1998-05-143817REPS333101998-05-14Mr SPEAKER(Rt Hon. Ian Sinclair) took the chair at 9.30 a.m., and read prayers.Bills3331r5273331Bill presented by Mr Anderson, and read a first time.333109:31:003331Anderson, John, MPMr ANDERSON4K4GwydirNPPrimary Industries and Energy10—I move:That the bill be now read a second time.This bill concerns the restructuring of marketing arrangements for the export marketing of Australian wheat based on the objectives of grower ownership and control, self-reliance and a fully commercial approach to marketing. Industry and government have both agreed that a structure based on these objectives would best meet the needs of industry into the next century.In April 1997, the government agreed to industry's recommendation for the establishment of a grower owned and controlled company to assume responsibility for wheat marketing from 1 July 1999, when the government guarantee of the Australian Wheat Board borrowings ends.The new grower company will operate under Corporations Law in accordance with its memorandum and articles of association. It will have two classes of shares: A class shares which will be issued only to growers and will give control of the company; and B class shares, issued on the basis of Wheat Industry Fund equity, which will form the capital base of the company.As a transitional step towards these arrangements, government agreed that the Australian Wheat Board establish a wholly owned company to carry out all the commercial activities of the board. The Australian Wheat Board expects the new company, with separate subsidiaries to undertake pooling and domestic trading, to be operational from 1 June 1998. In March 1998, industry put to government, and government endorsed, the final details for the new arrangements to commence on 1 July 1999.The bill before the House completes the legislation necessary for the restructure of the Australian Wheat Board. It addresses the following key areas:. the conversion of the Wheat Industry Fund to shares, thereby providing the capital base of the new company structure;. provision for managing the continuation of the wheat export monopoly; and. other transitional matters to finalise the new arrangements.Conversion of the Wheat Industry Fund to sharesAlmost a decade ago, the wheat industry commenced building up funds for a capital base for a future grower owned Australian Wheat Board via a levy on wheat sales. These funds were paid into the Wheat Industry Fund. Under the bill, from 1 July 1999 the Wheat Industry Fund will be returned to growers in the form of B class shares. B class shares will be issued to fund equity holders on the basis of one share for every fund unit and will provide the new company's capital base.The issue of shares to growers to replace Wheat Industry Fund equity is a significant financial transaction. Growers have been rightly concerned as to the taxation implications. The taxation treatment to apply to the conversion of the Wheat Industry Fund to shares is covered by tax legislation. So there can be no doubt, I would like to reiterate the taxation arrangements agreed to by government. As announced in November 1997, shares in the new grower company are to be treated as capital for taxation purposes. Automatic roll-over relief from capital gains tax on conversion of the Wheat Industry Fund units to shares means that capital gains tax on the shares will apply only when they are disposed of.For capital gains tax purposes, the cost base of the share is to include levy contributions made by growers prior to 13 May 1997, indexed for inflation. However, levy contributions made after 13 May 1997 will remain immediately income tax deductible, and will receive the benefit of capital gains tax indexation until disposal of the asset. On disposal of the asset, the cost base is to be reduced by levy contributions made after 13 May 1997.In addition, the government has decided that the capital gains tax small business roll-over provisions, as announced in the 1996-97 budget, will be available to growers where a Wheat Industry Fund unit is disposed of and the proceeds applied to the purchase of another small business active asset. However, this roll-over relief will cease to be available after the Wheat Industry Fund units are converted to shares.Provision of the Wheat Export MonopolyThe bill also provides for the retention of the wheat export monopoly from 1 July 1999. Specifically, the bill provides for an independent statutory authority, to be known as the Wheat Export Authority, to manage the export monopoly on wheat. To give growers the certainty that they have been asking for, the bill also provides that the new grower company pool subsidiary, called company B, have an automatic right to export wheat for five years. Requests to export wheat from other than the grower company pool subsidiary, as currently happens, will be managed by the Wheat Export Authority in consultation with the grower company pool subsidiary. The Wheat Export Authority will also oversight the pool subsidiary's use of the export monopoly to ensure it is being used in accordance with the intentions of parliament.The government is committed to the principles of national competition policy. Continuation of these arrangements for the export monopoly for the full five-year period will be subject to the outcome of a comprehensive and independent national competition policy review in 1999-2000.Assuming the national competition policy review in 1999-2000 recommends continuation of the export monopoly, it is envisaged that before the end of the prescribed five-year period in 2004 an export monopoly performance review be held. Specifically, the review would assess the performance of the pool subsidiary in its use of wheat export rights and advise government on the future operation of the export monopoly, including whether that company should continue to have special export rights. Such a review would probably be linked with a national competition policy review process. It would be up to the government to decide who would receive any special export rights beyond 2004 and for parliament to amend the legislation as necessary.Other Transitional MattersThe bill also provides for a number of other transitional matters to finalise the restructure of the Australian Wheat Board including:. deletion of the redundant provisions of the Wheat Marketing Act 1989;. completion of the transfer of assets, liabilities and staff from the Australian Wheat Board to its wholly owned holding company prior to 1 July 1999; and. continuation of government underwriting for pool borrowings outstanding as at 30 June 1999, until these borrowings are repaid.ConclusionThis bill finalises the legislation for the restructure of wheat marketing. Administrative and legal work, such as the transfer of staff and assets to the new company, will be completed over the next 12 months. The grower company of 1 July 1999 will be a robust, commercial company with the flexibility to meet the marketing challenges of the next century. Industry is to be congratulated on its success in developing this model and we now look forward to industry taking control of its future as it enters this exciting new era of opportunity. I commend the bill to honourable members and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr O'Connor) adjourned.Bills3332r5253332Bill presented by Mr Warwick Smith, and read a first time.333309:39:003333Smith, Warwick, MPMr WARWICK SMITHGJ4BassLPMinister for Family Services10—I move:That the bill be now read a second time.The government recognises the importance of an active, innovative and vibrant Australian film industry—both on cultural and economic grounds. The portrayal of uniquely Australian perspectives and stories is important to us as a nation. Australians are proud of the high standard and successes of our film industry, and there is increasing interest in contributing to that success through avenues such as investment. We also recognise that the production of film is a high risk business, and that it is necessary to provide incentives for the private sector to invest in the film industry. Division 10BA of the Income Tax Assessment Act was introduced in 1981 to encourage a broader base of private investment for Australian films. Whilst 10BA has been important in attracting private investment into the industry, there are flaws with the system. A number of films were never released while others appear to have inflated budgets.As part of his wide-ranging review of Commonwealth assistance to the film industry, Mr David Gonski, a leading corporate lawyer in Australia, recommended that the current 10BA and 10B taxation concessions be replaced by the introduction of a Film Licensed Investment Company tax concession. The government consulted widely on the detail of Mr Gonski's proposal. We listened to industry concerns about replacing 10BA and 10B with a completely new and untested mechanism. As a result of these concerns we decided not to replace 10BA until the FLIC scheme had been properly trialled. The government will retain 10B. The FLIC scheme will operate alongside the current 10BA concession for two years from the 1998-1999 financial year.The adaptation of Mr Gonski's FLIC model signals an innovative and exciting new approach to government support to the film industry in Australia. The FLIC scheme provides an opportunity for the Australian film industry and the investment sector to work together in attracting more effective and wide-ranging private investment into the development and production of qualifying Australian films. It is envisaged that the FLIC scheme will be able to tap into a part of the investment market which has shown interest in the past in investing in the film industry. As the film industry matures and develops, the government believes that sophisticated investors will be attracted to investing in a slate of film and television productions across which their risk can be spread.This bill enables the introduction of the Film Licensed Investment Company pilot scheme. Under the scheme up to $40 million worth of concessional capital over the two-year period will be allowed to be raised for investment into qualifying Australian film and television product. A Film Licensed Investment Company will be a commercially driven company that will invest in a slate of eligible film and television product. Companies will be selected through a competitive application process. Shareholders will be eligible for an upfront tax deduction of 100 per cent on their investment into the company.While the licence period for raising concessional capital will apply for just two years, the FLIC will have up to three years to invest the capital and up to four years to complete production. The FLIC will be able to start raising non-concessional capital at the end of the two-year licence period.This represents a major commitment of Commonwealth funding to the film industry. The cost to government is estimated to be up to $20 million over the two-year pilot period. The FLIC scheme will deliver support to the industry that is transparent and accountable, and afford investors an alternative avenue for investment in film. This introduces a level of contestability between current funding sources through the provision of an alternative source of funds from that currently available from the Film Finance Corporation and that which can be raised under division 10BA. The FLIC scheme will support and promote the ongoing development of the Australian film industry by facilitating the establishment of a new Australian owned and controlled company that will raise capital primarily from Austral ian investors for investment in qualifying Australian film.The FLIC does not replace any existing funding for the industry, rather it will complement those programs. The government recognises the vulnerability of the industry, especially for some of the most culturally sensitive genres, and need for certainty for investors and producers alike. Forward funding for the Australian Film Commission and the Australian Film Finance Corporation was confirmed in the 1997-98 budget, and the continuation of film agencies was confirmed in the government's response to Mr Gonski's report in November 1997. I present the explanatory memorandum, which covers this bill and the next. I have pleasure in commending the bill to the House.Debate (on motion by Mr O'Connor) adjourned.Bills3334r5263334Bill presented by Mr Warwick Smith, and read a first time.333409:44:003334Smith, Warwick, MPMr WARWICK SMITHGJ4BassLPMinister for Family Services10—I move:That the bill be now read a second time.The Taxation Laws Amendment (Film Licensed Investment Company) Bill 1998 is a companion to the Film Licensed Investment Company Bill 1998. The bill authorises a deduction for money paid during the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 income years to subscribe for shares in a Film Licensed Investment Company, FLIC. The deduction is not allowable until the shares have been fully paid and issued to the shareholder.The legislative package comprising the two bills is intended as a pilot measure, to provide assistance to the Australian film production industry in a way that complements the existing tax concession in division 10BA of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936. FLIC shareholders will be able to effectively spread their investment across a range of films, whereas division 10BA applies to investments in individual films. Full details of the measures in the bill are contained in the explanatory memorandum circulated to honourable members. I commend the bill to the House.Debate (on motion by Mr O'Connor) adjourned.Business3334Motion (by Ms Worth)—by leave—agreed to:That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent Notices 23, 24 and 28, Private Members Business, being called on forthwith.Private Members' Business33343334333409:47:003334Campbell, Graeme, MPMr CAMPBELLCF4KalgoorlieIND00—I move:That the Therapeutic Goods Regulations (Amendment), as contained in Statutory Rules 1997, Nos. 400 and 401, made under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, be disallowed.In moving this motion for disallowance I am taking advantage of one of the few options that Independents have in this House to bring attention to the situation that exists in Australia, where I believe Australia's national interests are simply not recognised by the government. If this section is not passed, control of advertising would become the province of the TGA, the Therapeutic Goods Administration. While I do not think this is good, I think it might bring things to a climax because I think their heavy-handed style would have to be countered, particularly in view of the fact that we now operate in this free trade zone with New Zealand. If it is passed, however, the control of advertising will rest with the collegiate of the Proprietary Medicines Association and the Nutritious Foods Association, which would probably be a better outcome.Under the present situation, I find that there is an unnecessary heavy hand placed on the advertising and promotion of alternative medicines. This is another example of the nanny state. I think people overwhelmingly should have the right and have the ability to discern for themselves whether alternative medicines are working for them or not. In this regard I do not discount the placebo effect. If people think a thing is working for them then it is to all intents and purposes doing just that. Under the present situation herbs such as feverfew cannot be advertised as helping to prevent migraines but they can be advertised as helping to reduce the pain of migraines. It is quite clear they have no effect whatsoever in reducing the pain of migraine, but for many people I think they do help to stop the onset of migraine. It seems to me absolutely ludicrous that the company is not allowed to advertise what they believe the real purpose of this herb is. As a herb I think it has few side effects, unlike many other drugs in this category, and should be free from these sorts of restraints.We also have the situation that in New Zealand, which has a very liberal view of those matters, manufacturers of proprietary medicines and these sorts of herbal remedies do not have to meet the conditions that are met in Australia, yet they are free to sell in Australia, which gives them a big advantage over Australia manufacturers. This is just another example of the much lauded and illusionary level playing field.I am taking this opportunity of opposing this to highlight what I see as the unnecessary bureaucratic interference in these drugs. Let us look at vitamins. You cannot advertise vitamins unless you say on the label that they will have no effect unless you have a vitamin deficiency in the diet. There is substantial evidence to say that this is not true. There is substantial evidence that says that large doses of vitamin C are very efficacious in preventing the onset of quite a lot of human problems, including the common cold. There is evidence that vitamin E has therapeutic effects which go beyond merely having adequate amounts in the diet. So here we have a situation where the advertising is in fact advertising an untruth by government mandate.I believe we should be taking a much more liberal view of this situation and I believe the Australian public is well able to discern. They are not for long going to buy snake oil, and in fact there are already in place under other acts remedies for people who advertise things that do not do what they claim. I think it is just unnecessary to have this very expensive interface of the Therapeutic Goods Administration in there impacting heavily on the costs. I know that one manufacturer of herbal remedies said that their costs had risen astronomically, from something like $2,000 a year to $250,000 a year in compliance costs. For others I believe it is even more severe.We have a crisis in medicine where people are unable to get into hospitals for elective surgery in many areas and where there is a continual blow-out in medical costs. If people are convinced and satisfied that this is an alternate to the expensive medical system, then I believe it ought to be encouraged. The fact is that we do everything we can to impede this business, and one has to ask why this is done. Is it done at the behest of the medical profession? Certainly a dinosaur like the AMA may be opposing it, but there are many doctors I know who simply say, `If it works, use it.' Is it zealous pharmacists? I do not think so, because pharmacists are in fact one of the big outlets for this sort of medicine. It is hard to say exactly why we are putting all this impediment in the way of these types of remedies.I had my attention drawn to one proprietary brand, the name of which I have forgotten for the moment. It is a very effective laxative. This has now been put under very strict control, and it is going to become a doctor's only prescription. On two occasions it was prescribed by doctors to very elderly people who died as a result of it. To administer extreme laxatives—it is a very effective laxative—to 90-year-olds does seem to me to be rather foolish. But the effects of this particular herb were known and it was administered by registered medical practitioners, and one has to question why we should have what I consider to be this overreaction—putting this on a list where it can be prescribed only by medical practitioners. After all, there are many people killed in the everyday practice of medicine, and these sorts of accidents do happen. As I say, the effects were known. They were clearly written on the label. It is probably a fact that it should not have been prescribed in the first place under those circumstances.I know that we are in a sense tilting at windmills—that I am not going to be able to stop this regulation. It may, in the short term, be a good thing that the power to control advertising goes to the collegiate, who are certainly more sympathetic to the industry than the Therapeutic Goods Administration, but I do believe that we as a nation have to have a very close look at what I consider the nanny state interference of decisions that should be made in the normal course of events by ordinary people.Given that the side effects of most of these preparations are far fewer than prescriptions used in the alternative, I would suggest that it would make for a safer, healthier society if their use was encouraged. I might add that many of these things which we are deeming to be drugs should more properly be looked at as nutritious foods and treated under totally different legislation. I believe that we have a high standard in the preparation of our nutritious foods and herbal remedies in Australia. There is potentially a very large overseas market, and I believe it is not going to develop under the draconian hand and pressure that is put on it by legislation which gives so much power to the Therapeutic Goods Administration.All I ask is that this parliament look very closely at legislation that comes before it, that it not simply rubber-stamp the will of executive government—and this happens in all the major parties—and that members actually look at the consequences of their actions and give more care to how they vote on these matters. It is a very simple proposition, and I do not intend to take the 20 minutes allotted to me. I have had a lot of correspondence on this issue. It is a concern to a lot of people, and I believe that it should have had a lot more consideration in the parliament than it was originally given.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Is the motion seconded?09:59:003336Bradford, John, MPMr BRADFORDFT4McPhersonIND10—I second the motion. It is not entirely clear to me exactly what is occurring here, but I understood that this matter was coming back to the House of Representatives as a result of the decision which was taken in the Senate to disallow these regulations. If that is the case, I am a bit surprised that the opposition is now going to vote with the government on this particular issue. In the position in which I now find myself in this place, I am on a very steep learning curve as to how to deal with these matters. I am seconding the motion of the member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell) simply because I believe he is right. That may be an unusual way to operate in this place; I have lived with a system where one essentially does—pretty much as the member for Kalgoorlie suggests—what one is told to do in the situation. But if I am correct, and I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Family Services (Ms Worth) will take the opportunity to correct me if I am not, this deals essentially with the regulations in respect of the issue of `drug free'.I have just been reminded that I am in the wrong seat. All of this is new to me. That is probably why you failed to recognise me properly, Mr Speaker.