Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight with a heavy heart after spending most of the last two days in the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee hearings around the media laws legislation that is being rushed through the House of Representatives and will be before us tomorrow. I do that because we have spent a lot of time and money in this country over the last few years doing very detailed consultation—as Senator Conroy outlined for us here in the Senate—into the future of our media in the Convergence review and the Finkelstein report. For these monumental reforms to be what they actually are before us is quite a tragedy. But we should not be surprised. This is just the caboose on the train wreck of a Labor government that this country has been on board and unable to get off as it hurtles down the track. There is a record net debt of $142 billion. When Labor came to office in 2007 there was no debt. Interest payments will be a massive $7 billion this year alone. And how did we get here after the slim promise—like the French guy in the Monty Python movie—of the wafer-thin surplus that was promised? We are now hurtling towards a significant budget blowout come May. How did we get here? There are almost too many examples to outline in this short time we have before us tonight, but I will give it a crack.

There was the home insulation bungle, $2.4 billion. There were school halls, $1.5 billion. There was an immigration budget blowout of $5.3 billion over four years. The Clean Energy Regulator cost $4.4 million for new offices and $25.2 million for rent for a five-year lease—good money if you can get it! There was carbon tax advertising, just letting us know that the money is coming whether you like it or not to a bank account near you. Close to $70 million of taxpayers' money was shelled out to let Australians know about that. The set-top box waste cost $67 million in administrative costs to run the program. The NBN budget blowout of $3.2 billion is now a massive $44.1 billion project.

As I have mentioned, there are the two massive reports to examine on the future of our media landscape. It is a very, very poor response to such a mountain of work that has been completed by the government. Whether you agree with the recommendations in their entirety or not, the response that is before us is pathetic, as is being evidenced right now in the committee. Whether it is the media union, whether it is academics, whether it is obviously industry and journalists, they are all talking about the response—and what a silly response it is was mentioned in evidence concerning this set of bills.

While I have outlined the obvious blowouts in the budget, there is a hidden cost and it is the cost of doing nothing or using people's money badly. I have just got a few more examples for your listening pleasure, Madam Acting Deputy President Pratt. There was the Hawke review, the inquiry into EPBC Act, where one of their key recommendations was to streamline environmental regulation. This government accepted that response and gave undertakings to state governments that that is exactly the track we would move down. However, whilst making those sympathetic noises in December, the Prime Minister walked away from that commitment with state governments and so, whilst the Hawke review contains a multitude of recommendations, very, very few have been picked up by this government.

There is the Gonski review. This government cannot get it together on the Gonski review. D-day is COAG in April so we are hurtling down the track. The panel cost $400,000. There was $1.3 million on consultancies. Secretariat support was close to $3½ million, and in the 2012 budget $5 million was allocated for more research and technical work. That totals an estimated $10 million on the review and associated processes. To be this close to the pointy end, we have got to make sure that that $10 million investment we made in understanding the issue actually results in an outcome that was meant by the review. I have grave concerns that the resulting funding formula and the result of the Gonski review will look nothing like brand Gonski—a very good brand, I might say, that is out there in the market.

We had the Henry tax review in 2009 which cost $10 million. There were 138 recommendations and 1,332 pages. It took two years, 1,500 submissions and five public consultations, and the government has claimed that it has adopted 40 recommendations. However that is a very liberal view. We in the coalition are saying that it is a handful. What has been adopted has maybe not been adopted in full, and I can only think of the greatest example of that being the mining tax.

There is the aged-care system, the $3.7 billion Living Longer Living Better aged-care reform package announced on 20 April last year as a result of the Productivity Commission report in 2011. There were 58 recommendations. The government has adopted five to eight per cent of those recommendations. There are significant issues facing our aged-care system particularly in regional Australia where 700,000 people are ageing or in aged care. When you speak to the aged-care sector, the five to eight per cent of the recommendations adopted out of that review are not the top three that they would have picked to give the biggest bang for our public buck, and that is the problem.

We have got the Knight review of 2011 which looked into student visas. It has been extensively delayed in its implementation, and there is the Chaney review et cetera. So when the coalition bangs on about issues around net debt, gross debt, and interest payments that add up to $7 billion per annum, as I said earlier, it is only because that is the bleeding obvious. It is all the hidden costs and the cost of doing nothing and the cost of not taking out of all these extensive and comprehensive reviews the top five as the biggest bang for our public buck that will lead to long-term issues. We are not actually dealing with the problems. Good government is not only about a balanced budget; it is about using taxpayers' money effectively and efficiently in a prioritised manner. By cherry-picking out the easy issues, and not the tough ones that are going to cause us a little bit of political pain and cost us a bit more money but will actually result in a greater outcome in the end, is very poor government. Labor continues to leave a trail of waste, inefficiency and mismanagement and it is a shambles. The only way to get this nation back on track is to elect a coalition government as soon as possible.

Senate adjourned at 21:21