Governor-General's Speech Address in Reply

 Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (12:33 PM) —I am happy to speak in this place today in reply to the Governor-General’s address. The 2010 federal election was, of course, a great sea change in Australian history, a time when Australians did stand up for a different vision of what they wanted from their federal government and sought a new direction from it. The reason they did that follows on from what the member for Charlton has just said. He said that any fair-minded member of parliament would need to look at the performance of the government and assess it carefully. That is what voters in the electorate of Mitchell did do at the last federal election. They took a very careful look at the policies, the results and the delivery of services that were provided by the federal government in the last term.

In this place, I have spoken at length about Building the Education Revolution and it just so happens that in my electorate of Mitchell there have been serious problems with federal government service delivery in the BER program. Some members of parliament might say, ‘That’s only confined to one or two schools or a very small percentage.’ If you are in a school community that has been badly affected by government failure then you feel it. Communities in my electorate have certainly felt that failure quite keenly. What am I talking about? Annangrove is an example. I want to acknowledge the Leader of the Opposition and our education spokesperson, the member for Sturt, who paid a visit to the community in Annangrove during the federal election to launch our national education policy. That community has a school of 90 pupils. It received a BER grant of around $900,000—an opportunity, one would have thought, to make a significant investment in the future of that school for the community.

What could you do with $900,000 to achieve real advancement for the education of those 90 pupils? The school is in a semi-rural area. They asked for new toilet blocks. They asked for more classrooms. They asked for these very important infrastructure upgrades for their community. They were awarded a library. Members here will say, ‘What’s wrong with a library?’ They already had a library. For 90 kids, we have the farcical situation at Annangrove of two libraries sitting right next to each other. The original library has air-conditioning. It is a great little library. It has shelving, connection to the internet and other features. It functions very well. The new library is not air-conditioned, there is no shelving and it is not connected to the internet. That cost $900,000.

There are line items in the BER for expenditure at this school in Annangrove for $60,000 for landscaping. If you ask what landscaping has been done at the school, you will be pointed to a one metre by one metre piece of concrete and 10 plants. It is of great concern to that school. I want to congratulate the P&C president, Donna Hunter, for having the courage to come forward and raise these matters with us. Of course, we have raised this with Mr Orgill and his committee. This is an example of what is wrong with the BER and the delivery mechanisms within the New South Wales government—two libraries for 90 pupils and the new library, which does not work, at a cost of $900,000. Something has gone awfully wrong by anybody’s standards. Members opposite have gone quiet.

I want to talk about another great school in my electorate, Baulkham Hills North Primary School. It just so happens that the president of the P&C at Baulkham Hills North Primary School, Mr Craig Turner, is an architect. When he came across the BER plans for his school—a new school hall; sounds like a worthy project—he found it was going to cost from $1.2 million to $1.3 million. That sounds marvellous! However, the new school hall to be built under the BER was going to fit only 20 more pupils than their existing hall. It was not big enough to hold the whole school. This architect, this representative of his school community—not a partisan political player, not a member of a political party—came to me as the local member and said: ‘Why $1.2 million for this? I can design a building that will house the whole school and have it constructed, and it will deliver the outcome that this great public school needs.’ The answer lies in the bureaucracy and the incompetence of the New South Wales government, and the rigidity of the BER program not allowing enough flexibility for local public schools.

The independent and private schools in my electorate each achieved a great outcome from the money they were granted. They got architect designed structures that were exactly what they needed for their pupils. The local public schools got a template, mandated outcome by the state government that did not provide the best outcome for schools in many cases. While many are grateful—because they have to be grateful for any infrastructure upgrades they get—they did not get the opportunity that they deserved. Why? Because of the rigid and foolish bureaucratic mechanisms within the New South Wales government.

It is the case in New South Wales that there was a big swing against the Labor Party at the election. Perhaps the coalition did not go as well as we could have. I know the member for Dobell will not defend the performance of the New South Wales government because it is beyond defence in my state. State Labor has underinvested in infrastructure—and the top issue in my electorate is the provision of infrastructure. The north-west rail line has been the most bitter failure of the New South Wales government. It was promised, cancelled, promised and cancelled. Also the south-west rail line is a failure.