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I know the honourable member for McPherson's heart is in the right place, even though his body may not be.FT4Bradford, John, MPMr BRADFORD—This is only my second day in my new seat here and, as I said, I am on a very steep learning curve. I hope the parliamentary secretary will correct me if I am wrong but I understand—and with the resources available to me it is hard to get up to speed on these things—that this deals with the issue coming back from the Senate; that is, the Senate's determination to oppose these particular regulations.Be that as it may, I happen to believe very strongly that the member for Kalgoorlie is absolutely right in everything that he says. I do not find it easy to stand in this place and agree with him because for the almost nine years I have been here—and he has been here throughout that time—we probably have not agreed on anything at all. But it does underline for me the importance of the new role I have taken on in this place, which is that one actually listens to what other members say and attempts to evaluate what they say to take some sort of decent and intellectually honest approach to what they have said.I believe that, in this particular area, the government has got it wrong. Like the member for Kalgoorlie, I am very suspicious of why they are going down this track. I notice in the latest budget there is mention of the government's commitment to what it calls preventative health. One would have thought that that would be consistently reflected in their approach to these sorts of issues, but it is not.All of the input that I have had in this particular area makes me wonder about what is actually going on. I am not much into conspiracy theories. Although in the time that I have been a member of this place I suppose I have heard them all, I generally manage to discount them very heavily. But in this particular area there is evidence that there is some sort of a conspiracy here against the, broadly speaking, alternative professions and against the interests of people who want to choose what is best for their own health care.If we are really committed to preventative medicine then we ought to take seriously the alternative options that are available to people outside of traditional or, more correctly, modern medical care and access to drugs. My experience in this area leads me to believe very strongly that these alternatives are good for people. More importantly, speaking as an ex-Liberal, people ought to be able to make choices about access to those forms of care rather than have the heavy hand of government come down on them and tell them that they simply cannot make those choices or, worse, tell them that they need the government to tell them what is good for them and to make it difficult for them to make those choices.In the end it is all about getting information about the availability of these treatments and remedies. Yes, there is a public interest involved and that, of course, is the crux of the issue. I assume that is what leads to this particular debate this morning. People, up to a point, need to be protected and there needs to be in place a reasonable regime to ensure that the information they are given is correct and that they are not given misleading infor mation about medicines, such as herbal, homoeopathic, and vitamin and mineral preparations, which may mislead them or give them advice which may ultimately be contrary to their best health interests.I wonder what is going on here. I have had a lot of input into this particular subject, obviously like the member for Kalgoorlie has and I assume like a lot of other members of this place have. But, as with a lot of these issues that come up, often members, because they are so busy with a lot of other things which ironically turn out to be fairly peripheral when you are not having to deal with them all the time, do not give them adequate attention.I need to say—because I am sure the parliamentary secretary will raise it—that I have had some input from Mr Joshua Shaw, who runs a company called Bionic Products and who happens to be a constituent of mine. Frankly, I have not taken a great deal of notice of Mr Shaw. I think he has been responsible for a lot of misinformation in this particular area. I have told him so. I have known him for many years and I am aware of his product. I do not want to take advantage of the privilege of this place by saying anything negative about his product. There may be, as the member for Kalgoorlie said, a placebo effect there but other documentary evidence I have seen shown shows that his product does have some beneficial effects for some people with some conditions. So I do not make a judgment particularly about that but I do want to place on the record, in case there should be any misapprehension, that I am not driven to speak in this particular instance on behalf of a constituent who has been very vocal but nevertheless has misrepresented the situation to a very large extent. That, of course, has quite correctly been taken to task by a number of people in the various associations that represent the manufacturers of vitamins and some of these other products.Having said that, I do share the member for Kalgoorlie's concern about who is actually making these decisions. Unfortunately I will not have the opportunity to hear from the parliamentary secretary until after I have spoken but I hope that she will make it clear what the government's ultimate concern is about the use of the words `drug free' because it seems to me that the inherent benefit of these particular remedies is that they can claim to be drug free.I believe they ought to be able to make that claim because there is a distinction between what is a drug and what is not a drug. I do not think it is fair to attempt to enforce regulations which have the intention of preventing people claiming their product is drug free. I do not think it is fair and I do think that it is correct for that sort of regime to be forced on people.I have got a healthy scepticism about the major drug companies in this country. I realise they are substantial businesses, they are substantial employers. They also have substantial clout—and here I am talking about political clout—and influence and of course everything that goes with those things. They have a lot of money behind them. They have a vested interest in maintaining their dominance of a very big market. I do not have any particular philosophical problems with people in free enterprise doing whatever they can to enhance the worth of their products or promote their products, but in this particular case they enjoy a very privileged position because to a very large extent by virtue of a lot of regulations and laws their regime is protected and entrenched.For many years I have observed the valiant effort made by these so-called drug companies to prevent the incursion of all the alternatives into that particular marketplace. They have at times done it dishonestly, I suppose it would be fair to say, but they have certainly fought a major battle to prevent people being attracted to alternative treatments or non-drug treatments such as vitamins and a whole range of mineral-type remedies.I said I am sceptical—I think it is a healthy scepticism. But I am particularly sceptical—I think the member for Kalgoorlie alluded to this, and again the parliamentary secretary may want to correct me on this, if I am wrong—about the fact that they have the numbers, as it were, for the regulatory regime that is in place. There is some concern within the alternative industry that having to deal with a regime or an authority that is stacked against them is not exactly playing on an even playing field.The other side of the whole issue is the availability of non-traditional forms of treatment. It is amazing when we look back over the years as history has unfolded how things have changed. At one stage, for instance, the chiropractor was regarded by the traditional medical profession as being something of a quack. That has of course changed dramatically in recent years. Now the average general practitioner is not unhappy in a lot of cases about referring a particular patient to a chiropractor who has specialised training in a particular type of care. The same might be said of acupuncture. I can remember that it was not very long ago when acupuncture was regarded as being a fairly extreme form of treatment. Now it is almost considered to be mainstream. In fact, not only do medical practitioners refer people for that sort of treatment in a lot of cases but also they are trained to be able to administer that sort of treatment.I second the motion by the member for Kalgoorlie because I think he is simply right about this. I do not want to reflect adversely on the parliamentary secretary, but I think that this debate has been dominated by the powers that be: the drug companies which have a huge vested interest in preventing an incursion into their market by the manufacturers of vitamins and mineral therapies, and to some extent the medical profession.Again, I do not want to reflect on the medical profession because I think they have got a number of genuine grievances against the government at the moment, and I share most of their concerns about the way the government has handled health. In fact, despite the latest budget I still see health as being one of the major Achilles heels of this particular government. However, let us face it: the doctors, the medical profession, are a very powerful and influential lobby understandably and, up to a point, quite correctly so. But when the medical profession and the drug companies combine to look after their own interests—legitimate up to a point as those interests may be—one must in the end be suspicious about who has won the day as far as the political debate in this particular area is concerned. I wonder.I have had letters from people about this. Even while I was a member of the government I was honest enough to say to them, `This doesn't all add up. There's something missing here, and one finds it very difficult to get to the bottom of what it actually is.' I do not know whether the opposition has sorted itself out on this issue yet. My understanding may be wrong about what the opposition actually joined in opposing in the Senate. If my understanding is different from what is happening here this morning, then I apologise for taking up the time of the House. But I want to support the member for Kalgoorlie in what he actually said. I am not entirely sure what he is trying to do, but I agree with what he had to say on this particular matter.10:14:003339Lee, Michael, MPMr LEEMG4DobellALP00—I will be very brief. The motion moved by the member for Kalgoorlie seeks disallowance of statutory rules Nos. 400 and 401 made under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989. The opposition initiated action in the Senate to disallow statutory rule No. 401. The motion was moved by Senator Forshaw, one of the Labor senators from New South Wales, and had the support of the Democrats, the Greens and Senator Harradine. It was one of the few occasions on which we actually had the numbers in the Senate to carry a positive motion. So, for the information of the member for McPherson (Mr Bradford), statutory rule No. 401 has been disallowed because of the Labor Party's initiative in the Senate. That effectively means that unless the minister takes another action some time in the future people are allowed to use the expression `drug free' on vitamins, herbal supplements and other substances.The Parliament Secretary to the Minister for Health and Family Services (Ms Worth) might like to dispute that—I welcome any advice she has to the contrary—but my understanding is that, because the motion on statutory rule No. 401 was carried, the government's initiatives which were gazetted just before Christmas are overturned. That means that statutory rule No. 400 is the only thing we are discussing this morning.When this came up in the Senate we made it clear that we had concerns about supporting a proposal to disallow statutory rule No. 400 because that would in effect mean that we had minimal regulation in this whole area. Unfortunately there are some people who do make unfounded claims about some of these non-drug supplements. We need to make sure that people do not claim that they can cure cancer or make people look handsome or beautiful.FT4BRADFORDMr Bradford—Or grow hair!MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—Or grow hair, as the member for McPherson interjects with a frown on his face. We believe that a fair position for the opposition to take is to initiate disallowing 401, which we did in the Senate, but we do not believe that it would be right to strike down 400. The reason we think 400 is needed is that, due to some changes initiated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, we do not have the process of the Advertising Standards Council looking at advertisements that are placed in the media.We do have some concerns about the fact that the government has increased the scope of regulation with 400, but if we voted to strike down 400 we would leave the community at risk of being misled by a very small proportion of people who are at the extreme edge of this industry who make unfounded claims. That is the reason the opposition will be voting against the motion of the honourable member for Kalgoorlie. We have succeeded in knocking over 401, but we do not support disallowing 400.10:17:003339Andren, Peter, MPMr ANDRENKL6CalareIND00—I will not take too much of the House's time, but I thought I had better put on the record the fact that I, like most members I gather in this place, have received numerous submissions from people on this matter. It is important to remember some comments made in this House in question time by the Minister for Health and Family Services (Dr Wooldridge) several months ago when fiercely defending—and I agree with him—generic drugs that have been put in place, particularly as lower cost drugs available to pensioners, so that the cost on the public purse of providing drugs for the community can be reduced. But, in defending that, he made reference, if I remember correctly, to the lobbying that goes on—I think it was on the golf course—between the medical profession and drug company executives. That should be kept in mind when we are looking at this issue.As this problem erupted, with letters coming in—they were form letters too, I must admit—from many of the people outraged at these changes, I, my wife and a friend and others were involved in not only investigating but seriously looking at the efficacy and the literature and the questioning that were going on in the medical profession both here and overseas not only about the treatment for women undergoing menopause, and all of the problems associated with that, but also about the rapid increase in the occurrence of breast cancer. Despite our best endeavours, it is a scourge that is biting deeper into the ranks of our women. The medical profession, particularly the established and traditional drug companies, do not appear to be able to come up with anything except a hormone replacement therapy which is being seriously questioned by experts in the field.If you listen carefully and read the literature, there is a lot being said about the counterproductive nature of hormone replacement treatment. There are some very sound reasons, I believe from what I have heard, for the use of naturally occurring progesterones and other products to balance the system at this time in a woman's life. They also offer a means by which the body's hormonal balance can be re-established without artificial upset. According to my reading, that in turn exacerbates the trend towards the emergence of breast cancer particularly and other diseases.I have grave doubts about the clout and the motives of the drug companies particularly, and the medical profession, although many parts of that profession are seriously looking at an alternative drug regime—for natural therapies and treatments that are available. I was discussing this with one of my friends at Christmas last year. With the onset of menopause an absolutely suicidal period emerged in her life. It was quite a fluke that she came across this alternative option. We all know about the products that are on sale. Commercially they are being picked up more and more. You only have to look at the racks of the supermarket shelves: commercial producers have seen the value and the demand out there for soya products, one source of alternative and naturally occurring products that the body requires to establish equilibrium.There are real difficulties out there about the experimental nature of the drugs on offer. The member for McPherson (Mr Bradford) and the member for Kalgoorlie have said that the drug companies and the medical profession generally are in a state of constant experimentation, and women particularly do not want to be experimented with. There are many women out there who are wise and well read. They are following the debate on this issue and they know that there are real prospects for the long-term re-establishment of a healthier equilibrium in their bodies through some of these products. If there is any means to try to exclude the advertising of such products—without any outrageous claims of cure; nobody can claim that and we are not arguing that—or any means devised to prevent those products from being presented as efficiently, as widely and as honestly as possible to the general public, I will oppose them to my last breath.I have not seen enough in this revision of the code. From what I understand, I think the Labor Party is talking about one section only of this advertising code. I think they should rethink it and support the member for Kalgoorlie's disallowance motion as well to ensure that this whole area is looked at far more closely before we accede to what I believe are the demands of the vested interests and the drug companies.10:23:003340Worth, Trish, MPMs WORTH8V5AdelaideLP10—While I am disappointed that the member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell) has chosen to move a disallowance motion against two important amendments to the therapeutic goods regulations, this disallowance debate does provide me with an opportunity to explain the importance of protecting public health and safety and ensuring that the public is protected from false, misleading and unsafe advertising of therapeutic goods.The member for Calare (Mr Andren) has raised some important issues. Should he not be convinced at the end of what I have to say this morning, then I am happy to have the department provide him with a briefing because hormone replacement therapy is not part of anything to do with this; it is all about public health and safety. I share his concerns about public health and safety and, on the record, offer to provide him—or for that matter any other Independent—with a briefing.The member for Dobell (Mr Lee) identified correctly that these issues have been canvassed in the Senate. I am happy to put the following issues on the record for the benefit of this House. The member for Dobell mentioned regulation 401 and said that it would now be okay, given the ALP's stand on this, for companies to describe and advertise their products as `drug free'. It might be appropriate for me to actually warn that they could try to describe their product as drug free but they would end up then in legal argument, because all that regulation 401 was trying to do was to clarify Labor's legislation on this. It is the previous Labor government's legislation that in fact prohibits describing drugs as `drug free'. Because there had been legal argument about that, the government sought to clarify that situation and assist all parties involved. That is just a matter of clarification.As has been said, the Senate disallowed statutory rule No. 401 on 31 March 1998. This disallowance was an example of the political point scoring that occurred despite wide-ranging support for this regulatory change by consumers, public health experts, complementary medicine practitioners and some sectors of industry.Prior to the disallowance of statutory rule No. 401 and in response to community confusion, which I can see has been carried further here today, about the implications of this amendment, the government established a special committee to examine the use of the term `drug free'. The committee is made up of all key stakeholders on this issue. For the record, the members of this committee are: Professor Dave Roberts, Chair of the Complementary Medicines Evaluation Committee and Professor of Nutrition; Ms Juliet Seifert, Chair of the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council; Ms Val Johanson, Executive Director of the NFAA; Professor Lloyd Sansom, Chair of the Australian Pharmaceutical Advisory Council and Professor of Pharmacology; Mr Matt O'Neil, Australian Consumers Association; Ms Janne Graham, Consumers Health Forum; Dr Giselle Cooke, Australian Comprehensive Medicines Association/Natural Herbalists Association of Australia; Dr Robert Grace, President, Australian Committee of Natural Therapies; Dr Sue Wicker, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners; Ms Bronwyn Capanna, Proprietary Medicines Association of Australia; and Mr Kerry Bone, Chief Executive Officer, MediHerb Pty Ltd.While there are some who have tried to imply that this committee is biased and is simply a TGA committee looking at the TGA, when you consider the names and qualifications of members of the committee, it is obvious that these criticisms arise out of ignorance, deliberate attempts at political point scoring or even attempts by a small section of industry to seek political, and therefore commercial, advantage from these claims. The committee reported to me last Friday, 8 May 1998, and I will be tabling the report together with the government's response. I take this opportunity to thank the committee in examining the use of the term `drug free' for their detailed consideration of this issue.To return now to what we are really on about today, despite the confusion of the member for McPherson (Mr Bradford) of the issue, most people would agree that we need controls to ensure that the public are protected from false, misleading and unsafe advertising. Statutory rule No. 400—which is the important part of today's debate because No. 401 has already been disallowed in the Senate—provides for the proprietary and complementary medicines industries to approve advertising for their products in the mainstream print media and provides the mechanism by which the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code may be reviewed and updated to reflect the views of health professionals, industry, advertisers and the community. I state again that this is the proprietary and complementary medicines industries, not the TGA, as has been claimed here today.These are important changes, requested by industry, which deliver consistent application of the advertising code across the industry. Unfortunately, there has been much misinformation about these changes distributed to the public over the past few months. This has caused unnecessary confusion in the community about the access to information about complementary medicines and I suspect that the disallowance motion moved by the member for Kalgoorlie is the result of his and the member for McPherson's confusion about changes to these regulations.In setting the record straight on these amendments and highlighting the many positive outcomes of these amendments, it would be useful to provide the House with a short history of the advertising code. Guidelines to control advertising of therapeutic goods in Australia have been around since 1972. Since then, advertising controls have been endorsed and administered jointly by industry and government. This code prohibits advertising of therapeutic goods for serious medical conditions which require advice and/or monitoring from health professionals. Examples of that are asthma, heart conditions or depression. It allows advertising of therapeutic goods for the treatment of minor conditions which generally do not require consultation with a health professional. It does not apply to advertisements in publications solely for health professionals. It is reviewed regularly to keep it up to date with community expectations and advances in medical and scientific technology.The Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code has been developed by the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council, comprising representatives from consumer groups, industry, health care professionals and government. One representative only from the following organisations are members of this council, which I will read for the benefit of those who have been confused over this and assume that it is the TGA: the Nutritional Foods Association of Australia, the Proprietary Medicines Association of Australia, the Australian Direct Marketing Association, the Direct Sellers Association of Australia, the Australian Association of National Advertisers, the Advertising Federation of Australia, the Australian Consumers Association, the Consumers Health Forum, the Australian Traditional Medicines Society, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia or Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Therapeutic Goods Administration.As with the make-up of the drug-free committee, there have been criticisms that this council is biased against the complementary medicines industry. Concerns have also been raised that it is the government that is determining what can and cannot be advertised to consumers about therapeutic goods. Both of these criticisms are unfounded. The recommendations about what should or should not be advertised are decided by the Advertising Code Council, which is broadly based and only provides the government through the TGA with one vote out of 12.Until the end of 1996, the Media Council of Australia provided the resources for these arrangements. They also supported the system of pre-clearance of print advertisements for products, including therapeutic goods, by the Australian Print Bureau. In September of 1996 the Media Council advised that they would be disbanding the system and structure of co-regulation of advertising. An alternative system, therefore, had to be established for the pre-clearance of print advertisements and for the maintenance and update of the therapeutic goods advertising code. The government made the decision that the industry organisations, the PMAA and the NFAA, should take over responsibility for the pre-clearance of the print advertisements, in line with the effective co-regulation of advertising in the broadcast media.The industry organisations, with the support of the TGA, also submitted proposals to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for authorisation to administer the code, and to establish the new code council and appropriate complaint and appeal handling mechanisms. Such authorisation was granted subject to any application for review. Such an application for review was made, and during the subsequent hearings on the authorisation the Australian Competition Tribunal suggested that the industry bodies—I stress this—would have difficulty enforcing the guidelines for advertising unless the sanctions were underpinned by legislation.So in October 1997 the Nutritional Food Association of Australia and the Proprietary Medicines Association of Australia asked the government to formalise the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code through Commonwealth regulation—the government responding to a request from industry. Those regulations were gazetted in December of last year and are being considered today. They provide for the establishment of a new advertising code council and an associated complaints resolution panel and for regulatory support for industry pre-clearance of print advertisement.So what we have here are regulatory exchanges which are designed to support a system of advertising control which is based on the system that has worked well for industry, government and advertisers since the early 1970s. I can assure the