In the News
Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (11:56 AM) —I rise today to speak on the important topics of lymphoedema and funding for lymphoedema in Australia. I want to pay tribute to the Castle Hill Country Women’s Association, who raised this vital issue in two motions in their community group at a recent meeting. The first motion read:
That the CWA of NSW urges the state and federal governments to establish treatment centres for lymphoedema, with a central register of approved clinicians.
And the second motion read:
That the CWA of NSW urges the state and federal governments to cover the cost of prescribed compression garments necessary in the effective treatment of lymphoedema.
This comes on the eve of the 2010 Australasian Lymphology Association conference, which is being held at the Sebel Albert Park in Melbourne from 27 to 29 May. The theme for this year is ‘Reflections of the Past, Inspirations for the Future’.
Lymphoedema is the term given to swelling as a result of malfunction of the lymphatic system. It can be congenital—primary lymphoedema—or secondary lymphoedema, which results from damage to the system, such as trauma, but it more often results from surgery for cancer or melanoma. In recent times it has become more common. With an increase in the number of obese people or of people with weight-related problems, there is evidence of increasing numbers of diagnoses of lymphoedema.
One of the important features of the motions that the Castle Hill Country Women’s Association has passed is that they have some therapists and people involved in the treatment of this area who have some very direct suggestions that can help government with their funding. I note that the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, when he was the health minister in the previous government was one of those who recognised this challenge and provided funding of half a million dollars to the National Breast Cancer Centre for initiatives to help patients affected by lymphoedema after treatment. In a press release dated 15 April 2007 he noted that the Australian government was providing this half a million dollars because:
At present, there are no lymphoedema guides in Australia for either the public or health professionals.
That is one of the consistent themes that I hear in relation to this topic: that there needs to be an improvement in the awareness of this issue generally and, indeed, the attention given to it. So the Leader of the Opposition, as then Minister for Health certainly saw ahead on this particularly important issue.
The Castle Hill Country Women’s Association is concerned about two issues associated with lymphoedema. The first is the cost of the garments used in the ongoing management of people suffering from lymphoedema. The second is the need for designated, trained therapists and, potentially, what they term as dedicated lymphoedema treatment areas in our hospital system. This is of quite serious concern considering that there could be an extra 38,000 people being diagnosed with cancer each year, of whom at least 8,000 are expected to develop lymphoedema.
As to the cost of treating this condition, the garments that individuals are required to wear need to be made to measure—they cannot be factory made or simply one-size-fits-all. For example it was put to me that one made-to-measure garment with two full legs would cost $712. That could be very significant for people already in difficult circumstances. The cost of treatment is not as great as that for other things, but it is a significant impediment to a person’s ongoing healthcare management and there is little or no attention paid to this serious consideration.
There is also a push—which I support, and which is part of the motions put forward by the Castle Hill Country Women’s Association—for lymphoedema to be regarded as an illness in its own right and managed as such, and I accept that that is something that should be looked at seriously. The suggestion that there be dedicated treatment areas within our hospitals has a lot of merit as well. I think if we are seeking to make improvements to the management of ongoing issues related to cancer treatment, then this is an area that could well benefit from attention from state and federal governments.
A great deal of money has been allocated to researching this illness but, from the advice that has been provided to me, the best-practice guidelines that have resulted from the research are not being followed. I think it is important that treatment centres are established, or looked at by government as an option, for early diagnosis and therapeutic management of this condition. I want to record my thanks to the Castle Hill Country Women’s Association for these wonderful motions and to record my support for lymphoedema being diagnosed as an illness.
Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (6:32 PM) —I rise tonight to speak on the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Close of Rolls and Other Measures) Bill 2010. I want to start by rejecting many of the comments of the member for Reid in his typically bleak fashion. He sought to paint a picture of the electoral roll and the agenda of the coalition in relation to the measures proposed by the government. In that bleak assessment perhaps the main criticism I would have of the member for Reid and his arguments was that he suggested that somehow our opposition to many of these changes, particularly the voter identification and other scheduled changes proposed in the bill, was that we were seeking to disenfranchise people, or not have a group of people vote. Of course, the significant problem with the member for Reid’s contention in this regard and with the Labor Party’s contention in this regard is that the argument that more voters were disenfranchised under the coalition’s changes to voter identification in the seven-day grace period is erroneous. The facts tell a different story.
In 2004, under the previous system where there was a seven-day grace period, there were 169,000 people who missed out on the enrolment deadline. But, of course, in 2007, at the last election under the coalition’s changed three-day grace period, there were only 100,000 people who missed out. These are not estimates from us; these are the AEC’s figures. So this argument that somehow this is an attempt to disenfranchise a body of people is of course erroneous and the member for Reid knows it.