What we did see in the election campaign was that great, famous commitment of Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister to build a rail line in Sydney. Her advisers on that day—because it was done on that day and it was done on the back of a coaster—really failed her. There is one thing that you do not do in Sydney, and even the member for Dobell would acknowledge this: you do not come out as a politician and say, ‘I am going to build a rail line in Sydney.’ Nobody believes you. Why? We have had a state Labor government for 16 years that has promised rail lines, including the Parramatta to Epping line, and delivered billboards which said, ‘Coming soon.’ They had cranes up the top of Epping and bulldozers parked on the side of the road. It was a great PR stunt before a state election. Of course, once the election was over the bulldozers were moved, the cranes were cancelled and the billboards came down. We never heard of the Parramatta to Epping rail line until the federal election. Fancy that. Three weeks out from election day, Julia Gillard says, ‘I’ve come up with an idea to move forward, to move Sydney forward and that will be the Parramatta to Epping rail link.’ It sounded like a worthy initiative. It probably lost them just enough votes to lose the seat of Bennelong. I say to the voters of Sydney and New South Wales ‘thank you’ because we need to punish bad governments. They need to be dealt with harshly. And there is no worse example of a bad government in Australia today than the New South Wales state Labor government. It deserves to be punished. It deserves to be sent a very serious signal—governments in this country cannot be allowed to get that bad ever again.

Is the federal government now going to commit to building the Parramatta to Epping rail line? My colleague the member for Bennelong is actively seeking the answers to those questions affecting his community at Bennelong, and also affecting my community within Hills Shire. But we do not have any answers yet. Is this a promise that is going to be cancelled? Is this a pre-election commitment that is going to go by the wayside? We are about to find out. We will maintain the pressure on this government to deliver the money and the commitment to upgrade infrastructure in Sydney.

There is no doubt that under the Rudd and Gillard governments that Sydney has missed out on vital infrastructure funding. There is no allocation of money for infrastructure in the biggest city in our country. There was money for some studies on the metro line, but the incompetent New South Wales Labor government cancelled the metro line and had to, humiliatingly, return the $51 million for the study to the federal government. There were no other infrastructure funding provisions in any of the budgets of the Rudd or Gillard governments—none in Sydney, our biggest city. It is the city most underinvested in infrastructure in Australia. This is the city we are asking to take the bulk of our migration. This is the city we are trying to urban consolidate—pack in people without the adequate infrastructure to provide for those people. No wonder voters in Sydney are sceptical about immigration. No wonder it has been given a very bad name. My family are migrants to this country. They came here in the waves of migration after World War II and they have worked very hard and built a great life for me and my family today, and I am very grateful to them. That is the experience of so many people in Sydney. Yet, why are so many people in Sydney so concerned about immigration. It is not so much because of the people, the humanity; it is because of the policies of government that have crammed so many people into so little space without the proper infrastructure provision, and there is no better example than the city of Sydney.

The federal government fails to provide infrastructure money even when it lauds its infrastructure funding programs all around the country. There may very well be places where it is funding infrastructure but in Sydney it is not. The communities of Sydney continue to be ignored at both the state and the federal level. And that does mean that we have to change what we are doing in the Sydney basin. Indeed, it will lead to further scepticism about immigration and our migration program because Sydney cannot afford to continue to be the recipient of so many people without provision for them. That is something that has received a lot more attention in recent times.

The coalition did have a clear position on so many issues at the last election, including water protection, repaying our debt and ending waste in government. Ending waste in government was, I think, a theme that really resonated with the community. People knew that under the Howard-Costello years not only was debt repaid, not only were the finances put in order but also provision was made to fund future obligations of the Commonwealth government, particularly Commonwealth superannuants, but also to fund, through the Future Fund, other commitments of the federal government to ensure that there was a financial base.

In Mitchell, this could not be more critical. In my electorate, I have the highest proportion of families with dependent children in Australia. The average income is one of the highest in the country, but we also have one of the highest rates of mortgages—I think we are second—and of McMansions in the entire country. That is a very homogenous society: families with mortgages on over-high-average incomes, but using nearly all of that income, of course, to service mortgage debt. Most cash, as we know, is being put into paying off those mortgages. In the last year, there have been seven interest rate rises—even though the current government said that it was going to do something about interest rates. That is of very serious concern to my electorate.

One of the great things about Mitchell is that we have so many small businesses in the Norwest Business Park. It is a very entrepreneurial and innovative community. But those small businesses are suffering, as they are across the Sydney basin. When I speak to my colleague the member for Macarthur or to the member for Hughes, they tell a similar story about this Christmas: small businesses are finding that there is less cash in people’s pockets as the cost of living escalates and as interest rates also take money out of those pockets.

That is why we are so concerned about banking and financial sector reform. The reason we are—though there is some scepticism opposite—is that, in the life of the Howard government, banks did not raise their rates outside of Reserve Bank movements. This is a very critical point to understand. That was not through a legislative instrument. That was not an informal agreement. That was not an unwritten agreement with the federal government or Peter Costello. And it was despite an Asian financial crisis, a tech wreck, and many serious world and local economic challenges.