parliament and those members who have been confused about this that the new regulation does not change the existing controls on advertising, does not alter the manner in which consumers or health professionals can obtain therapeutic goods, does not change the existing powers to stop breaches of the advertising code, does not change the right to review decisions through the minister and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, does not allow drug companies to exert major control over the advertising code, does not propose a new advertising code, does allow the proprietary and complementary medicines industries to make decisions about advertising of their own products and does allow consumers, industry and health professionals to have a say in the review and updating of the advertising code.I could go on quoting letters from the industry bodies to support what I have said here today, but I think the time of the House has been overtaken by the number of speakers on this matter. So I move:That the question be now put.Question resolved in the affirmative.Original question resolved in the negative.3343334310:37:003343Campbell, Graeme, MPMr CAMPBELLCF4KalgoorlieIND00—I move:That the Carrier Licence Conditions (Optus Mobile Pty Ltd) Declaration 1997 (Amendment No. 1 of 1997), made under subsection 63(5) of the Telecommunications Act 1997, be disallowed.This is a very serious disallowance motion. I hope that members on the government side representing rural electorates and members of the supine National Party take a real interest in it because it clearly affects their constituencies. I am taking this step basically to highlight the very foolish move the government is taking in abandoning the AMPS system.I do not see why any reasonable person would be handing to large companies the beneficial ability that they do not have to Australianise, that they can maintain their national shareholding, without some recompense. They agreed to that in the first place. They readily agreed that they would sell down and increase Australian shareholding. Now we are unilaterally saying to them, `No, you don't have to do this.' It is obviously a very big advantage for them. At the same time, if the government comes to its senses, we may be in the position of having to litigate over compensation for the non-removal of the AMPS system.There is no doubt whatsoever that the most cost-effective way of delivering telecommunications services to isolated areas is through the analog system. There is absolutely no technical argument about that whatsoever. There is some fraudulent argument put forward and run by the National Party that it could be done through low orbiting satellites, but it is simply not true. Any technical analysis will demonstrate that. Quite clearly, this government is endorsing a decision taken by the previous Labor government. When the Labor government made that decision in 1991, they were acting on the advice of all the bureaucrats—many Eurocentric bureaucrats—who were telling them this was the way to go. We now know that this is not the best system for Australia's needs.It is interesting to note that Vodafone, which operates both GSM and analog systems in Europe, is not phasing out its analog system. I am told that its analog system is growing. That is because analog is a very useful medium for the transmission of communications. If we allow the government to do this, it will clearly not be in the interests of a great majority of Australian people in outlying areas. It will not affect the cities much. There is no doubt about that. But I have to reiterate in this House that there is not a city in this nation that lives on its intrinsic wealth. They all live on the wealth of the hinterland. If you go on doing these things which are not in the interests of the hinterland, eventually you will affect the welfare of the whole country. A lot of people in the cities are so blind that they do not see this. Quite clearly, with the government benches largely filled with people from Sydney and Melbourne, they are not aware of it either. It has been a long time since we could rely on the National Party to look after the interests of country people. So supine are they that they may just as well, for all intents and purposes, become an extension of the Liberal Party.This is a very important issue. It goes to the heart of commonsense. When you are in a situation where you may have to litigate, you do not give away to your opponent these enormous free kicks. It is just plain silly. There is no hurry to do this. There is absolutely no hurry to force this legislation through the parliament. It could easily wait. It would be much better to wait until the government was in a position to know more clearly what it was doing. While the government will get up in this House and say, `No, we are committed,' the facts are against them and the facts are rising daily. The evidence is accumulating daily that the analog system is a very valuable asset that should not be so carelessly discarded by this government. It is an asset of the people of Australia. I do not think the government should, with such caprice, abandon it, particularly when they are on such poor technical grounds.All we are saying is let us put aside this regulation. Let us not give this free kick to Vodafone and to Optus. Let us wait and see how the analog system develops. We will be talking very shortly on another amendment, which is the sale of the 800 megahertz and the 1.8 gigahertz bands. A lot of what we have to say is relevant to both issues. But the point is that it is simply a commonsense negotiating point. We are likely to be locked into litigation. Bear in mind that, had this government acted promptly before the roll-out started, the compensation would have been minimal. By sitting on their hands and doing nothing, they have now ensured that compensation will be considerable, but in any case it will be reduced somewhat when we compensate for allowing them not to Australianise. I do not think anyone could seriously argue otherwise.Why are we hurrying? What possible reason is there for rushing in and doing this? Why can it not sit there for a while longer and wait to see what develops? The government has talked about its desire to bring competition to telecommunications. The Labor Party started this rot, and it talked with great pride about how telecommunications prices have come down. They did not come down because the Labor Party gave a large section of the assets of the Australian people to a foreign company. They started to come down because we were on the cusp of technological change. That was what brought down the cost of communications. You do not reduce costs in communications by some of the silly things that have happened under free enterprise—rolling out across Australia enormous overcapacity in optic fibre lines. When one line has got all the capacity, we have two across the nation. In fact, in many cases we have more than that because, in Telstra's case, with its very large obligations, planning for a break in a cable is very good. But we have Optus doing the same thing. That is an enormous cost—the cost on the current account—and a cost which is borne by consumers.The other point is this: this government is not allowing competition. The way to allow competition is to unlock the technology, just as we saw in Australia when there were changes to our communications technology with the resultant massive drop in those costs. But this government has the dead hand of officialdom on the technology. It is saying, `In Australia we must only have GSM.' It is quite clear that the government needs to wipe out the people's asset, the analog system, because GSM looks as though it will not be able to compete with it. Why won't GSM be able to compete with the analog system? Because the analog system works very well, and people are happy with it.If the government were simply to take its hands off the technology and say that people could enter and use whatever technology they liked, you could get some real competition in the system. On that basis, Australia would be likely to be served by the best technology. The outcome would be that the best technology would become the most important technology, the major technology.That is not to say that there would not be a place for GSM. I guess that GSM is so well established now in our cities that it will probably survive there. We have seen the advent of low orbiting satellites, such as the Iridium satellite. I know that Iridium does have a protocol which enables communication between GSM, the satellite, the CDMA and the AMPS system. But it is going to be at a cost to country people which is significant. Using that protocol will cost about $1.50 a minute. If the National Party thinks it is all right for people in rural and isolated areas to pay those sorts of prices for services which can be obtained much more cheaply by some other mechanism, then I guess that is a decision it makes, but I am sure that it is a decision that will not be endorsed by people in remote and isolated areas.With the sell-off of Telstra, we were told that a fund would be put up which would be made available for communications in isolated areas. In my own electorate, we have seen what has happened already. A group of shires got together—Laverton, Leonora, Meekatharra, Wiluna—wanting to put in a system, some $3 million. This was knocked back by the government appointed committee, which said that it was a commercial decision. It is quite clear that it will never be done commercially.It is not a commercial proposition, but it could have been achieved under the telecommunications program which flowed from the sale of Telstra. However, it has been knocked back, and I see that the government's decision to knock it back was welcomed by ATUG. What in heaven's name is ATUG? It represents the large city users of telecommunications. They are, in the main, private companies—the Coles, the Woolworths and the other giant companies in this country. They have no interest in rural Australia, no interest in the welfare or the wellbeing of people in remote areas. I think, in the future, for their own public relations purposes, they would be better off keeping their noses out of this issue.But on this point alone we have seen how little real regard there is for transmission of telecommunications to country areas. Anyway, if the government opts out, it is still possible for those councils to get together and put their own system in, but they can do this only on an analog basis. That is the only way they can get coverage at a price affordable by local government. But, of course, taking into account these carrier licence conditions, they are to be locked out of this.We will be talking in greater depth on the shortcomings of low orbiting satellites in the next disallowance motion. But, in the meantime, I call upon members of the Liberal Party and the supine members of the National Party to actually give this matter real consideration and to vote in the real interests of their constituencies.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)—Is the motion seconded?10:49:003345Andren, Peter, MPMr ANDRENKL6CalareIND00—I have pleasure in seconding the motion moved by the member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell). Again, I will not take up too much time. I just want to endorse the comments made by the member for Kalgoorlie and add to the record the overwhelming response that I have received from regional residents and subscribers since we debated the disallowance motion back on 1 April, I think it was, in regard to Vodafone.There is no doubt that these carrier licence conditions we are debating are designed to help digital providers at the expense of the bush. Since the last debate in this chamber on Vodafone—which, from memory, was pretty vigorous and one which this parliament should have far more of rather than sending such regulations through without debate—the Association for the Protection of Users of Mobile Phones has done a quite comprehensive survey in the central and south-west of New South Wales. As is pointed out in that survey, the major highways have good coverage from all four mobile networks. But off the main highway it is a completely different story.Where I say `good coverage' from the four networks, just bear with me because it does not mean they all provide a good coverage. Orange to Parkes via Molong off the highway and through to Manildra tells the real story of digital coverage. There is analog coverage for 78 per cent of the way compared with 43 per cent digital coverage. People may say, `Well, hey, that's not such a bad figure for digital; that will get better.' That digital figure shows what a hoax this whole argument about adequate digital coverage is, because you have to have three digital phones to get that sort of coverage. With just one phone, the best you can do is 26 per cent with Telstra Mobilenet, 22 per cent with Optus and 17 per cent with Vodafone. That, I suggest, enforces the argument that I have been putting up for quite a while that, while the digital providers can argue that they are meeting requirements to service 90 per cent of whatever it is of the population, it is the geography that is important in the regional areas. Nowhere approaching anything like an adequate coverage of the geography is provided by digital, yet it is by analog—and we are in the process of giving analog the flick.It is for that reason that I have been contacted by many—councils, farmers, business people. I have a file which is 2½ inches thick that I wish I could table, but I am certain that much of that information will be presented to the current inquiry. I hope that it is listened to carefully, because I do not want the final report to come out, as some suspect, acceding to the promises and wishes of the digital providers and disregarding the genuine concerns of those many, many councils and others I have encouraged and, I know, who will come from elsewhere through the nation to say, `We want analog retained.'To actually get the digital coverage shown in the maps that have been provided by the government authority you need three different digital phones—one for each network. That is absolutely crazy when you have an analog system that can do the job.I will reserve further comment for the next motion, but I want to point out that when the issue relating to Vodafone came up in this House the member for North Sydney (Mr Hockey), who later apologised and I acknowledge that, accused me of being nowhere near the place when this fundamental issue was debated. He said that what I was trying to do was to use:. . . the most deceitful and crass mechanisms to try to undermine the worth of a great company, a company—Vodafone—that is making a substantial contribution.It may be making a great contribution in the built-up areas where there is a quid to be made, but they are not interested in looking beyond those borders to provide worthwhile coverage to the regional and rural areas. Their substantial contribution at the moment is in the central west—17 per cent mobile coverage in those parts that were surveyed. For the record, on 13 February 1997 in completing my contribution to the debate on that very legislation I said:I would strongly urge the minister to open the way up now for analog services to remain in country areas. The mobile phone services have been a boon to farmers, allowing them to carry out business from the tractor seat. Digital services in country areas have proved to be inadequate . . . Areas like Rylstone-Kandos, already battling bank closures and depleted hospital services, still—that was in February last year but it applies still today—cannot get a word from Telstra on any sort of mobile service. That sets that record straight. I reserve my further comments for the next motion.10:55:003347Smith, Warwick, MPMr WARWICK SMITHGJ4BassLPMinister for Family Services10—I thank the member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell) and the member for Calare (Mr Andren) for their comments. The debate is about the Carrier Licence Conditions (Optus Mobile Pty Ltd) Declaration 1997 (Amendment No. 1 of 1997). A motion for disallowance of that has been moved by the member for Kalgoorlie and seconded by the member for Calare. The government will not support their proposal.As the member for Calare has just mentioned, there was an extensive debate about this matter on Wednesday, 1 April and I do not want to delay the House in traversing ground I covered in summing up that debate because this motion is a companion motion to that matter. Suffice it to say today that this motion relates particularly to Optus and the corresponding declaration for Optus Networks. It removes from those carriers the licence conditions which required each to ensure that Optus Communications, as the parent company, comply with its articles of association that were in force on 1 July 1997 dealing with foreign ownership matters. It was specified in the licence condition that any amendment to those provisions be approved by the Treasurer. The Treasurer (Mr Costello) has made determinations about those matters. I did canvass a lot of this material in the 1 April debate. But, as it relates to Optus, the Treasurer approved in August 1997 that Cable and Wireless were to acquire 24.5 per cent of Bell South's shareholding in Optus and subsequently could take up the options that would give it majority ownership of that company, and a further proposal to remove from Optus Communications articles of association the requirement for the Treasurer to approve changes to the articles dealing with foreign ownership and control.Colleagues will recall that on the occasion of 1 April the debate was about Vodafone when I indicated that the government strongly supported the role that Vodafone is playing in developing its mobile telephony through the utilisation of GSM technology. We believe that the decision that we made and are mak ing today in rejecting this motion goes to the very heart of developing a strongly competitive telecommunications industry. The disallowance of the Optus Mobile declaration would be inconsistent with the principle of competitive neutrality to which all Australian governments have subscribed and it would in fact have no practical significance as the Treasurer has already made the decision.The fundamental issue that the two members are raising is in regard to the AMPS phase-out. Again, I did detail that at some length on 1 April. We as a government inherited the Labor Party's 1992 decision that locked us into the GSM standard for digital mobile telephony, which has already commenced, and a phase-out of the pre-existing AMPS network by 1 January 2000. We are concerned, and we have heard what the two members have said on previous occasions and what others have said, to ensure that mobile telephony users in regional Australia do not lose out as a result. A range of steps have been taken and members are aware of those. We have announced a package of measures designed to ensure that all areas of regional Australia which currently receive mobile coverage will continue to enjoy reasonably equivalent coverage after the year 2000.The Australian Communications Authority has been urged to make an urgent review and that is well under way. That will be reporting back by 30 June this year. It will examine each regional area which currently receives AMPS services to determine whether the phase-out of the AMPS service would leave that area without alternative mobile phone coverage. I am sure that the ACA will be looking at the two areas which the relevant members represent, being as they are significant rural and regional areas. We want to make sure that there is equality of service and breadth of coverage reasonably equivalent to that offered by AMPS. In those areas where the review finds that there would be no reasonable equivalent coverage following the AMPS phase-out, either the AMPS service will be retained by agreement with the carriers or the government will impose network roll-out obligations on Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to provide reasonably equivalent replacement coverage through other means such as GSM, although other means may be available. The government will also consider mandating roaming between parts of the GSM networks which are installed under the roll-out obligations, if it is technically feasible and commercially appropriate, in order to reduce the cost to carriers.We have also, of course, taken other steps to improve reporting on quality of service and coverage from the carriers and have developed and implemented a binding AMPS phase-out plan designed to enable AMPS customers to have a smooth transition to alternative services. Much of that, as I say, covers what I said at some length in my speech on 1 April. I might just mention one other point that was made, I think it was by the member for Kalgoorlie, about the Australian Telecommunications Users Group. I have to disagree with you, they have been champions of enhancing competition—Mr Campbell interjecting—GJ4Smith, Warwick, MPMr WARWICK SMITH—They have—and of recognising the needs of regional areas. If you have not had some discussions with them, I would certainly urge you to do that. For those reasons, we reject the disallowance motion that has been proposed.Question resolved in the negative.3348334811:01:003348Campbell, Graeme, MPMr CAMPBELLCF4KalgoorlieIND00—I move:That the Carrier Licence Conditions (Spectrum re-allocation) Declaration 1998, made under subsection 63(2) of the Telecommunications Act 1997, be disallowed.The proposed sale of the 800 megahertz and 1.8 gigahertz spectrums I think has to be rejected because these are assets and, once dissipated, the opportunity will not be there to maintain a vital service to Australia. The Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts (Senator Alston) recently talked about a reasonably equivalent service. For that reasonably equivalent service to be judged, they will rely on the advice of the various companies—and those companies simply will not tell the truth.I can tell you now that there is nothing like the coverage of the digital that the maps indicate. If you overlay those maps onto a map where you can get geographical points, you will find that they greatly exaggerate the capacity of the digital. They will show continuous and seamless connection when, in fact, it does not exist. We already know that the coverage of digital is going to be overstated.It is an irrefutable fact that, because of the nature of the signal, analog simply relies on line of sight. For instance, in coastal areas, coastal shipping can receive analog signals 100 kilometres out to sea. No matter how good your line of sight is, how high your aerial is, you cannot do that with GSM because the nature of the signal is that it will go for 30 kilometres, then it is simply attenuated beyond recognition. It is true that Telstra is working on technology to double this. That technology, I note, has been rejected by Optus which says it is not worth bothering with but, even if you double it, it still does not come anywhere near the coverage of analog. So why would you be looking for a much more expensive system that simply is not as good?This is important in coastal areas for shipping—and there are many ship operators, fishermen, who bought their GSM phones on the assurance from Telstra that they would be able to use them. They find, in fact, they cannot use them unless they are pretty close to the shore. That is just one example. That is also true of inland Australia. We have been told—in this House we heard it during the debate—by members of the National Party that Iridium was coming and orbiting satellites were going to make roaming world wide possible. That is true, the Iridium network will do that. The majority of the Iridium network is Indonesian owned—that may change, of course, with the Asian meltdown—and is providing a very good service.Their target customers are not the mass phone users, they are people who travel a lot. They are people who will be able to take their phone from one country to another and people in remote areas such as in mining and explor ation companies. That is the market they seek. If you look at the Iridium figures—and I suggest they are somewhat more reliable than those that have been proposed by the National Party—a hand-held Iridium phone will be about $5,000 and the cost for use will be about $3.50 a minute.Are those members of the Liberal Party who represent country areas and those in the National Party really suggesting that this is a viable alternative for people in country areas? I certainly do not think it is. Iridium does have a protocol that will allow roaming between GSM, CDMA and the AMPS system. If the AMPS system were left in place it would simply enhance that service. It would be an ancillary service because people would not be using the satellite while they were in range of one of those other services. The AMPS system, being much larger and having better coverage in rural areas, would save a lot of costs for people.There is a package, I think it is IS41, which would enable compatibility between GSM and analog that Telstra could incorporate. To my knowledge, Telstra could have acquired this software very cheaply—I think, from Ericsson's—and it would have allowed a much wider use of the spectrum. They chose not to do that, I suspect because of government fiat: they knew they would have to close down the analog system. I know that Telstra do not want to close down the analog system; they realise