The changes proposed by the government today seek to reinstate the seven-day grace period, and this is an argument that I oppose, because the integrity of the electoral roll is something that is paramount to the functioning of our democracy. It is the member for Reid’s assessment that everything is fine and rosy with the electoral roll—that it is fine to contend in this parliament that there is no need to be rigorous in our ongoing examination of the roll and of the system that we have of voting in Australia and that, somehow, just by encouraging everybody to participate, participate, participate, we have a benevolent democracy where everything will end up just fine. Of course, the reality is very different. That is, we do have to have a strong system in place. We have to have a system of ensuring that the right people are casting votes in the right way and that people do not attempt to manipulate our electoral system. We do have examples of people attempting to manipulate the electoral system in recent history. Perhaps you should not take it from me—I know the member for Reid and I have a history in relation to politics which is different—but noted communist author Frank Hardy wrote a book called The Stolen Election: Australia 1987. Maybe the member for Reid would care to read what he had to say about the 1987 election and the potential for manipulation in that election. Frank Hardy is the famous author of Power without Glory. In that work he suggests that there is a propensity in Australia for people to attempt to manipulate the electoral system at various selections. When you consider many of the results in marginal seats or seats where elections are very tight and come down to a handful of votes one way or another, I think it is proper that the parliament ought to remove any opportunities for fraud and seek to constantly improve the system we have in place to ensure that the opportunity for fraud is minimised.
I will oppose schedule 2 and the amendment relating to the evidence of identity for provisional votes. The previous government, in line with long-standing policy, moved to prevent fraudulent voting and impersonations by requiring that people who claim a provisional vote in an election produce evidence of their true identity and enrolled address either on polling day or in the week following polling day. I think that is a proper mechanism. People who live at a location for 21 days are, by law, required to enrol and, if they do not, they are breaking the law. But, as we know, the reality is that many people in our community choose not to enrol within that 21-day period. It is true that they may not be aware of any changes to boundaries which could affect the electorate in which they now reside. However, people are aware of the fact that they have changed address, so they are making a choice in relation to that—that is, not to re-enrol or not to be on the electoral roll—they simply forget or there are other reasons for them not to re-enrol.
However, effectively the changes that are being proposed in schedule 2 mean that there is no consequence for breaching the Electoral Act. The benefits of correctly enrolling are reduced to nothing and there is no disincentive for any person who fails to correctly enrol. That leads to a situation where the whole basis for the continuous roll update, which was something brought in by the coalition in 1999, is severely undermined.
Any proposal to weaken the rules in relation to the identification requirements for provisional voters should be opposed. It should be opposed because it gives the impression that if you do not obey the law and seek to put yourself on the roll, which all responsible citizens should do, somehow you should be rewarded for not maintaining correct enrolment for a substantial period of time. That is a very important argument. The integrity of the roll does matter. While we have a compulsory voting system we should discourage people from choosing not to be on the electoral roll.
I note the member for Reid challenged the coalition, saying that our opposition to the bill is really part of some sort of secret agenda of ours to bring in voluntary voting, which I find a weak argument in relation to this legislation. I can publicly put on the record that I do have a view that voluntary voting is something that we should look at as a nation. We ought to have a free society where people are allowed to choose whether or not they want to vote. Currently in Australia we only compel people to attend a ballot box and mark off their name on election day. There is no such thing as forced voting. You cannot force a person to vote. We simply force attendance at polling booths, and many people register their votes in an informal way or take another way of not voting. We simply force attendance, and some people suggest that is a good thing. I do not violently object to that system; however, if we are continually to push to have a freer society, voluntary voting is a mechanism we should look at. Indeed, looking at the United Kingdom and the United States, there are many good arguments for voluntary voting. However, that is not the agenda of the coalition today and it certainly is not the topic we are presented with in the legislation before us.
Many of the proposals here weaken the integrity of the Electoral Act. The member for Reid said that he was not aware of any examples or any matters which caused him to be concerned about our current electoral system, which I again find to be an unusual contention. The HS Chapman Society was set up in 1996, meets regularly in Sydney and is a society with which I have had something to do. Other members of this place quite regularly have interaction with the HS Chapman Society. That society was purely set up to examine and look at our electoral system. Included in their objectives are:
- To promote public understanding of the … electoral systems
- To monitor the operation of the Australian electoral system and … recommend changes to the law and practice of elections
- To compare the Australian … systems with those of other democratic countries
That is a fine body of objectives for any organisation. It is good to see that we have private citizens taking an interest in the electoral roll and the operation of our electoral system who are prepared to meet in their own time, examine proposals for improvements and make recommendations. Indeed, along the way they have certainly highlighted a number of cases where there have been concerns with the roll. The member for Reid said there have only been 71 instances of people multiple voting or conducting voting fraud. Considering that many of these elections have very close results, I think that is a reason why we should have strong electoral provisions and should constantly look at ways to improve them.