There are many reasons and factors. When you have serious and competent professional people managing your economy, the CEOs of the banks have no choice but to take those people seriously. There has been a marked change in the attitude of the banks towards the federal government. Peter Costello had an arrangement and an understanding with the banks where they knew that they would not move interest rates outside Reserve Bank movements—and that was not by legislative instrument or by pressure but by force of respect and personality and ability: ability to manage the economy and to communicate why interest rates should not be moved outside of Reserve Bank movements. That was a very successful formula during that period.

That is why we have put forward our nine-point plan. It is a plan for the future. It is a plan to ensure that small businesses in Mitchell are able to access finance from banks. People in small business, when they talk to me, speak in a very concerned fashion about how they cannot access finance. With the taxpayer now underwriting the major four banks—which, of course, continues to need to be looked at—we need to look at how we re-encourage competition in the banking sector. How do we get competition in finance so that people can access finance again? If the government is not prepared to look at that, or not prepared to do anything about it, then it should adopt the opposition’s policy, its nine-point plan, to ensure that we have competition in the banking sector. It is vital for there to be competition in funds and to not just have all the money locked up in the big four banks. It will mean pressure on interest rates. It will mean pressure on fees, charges and services. Competition—so important to so many things—is one of our keynote policies.

I want to turn now to some other key factors affecting Mitchell and to local issues within the campaign. I want to thank and congratulate my friends in the Indian community in Sydney. The Indian community, at the last election, being dominated by very hard-working small business people, adopted the view that it was time to seek a better alternative in government. We had many successful functions with the Indian community. We visited their temples in Wentworthville. They were very encouraging of the deputy opposition leader, Julie Bishop, who made a visit to my electorate—for which I was very grateful—to hear about their key issues. The Indian community in Sydney is very concerned about those key issues: competent management of the economy, and the performance of the federal government in doing something for small business and ensuring that we have a safe and well-funded infrastructure program for the Sydney basin. So I do want to thank and congratulate those members of the Indian community who came forward and worked so closely with us to ensure that there was a good understanding of coalition policy and that people had a genuine choice within the Sydney basin.

It is, of course, a great scandal in Australia that, when an incoming government is sent a strong signal by the electorate of, ‘You have got your settings wrong. You have failed us so badly,’ they do not heed the messages from that very strong signal. In fact the opposite has occurred. What I find most distressing about this current government is that from the outset the Prime Minister has flagged her intention to abandon all of her core election promises. She has even had the gall to say to the electorate, ‘We are going to abandon our core promises. We are going to go down a different path.’ That signals that we now have a government that is run by a minority group: the Australian Greens. One of the great features of this parliament will be to what extent the Greens dominate the agenda of the Australian government going forward. I do not think, if they are allowed to dominate in the way they have been dominating in the first session of this parliament, that things will improve in Australia.

The government’s vaunted carbon tax, which of course they swore they would not implement in the election campaign, of course now becomes a core commitment of this government. We did not hear a lot about climate change in the election campaign. That is because in the world today and in the Australian community there is a growing—I hesitate to use the word ‘scepticism’—concern about the validity of the climate change argument and about whether the political takeout of climate change has been the correct one. There is a very big difference between what the scientists tell us about climate change and what the politicians say. Issues are regularly hijacked by politicians for their own benefit. I would suggest that in this case there is a growing view in the world today that climate change has been hijacked for political benefit by left-of-centre political parties.

There are sensible and competent things we can do to help the environment. The coalition had a plan for some direct action to do practical things that would benefit the environment and not just implement new taxes. If the way to solve the environmental situation in the world today is to raise tax, why wouldn’t everybody be for it? If all we had to do was apply new taxes, charges and fees, that would be a very simple way to fix things. Of course the reality is that new taxes, charges and fees will not produce environmental benefit.

The government abandoning the promise not to implement a carbon tax is going to resonate with the electorate. People do not want a carbon tax on the back of rapidly rising electricity prices, particularly in New South Wales. That is after a decade of underinvestment in electricity generation by the New South Wales state Labor government. The privatisation of electricity tore two or three state Labor governments into pieces over the electricity generation question of how much they were to invest in electricity. We are already paying the price with massive increases in electricity prices. Utility prices in Sydney are probably the most common concern. Yet this government proposes to implement a major new tax that will, of course, push up the price of electricity rapidly. It is of grave concern that the Greens may well continue to dominate the Australian government agenda for the years ahead.

I want to say a big thank you to the people of Mitchell for the opportunity to represent them in this place for the next three years. It is a great honour. I am grateful to them for the support they showed me at the last election and I pledge to work in their interest and to ensure that we get better infrastructure and services in the north-west of Sydney, and that our economy and finances allow people to get ahead, allow businesses to generate employment and opportunity and allow our families to affordably live in the Sydney basin and to have a bit of room for their kids. I thank you for the opportunity.