it is an enormous asset. They know very well, because they are technically probably the most competent of all the communication carriers, that it is the cheapest and the best system for providing communications in remote areas. It is also a system that is compatible with CDMA.I notice the minister says the government is committed to competition. The government is not committed to competition because it will not take its hand off the technology, as has been done in America. If the government were to take the bureaucratic hand off and allow real competition, there is absolutely no doubt that Telstra would have CDMA up in Australia in a flash. You would have digital that was fully compatible with the analog system: you would have a digital system which could interface with the existing analog network. Also, companies like Hutchison would be in there with CDMA. Companies like Hutchison would probably be deterred from bringing CDMA in, even if the government allowed it, because of the large costs of setting up a network. If they had a network they could already access and then build on, they would clearly look at it and it would be a viable opportunity. But it will not happen under the system being put forward by the government.The minister makes great play of the fact that they were simply locked in by the Labor Party. The government was not locked in by the Labor Party. The government can change legislation; it can say, `We want to review this.' If the government had acted quickly before this roll-out by Optus and Vodafone started, compensation would have been minimal. But the government chose not to do so; it swallowed the same bureaucratic nonsense that was given to the Labor Party by people who had this vision of this wonderful European system.Let us have a look at what has actually happened in Europe. The French saw a need, given the nature of the Common Market, for people to be able to carry their phones from Brussels to Birmingham—the same phone would be able to communicate in those places—and GSM does that in Europe, a relatively compact area. In fact the whole of Western Europe is a little bit less in size than my electorate, which puts into some context the actual geographic area we are talking about.The French saw this need because there are some 13 or 15 competing analog systems existing in Europe. These analog systems can actually talk to each other via an exchange, but you could not take your phone from one area to another. But did they close down the analog system? No, they did not. As Vodafone has been demanding we close the analog system down in Australia, has it closed down its analog system in Europe? No, it has not. Why hasn't it? Because lots of people want this service and they find it perfectly adequate for their needs, and of course the customers are being given what they want. But in Australia the government is determined to protect the customer from what the customer wants, and this does not seem to me to be in the true nature of competition although things are being so quickly redefined these days that I would not be surprised to find it in some new dictionary.The Iridium satellite, which is being touted as a solution for remote areas, clearly, on cost alone, is not. It is quite possible that over time hand-held sets will come down from $5,000 but it will not be anything like as quick as we are being told. It will not be quick for the simple fact that that price limits, in the initial stages, those people who have that specific need. That will not grow dramatically. Iridium's viability is predicated on servicing that need, so they do not actually see any need to get the returns that they plan for by mass use.It is also limited in effect in that it gets 2,400 bits per second transmission, which means it is not really suitable for data transmission, whereas with the technologies being developed we are getting a lot of data transmission capability on the analog. This of course does have ramifications for people in country areas.We are saying to the nation and in particular to those members who represent remote areas: let us look at the national interest in this. How is the national interest served by closing down a perfectly viable network, which has obviously cost a lot to establish and is worth a lot of money and provides a service which will not readily be replaced? It is interesting to note the statistics. When they talk about their 90 or 95 per cent coverage provided by the digital system, what they are talking about is 90 to 95 per cent of those people who can presently be reached on hard lines, on the traditional copper cables. That is what they are talking about. Those people are always in those areas where you have the density of populations.KL6ANDRENMr Andren—Not even that.CF4Campbell, Graeme, MPMr CAMPBELL—The member for Calare says, `Not even that,' but the fact is that they are talking about numbers; they are ignoring the geography. I believe that this nation cannot survive if we are allowed to divide against ourselves on a city-country basis. That is clearly what is happening: this mindless user pays being promoted by the previous government and by this government means in the end that a lot of services that are now available in the country are going to decrease. If we go down this road too far, we are going to end up as two separate peoples, and this nation will simply not survive as that.One of the great benefits of Telstra and of Australia Post is that they tend to unify services across Australia. That is always under attack and there is talk about taking the community service obligation away from Telstra and picking it up off the budget. Heaven forbid that this should ever happen, because governments are so city based in Australia and they will not bear to resist the budget implications of cutting that community service obligation.I know the government is sensitive about this issue. I notice the minister trying to wind me up. This is a very important issue. It is not one that is going to go away. If the government goes ahead and closes down this national asset, the analog system, and if it destroys the potential by going ahead and selling the spectrum, I can tell it that it will rue the day because this is something that people in remote Australia are going to remember.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—Is the motion seconded?11:14:003350Andren, Peter, MPMr ANDRENKL6CalareIND00—Yes, the motion is seconded. Again, I will not take up too much of the time of the House, but I would like to endorse again the comments made by the member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell) in that the sale of this spectrum, once gone, cannot be retrieved. We are throwing away in the analog system a technology that is really of great benefit to regional Australia, and that is what the people out there are saying. If the members representing those areas are not listening or do not care, I believe that there may be some ramifications in terms of whether there will be direct support for them or otherwise from people at election time.As the member for Kalgoorlie suggested, the CDMA technology allows for digital and analog interface, and why should that not have been part of the equation, part of the investigation of what was the most efficient mobile coverage that this country could have. It is a unique country; it is unlike any other country in the world in terms of our population distribution. As the member for Kalgoorlie indicated, the current provisions for coverage are based on figures for coverage that rely on the existing telephone network and largely the population distribution, and that means nothing when you are out at Rockley or down towards Trunkey Creek and you are a bushfire captain and your only means of communication is an analog phone.The sale of the spectrum and the Australian ownership provisions should have been bargaining chips in this whole exercise. It could have been renegotiated. It was interesting to hear some of the comments from members off the record after the last debate about the fact that there would have been no great drama in renegotiating this. For instance, the licence for Vodafone was $140 million, I understand. The cost of renegotiating that I think has been put at around the same figure, $150 million to $200 million. Even if it was that, if that was the final settlement, I still think there is room for even a High Court challenge on that basis in the interests of the public, in the interests of community service. A very good legal argument could be put up to say that nowhere near that sort of compensation would be payable.The minister speaks of the roll-out provisions that will be required post the current inquiry, after these concerns are taken on board. I am not picking on Vodafone; I will talk about Optus too. I am talking about the digital providers generally. But in Vodafone's case, those survey results I mentioned earlier, does one really expect that company to go much beyond its 17 per cent coverage in the Central West, where I said you get 43 per cent digital coverage overall in that survey but you need four phones to achieve it? From my investigations, there is something between four and 10 times the number of relay point cells required to deliver a comparable service to the existing analog one.It is getting a bit like what I hear about the costs of digital TV for regional stations who are telling me that the cost of this exercise is escalating by the day. It is going to be a very expensive exercise to undertake this digital television process, and I think the government is in for a few shocks when the figures come in; it is probably seeing some of the figures already. Whatever undertakings you get, unless you regulate you are not going to get these companies agreeing to put up 10 times the number of infrastructure points they have at the moment. They will say, `Hey, we are covering 95 per cent. That is what you asked us to do and that is what is in place.' It is a nonsense.I just want to put on the record a little article from the Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday in the computer section, headed `Digital Dropouts'. It reads:Despite the spread of the digital mobile network to almost 95 per cent of where Australians live, the blanket is threadbare in parts. For every `analog black hole' into which only digital reaches there's a pocket of analog coverage that remains stubbornly digital-free. Most of these occur in regional NSW, forcing many subscribers to maintain two phones with two numbers.While all three carriers are expanding their reach by building new digital base stations to add coverage cells to the network, some gaps remain.Well, believe it, they do.Telstra is the only player still in analog (Optus . . . resells its analog air time) and is not adding sites to the analog system. It's being wound down, with more than half the channels now closed and being sold to the private sector.The superior scope of analog compared with digital has led to a Federal Government commitment to retain the analog network past the . . . 2000 cut-off.That use by date had nothing to do with technology—the analog system is still widely used around the world—and has everything to do with the politics of the dollar. The former Labor Government assured Optus and Vodafone of analog closure to entice top dollar in the companies' bid for digital mobile phone licences.Top dollar—140 million lousy dollars to get rid of this analog system. That was Vodafone's price. What a bargain for companies that will exploit the prosperous urban and built-up areas for their markets but do not give a fig about the more isolated areas. As the member for Kalgoorlie said, this is a national interest issue, not an interest purely for the digital providers, who are now, because of these provisions, allowed to perhaps become foreign controlled, with no community responsibility here in Australia but a huge commercial responsibility to their shareholders. That commercial responsibility does not, I am afraid, and will not, unless we see some real toughening up in the regulations, extend to people in the Central West nor the rest of regional Australia.11:21:003352Smith, Warwick, MPMr WARWICK SMITHGJ4BassLPMinister for Family Services10—I indicate that the government does not support the disallowance motion proposed by the two members. Fundamentally, this is a motion that would seek to undo the spectrum auction process, but in fact it misses the point. The declaration in fact prevents Telstra, Optus and Vodafone from being bidders in the auction of the spectrum in the ranges of the 10 megahertz to 800 megahertz and 5 megahertz to 15 megahertz bands, and it is very unlikely that we will see at least one new mobile telecommunications operator emerge unless they were prevented from being able to bid for that spectrum. So I think that the prospect that the members had in mind in moving this disallowance motion has been missed.What we are trying to do here by saying to the existing operators that they do not have access to the new spectrum is develop a broader pro-competitive strategy designed to ensure that the option has a pro-competitive outcome. A fundamental point that I think has been missed by the member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell) and the member for Calare (Mr Andren) is that if you want to have a multiplicity of service providers then one of the things in the original decision that drove the movement towards GSM as against analog was to get better efficiency for the finite resource of the spectrum. If you can get better use of that spectrum and allow the licensing of other operators, whether those be by way of licence or by way of purchasing spectrum, then the consumer gets in a competitive environment a broader range of services. I heard the member for Kalgoorlie talk about the prospects of Hutchison, OzPhone, AAPT and others who will want to be part of the auction spectrum arrangements so that they can enter into new technologies to provide some of the things he was actually talking about. Code division, multiple access and CDMA proposals will be pursued by those operators if they are able to get allocation of spectrum through the auction process—PCS1800s and so on. So I think they are working at cross-purposes, but the fundamental aim of their intervention with this proposal is, of course, to argue the case that AMPS should be continued in preference to GSM.I think the issues have passed us by to a fair degree. We know that there is an issue there. We are seeking commonsense approaches, as I outlined in my remarks on 1 April. There are urgent reviews being undertaken now to address many of the issues that the two members and others have raised with the minister and me, and we believe that there is the capacity to deal with those matters. Fundamentally, as with the 3.4 gigahertz area that is also being considered by way of a discussion paper and review at the present time, an allocation process in that area might be considered an option. What we are trying to do is get many more players to utilise technology to the best advantage of consumers wherever they might live in Australia. That is what we are attempting to do here. I think that the motion that you have put is therefore not appropriate in the circumstances, but the points you make in the broad have been listened to and we have taken what we believe to be commonsense approaches to try to find some solutions to some of the concerns that you have raised.Question resolved in the negative.Bills3352r518Billsr516Bills3352Debate resumed from 13 May, on motion by Mr Reith:That the bill be now read a second time. upon which Mr Tanner moved by way of amendment:That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:"the House declines to give the Bill a second reading because the government's proposals in their present form contain major defects, in particular:(1) they fail to ensure that no levies are placed on stevedoring companies who do not wish to access payments made under any scheme related to the package;(2) they fail to ensure payments are not to be made, either directly or indirectly, for redundancies of people dismissed unlawfully;(3) they fail to ensure that payments are not to be made, either directly or indirectly for redundancies of people whose employment is terminated in a way which is inconsistent with the provisions of the Stevedoring Industry Award or other industrial agreements;(4) they fail to ensure that payments are not to be made, either directly or indirectly for redundancies of people whose employment is terminated as a result of corporate restructuring;(5) they fail to ensure that payments under the proposals are neither directly nor indirectly a substitute for appropriate redundancy provisions by employers of stevedoring labour;(6) there is no means by which Parliament can properly scrutinise payments made under the scheme and, in particular, there is no effective Parliamentary oversight of the Maritime Industry Finance Company;(7) there is no guarantee that trade on Bass Strait will not be adversely affected;(8) there is no provision to ensure that no levies are placed on cargo and vehicles not handled by major stevedoring service providers or cargo or vehicles handled for official purposes"11:25:003353Wakelin, Barry, MPMr WAKELINHV5GreyLP10—Last evening I said that the fundamental tenets of our democracy relate to our private enterprise system, our market economy and our sense of a fair go for all, and that a federal government has the responsibility to serve the national interest.The issues of stevedoring, which have been so much to the fore in the last few months, have come to pass with the Stevedoring Levy (Collection) Bill 1998 . This morning, in the brief time available, I want to make a few points about the public perception—if I can put it that way—of this issue. One issue that stands out clearly is the monopoly issue. Many in the media—particularly, I believe, in the ABC—would have us believe that the MUA have been hard done by—that they have acted with some justification at most times. But the issue is not about what the ABC think or what many media commentators think; it is more down to whether we want a more efficient waterfront. It is about facing up to the fact that the MUA are fighting for their monopoly right. I believe that is where Patrick have been much maligned in the public debate.Everybody knows that the union is a closed shop. Everybody knows that you must be a member of the MUA to work on the wharves. Therefore, by definition, any change to work practices that Patrick wanted to introduce would have some impact on MUA members because of that compulsion. For the MUA and all members on the other side to suggest that there is some conspiracy because these people have insisted that they are only standing up for their rights when their monopoly right has been challenged is just too absurd. Mr Chris Corrigan was reported in this morning's Financial Review as saying:Certainly the ACTU had made it clear that if the courts, the administrator, the government and Patrick do not give them what they want—that is, the MUA—then it would be back to the picket line. How long will it take before society judges that it is in no-one's interest to allow the picketers to break the law indefinitely.And what will happen in the next major industrial dispute in some other industry perhaps of less importance with less media focus.Certainly if I were advising the ACTU I would recommend that every industrial confrontation now be accompanied by a small but effective picket which prevents the company concerned from doing business during the dispute.To paraphrase Greg Combet, if it can happen to this company then it can happen to every Australian company.The issue of our democracy, the issue of the monopoly and the issue of the conspiracy charges are something which I find totally unacceptable if we look at the fundamentals of an employer-employee relationship in this country. If you listen to the MUA, they want to be the boss, they want to be the worker and they want to be the shareholder. They want to be the whole lot.Let us look at another piece from the paper today. As I understand it, the MUA are actually going to put a case to the meeting of creditors on 25 May that, because they believe there may be some $400 million available to them in damages from the conspiracy charges, they are the largest creditor and therefore they can dictate or vote down at this meeting of creditors any deed of company arrangements not acceptable to the union. There we have this relationship between employer and employee, where John Coombs wants to be the managing director, the shop steward, the chairman of the board and, I suppose, just about the leader of the opposition in this place as well. I cannot see how a country can operate like that. I cannot see who could possibly even suggest that that is the basis of anything that makes any logical sense in our system.I want to finish by talking about intimidation. I think it is totally un-Australian for any individual—and I do not care whether it is a unionist or a non-unionist or a farmer or a politician or a member of the MUA—to intimidate anyone else in an unlawful way, or in any way whatsoever for that matter. With some of the evidence that is coming out about some MUA members, I really think all Australians should have a good hard look at them to see whether this is fair and reasonably acceptable behaviour in our democracy.If the MUA are going to allege a conspiracy between Patrick, the banks and others, what sort of conspiracy is there between the ACTU, the MUA and the Labor Party? What sort of a conspiracy is that? I think this is where we have to really take a good hard look at whether we want an efficient waterfront, whether we want to respect our democratic traditions and, most of all, whether we want to act within the law. No-one in this country should be subjected to the kind of intimidation that has been evident in the way the MUA has conducted itself over the last three to four months.11:33:003354Rocher, Allan, MPMr ROCHERZI4CurtinIND00—I would start by saying:What I do accept however, without reservation, is the comment that was made by the interstate commission in both of its reports, brought down very recently, where it said that what is abundantly clear—and I think this is a fairly accurate quote—abundantly clear is that the waterfront is not going to reform itself. I think that is accepted by everybody and the need for government to intervene is there. It's not at all extraordinary that the government is prepared to offer assistance for redundancy on the wharf. In fact, I think it's the most appropriate, reasonable and sensible way to go, in co-operation with employers. A major overhaul is needed.I was not quoting the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) or even the Prime Minister (Mr Howard). It was neither of those two gentlemen, whom you might expect to say things along those lines; it was indeed former Senator Bob Collins, the then minister for shipping, during an interview on Radio 2CN on 9 April 1990.VH4McARTHURMr McArthur—A good Labor minister.ZI4Rocher, Allan, MPMr ROCHER—A good Labor minister. So let there be no doubt that the opposition, when in government, admitted and acknowledged not only the need for waterfront reform but also that government funded redundancy is `appropriate, reasonable and sensible'. Unfortunately the ALP, when in government, failed to achieve the much needed reform that the current government is now working for. So the opposition are scrambling desperately to find some position on this issue which will have even a modicum of credibility.It is useful to look at the history of problems on the waterfront, including a consideration of the impotence of the former Labor government and the nature and size of the problem today, before examining the government's proposal to assist structural reform by establishing an industry funded redundancy program. The waterfront is a key link in the distribution of traded goods. The efficiency of the waterfront affects the competitiveness of Australia's trade. The Productivity Commission found recently that, in value terms, approximately 70 per cent of imports and 78 per cent of exports were transported by sea in 1995-96. These trade flows amounted to close to $60 billion.In the late 1980s the Interstate Commission, the ISC, was asked to investigate the efficiency of the handling, storage and movement of cargo through Australian ports and to formulate an integrated industry plan for waterfront reform. In March 1989 the ISC presented the federal government with the final report of its investigation into the waterfront. The evidence presented to the ISC confirmed the fact that:The waterfront industry was in urgent need of fundamental change.The ISC observed `high costs, endemic unreliability, a high level of industrial disputation, inappropriate manning levels and work practices, poor discipline, poor motivation throughout the industry and a pervasive lack of competition'. In its report the commission also noted the concern expressed in the hearings before it about union abuse of monopoly power. The ISC found that over the years working arrangements on the waterfront had been introduced that had had the overall effect of sustaining a larger work force than would be required if the work force was appropriately structured and managed. For example, the commission said that the practice of equalising hours worked and payments received removed any incentives for the work force to provide adequate