Identification is an important issue. I still find it a very odd situation that if you go to the bank you are required to have 100 points of ID, if you want a passport you have to prove your identity and if you want to hire a video at a video store you have to prove your identity with a licence, but there is no real identification required at a polling booth on election day. However, that is a different matter.
There are some amendments within this legislation that we can support, and the coalition has provided its support for schedules 3, 4 and 5. In relation to the proposed Electoral Act provision that a political party cannot nominate multiple candidates, that is a valid and worthy amendment to the act. It has grown out of recent examples, particularly in the Bradfield by-election, where a political party sought to, I think, deliberately manipulate the electoral process by nominating multiple candidates. The Christian Democratic Party nominated nine candidates for the Bradfield by-election. There has been plenty of speculation about the motives behind that, but it is the case that the AEC records over many elections and many years that the more candidates you have the higher the informal rate. I note from the member for Bradfield’s contribution earlier in this debate that there was an unusually high rate of informal voting in the Bradfield by-election, which should be of great concern to all members in this place. So it is easy for us to support such an amendment. A political party ought not to deliberately seek to manipulate the electoral system in that fashion. Therefore, that is a good amendment.
Schedules 3 and 4 relate to provisional voters and are certainly an improvement in administration for the AEC. Provisional voters certainly caused a lot of difficulty for the AEC and scrutineers alike in terms of the time it took for administrative checking in the weeks following polling day. The proposal to treat them as ordinary voters is a worthy one and something that we support.
The bill before us has some worthy provisions. However, schedules 1 and 2, as they relate to particularly the close of the rolls but also the changes to identification for provisional voters, are changes that I cannot support. The electoral roll is an enormously important mechanism and the administration of it is something that we should constantly be seeking to tighten. The government’s proposals certainly weaken the administration of the roll. As we saw in 2004 and 2007, the coalition’s tightening of the three-day and seven-day periods was not of any impact upon the number of people that missed out on voting; in fact it was reduced. I am happy to support schedules 3, 4 and 5, noting the great concerns that the coalition has with the weakening of the electoral roll.
The Federal Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke, has expressed deep concern about the New South Wales Government’s commitment to construct a northwest rail link.
“We have been burned too many times by this New South Wales Labor Government to believe their promises to build a rail link,” Mr Hawke said.
“It seems that every time there is an election coming, the New South Wales Government announces a northwest rail link.
“We have been tempted, teased, and ultimately tormented before each of the last three elections, and we still have nothing to show for it.”
Mr Hawke said the projected finish date for the railway — 2024 — was a great concern and provided far too much opportunity for the New South Wales Government to slip out of their commitment in the future.
“Federal Labor has made it clear to the Hills that they will not be allocating money to New South Wales. This followed New South Wales missing out on the national infrastructure funding due to poor submissions by the State Government. Now the State Government is also set to lose the token $90 million they received for a study into the CBD Metro as well,” Mr Hawke said.
“If they were sincere about providing our local community with the services we deserve, they would adopt the position of Barry O’Farrell and the New South Wales Coalition and make the construction of the North-West Railway a priority.
“But too often it seems that the New South Wales Labor State Government’s priority is to quell negative press coverage. If they think that 2024 is an acceptable timeframe for a northwest rail link they are fooling themselves.
“There is a clear alternative to New South Wales Labor’s failure on this, and it is to elect a New South Wales Government committed to building the northwest rail link,” Mr Hawke said.
In the course of this year we are increasingly learning about waste and cost blow-outs in Federal Government programs across many departments, one notable example being the dodgy installation of batts under the multi-billion dollar Home Insulation Program.
However in the midst of this climate of Government profligacy, it was astonishing to learn that Australian soldiers might have been wearing combat uniforms made from fabric sourced from China in order to save money.
The Disruptive Pattern Camouflage Uniforms – known as DPCU – is a high-tech fabric largely developed in Australia by organisations including the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.
Recently, we learned that a tender to provide 120,000 uniforms over two years would have included an option of fabric being provided from China. For this $13.6 million tender, there would have been a saving of $1.5 million, or about ten percent, to have the material for uniforms sourced from overseas.
