments, which is based on the first recommendation not being accepted, is that we should acknowledge that rejecting temporary visa holders as permanent visa holders solely on the basis of the birth of a child with a disability is discriminatory and we should develop protocols to address this. I am aware of couples who have come to Australia on temporary visas and conceived and given birth to a child with a disability in Australia and, on that basis alone, have been refused permanent resident visas. These are, on every other count, the Dr Moellers of the migration world—well-educated people with very senior positions who would, in anyone’s terms, be a great addition to the Australian community but who have had a child with a disability in Australia and have then been put in the position of not being able to continue to pursue their attempts to become Australian citizens.

I think all use of disability criteria against migrants and refugees is discrimination but I think this form, where a child who is conceived and born in Australia is the cause of a family being discriminated against, is a particularly offensive form of discrimination. I would urge the government to add that recommendation to the list of the other 18 in the event that they are not prepared to accept the idea that we should simply take the disability criteria completely out of our Migration Act.

In the spirit that this inquiry was conducted, in the spirit that the terms of reference were developed, as I said before, by Minister Evans and Parliamentary Secretary Shorten and in the very sensitive way that the whole inquiry was handled by all members of the committee, I would hope that we could move to remedy this situation and to stop discrimination against people with a disability who simply want to call Australia home.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This momentous day in the ongoing history of turmoil and destruction in the Labor Party, with yet another leader of the party, reminds me of the days not all that long ago when Mr Hawke and Mr Keating were at each other’s throats. Certainly today is a momentous day in that ongoing history of turmoil and backstabbing in the Labor Party.

I did want to make a contribution on the motion moved by Senator Parry noting the ineptitude of the Rudd Labor government to deliver promised services to the Australian people, but there are not enough hours in the day to do that. In moving the motion, Senator Parry wrongly called it the Rudd Labor government. He should have called it the Rudd-Gillard-Tanner-Swan Labor government, because we all remember that the gang of four made all the decisions—nobody else.

Mr Kelvin Thomson let the cat out of the bag today when he said that none of them had any idea of what was going on. He was going to vote for Julia because, he said, ‘We have been sent out there to sell policies that we’ve had no say in and don’t even support.’ So he was dead keen to get rid of the then jockey on top of the horse. But he did not quite understand that those decisions had not been made by Kevin Rudd; they had been made by four people, and Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan were two of them. In the course of the day, the gang of four has suddenly turned into the gang of two as Mr Tanner picks up his bags and goes home. But the ineptitude is still there.

I want to briefly come back to Senator Conroy’s NBN proposal. The motion before the Senate talks about the ineptitude of the Rudd Labor government. In question time yesterday, when I said that Senator Conroy had shown his incompetence, I was very correct. Those who remember question time yesterday might recall that I asked a question about Telstra’s HFC cable in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, which currently serves over half of the Australian population.

I was making the point that, for a fraction of the $43 billion that Senator Conroy is wasting on the NBN, we could have upgraded Telstra’s HFC cables, built on to them, and provided a network better than or equally as good as the NBN. I also raised the point that by doing this deal—albeit a deal that is not binding—Telstra has to shut down its network, therefore taking away competition in the networks in the name of promoting competition. Can you believe that? You reduce the competition so that you increase the competition—it was clearly nonsensical. When Senator Conroy gave the answer, he stood up and said to me, ‘Let me explain to you the laws of physics.’ Then he went on with a diatribe. No sooner did I get back to my office than I had any number of people who really understand the internet, broadband and telecommunications emailing me to say, ‘Conroy has no idea what he is talking about.’

Senator Conroy, as you will recall, said HFC is like wireless in a pipe: the more people who switch on and use HFC at the same time the slower the dedicated speeds become. Then he went on as though he knew something about it. The people who understand these things will tell you that it is all matter of engineering. The same will happen with his fibre unless it is engineered properly, but it can be engineered and this is what engineers do. How they do it I do not have a clue, but engineers can deal with the fibre so that slowdown does not happen. Similarly, as I have been told by experts, HFC can be dealt with by engineers in a way that does not have the results that Senator Conroy was alleging.

Anyone listening to question time yesterday would have thought, ‘That Senator Conroy knows what he’s talking about, he really is very understanding and very knowledgeable in this area.’ But, as with all of the Rudd government ministers, it is just blah, blah, blah. Senator Conroy sounds good, but his knowledge of the NBN is about equal to his knowledge of financing and getting a return on an investment. It is all blah, blah, blah—very seldom does it relate to reality and the actual facts.

That is why I am very disappointed. It does not matter whether Mr Rudd or Ms Gillard is the boss, we will still have Senator Conroy as the broadband minister and we will still have this waste of $43 billion on something that could have been done for a fraction of that cost. I say $43 billion but, if we add on the $11 billion they are going to pay to Telstra, does it become a $54 billion program? When we said to Senator Conroy, ‘Tell us how much you are going to save,’ he had no figures, no answers. He did not have a clue about those things.

What the Australian taxpayer is going to be left with is a huge bill, paying off an NBN that most Australians will not need or can already get. Instead of spending the money on duplicating a system that, with a bit of upgrading and engineering, would already be there, they could have been using that money to provide fast broadband to places like Birdsville, Bedourie, Boulia and places out in the south-west of Queensland—and other parts of Australia are the same. That money could have been spent on a fibre link through those areas so that people in remote parts of Australia could have got a decent broadband service, and you do not need to spend $55 billion of our money to do it.

So I urge support for this motion of Senator Parry’s. I know that, if all senators could have the opportunity of speaking on it and even voting on it, they would support Senator Parry’s motion, because I think it is quite clear from the actions of the Labor Party over the last few months, and particularly the last couple of days, that the government is simply inept and is unable to deliver the promised services that it committed to deliver to the Australian people.

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would very much like to contribute to the debate on Senator Parry’s motion on government service delivery but, given the time constraints facing us today, I will not. Suffice it to say that I disagree with most of what Senator Macdonald said. I do appreciate, however, that he said it in a relatively short period of time. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.