levels of service and to increase output.The commission found that rotation of work, partly to equalise hours and earnings, frequently resulted in employees with inappropriate skills operating sophisticated equipment. The ISC concluded:Those who are more able have little incentive to perform better than average because there are no rewards for doing so.The response of the then Labor government was to establish the Waterfront Industry Reform Authority, WIRA. WIRA's only attempt to solve the appalling situation on the wharves was to pay $420 million in redundancies to aged wharfies in order to re-employ younger ones. Yet today, according to the honourable member for Flinders, the minister, we still see many of these so-called redundant wharfies working as casuals on $30,000 to $40,000 annually. According to the minister, at Patrick's Stevedores alone there are 290 wharfies who received payouts from $80,000 to $100,000 plus superannuation under the WIRA process.Back in October 1990 when the redundancies were proposed I said that the Labor government was resorting to buying wharfies out of their jobs as a substitute for comprehensive reform. During debate in this place at the second reading stage of the Stevedoring Industry Levy Amendment Bill 1990, I urged:Such generous redundancy packages should be offered only in exchange for real and comprehensive reform in work practices.I said that regrettably no such reform was in prospect and went on to observe:We are looking at enormously generous redundancy packages that will achieve little by way of substantial reform. The government's redundancy packages are more like a one-off voluntary retirement scheme than a real redundancy programme.I advocated then and say now that there is a good case for introducing compulsory redundancy as a solution to overmanning where voluntary schemes are found to be inadequate.WIRA failed to tackle the hard issues of continuing productivity improvements that are so necessary if Australia is to become internationally competitive. The worst feature of WIRA was that it cemented the rorts and inefficiencies that afflict the waterfront today by allowing a monopoly union for both the waterfront and maritime industries despite being warned by the ISC about the dangers of doing just that.An example given by the government of such rorts is the three-man lashing team. I understand from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business that at Melbourne's East Swanson Dock the system is that three wharfies lash down containers on board a particular ship supervised by two others—one on board and the other on the wharf. The rort is that if just one of the lashing crew says he is sick, the whole crew knocks off on full pay. The work is not done, of course.Even without such abuses, Australian wharfies are by no means hard done by. According to figures provided by the minister, wharfies in Sydney receive $74,000 annually for a 35-hour week; five weeks annual leave with a 27.5 per cent loading; 10 days sick leave which can be paid out; subsidised meals costing $2 million annually; clothing, laundry and telephone allowances; two weeks additional leave every 15 weeks taken as rostered days off; and a 27.5 per cent loading on long service leave.What are the substantive gains that the Labor Party would have us believe they achieved through the WIRA process? Container rates rose from an appalling 13 movements an hour to a very poor 18 movements an hour, but at the huge cost of $420 million and without the continuing reform so much needed by our ports.Have things changed? In April 1998 the Productivity Commission presented its two reports entitled Work Arrangements in Container Stevedoring and International Benchmarking of the Australian Waterfront. The commission found that there had been some improvements in container stevedoring work arrangements in Australia as a result of enterprise bargaining and the waterfront reform processes so far achieved. These improvements included the use of some supplementary employees at major ports, decreased numbers of workers per gang, earnings equalised over longer periods and more efficient use of drivers otherwise on a rest break. However, the commission also found that there were a number of practices that continued to adversely affect workplace performance on the wharves. These included the arrangement which specified the order in which employees were engaged for a shift, relatively high shift premiums and penalties, relatively high redundancy provision, prescribed work force size and composition, equalisation schemes, some aspects of existing productivity schemes, some aspects of aggregate wage schemes, relatively high leave and rostered time off provisions, minimum call-up and idle time provisions and constraints on contracting out. A handsome list.The commission concluded that these work arrangements form a complex, inflexible and prescriptive system that continues to constrain container stevedoring workplace performance. The commission said:Many of them create incentives for permanent employees to work longer hours to obtain high levels of overtime payments which can risk the health and safety of employees.These risks could be mitigated by alternative rostering and leave arrangements.However, the order of engagement practice constrains employer flexibility.The commission found that earnings from overtime continue to outweigh those from productivity bonuses. Therefore, the incentives provided by the productivity bonus schemes to work more efficiently may not be sufficient. They also constrain the opportunities for management to alter the size and composition of the work force. The commission said that the outcome is lower levels of productivity, reduced timeliness and reliability, and higher labour costs.The Productivity Commission report said that the ability to improve work arrangements is subject to workplace, industry and legislative factors. The workplace factors include `an adversarial workplace culture and the attitudes and abilities of managers and union representatives'. The industry factors include the limitation on industry competition and significant union bargaining power. The commission said that industry factors can reduce the pressure on stevedores and workers to change to the extent that at least some of the costs of inefficiency are passed on to users of stevedoring services.In its international benchmarking study, the Productivity Commission found Australia also to be underperforming on the waterfront. Container stevedoring charges in Australia are higher than overseas. Ship loading and unloading are slower, and services are less reliable. Other areas of traditional bulk and break-bulk—break-bulk apparently means non-bulk cargo that is not containerised—stevedoring examined by the commission also performed relatively poorly. Even cruise ship baggage handling charges in Sydney were five times those in Auckland. The commission found that the cost of providoring—supplying ships' crew and passenger provisions—was four times that in the port of Miami.The international benchmarking study showed that marine services and port infra structure charges are two to three times greater in Australia, not all of which reflects pricing polices to recover costs. The study showed also that the port-land interface is not operating effectively and that there is a need for better coordination throughout the transport chain. As the commission also noted, poor performance increases costs to exporters, importers and other shippers both directly and indirectly. The commission concluded that overall there is significant scope for improvement. That is a bit of an understatement.The poor performance costs Australian jobs and adds to the cost of products for all Australian consumers of imported goods. The current government's approach to these serious problems besetting the waterfront involves raising a levy on stevedoring operations to fund urgently needed restructuring. The bills introduced by the government are designed to ensure that the industry, not the Australian taxpayer, is responsible for the funding.As part of the waterfront restructuring, the government has reached an agreement with the two major stevedoring companies, P&O Ports and Patrick Stevedores, to adopt seven key performance benchmarks for continuous improvement on the waterfront.These benchmarks include: an end to overmanning and restrictive work practices; higher productivity, measured by a national average crane rate of 25 movements per hour; greater reliability through less industrial disruption and the elimination of outdated work practices; improved safety; lower costs throughout the logistics chain to the waterfront gateway; more efficient use of the technology available to increase productivity; and improved training.The levy is intended to provide access for the industry to redundancy funding in order to reduce excess labour arising from future restructuring. According to the government, the stevedoring companies have given undertakings that they will absorb the cost of the levy and will not pass it on in the form of increased costs to shippers. I note that no levy will be applied to bulk cargo, in view of the Productivity Commission's finding that the performance of seaboard bulk cargo terminals in Australia is already internationally competitive. Indeed, performance in that sector is among the best of its kind in the world.The grain, minerals and energy industries in my home state of Western Australia use the bulk terminals for exporting their produce and in that regard would not be affected by changes at container terminals. However, the efficiencies sought at the container terminals will benefit the rural and resources sectors in a key respect: to the extent that those ports are used in the importation of vital machinery and chemicals in containers and as break-bulk cargo.The levy proposed by the government will apply to each stevedoring company, whether or not the company draws down on the funds from the maritime industry finance company. This will provide major incentives for the stevedoring companies to restructure their work forces through redundancies. Redundancies are always regrettable, but if the affected workers receive the full value of their entitlements at no cost to our export and import industries, and at no cost to the taxpayer, then the government's proposal should be supported. It will be, I am sure.On 9 April 1998 the Minerals Council of Australia, through its Executive Director, Dick Wells, said it was vital that long overdue reform on the docks was implemented. He said:The minerals industry supports ongoing microeconomic reform in Australia particularly in the transport and energy sectors . . .Maritime costs are a significant burden to the industry where minerals companies have limited opportunities to directly influence the efficient and cost-effective provision of services.The Metal Trades Industry Association, on 9 April 1998, expressed `unequivocal support' for the reforms. MTIA's Chief Executive, Mr Bob Herbert, emphasised `the paramountcy of an efficient waterfront for Australia as it engages in global trade'. We have identified the problem; the government has proposed a solution and is preparing to implement it.What is Labor's solution? Another meeting? Another summit? The troglodytes of the ALP have tackled waterfront reform in the past and have failed, at great expense. They are caught in a bind with their ties to their trade union mates. They voice support for waterfront reform through gritted teeth and with their fingers crossed behind their backs.Australia cannot afford another series of meetings; we cannot afford to wait. We must act now to get the waterfront working, to secure a place for Australian industry in the world and to secure jobs for all Australians—including those who choose to not join a union. Australia cannot afford another series of meetings; we cannot afford to wait. We must act now to get the waterfront working. I therefore commend these bills to the House.11:53:003358Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—Labor is opposing the Stevedoring Levy (Collection) Bill 1998 and the Stevedoring Levy (Imposition) Bill 1998 in this House. We are doing so because the bills are based on illegality, they are based on a conspiracy and they come from a government that is rotten to the core.The bills are the most visible evidence of the government's part in the conspiracy: a conspiracy that, according to the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), involves supporting Patrick and the National Farmers Federation `to the hilt'; a conspiracy to sack all 1,400 members of a work force simply because they belong to a union—contrary to section 298K of the Reith Workplace Relations Act; a conspiracy to sack without notice workers involved in lawful industrial action under section 170ML of the same act and permitted within the rules of their industrial association—an action also prohibited and therefore illegal under section 298K of the act; a conspiracy to sack workers involved in no industrial action and performing to the world's best practice—sacked why? `Because they belonged to a union', as said by the Prime Minister himself on the Ray Martin program the night before Good Friday; a conspiracy to replace the work force that was sacked with an overseas trained and secretly trained work force; a conspiracy that involved midnight raids by balaclavaed commandos with rottweilers; a conspiracy to allow a corporate law scam to do the full monty on Patrick's assets, to strip the companies bare, leaving nothing with which to pay the employees; a conspiracy backed by the govern ment; and a conspiracy that 10-1 our most senior judges in the land have found prima facie occurred and, as a consequence, ordered reinstatement of the workers so sacked.Most Australians—those not part of the conspiracies—first heard about the mass sacking of Patrick's workers at 11.00 p.m. on Tuesday, 7 April, when the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) announced it by press release—not the company, but the minister. To his press release he attached a statement from Patrick's. The very next morning, just 10 hours later, Mr Reith introduced into this House two pieces of legislation that are the subject of today's debate. They were approved by cabinet the night before. Just 10 hours for this complex legislation, when it has been almost a year and we still have not seen their legislation on car and TCF tariff legislation? Yet, against all of this background, Mr Howard and Mr Reith claim they knew nothing of the scheme. On that morning, Wednesday, 9 April, as the bills were introduced, we saw Mr Howard slapping Mr Reith on the back, grinning triumphantly. What an edifying sight: the Prime Minister revealed his true colours on that day.But where did all this begin? The government has been involved in this scam at the highest level from the very early stages and the overwhelming weight of evidence will prove it. We have already produced some of that evidence and the parliamentary process will continue to fill in the pieces, bit by bit. Mr Reith recently said he had no idea where the plan to sack Patrick workers came from. Let me refresh his memory. On 27 February 1997, the minister's office received a briefing on two options for waterfront reform. On 10 March 1997, a more detailed minute to Mr Reith from his own department appeared. It recommended considering a strategy. It stated:What would be needed for the MUA's influence on the waterfront to be significantly weakened would be for a range of affected service users and providers to take decisive action to protect or advance their interests.It went on:Another matter that might be canvassed is the proposition that a dispute—of itself—would produce desired change on the waterfront. Understand this: this is a department recommending to a minister that engineering a dispute is the first step in the vehicle to break the union. They then go on to say that what was needed was:Stevedores would need to activate well-prepared strategies to dismiss their workforce, and replace them with another, quickly, in a way that limited the prospect of, for example, the Commission ordering reinstatement of the current workforce.In this same minute, Mr Reith was urged to meet with Patrick's and P&O two days later, on 12 March, and to recommend to them a course of action built around this strategy. It also recommended that he involve the Prime Minister. From that moment on, the plan was put in place. Everyone knew their role and everyone played their part: the consultants produced their secret reports at an enormous cost of more than $1 million, but still not made public as a result; Fynwest recruited the alternate work force; Patrick's shifted the work force into subsidiaries and stripped the assets; Patrick's provided the financial backing to Fynwest; and the government prepared the ground by demonising the work force and preparing the legislation. Every one of them knew they were doing `a special job for Mr Howard'—the words of Webster. The ACIL report was contracted and polling was commissioned.On 30 July, Dr Webster was contracted by the government. His consultancy was for $95,000-plus. We understand that he was paid by the previous minister for maritime industries, Mr Sharp, but he was specifically working to Mr Reith. The evidence is that he was also working for the Prime Minister.On the same day, 30 July 1997, the day that he went on the payroll of this government for $1,000 a day, Webster phoned Mr Wells and told him he was doing a special job for John Howard. He urged Mr Wells to phone Chris Corrigan the next day. On 6 August, Mr Wells met Corrigan at Brencorp. He talked about the numbers he was after and then, from the affidavit of Mr Wells, was `taken by C.C.'—Chris Corrigan—`to visit East Swanston dock—up in a straddle crane. He said'—that is, Corrigan—`he wanted to replace the whole Dock work force on 30 March 1998. He said that he was in regular discussion with the Federal Government and, in particular, he was talking to John Sharp and Peter Reith'.On 7 August of last year there was another call from Webster to `discuss meeting C. Corrigan and my interest'. On 13 August and 3 September, more meetings with Wells and Corrigan. On 5 September Wells phoned Webster—`everything was in place', according to Mr Wells, from the conversation he had with Webster. Webster said not to phone him again.On 23 October Kilfoyle, Wells and others meet and sign an `Agreement to Act'. This was the agreement between Corrigan and Fynwest for the replacement work force. Again, on that very same date, 23 October, Webster is taken on the staff of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business. On 1 December there is a meeting involving a member of Mr Reith's staff and government officials with Patrick executives to discuss `breaking the MUA hold on the waterfront'.We have asked the minister in this House to tell us what was discussed at that meeting and specifically whether there was any discussion at that meeting that involved a plan to replace the existing work force of Patrick's with another. He will not answer that question in the parliament, but he continues to claim he knew nothing.On 3 December, two days later, the Dubai story breaks. Remember this—his office was involved in meetings on 1 December, but Peter Reith in this House on 3 December and subsequently continues to say that neither he nor his office knew anything about a plan that involved the replacement of an existing work force with another work force. On 5 December the Department of Workplace Relations writes to Patrick offering to underwrite redundancies. On 6 January 1998 the minister was briefed on the next stage of the strategy, the Webb Dock operation, the farmers' operation. On 31 January Corrigan meets Wells and Kilfoyle. On 3 February Corrigan admits to the media that he has been linked to Fynwest. The next day, however, he denies having backed it financially. On 9 February Corrigan appears before the Industrial Relations Com mission and under oath denies financial involvement with Fynwest.The final act of betrayal, the night of the sacking, was when the cabinet met. The minister took the cabinet through the plan and locked them into it. But in all of this the Prime Minister and his minister claim they knew nothing about the plan to sack one work force and replace it with another that was trained overseas secretly, involving ex-commandos.Let us look at who precisely the Prime Minister is backing to the hilt—Mr Chris Corrigan himself. He is a person whose word a Federal Court judge, Mr Justice Von Doussa, has dismissed as being unreliable. This is reported in the Financial Review on 9 May 1998 in relation to a report tabled in the South Australian parliament back in 1982. He is a person who prima facie has conspired to sack an entire work force because they are members of a union. He is a man who was taped on 31 January admitting that his plan to replace the work force was `partly illegal'. He is on the record as saying it was an illegal act.He is a person who in 1994, as Chairman of Australian Stevedores, proposed a similar asset stripping scam to get rid of his work force that he actually implemented in this dispute. At that time, 1994, his board rejected the proposal. He is a man who has prima facie committed perjury by swearing under oath that he provided no financial backing to the Dubai operation when evidence, including a letter written by him dated 8 May, shows that he has. He is also a person who has been linked to the Elliott corporate scams of the 1980s.The Prime Minister has said to this parliament in relation to the Corrigan scheme that he will support them to the hilt provided they act within the law. This is a person who has demonstrated exactly the opposite on many occasions. The Prime Minister was seen in recent weeks asking what was illegal or improper anyway about Dubai. Let us go through those charges. In the Industrial Relations Commission Corrigan was asked whether Patrick's or Lang Corporation had had any financial involvement in relation to the recruitment of personnel by Fynwest. Under oath he says, `No.' Yet we have a letter from him on 8 May which states, `Your clients'- this is signed by Corrigan—`have consistently failed to provide regular accounting and bank reconciliation details in respect of the loan provided by Patrick to Fynwest Pty Ltd.'Under oath he says that he has had no involvement. When he is in strife and is trying to recover the money, he is threatening to sue to recover money that he claimed had never been lent. If Mr Corrigan has perjured himself in the Industrial Relations Commission, surely the Prime Minister would see fit to at last distance himself. Ten of the country's most senior judges, including six of the seven High Court judges, have found that there is a prima facie case that the Workplace Relations Act—the minister's own act—has been breached by Patrick's and that illegal conspiracy surrounds the whole affair.If the Prime Minister needs any more evidence of the illegality, he need look no further than the words of Mr Corrigan himself as set out in a transcript of a conversation which he had on 31 January 1998, in which he admits that the scheme to replace Patrick's work force is `Well, partly illegal.' The government has claimed all along that the ALP is tied hand and foot to the MUA, but in reality the only people tied hand and foot are the government to Chris Corrigan. They know they cannot drop him because they know what he knows about their involvement in the conspiracy. But Chris Corrigan is fast developing cement boots, and he will drag this government down with them.I am pleased to see that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business has finally entered the House for this debate. He is the person who has consistently demonised the lack of productivity on the waterfront by the existing work force and claimed that the replacement work force was doing double the rate of waterside workers. It just so happens that documentation was left on the computers at Patrick's of the track record of the replacement work force—the NFF group; the people who were supposedly trained to do a much better job. In Sydney the computer print-outs show that, for the period 12 April to 28 April, the average net crane lifts were 10 an hour. Remember how you have been saying in this parliament that they were doing double what the MUA was doing before; that they were supposed to be doing something like 36 crane lifts an hour. At Port Botany it was 10.1 an hour.In Melbourne non-union labour managed even worse results than Sydney. Computer print-outs show that for East Swanston dock the average net crane rate was 8.5 an hour and, in addition, most shifts only recorded four or five cranes an hour. In Fremantle it was 9.3 an hour, 9.14 an hour and 8.8 containers an hour at different stages. Mr McGauchie, the National Farmers Federation leader, has also claimed double the rate, but handwritten log sheets at Fishermens Island, the Brisbane terminal, show an average crane rate loading for a number of vessels of a gross rate of 31 boxes for four to five hours.It is about time the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business told the truth in relation to these issues of productivity on the waterfront. He spent the last 12 months not only conspiring but also building the case to demonise the MUA. This is a person who is shameless when it comes to telling the truth. This is a person who is prepared to keep rattling off productivity rates that bear no resemblance to the facts. This is a person who has claimed that the replacement work force was performing at twice the rate when evidence now before the parliament shows that they were performing at half the rate. Minister, you should have the decency to come into this place and apologise to the people that you have maligned in relation to this whole exercise.WI4REITHMr Reith—Madam Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. Is it appropriate for a speaker to allege misrepresentation, particularly when there is a Productivity Commission report independently prepared available to the member which substantiates all the claims that the government has made? I believe it is inappropriate. He should be asked to keep his claims to the facts, instead of personal vitriol which is unsubstantiated.