It is hardly in our in our national interest to provide this intellectual property to a foreign manufacturer, who also supplies third parties, simply to save money.
The Government has since back-flipped, and the option for the material to come from China will not be exercised, but the tender should not have been accepted in the first place and it should never have been considered.
All Government Departments are expected and should be encouraged to provide taxpayers value for money. However, this is not about Defence legitimately trying to make savings, this is about scrimping on uniforms for our military, the risk to our manufacturing industries, and potentially sending jobs overseas.
At a time when billions are being spent and sometimes wasted on program blow-outs and over-runs, it says much about the Government’s priorities that our nation’s intellectual property, the material used in our soldiers’ uniforms, could have possibly been sourced from China. Any saving would have been a false economy.
I strongly believe our defence industries must not be put under pressure like this to pay back debt for profligate spending. Please feel free to pass on your thoughts to me about this at alex.hawke.mp@aph.gov.au
Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (8:50 PM) —In a week in which we have seen the government rocked by scandals in the home insulation sector, I rise tonight to speak about another epic tale of government failure that has hit people in my electorate of Mitchell. I refer of course to the green loans scandal that is plaguing this government, which again is affecting real lives and real people in our community, particularly in my electorate.
Kevin Rudd and Peter Garrett went to the last election promising to:
- Offer low-interest loans of up to $10,000 to make at least 200,000 existing homes more energy and water efficient, with subsidised environmental audits and free Green Renovations packs.
It was a worthy objective and of course something which many in our community would laud. In the 2009 budget, however, this was quietly downsized. Their promise went from providing 200,000 green loans to instead providing 75,000 green loans. While this is a massive cut—in fact a 62.5 per cent cut to the number of promised loans—it was, again, a worthy initiative and something which we could all support and laud. However, seven months into this financial year, only 1,008 of the 20,000 loans budgeted for have been provided—let alone the 200,000 that were promised in 2007.
In his 8 May 2009 media release, Peter Garrett said that there would be ‘1,000 home sustainability assessors’. On 20 August 2009 the secretary of the environment department also told the Australian Economic Forum that the program would be delivered through ‘training 1,000 home sustainability assessors to undertake 360,000 audits’. I rise tonight to say that, instead of training 1,000 assessors as promised, Peter Garrett and the Rudd government have trained 3,648 assessors without ever announcing their intention to increase this number. What we see here is the reduction from 200,000 loans to 20,000 loans, with only 1,008 loans being delivered; yet, with a promise of only 1,000 assessors, we have 3,648 assessors who have been trained. Little wonder, then, that we have mismanagement and the creation of a crisis which has affected real people hard in my electorate.
People in my electorate have contacted me in recent weeks about this program. I want to relate the stories of some of those who have approached me and what they feel about how this government is handling this program and mismanaging it. A gentleman from Baulkham Hills approached me and said:
After interviewing 5 solar hot water panel company reps (a total of about 6 hours) and spending about a dozen hours reading material on relative panel efficiencies, and having had the mandatory home assessment done in October 2009, I last week submitted my Green Home Loan to Westpac. Today (22 February) I am informed that the Government Home Loan website is down, has been thus for three weeks and so my application cannot proceed at this time.
Take the example of the Baulkham Hills woman who contacted me this week and said:
I have not been able to get through or book any assessments since before Christmas. I have tried many times without success. For example today (2 February) I have tried 5 times.
There was also a retired woman who found that, due to the global financial crisis, her investments were not going well and were unable to provide her with a level of support. She comments about this program:
I am facing financial ruin and saw this program as a way to earn an income and make a contribution to conserving the resources of the planet.
Then there was the Castle Hill homeowner who wanted to take up this program and who said:
We were in the process of having the assessment done to apply for a $10,000 loan to install a 3kw solar energy system. If the Government is serious about encouraging people to switch to greener forms of energy there must be financial incentives to enable this to happen. I feel that stopping the Loans Scheme is a real step backwards along the road to making Australia a more sustainable pace.
I want to record that these people are not rent seekers or disgruntled Liberals; these are real, aspirational people, working to do better for themselves and trying to make a difference to the future of our planet. There are many more examples across Australia.
I want to record that I believe this to have been a good policy idea—good because it was self-funding and good because it enabled people to act on their good instincts and do the right thing by the environment. However, this program has failed because of horrific mismanagement by this minister and the government. The most serious consequence of this mismanagement is that it is a huge step backwards for the idea of self-funding initiatives that give people a hand up and not a handout. We know that governments cannot and will not fund a sustainable future. It must be achieved by citizens taking action, and the failure of this program will make this task all the more difficult.