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—Madam Deputy Speaker, I will stick to the facts. I seek leave to table them because these are documents that have come into my possession—10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mrs De-Anne Kelly)—There is no point of order.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—I am not asking for a point of order. I am asking for leave to table the documents which show that what the minister for workplace relations has been asserting is untruthful. It is deceitful. It is not true. If he wants to get up and take a point of order, then let him have the documents tabled. Minister, are you allowing it? Of course you are not because you do not want the truth.WI4REITHMr Reith—I ask for the word `deceitful' to be withdrawn.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—I will not withdraw it. I seek leave to table the documents, because he has been deceitful. Unless he is prepared to have these documents tabled, he is the one who is covering up the truth.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! You will withdraw the comment `deceitful'.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—I thought `deceitful' was in, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would you like to check with the Speaker on that? `Deceit' is out but `deceitful' is in.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I am asking you to withdraw.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—Well, `deceitful' is in.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I am asking you to withdraw your comment.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—What the minister has involved himself in is a deceitful act.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I am asking you to withdraw your comment.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—On what basis, Madam Deputy Speaker?10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I am asking you to withdraw your comment.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—Are you ruling that I withdraw?10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I am asking you to withdraw your comment.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—`Deceitful' is in on the basis of a ruling of the previous Speaker. Speaker Sinclair has said that `deceitful' is in order. I would ask you to reflect on your ruling.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I am asking you to withdraw your comment.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—On what basis?10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I am asking you to withdraw.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—On what basis? I take a point of order. I have been through this exercise before. I was asked to withdraw the word `deceit' when I referred to a web of deceit. When I came back and explained that it was a deceitful web, Speaker Sinclair ruled it was in order. He said `deceitful' was appropriate, and now you are telling me it is not because the Leader of the House is mugging you.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—I ask you to withdraw the comment `deceitful', under standing order 76, personal reflections.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr CREAN—I withdraw the word `deceitful' about the minister, but I say that he has been involved in a deceitful act, and I will not withdraw that. I seek leave to table the documents.Question (by Mr Reith) put:That the question be now put.12:19:00The House divided. (Madam Deputy Speaker—Mrs D.M. Kelly)79Anderson, J. D. Andrew, J. N.Andrews, K. J. Anthony, L. J.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bishop, B. K.Broadbent, R. E. Brough, M. T.Cadman, A. G. Cameron, E. H.Causley, I. R. Charles, R. E.Cobb, M. R. Costello, P. H.Dondas, N. M. Draper, P.Elson, K. S. Entsch, W. G.Evans, R. D. C. Fahey, J. J.Forrest, J. A. Gallus, C. A.Gambaro, T. Gash, J.Georgiou, P. Grace, E. J.Halverson, R. G. Hardgrave, G. D.Hawker, D. P. M. Hicks, N. J. *Hockey, J. B. Jeanes, S. B.Johnston, R. Jull, D. F.Katter, R. C. Kelly, J. M.Kemp, D. A. Lieberman, L. S.Lindsay, P. J. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S. *McDougall, G. R. McGauran, P. J.McLachlan, I. M. Miles, C. G.Moore, J. C. Mutch, S. B.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Prosser, G. D.Pyne, C. M. Reid, N. B.Reith, P. K. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Ruddock, P. M. Scott, B. C.Slipper, P. N. *Smith, A. C.Smith, W. L. Somlyay, A. M.Southcott, A. J. Stone, S. N.Taylor, W. L. Tuckey, C. W.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.Wakelin, B. H. West, A. G.Williams, D. R. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Worth, P. M.50Adams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Andren, P. J. Baldwin, P. J.Beddall, D. P. Bevis, A. R.Bradford, J. W. Brown, R. J.Campbell, G. Crean, S. F.Crosio, J. A. Dargavel, S. J.Ellis, A. L. Evans, M. J.Ferguson, L. D. T. Ferguson, M. J.Filing, P. A. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Griffin, A. P. *Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Kerr, D. J. C. Latham, M. W.Lawrence, C. M. Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L. Martin, S. P.McClelland, R. B. McLeay, L. B.McMullan, R. F. Melham, D.Morris, A. A. Morris, P. F.Mossfield, F. W. O'Connor, G. M.Price, L. R. Quick, H. V.Rocher, A. C. Sawford, R. W. *Sercombe, R. C. G. *Smith, S. F.Tanner, L. J. Theophanous, A. C.Thomson, K. J. Willis, R.Wilton, G. S. Zammit, P. J.Howard, J. W. Beazley, K. C.Moylan, J. E. Grace, E. L.Thomson, A. P. Brereton, L. J.* denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the affirmative.Question put:That the words proposed to be omitted (Mr Tanner's amendment) stand part of the question.12:24:00The House divided. (Madam Deputy Speaker—Mrs D.M. Kelly)84Anderson, J. D. Andrew, J. N.Andrews, K. J. Anthony, L. J.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bishop, B. K.Bradford, J. W. Broadbent, R. E.Brough, M. T. Cadman, A. G.Cameron, E. H. Causley, I. R.Charles, R. E. Cobb, M. R.Costello, P. H. Dondas, N. M.Draper, P. Elson, K. S.Entsch, W. G. Evans, R. D. C.Fahey, J. J. Filing, P. A.Forrest, J. A. Gallus, C. A.Gambaro, T. Gash, J.Georgiou, P. Grace, E. J.Halverson, R. G. Hardgrave, G. D.Hawker, D. P. M. Hicks, N. J. *Hockey, J. B. Jeanes, S. B.Johnston, R. Jull, D. F.Katter, R. C. Kelly, J. M.Kemp, D. A. Lieberman, L. S.Lindsay, P. J. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S. *McDougall, G. R. McGauran, P. J.McLachlan, I. M. Miles, C. G.Moore, J. C. Mutch, S. B.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Prosser, G. D.Pyne, C. M. Reid, N. B.Reith, P. K. Rocher, A. C.Ronaldson, M. J. C. Ruddock, P. M.Scott, B. C. Sharp, J. R.Slipper, P. N. *Smith, A. C.Smith, W. L. Somlyay, A. M.Southcott, A. J. Stone, S. N.Taylor, W. L. Tuckey, C. W.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.Wakelin, B. H. West, A. G.Williams, D. R. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Worth, P. M. Zammit, P. J.46Adams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Andren, P. J. Baldwin, P. J.Beddall, D. P. Bevis, A. R.Brown, R. J. Campbell, G.Crean, S. F. Crosio, J. A.Dargavel, S. J. Ellis, A. L.Evans, M. J. Ferguson, L. D. T.Ferguson, M. J. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Griffin, A. P. *Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Kerr, D. J. C. Latham, M. W.Lawrence, C. M. Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L. Martin, S. P.McClelland, R. B. McLeay, L. B.McMullan, R. F. Melham, D.Morris, A. A. Morris, P. F.Mossfield, F. W. O'Connor, G. M.Price, L. R. Quick, H. V.Sawford, R. W. *Sercombe, R. C. G. *Smith, S. F. Tanner, L. J.Theophanous, A. C. Thomson, K. J.Willis, R. Wilton, G. S.Howard, J. W. Beazley, K. C.Moylan, J. E. Grace, E. L.Thomson, A. P. Brereton, L. J.* denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the affirmative.Original question put:That the bill be now read a second time.12:28:00The House divided. (Madam Deputy Speaker—Mrs D.M. Kelly)84Anderson, J. D. Andrew, J. N.Andrews, K. J. Anthony, L. J.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bishop, B. K.Bradford, J. W. Broadbent, R. E.Brough, M. T. Cadman, A. G.Cameron, E. H. Causley, I. R.Charles, R. E. Cobb, M. R.Costello, P. H. Dondas, N. M.Draper, P. Elson, K. S.Entsch, W. G. Evans, R. D. C.Fahey, J. J. Filing, P. A.Forrest, J. A. Gallus, C. A.Gambaro, T. Gash, J.Georgiou, P. Grace, E. J.Halverson, R. G. Hardgrave, G. D.Hawker, D. P. M. Hicks, N. J. *Hockey, J. B. Jeanes, S. B.Johnston, R. Jull, D. F.Katter, R. C. Kelly, J. M.Kemp, D. A. Lieberman, L. S.Lindsay, P. J. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S. *McDougall, G. R. McGauran, P. J.McLachlan, I. M. Miles, C. G.Moore, J. C. Mutch, S. B.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Prosser, G. D.Pyne, C. M. Reid, N. B.Reith, P. K. Rocher, A. C.Ronaldson, M. J. C. Ruddock, P. M.Scott, B. C. Sharp, J. R.Slipper, P. N. *Smith, A. C.Smith, W. L. Somlyay, A. M.Southcott, A. J. Stone, S. N.Taylor, W. L. Tuckey, C. W.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.Wakelin, B. H. West, A. G.Williams, D. R. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Worth, P. M. Zammit, P. J.46Adams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Andren, P. J. Baldwin, P. J.Beddall, D. P. Bevis, A. R.Brown, R. J. Campbell, G.Crean, S. F. Crosio, J. A.Dargavel, S. J. Ellis, A. L.Evans, M. J. Ferguson, L. D. T.Ferguson, M. J. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Griffin, A. P. *Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Kerr, D. J. C. Latham, M. W.Lawrence, C. M. Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L. Martin, S. P.McClelland, R. B. McLeay, L. B.McMullan, R. F. Melham, D.Morris, A. A. Morris, P. F.Mossfield, F. W. O'Connor, G. M.Price, L. R. Quick, H. V.Sawford, R. W. *Sercombe, R. C. G. *Smith, S. F. Tanner, L. J.Theophanous, A. C. Thomson, K. J.Willis, R. Wilton, G. S.Howard, J. W. Beazley, K. C.Moylan, J. E. Grace, E. L.Thomson, A. P. Brereton, L. J.* denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.3364Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.12:31:003364Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—There are two technical amendments I shall move to the levy imposition bill. The amendments make explicit the Governor-General's power to make regulations to prescribe different rates of levy for different types of cargo. Clause 5 of the bill imposes the stevedoring levy on the loading and unloading of containers and vehicles. The maximum rate of levy is set at $20 for a container and $10 for a vehicle. In each case a lesser amount may be prescribed under the regulations. The clause specifically provides that regulations may prescribe a zero amount.A note to the clause highlights the government's intention that regulations may prescribe different rates for different types of cargo, with reference made to section 33A of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901. For example, prescribing different rates of levy for different types of cargo would allow a special provision to be made for accompanied passenger vehicles carried on passenger ferries. This would, for example, allow passenger vehicles accompanied by their owners, carried across Bass Strait on the Spirit of Tasmania, to be exempted from the levy. The intention of the government is that differential rates applying to different types of cargo would apply uniformly across the industry.To remove any doubt, amendment 1 would make explicit the power of the Governor-General to make regulations to prescribe different rates of levy for different types of cargo. Amendment 2 would omit the note to clause 4 which becomes unnecessary if the matter is dealt with explicitly in the proposed clause 4 of the bill. With respect to the levy collection bill, I move:(1) Clause 5, page 2 (after line 20), after the definition of container , insert: constitutional corporation means any of the following: (a) a foreign corporation within the meaning of paragraph 51(xx) of the Constitution; (b) a trading corporation, or financial corporation, to which paragraph 51(xx) of the Constitution applies; (c) a body corporate incorporated in a Territory. constitutional trade or commerce means trade or commerce: (a) between Australia and a place outside Australia; or (b) between the States; or (c) within a Territory, between a State and a Territory or between 2 Territories.(2) Clause 5, page 3 (after line 9), after the definition of ship , insert: stevedoring industry means the stevedoring industry, so far as it involves: (a) stevedoring in the course of constitutional trade or commerce; or (b) stevedoring by a constitutional corporation.(3) Page 3 (after line 19), after clause 5, insert:5A Purpose of the levyThe purpose of the levy is to meet the cost of payments under section 17.(4) Clause 17, page 11 (lines 2 and 3), omit "directly or indirectly in connection with", substitute "in connection with, or incidental to,".(5) Clause 17, page 11 (after line 4), after subclause (1), insert:(1A) No more than $250 million in total may be authorised under this section.(6) Clause 18, page 11 (line 9), omit "purposes", substitute "purpose".Clause 17 of the bill provides that the minister may authorise payments that are directly or indirectly in connection with the reform or restructuring of the stevedoring industry. Amendments 1 and 2 include a definition of `stevedoring industry' in clause 5. The proposed definition refers to stevedoring in the course of constitutional trade or commerce or stevedoring by a constitutional corporation. The terms `constitutional trade or commerce' and `constitutional corporation' are also defined.Amendment 3 proposes a new clause 5A which specifies that the purpose of the levy is to meet the cost of payments under section 17; that is, payments in connection with the reform of the stevedoring industry. The proposed amendments are intended to clarify the purpose of the appropriation. Amendment 4 would vary the reference in clause 17 to the minister's power to authorise payments that are `directly or indirectly' connected with the reform or restructuring to payments `in connection with or incidental to' reform or restructuring. This is intended to clarify the scope of the provision. Amendment 5 would amend proposed clause 17 by inserting a new subsection 1A. This would provide that `no more than $250 million in total may be authorised under this section'. The amendment would thereby put beyond doubt the total available under the appropriation. Amendment 6 is consequential upon amendment 3 and would change the reference in clause 18 from `purposes' to `purpose'. I commend those technical amendments to the House.12:36:003365Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—The amendments which the government has moved just now go to the constitutional issue associated with the levy that is sought to be imposed to facilitate pay-out to workers from the MUA, under the guise of restructuring the waterfront. The reason this is necessary is that the government has been involved up to its bootstraps in a conspiracy to attack a union, a union which in the past perhaps has not had the track record that most Australians believe appropriate; nevertheless, it is a union that is appropriately registered and appropriately has been operating the wharves in this country.What this government sought to do was to facilitate, with Patrick's, the illegal sacking of those 1,400 workers, and then to look at ways in which those workers could be paid out. The history of this matter is long and complex. The member for Hotham (Mr Crean) gave a detailed explanation of it in the speech he made immediately before the series of divisions associated with this.Madam Deputy Speaker, let me tell you something about those MUA members at Point Kembla at a facility which Patrick's had shared with other stevedoring companies—it was not owned by Patrick's, but shared by Patrick's. It is not, as claimed in one newspaper article today, that Patrick's have walked away from this place saying they would never go back and reopen it; they never owned it in the first place, they simply shared the facility.Those waterside workers, MUA members, had worked in terms of the conditions and in terms of the appropriate world's best practice facilities down there, and had contributed greatly to the way the port had gained a reputation in Port Kembla over many years of improving the through-put and improving capacity. We saw that, as a result of the decisions taken by Corrigan and Patrick's, aided and abetted by this government, those employees were sacked. Fortunately for them, they have been rehired by Port Kembla Stevedores. They are taking their rightful place once again in Port Kembla and facilitating, without any further incident, the unloading and loading of cargo through that port.It is a joke when people in this debate talk about one-union labour on the waterfront in Australia and, in the same breath, talk about the way in which cargo is handled in Singapore, Rotterdam and other major ports around the world, and suddenly the realisation is that they have one-union coverage as well in each of those locations, yet in Australia it is demonised. When you look at some of the examples, such as Dampier in Western Australia, you see that one-union coverage up there was not allowed. In fact, it was a closed shop and they would not allow anybody else into that particular location. They were not union members, but they were not allowed in; another stevedoring company was not allowed to start.We do not see the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) and we do not see Allan Fels out there looking at the competitive nature associated with this particular exercise. No, we see Allan Fels and this minister attacking the MUA simply because it was the first chance, the first opportunity, to play once again wedge politics in Australia: attack one union whose reputation is not up to what this minister believes it should be and then use that as a springboard to get into other unions in this country.It is not enough that we get a 10-1 decision, Minister, in the courts of Australia saying that what you proposed was in breach of your own workplace laws—the laws that you stood up in this place and championed over 12 months ago as going to bring absolute peace and harmony to industrial relations into this country.I also remember the brag of the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), who said that no worker would be worse off in this country under his prime ministership and under the industrial relations laws that you, Minister, championed in this place. No worker would be worse off! I have got to tell you that the 1,400 Patrick's workers and their families and their kids were worse off because of your industrial relations laws until the law of this country was tested in the courts and your laws were found and proved to be negligent.The conspiracy issue in this goes far and it runs deep. It is an issue which is going to come back and haunt this government in the coming weeks and months. We have seen, day after day, more and more information come out about the role played by this minister and his office and by the Prime Minister and his office and we will live long enough to see further evidence of it. (Time expired)12:41:003366Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO7T4ProspectALP00—I speak against the government's amendments and certainly against this particular bill, but at the moment in the consideration in detail stage I will speak to the amendments that have been moved. What we really have here is just another cog in the federal government's plans to destroy the Maritime Union of Australia and to drive a nail into the heart of unionism itself. You have got to ask yourself in this House: for what? Why are they doing it? Is it because our waterfront crane operators are not like Third World country operators? Is it because they just do not go up a crane with a sandwich and a bucket, if you do not mind me saying, Madam Deputy Speaker, in which to urinate so they can stay there all day? That is not what happens. Is it because they do not work eight-hour shifts without a break? Or is it because they want to belong to a union, they are now going to be virtually stopped by this bill from doing their work?The coalition is trying through its amendments and through this bill to wield an ideological hammer with which to smash the MUA and to weaken all other unions in the process. This bill, I believe, is an ugly step in an ugly campaign. How can the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) and the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) say with straight faces that they have no problems with unions or even the members of the MUA and that all they want is an efficient waterfront? It is beyond me.If that were really the case, why have they not stood up in this House and praised the work that is being done? But all we have had repeatedly is, day after day, this Prime Minister and this minister for workplace relations misleading the Australian people as to the work practice of the wharfies. They are indulging in propaganda and vilification and they are denigrating and inciting public anger where there should not be any, because what they are saying is untrue.What the government really wants to do is to lend a hand to Patrick's while there is no such lending hand or words of support, for example, to the Cobar miners or to any other workers who have now lost everything because their firms have either closed down or because redundancy packages have not been put into place when appropriate action should have been taken.This bill was introduced at the time supposedly because of the Howard government's genuine concern that the Patrick's workers received their full entitlements and redundancies. This government does not care in the slightest about guaranteeing workers' entitlements. This bill was originally introduced because of its base political motives, pure and simple. It was introduced as part of an orchestrated campaign to destroy—and I will repeat myself—the Maritime Union of Australia and to strike at the heart of the union movement in this country. It was introduced as part of a strategy to destroy the delicate balance of power between employers and employees that we have been able to achieve in Australia. It now wants to rebuild that balance with workers' rights at a disadvantage.It is nothing more than a tax on those efficient operators and competent waterfront managers who have been able to achieve satisfactory productivity outcomes with their work force through negotiation. They are now going to have a tax that I believe they will be unable to absorb. It stands before us as an ugly symbol of all that is to be condemned and regretted about this Howard government.Make no mistake: the issue of guaranteeing workers' entitlements lies at the heart of this piece of legislation and these amendments. This is a government that supports the restructuring of the corporation that kicks nearly 2,000 waterfront workers out of their jobs by manufacturing the insolvencies of the companies for which they worked. But, subsequently robbed of their entitlements, the federal government then steps in with its $250 million package and says to the wharfies, `Okay, if you go along quietly and if you play our game, we'll guarantee your entitlements; otherwise you'll get nothing.' This is a government of standover, this is a government of intimidation and this is a government that cares nothing for the workers of this country.It also represents a government that considers assisting in the payment of entitlements to workers from insolvent companies as something to do only when it suits its political motives. Any other workers in the same boat crying out for the same assistance but in less political important industries can fend for themselves, and they are being told so.The only difference between the wharfies and the Cobar miners, the Goulburn miners, the South Grafton abattoir workers and the nurses from Yeppoon and Rockhampton is that the stakes are higher for the government on the waterfront than in any other area. If the stakes were not as high then this bill would not even have been introduced into this parliament in the first place. Now we are being told that the wharfies are lucky to have been granted this guarantee of their entitlements. Of course they are not. It is just that the government considers this bill and the redundancy package it seeks to set up as an essential part of getting rid of them.For the evidence of how cynical the Howard government is in introducing this bill and these amendments, just take a look at how fast the minister for workplace relations acted to cover the waterfront workers' entitlements compared to assisting other Australian workers in similar positions. The waterfront workers were locked out, thrown out of their place of business, on the night of 7 and 8 April, and on the day of 8 April the minister for workplace relations was in this House introducing this bill.12:46:003368McClelland, Robert, MPMr McCLELLANDJK6BartonALP00—I oppose the amendments and indeed the whole Stevedoring Levy (Collection) Bill 1998 , because it is fundamentally unconstitutional. There is no power in the constitution to render a levy such as this for a clearly unlawful purpose. What the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) has asked this parliament to do is to become part of a conspiracy. If you want to have look at who was involved in the conspiracy, look at the make-up of these corporations. Let us open the corporate veil of Patrick Stevedores No. 1, one of the labour hire companies. Who do we find as directors? Brian Squires, John Young, Chris Corrigan and the secretary, Robert Dunn. Let us open the corporate veil of Patrick Stevedores No. 2. Who is sitting behind the corporate veil? Those same four men. Let us open the corporate veil of Patrick Stevedores No. 3. Who is sitting behind the corporate veil? Those same four men of the three labour hire companies.Let us look at the companies where the stripped assets went to. Let us open the corporate veil of Patrick Stevedore Operations. Who do we see sitting behind that corporate veil? We see the same four men. Let us open the corporate veil of Patrick Stevedore Operations No. 2, the other company that benefited from the asset movement. Who do we see? The same four men. If you look at National Stevedores of Tasmania, Chris Corrigan again turns up as a director and Robert Dunn turns up as a director. When I say I am opening the corporate veil, I am opening it at that snapshot of when all these events occurred prior to and during September 1997. A number of them have hit the road since then, quite clearly on advice, I would suspect.These people have been involved in a conspiracy. There is no doubt that the minister has been involved and there is no doubt that the promise of this $270 million contained in this bill was the precondition to the dismissals occurring. But there is no need for a levy such as this to fund any redundancy pay, although we hope those redundancies will not occur. The government is effectively giving a windfall gain of $270 million to Patrick Stevedores, if you like rewarding them for becoming part of this conspiracy. There is no need for it. Patrick Stevedore Operations and Patrick Stevedore Operations No. 2 are quite clearly liable for these payments as the principal contractor under section 127 of the New South Wales Industrial Relations Act. Despite this bill, they are whacked; they are gone for that amount at least in the state of New South Wales. There is no need for a bill to fund redundancies in New South Wales. There is no need for a bill to fund the redundancies because this money, some $300 million worth, stripped by those fellows sitting behind the corporate veils, is being held on constructive trust by the operations companies.There is no doubt that that money was stripped by a fundamental breach of the fiduciary obligation that those four fellows owed to the labour hire companies, and under section 232 of the Corporations Law they are liable as a result of their breach of duty. They have benefited a third party to the detriment of a company of which they were directors. Quite clearly, because of the dual directorships that they held in Patrick Stevedores and Patrick Stevedore Operations No. 2, those companies had notice of the breach of duty committed by those fellows. In those circumstances, both Patrick Operations and Patrick Stevedore Operations No. 2 quite clearly hold all those funds on constructive trust for the labour hire companies. This government should not be saying, `We are going to hit the other exporters, we are going to hit the other stevedoring companies to fund it.' This government should be saying, `You do what you are required to do at law—give back the money that was wrongfully taken out of the labour hire companies.'We are effectively a part of a conspiracy by trying to fund this illegal operation because the directors, from all indicators, had the positive intent to defraud workers of their entitlement, that is, the entitlement to their ongoing employment. I think the directors have been involved in criminal activity. All the indicators—Chris Corrigan said he advised the minister two weeks before the events that the fund was required—point to this minister being involved in a criminal conspiracy. I think there is absolutely no doubt of that. This minister knows that if the labour hire companies go belly up then the liquidator will have a statutory duty to follow all these trails. That is why he is trying to put the $270 million into it: quite clearly to cover up a conspiracy that he is linked into and that these individual directors are going to be liable for.12:51:003369Sawford, Rod, MPMr SAWFORD3J4Port AdelaideALP00—Twelve members of this House have been gagged from speaking in this debate. This is the culmination of the government's conspiratorial, manufactured dispute on the Australian waterfront—a deliberate distraction that leads up to the next federal election. Chris Corrigan, the Chief Executive Officer of Patrick's, may be a clever merchant banker but that is all he is. He is certainly not a chief executive officer of a stevedoring company. I lived in Port Adelaide all my life; my father was a wharfie. I remember the disputes of 1954 and 1956 when, with my family, we walked five and six kilometres to collect rations on a Friday: soup, vegetables, flour, sugar, tea, et cetera. We lived on that for months, along with 3,000 other families. It brought those people together and it brought their corporate memory together. Part of the 1956 dispute revived the memory of what happened in 1929: a very famous Australian cricketer, Victor Richardson, on a great grey horse, with the batons, came down and struck workers and put the dogs on them. Do you see the similarities? Nothing has changed. What are the symbols in this dispute? Dogs on the wharves, balaclavas, batons, huge security guards, violence, mace, ex-Dubai mercenaries and SAS soldiers—and haven't they been sold a pup!There is a question I want to ask the government. In the Port of Adelaide, we have a company called Sealand that operates in 26 countries. It is the most successful stevedoring company in Australia. It is, in fact, the most efficient and most productive stevedoring company in Australia. Why is this company being punished for being efficient and productive? Why is this company being punished for doing exactly what it should be doing in negotiating an agreeable settlement with the Maritime Union of Australia?In the 11 years that I have been a member of parliament, I have certainly realised that there are six players on the Australian waterfront. They are the shippers, the port authorities, exporters and importers, the stevedoring companies, the MUA and the Australian government. Look at the efficient and productive ports around the world—Rotterdam and Antwerp. It does not matter where they are, they all have a unionised work force. Antwerp, which is probably the most productive port in the world, has not had a strike for 30 years. But there the reality is that people sit down and they negotiate and work through solutions, which is what should happen here. But the government has not taken that task.In the 11 years that I have been a member, the only complaints I have ever heard about the waterfront have come from exporters and importers, and they have legitimate complaints. But never have they been aimed at the Maritime Union of Australia. What are they aimed at? They are aimed at the lack of transport links on the Australian waterfront. In Port Adelaide, we need a third river crossing—a bridge. We need a rail line to direct the container traffic. That is what you will get exporters complaining about. You will get exporters complaining about the Australian quarantine service—not in terms of the work that they do or the individuals involved; simply that they are not open for enough hours per day. The Australian waterfront operates 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. It is one of the very few organisations in this country that works like that.The other problem that exporters and importers complain to me about is warehousing. `It's not available. It's not open'—they are the complaints. Never in 11 years have I heard a complaint about the MUA in Port Adelaide. Never have I heard a complaint about Sealand. I have heard plenty of complaints about Patrick's in the last couple of years, and particularly in the last six months. This company, in a conspiracy with the government and with a minister for workplace relations illegally working against his own legislation, has in this country—in scenes that have gone around the world on television showing the most ugly stance and ugly images of Australia—attacked working men and women and their families. It is an example of a government that is totally out of sync with the Australian population.The people of a particular age group in Port Adelaide remember what happened in the 1950s. The older generation remember what happened in 1929. There is an increasing number of young people for whom those particular events meant nothing, but they have been made familiar with them in the last six months. (Time expired)12:56:003370Andren, Peter, MPMr ANDRENKL6CalareIND00—They say the first casualty in war is always the truth, and that is certainly the case in the waterfront war. So many of the lies and distortions that fuelled this war that divided so many Australians have again been peddled in this debate.In a country like Australia that relies on efficient ports for its economic reform, of course, continuing waterfront efficiency and reform is essential. No union should be in a position to dominate an industry and control a labour monopoly in the way the Maritime Union of Australia has dominated our ports, but there is a right way and a wrong way to bring about reform, and I suggest that that was well under way. Sadly, this government has gone the wrong way.Allegations of corruption and rorts among waterfront workers are legendary, but there are probably people who are corrupt and lazy in all sections of the work force of Australia. Look at the New South Wales royal police commission. Dare I say that history may well show that a very small percentage of people in this place are rorters, possibly corrupt and even lazy in some cases. So it is in all sectors of our society. But I say to honourable members: how would you feel if you were sacked in the middle of the night because some of your colleagues might be guilty of rorts and you are therefore tainted by association and your employer has engineered a circumstance to not even pay out those honourably doing their tasks with the rewards that they are entitled to?We have heard about the generous pay and conditions enjoyed by wharfies. Do they all deserve to be thrown out of jobs simply for taking what has been won for them by previous generations of workers? How many new members came into this House two years ago and offered—in the interests of efficiency and reform—to give back some of the generous pay and conditions handed out here? None of us did; in fact, some of you have maligned me for even daring to raise the subject.Let us be clear about what this war is really about. It has nothing to do with reforming work practices and everything to do with politics. The war that has unfolded on our waterfront in recent months was a spin-off of the confrontation that takes place in this parliament and every parliament around Australia. It is one of political ideologies. The Labor side believes in the absolute power of trade unions, although they have introduced necessary reforms in that area in recent times in terms of contracts and workplace agreements. There is some flexibility there. Across the barricade, unfortunately, we have the Liberal and National parties, who are being driven by the extreme right of their particular ideologies. I read something recently by a Liberal member that the concern of the small `l' Liberal Party—which believes in the rights of people, whether they be workers, or small business or farmers—is not the threat from the left in this country but the threat from the extreme right.This is what a lot of this argument is being driven by—ideology about not giving a fair go—and that is what is stuck in the craw of people out there in my electorate. They realise that you can put up an argument about farmers losing millions of dollars because of inefficient waterfronts, but they know there is an underlying fact here: that people are being dudded unfairly, and the government is party to an arrangement that is offering a line of credit to a company which, according to the Federal Court, there is every reason to believe, it seems, has deliberately arranged its company structure to the disadvantage of an entire work force.The NFF, which my colleague the member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell) described as standing for No Family Farms, leads the charge on behalf of the coalition, completely ignoring the fact that much of our mining exports and rural exports go out through excellent bulk handling terminals which, thanks to years of successive reforms, are the most efficient in the world. Of course, the NFF does not represent the bulk of farmers these days.Go and read the transcripts of the rural women talking to the primary industry committee and see how confident they are in the representation of the peak farm bodies these days in terms of real, objective representation of people. Eighty-three per cent of people in regional Australia are not farmers. While the farm sector is absolutely crucial, there are people out there amongst the farmers who also believe in a fair go.There are rorts on the waterfront; there are extremes of ideology too. But I say that they are also in this bill and in the means by which this government has aligned itself to the Patrick stevedoring company. We spoke of Sealand. Listen to them; hear what they are saying. They could take their MUA work force to Hong Kong and achieve better results. (Time expired)13:01:003371Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—The comments made in this debate already this morning and this afternoon clearly illustrate that there is a difference of opinion on the two sides of this parliament. It is a difference of opinion which regrettably has been shaped by ideology. When Patrick Stevedores decided to take the action they did in the middle of the night, working men of this country were barred from their lawful workplaces, and the simple reason that occurred was that they were sacked for being members of a union—and for no other reason.Then we saw a complex legal system put in place whereby Corrigan, through Patrick's, suddenly found that the four employer organisations—those that employed the MUA workers—no longer had the financial wherewithal to pay their work force. That is why they were given the flick. They went about a process of asset stripping. It was Chris Corrigan's version of The Full Monty. He decided to go into those four employing companies and say, `We'll move all of the assets from those companies and put them into another company.' As the member for Barton (Mr McClelland) said, that is a company that still has enough wherewithal to meet the redundancy payments that this legislation is now asking the people of Australia to put up so that Corrigan—Corrigan, the man of some questionable background—need not fund this redundancy package.It is not as if there had not been waterfront reform. I spoke earlier about what happened in Port Kembla. The simple fact is that we, when in government, embarked on that process—through negotiation, through sitting down with the MUA and their membership, and through talking to the stevedores to see what the needs on the waterfront were. The figures stand out in stark contrast to the industrial relations thuggery being peddled by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) in this place. There were roughly 10,000 workers on the waterfront several years ago. Today, there are just under 4,000—achieved not with dogs, not with mace, not with any of the other balaclavaed hoods who were brought in to try to do something about legitimate workers on the waterfront, and not with the distress caused to their families and children. There was none of that. It was through negotiation, which, in industrial relations, this side of the parliament stands for.Why can't we see that? Why is it that wedge politics is being played by this government? Why is it that, in this particular case, they seek to drive a wedge in the trade union movement, to put Australian against Australian, brother against brother? We saw that. We saw Corrigan's family—at least his sister, who lives in Wollongong, and one of his brothers—disown him for the actions that he had embarked upon. It will be a really great Christmas this year when they sit down over their turkey and ask, `What sort of a year have you had, Chris?' I reckon it will be just one terrific little meal and one terrific little conversation.The simple fact is that a 10 to one judgment of senior judges—High Court and Federal Court judges—in this country found that what Patrick's did was illegal. Forget for a minute that it was the MUA. The simple fact is that the Howard government's own industrial relations laws have been found to be faulty in that Corrigan and Patrick's abused the substance of those laws by a 10 to one decision in two courts in this nation—indeed, one of those being the highest court in this nation. So how can people on the government side argue that they are all for waterfront reform, peaceful change in industrial relations and improving the system, and yet at the same time condone the sort of tactics which Patrick's embarked upon?First, there was the try-on in Cairns. There was the abortive training exercise in Dubai. Then there was this blue that was put on. And they still have not come up with a winner. The people who bankroll the government must be just spinning in expectation of the sort of nonsense they are going to come up with next, because they were told after one day that it was all over—the waterfront was smashed, the trade union movement was smashed—and we all know that was only to be the first tranche. We know that the MUA was first—but who was going to be next? Anyone else who belonged to a union. That is who was going to be next. (Time expired)13:06:003372Miles, Chris, MPMr MILESBI4BraddonLP10—I would like to make a few comments. One is to the member for Calare (Mr Andren). He said that the line of credit was being made available to just one stevedore. That is not the case; that is totally incorrect. It is right across the board for those stevedores who are prepared to undertake reform. Comments by the opposition to this whole debate on the legislation indicate that they have been sidetracked on to a side issue.4T4MELHAMMr Melham—A side issue?BI4Miles, Chris, MPMr MILES—Absolutely; this is a side issue. The reality is that the government is about reform. Essentially the argument is very simple—reform—because we are country involved in exporting and importing and we need to be able to export our product efficiently, effectively and at the lowest cost possible.The reality is that the container rates across Australian ports can be improved. There is no doubt about that. Everybody agrees that reform has to be undertaken in this country. Of course, the end result for this country of lower cost exports is increased job opportunities. Increased job opportunities are what all of us in this parliament should be about. Waterfront reform is very important, increasing the competitive capacity of our exports on the world markets. With increased exports or with lower cost exports we can make sure that job opportunities in this country will continue to increase. That is the essence of this legislation.The opposition, the Labor Party, are against reform. They are locked hand and foot to the MUA bosses and to the other union bosses in this country. The federal government is prepared to make sure that reform does occur for the benefit of all families right across this country. Reform will continue to take place on the waterfront, and this legislation will make sure that waterfront reform continues, so that our exports can increase at a lower cost and therefore jobs can increase in this country. That is the simple argument in regard to this legislation.The Labor Party is locked hand and foot to people like Coombs and the trade union bosses, and they cannot dissociate themselves from that. The reality is—and I will just repeat it for the benefit of those people who are listening to this debate—that the coalition government is prepared to make sure that reform does occur on the waterfront, unlike the Labor Party.Reform on the waterfront will make sure that our exports will increase and will be at more affordable prices for those people around the world who buy our products. We live with global markets today, and we have to be competitive as a country. That is what this reform is all about. In bringing reform to the waterfront, this country has the opportunity to increase job growth for our young people in regional Australia and in our cities right around the country. I commend these amendments to the House. I move:That the question be now put.13:15:00The House divided. (Mr Deputy Speaker—Mr H.V. Quick)83Abbott, A. J. Andrew, J. N.Andrews, K. J. Anthony, L. J.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bishop, B. K.Bradford, J. W. Broadbent, R. E.Brough, M. T. Cadman, A. G.Cameron, E. H. Cameron, R. A.Causley, I. R. Charles, R. E.Cobb, M. R. Dondas, N. M.Downer, A. J. G. Draper, P.Elson, K. S. Entsch, W. G.Evans, R. D. C. Fahey, J. J.Gallus, C. A. Gambaro, T.Gash, J. Georgiou, P.Grace, E. J. Halverson, R. G.Hardgrave, G. D. Hawker, D. P. M.Hicks, N. J. *Hockey, J. B.Jeanes, S. B. Johnston, R.Jull, D. F. Katter, R. C.Kelly, D. M. Kelly, J. M.Kemp, D. A. Lieberman, L. S.Lindsay, P. J. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S. *McDougall, G. R. McGauran, P. J.McLachlan, I. M. Miles, C. G.Moore, J. C. Mutch, S. B.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Prosser, G. D.Pyne, C. M. Randall, D. J.Reid, N. B. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Ruddock, P. M. Scott, B. C.Sharp, J. R. Slipper, P. N. *Smith, A. C. Smith, W. L.Somlyay, A. M. Southcott, A. J.Stone, S. N. Taylor, W. L.Truss, W. E. Tuckey, C. W.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.Wakelin, B. H. West, A. G.Williams, D. R. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Worth, P. M.43Adams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Baldwin, P. J. Beddall, D. P.Brown, R. J. Campbell, G.Crean, S. F. Crosio, J. A.Dargavel, S. J. Ellis, A. L.Evans, G. J. Evans, M. J.Ferguson, L. D. T. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Griffin, A. P. *Hatton, M. J.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Kerr, D. J. C. Latham, M. W.Lawrence, C. M. Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L. Martin, S. P.McClelland, R. B. McLeay, L. B.McMullan, R. F. Melham, D.Morris, A. A. Morris, P. F.Mossfield, F. W. O'Connor, G. M.Price, L. R. Sawford, R. W. *Sercombe, R. C. G. *Smith, S. F.Tanner, L. J. Thomson, K. J.Willis, R. Wilton, G. S.Zammit, P. J.Howard, J. W. Beazley, K. C.Moylan, J. E. Grace, E. L.Thomson, A. P. Brereton, L. J.* denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the affirmative.Question put:That the amendments (Mr Reith's ) be agreed to.13:20:00The House divided. (Mr Deputy Speaker—Mr H.V. Quick)84Abbott, A. J. Andrew, J. N.Andrews, K. J. Anthony, L. J.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bishop, B. K.Bradford, J. W. Broadbent, R. E.Brough, M. T. Cadman, A. G.Cameron, E. H. Cameron, R. A.Causley, I. R. Charles, R. E.Cobb, M. R. Dondas, N. M.Downer, A. J. G. Draper, P.Elson, K. S. Entsch, W. G.Evans, R. D. C. Fahey, J. J.Gallus, C. A. Gambaro, T.Gash, J. Georgiou, P.Grace, E. J. Halverson, R. G.Hardgrave, G. D. Hawker, D. P. M.Hicks, N. J. *Hockey, J. B.Jeanes, S. B. Johnston, R.Jull, D. F. Katter, R. C.Kelly, D. M. Kelly, J. M.Kemp, D. A. Lieberman, L. S.Lindsay, P. J. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S. *McDougall, G. R. McGauran, P. J.McLachlan, I. M. Miles, C. G.Moore, J. C. Mutch, S. B.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Prosser, G. D.Pyne, C. M. Randall, D. J.Reid, N. B. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Ruddock, P. M. Scott, B. C.Sharp, J. R. Slipper, P. N. *Smith, A. C. Smith, W. L.Somlyay, A. M. Southcott, A. J.Stone, S. N. Taylor, W. L.Truss, W. E. Tuckey, C. W.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.Wakelin, B. H. West, A. G.Williams, D. R. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Worth, P. M. Zammit, P. J.42Adams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Baldwin, P. J. Beddall, D. P.Brown, R. J. Campbell, G.Crean, S. F. Crosio, J. A.Dargavel, S. J. Ellis, A. L.Evans, G. J. Evans, M. J.Ferguson, L. D. T. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Griffin, A. P. *Hatton, M. J.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Kerr, D. J. C. Latham, M. W.Lawrence, C. M. Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L. Martin, S. P.McClelland, R. B. McLeay, L. B.McMullan, R. F. Melham, D.Morris, A. A. Morris, P. F.Mossfield, F. W. O'Connor, G. M.Price, L. R. Sawford, R. W. *Sercombe, R. C. G. *Smith, S. F.Tanner, L. J. Thomson, K. J.Willis, R. Wilton, G. S.Howard, J. W. Beazley, K. C.Moylan, J. E. Grace, E. L.Thomson, A. P. Brereton, L. J.* denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the affirmative.Bill, as amended, agreed to.3374Bill (on motion by Mr Miles)—by leave—read a third time.Bills3374r5163374Consideration resumed from 8 April, on motion by Mr Reith:That the bill be now read a second time.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.3374Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.Amendments (by Mr Miles)—by leave—agreed to:(1) Clause 5, page 2 (lines 14 and 15), omit subclause (4), substitute:(4) Regulations for the purposes of this section: (a) may prescribe different rates for different classes of containers or vehicles; and (b) may prescribe a zero rate or rates.(2) Clause 5, page 2 (lines 16 to 18), omit the note.Bill, as amended, agreed to.3374Bill (on motion by Mr Miles)—by leave—read a third time.Bills3374r4373374Debate resumed from 13 May, on motion by Mr Miles:That the bill be now read a second time.13:26:003374Miles, Chris, MPMr MILESBI4BraddonLP10—in reply—In summing up, I would like to thank the participants in this debate. For a long time all of us in this parliament have recognised that this is a very complex area for the parliament to come to grips with. It is something which involves a lot of emotion, and I think all of us are concerned to try to move the legislation forward.In reply, I would like to stress a few things. The measures contained in this bill are good, sound changes. They will provide real benefits to parents by introducing flexibility into the child support scheme and will improve timeliness, accuracy and responsiveness in the administration.I commend the government's continuing commitment to reform the child support scheme to underscore the fundamental principle that parents are primarily responsible for the financial support of their children and that government will not unnecessarily intrude into people's lives. The Australian Labor Party has not properly addressed the child support issues and has ignored the recommendations of the inquiry by the Joint Select Committee on Certain Family Law Issues into the operation and effectiveness of the child support scheme.The measures in this bill were announced in a joint media release on 30 September 1997 by the Minister for Social Security, Senator Jocelyn Newman, and the Assistant Treasurer, Senator Rod Kemp. The bill improves the scheme's flexibility and provides greater equity for parents. It enables parents to take greater responsibility for support of their children. At the same time, the government will provide a safety net to ensure that children of separated parents are adequately supported and that the general community is not asked to carry an undue burden.The changes in this bill are, firstly, changes to child support payable. They increase paying parents' exempt income by 10 per cent; include an amount for shared care of a child in the exempt income amount; reduce the amount of the payee's disregarded income amount and remove the automatic inclusion of child care in the payee's disregarded income; allow high child-care costs to be a ground for a departure from the assessment; reduce the effect of the payee's disregarded income; introduce a minimum payment of $260 per year and make child support payable for secondary students until the end of the school year in which they turn 18; include rental property losses and foreign exempt income to calculate child support; base child support assessments on the most up-to-date income of parents; use an uplift factor only where the parent has not lodged the most recent tax return; and no longer backdate child support liability.Changes in the bill also include changes for second families, and these include the following points. They allow credit for child support paid in determining entitlements to family payments for payers' subsequent families. Changes to the administration are several, and I will quickly go through them. They will introduce a formal process to enable parents to object to the CSA's decision; no longer include the names and birth dates of relevant dependent children on the assessment notice; allow parents to agree to collect and pay child support privately at any time; and require parents to pay and collect child support privately where there is a good payment record.There will be a better alignment of family court and child support legislation relating to the care of children. The changes will allow parents to end a child support assessment where their safety is at risk and provide support and assistance to parents to collect child support where safety is no longer of concern; improve notification and disbursement processes to reduce incidences of overpayments; allow child support debts to be offset between parents; allow the registrar to initiate the process to depart from the administrative assessment and to streamline the departure process; allow estimates of income to be rejected where they do not reflect the actual income; and allow liable parents to apply for a child support assessment.As the member for Richmond (Mr Anthony) foreshadowed in his speech in the Main Committee, I will be moving an amendment to the bill and I am pleased to advise the House that this amendment was announced in the budget on Tuesday night. The amendment will allow payers to make non-agency payments without requiring the payees' agreement.I would also like to make some comments about the role of the House of Representatives task force and their initiatives at this point. The task force of government members was formed to consider and report to the government on a number of matters related to child support. The government appreciates the work that the task force has done in such a short period and supports the following recommen dations that the task force made. I will just quickly go through those areas of recommendations for people's information, firstly in regard to persons evading child support by travelling overseas. The majority of people with child support liability pay the amount when it is due and pay the correct amount. However, there are some payers who have a child support debt and go overseas before the debt is cleared. The government will amend the child support legislation with effect from 1 January 1999 to give the Child Support Registrar the power to stop a parent who has persistently failed to meet his or her child support liability from leaving Australia through a departure prohibition order process.The DPO will not be time limited and will remain in force until revoked by the Child Support Registrar when the debt has been paid or when satisfactory arrangements have been made. The process will come into effect from 1 January 1999. This is consistent with the taxation commissioner's powers which include a right of repeal to the Federal Court or Supreme Court. The remedy goes further than the joint JSC recommendation 115.The second area is consideration of diverse forms of income received and taken into account for determining child support. Child support is calculated using a parent's taxable income. There are a number of ways in which parents can reduce their taxable income and consequently pay less child support. Many of these ways of reducing taxable income such as salary sacrifice are legitimate under the taxation laws. The government has recognised that parents are able to reduce their taxable income for taxation purposes but this is not appropriate for child support purposes.The bill before parliament will add back to taxable income rental property losses and exempt employment income. Parents with second jobs and those that work overtime now have this extra income included in the income base for the calculation of child support. The government will establish an inter-departmental committee to examine the diverse manner in which all forms of income are received and taken into account for the purposes of child support assessments and will take account of the scope of tax reforms. The IDC would be chaired by DSS and comprise representatives from Attorney-General's, the Child Support Agency, Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance and Administration, and Treasury. Other departments could be coopted as necessary.In regard to transparency and independence of process to depart from the formula assessment I make the following comments: child support assessments are based on a formula. Parents who believe that the assessment is not appropriate can seek a departure from that assessment. Only about six per cent of parents seek a departure. The current process is perceived as not providing sufficient transparency or accountability. The registrar will review the process and will focus the concerns with a view to providing substantial improvements to current processes. The existing process to depart from formula assessment will be examined to develop a range of options which will improve its transparency and accountability to enable changes to be considered in the 1999-2000 budget process.A review of the training qualifications and remuneration of officers contracted to determine applications to depart from formula assessment will report to the Assistant Treasurer by 30 June 1998. The examination of the departure process will include legislation, procedures, information needed by clients, physical location and accountability of officers, notification of decisions and appeal mechanisms including an evaluation of the proposed legislative amendment which introduces objection provisions for departure decisions. Reviews are preferred to jumping prematurely to a judicial or quasi-judicial process which will be costly to administer and will run the risk of returning to a system which was largely out of reach of most parents.As to payer concerns about contact or access with children, currently the only recourse for parents denied contact with children is to lodge repetitive applications for enforcement with the court. These applications involve a delay varying between a few weeks and over six months and a range of penalties that are difficult to impose in the context of the best interests of the children. These processes are a significant cost to government and frequently to legal aid funding. The pilots will provide practical demonstration of alternative community based support for parents experiencing difficulties with contact. Pilots to help ensure compliance with Family Court child contact orders will be established within community based agencies, contracted under the family relationships services program.Pilots will be contracted at four locations—Parramatta, Brisbane, Townsville and Hobart—and will be three-pronged: firstly, information education sessions when the order is made; secondly, immediate assistance for parents to resolve conflict over contact; thirdly, a compulsory diversionary program for parents in breach of a contact order.The Attorney-General will also consider the establishment of a parliamentary committee to examine all aspects of family law contact and compliance once the Family Law Council has delivered its report in June 1998. Providing assistance to parents to resolve issues without court intervention is in line with recent changes in family law that encourage people to resolve family disputes outside the judicial system. A compulsory diversionary program provided by community based agencies for parents convicted of breaches would be a credible alternative to the current scope of penalties which range from recognisance to imprisonment.I thank those people who have participated in this debate and, as I said, I foreshadow that we will be moving amendments in the detail stages.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.3377Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.13:39:003377Price, Roger, MPMr PRICEQI4ChifleyALP00—I did have circulated in the House an amendment in my name. I advise that I no longer wish to pursue that amendment in that form, but this affords me the opportunity to point out to the Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet) to the Prime Minister (Mr Miles) in particular and to all those government members who have so effusively welcomed these amendments that in reality there will be more money collected by the Treasurer (Mr Costello) as a result of these changes. There will be more money going into consolidated revenue.I would hope that those government members in the Main Committee who attacked me and took exception to that view might read their own explanatory memorandum and the financial implications of the bill, because in child support there are always three people involved where money is concerned, although principally it is supposed to be directed to the welfare of children, and that is of course the two parents and the government. For example, the increase of a mere 10 per cent in the self-support component—and it is a pity that the parliamentary secretary could not share with us the reason why it is 10 per cent and not 20 per cent; what led the government to pick that particular figure—is going to cost $10 million. That will cost $10 million, but do you know how much Peter Costello is going to be better off by these measures? This is not my estimate or guess or the estimate of the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson). It is in the papers that the cost will be between $47 million and $26 million. When you take all the measures that are in this bill allegedly for the benefit of the children that are affected by child support and the financial impacts on the parents, who is the biggest winner? Not the children, not the parents, but Peter Costello and John Fahey—and they parade into this House as though this is some great bit of reform legislation.The parliamentary secretary says it is a difficult area. Well of course it is a difficult area but that does not mean there should be an absence of courage in wanting to tackle the problem and do some decent things. I would be grateful to the parliamentary secretary if he would respond to the financial implications of the bill. Does he agree with the explanatory memorandum that Peter Costello and John Fahey through this child support amendment bill will in fact be between $26.2 million and $47.297 million better off. Is this what the Coalition govern ment considers to be real reform in the child support area. He might share with the House through his generosity of spirit why they have actually made some of the decisions. I am not saying that what was recommended in the report is somehow set in concrete, is the best that there is. Far from it. It was the minimum that we recommended should be done to restore equity and fairness—the minimum. And that is well over 3½ years ago.Why did he pick 10 per cent, not 20? Why has he picked some new figure of average weekly earnings rather than the pension cut-off point. I would like to get into debate with him but if you do not share your arguments with us but more importantly the people of Australia, how is it possible to have a debate. Or does the parliamentary secretary want to do what he normally does and that is to gag measures through the House.I want to advise the people of the House that the better and more correct title of this bill is really a consolidated revenue measures bill rather than a child support amendment bill. I am not pursuing the amendment but I do want to say that is the real impact. The big winners are not the children, are not the parents, but consolidated revenue presided over by the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance. (Time expired)13:44:003378Smith, Tony, MPMr TONY SMITHSK6DicksonLP10—by leave—I move:(1) Schedule 13, page 69, before item 1 (after line 5) insert:1A Section 5Insert: applicant , for the purposes of Part 6A, means a liable parent, an eligible custodian or any other person affected by an administrative assessment or a departure order;(2) Schedule 13, page 69, before item 1 (after line 5) insert:1B Section 5Insert: arrears assessment means an administrative assessment of arrears of child support;(3) Schedule 13, page 69, before item 1 (after line 5) insert:1C Section 5Insert: order , for the purposes of Part 6A means an order made by a magistrate varying or suspending the operation of: (a) an administrative assessment of child support; or (b) an arrears assessment; or (c) an earlier order under Part 6A.(4) Schedule 13, page 69, before item 1 (after line 5) insert:1D Section 5Insert: Tribunal for the purposes of Part 6A means a Small Claims (Child Support) Tribunal constituted by a magistrate sitting alone.(5) Schedule 13, item 2, page 69 (line 8) to page 80 (line 16), omit the item, substitute:2 Part 6ARepeal the Part, substitute:Part 6A—Departure from administrative assessment of child supportDivision 1—Object of Part98A Object of Part(1) The object of this Part is, subject to subsection (2), to give power to a Tribunal established under this Part to make an order having the effect that the provisions of this Act relating to administrative assessment of child support will be departed from in relation to a child.(2) Under this Part, the Tribunal may make a determination or an order in 2 circumstances: (a) upon application by a liable parent or carer entitled to child support; or (b) when the Registrar initiates the making of an order.(3) The Tribunal is not empowered under this Part to make an order in relation to child support payable in the child support year ending on 30 June 1992 or any earlier child support year unless the Tribunal determines that special circumstances exist that would warrant an examination of child support prior to that date.Division 2—Application to Small Claims (Child Support) Tribunal98B Application to Tribunal(1) An applicant may make an application for review to a Small Claims (Child Support) Tribunal established under this Division.(2) An applicant may make an application under this Division where the applicant considers that special circumstances exist in respect of all or any of the following: (a) the needs of the child and the capacity to pay of both parents; (b) the history of support by both parents to the child; (c) the existence of any order in respect of residency and/or contact; (d) whether the applicant (being an applicant with an order for contact) is permitted and is able to exercise such contact; and (e) any other relevant circumstances in relation to the exercising of contact.(3) An order under this Division may make different provisions in relation to different child support years and in relation to different parts of a child support year.(4) The Tribunal must give, in writing, the reasons for making the order.(5) A contravention of subsection (4) in relation to an order does not affect the validity of the order.98C Small Claims (Child Support) TribunalAny Magistrate's Court or Court of Petty Sessions constituted by or under a law of a State or Territory is invested with federal jurisdiction to sit as a Small Claims (Child Support) Tribunal for the purposes of this Division.98D Formal requirements for applicationAn application made under section 98B must be in the manner specified in the regulations.98E Other party to be notified(1) The Tribunal must cause a copy of: (a) an application received under section 98B; and (b) any document accompanying it to be served on: (c) such other party as the Tribunal considers appropriate; and (d) where the Registrar is not the applicant—the Registrar.(2) The Tribunal must, at the same time, inform the other party to the proceedings, in writing, that he or she may make any representation (a reply ) regarding the application that he or she considers relevant.(3) If the other party to the proceedings makes a reply, the Tribunal must cause a copy of the reply, and any accompanying documents, to be served on the applicant.(4) If the Registrar provides any documents to the Tribunal, the Tribunal must cause a copy of such documents to be served on the other party or parties. 98F Procedure before Tribunal etc(1) In proceedings for an application for an order under this Division the Tribunal: (a) the applicant shall be entitled to be heard; (b) the parties cannot be represented by solicitors or counsel unless, because of exceptional circumstances, the Tribunal determines otherwise; (c) expert evidence is not admissible; (d) evidence of the costs of supporting a child may be adduced by the parties; (e) except as provided otherwise by this Act or by the regulations, the rules of evidence do not apply; and (f) a witness giving evidence must do so on oath or affirmation.(2) Where an applicant alleges that a course of conduct exists which constitutes deliberate and wilful breaches of an order for contact the onus is on that applicant to satisfy the Tribunal as to that conduct.(3) No appeal shall lie from the Tribunal in such proceedings, except for error of law on the face of the record or going to jurisdiction.(4) The Tribunal may not make an order for costs.98G Factors to be considered by TribunalIn considering an application under this Division the Tribunal may have regard to all or any of the following factors: (a) the history of support by both parents to the child; (b) the existence of any order in respect of residency and/or contact; (c) whether the applicant (being an applicant with an order for contact) is (i) permitted, and (ii) able to exercise such contact; or (d) any other relevant circumstances in relation to the exercising of contact.98H Powers of Tribunal(1) In considering all matters involving the support of children upon application by the Registrar the Tribunal shall have power to order that any person liable to pay child support appear before it to be orally examined and to show cause as to why child support should not be paid as ordered by the Tribunal.(2) The Tribunal may issue an order for the arrest of a person who fails to attend before the Tribunal when ordered to do so. (3) A person appearing before the Tribunal in accordance with this section may be represented by counsel or a solicitor.(4) A person may be required by the Tribunal to produce documents in accordance with an order of the Tribunal, including documents concerning business or company affairs potentially related to the person's obligations under this Act.(5) After hearing all the evidence, the Tribunal may make an order requiring the person to pay child support.(6) The Tribunal may make an order for costs in connection with a proceeding under this section.98I History of non-payment of child support—Action by TribunalUpon an order being made by the Tribunal requiring a liable parent to pay child support and prima facie evidence being later brought before the Tribunal by the Registrar that the liable parent has a history of non-payment of child support, the Tribunal may summons the liable parent to appear before it to show cause why he or she should not be punished for contempt of the Tribunal..98J Deliberate, wilful etc failure to pay child support(1) A liable parent found by the Tribunal to have deliberately, wilfully and without lawful excuse failed to pay a sum of child support pursuant to an administrative assessment or pursuant to an order under this Division is guilty of contempt of the Tribunal.Maximum penalty: Imprisonment for 6 months or a fine not exceeding $5000(2) In addition to any penalty imposed by the Tribunal under subsection (1), a liable parent found guilty of an offence under this section may be required by the Tribunal to pay any sum of child support owing by the liable parent.Division 3—Determinations that may be made under this Part98K Orders that may be made by TribunalIf the Tribunal is satisfied that the requirements of section 98G have been satisfied in respect of an application, the Tribunal may make: (a) an order varying the rate of child support payable by the liable parent concerned; (b) an order varying the child support percentage, adjusted income amount, child support income amount or exempted income amount of the liable parent; (c) an order varying an amount of child support which would, if not varied, be owed by the liable parent; (d) an order making provision of a kind permitted under the regulations with respect to the calculation of any such amount in relation to the liable parent; (e) an order varying the child support income amount or disregarded income amount of the carer entitled to child support concerned; (f) an order making provision of a kind permitted under the regulations with respect to the calculation of any such amount in relation to the carer entitled to child support; (g) an order directing that one or more of the following provisions is not to apply: (i) section 42 (Cap on child support if child support income amount exceeds 2.5 times yearly equivalent of relevant AWE amount); (ii) section 52 (Cap on combined child support liabilities of 2 liable parents); (h) an order varying a factor ascertained under paragraph 54(1)(b); and (i) where the Tribunal is satisfied that a course of conduct exists where there are deliberate and wilful breaches of an order for contact—an order directing that child support payable by the liable parent is not payable unless and until the Tribunal is satisfied that the order for contact is able to be exercised.Division 4—Child Support Agreements98L Parties may enter into child support agreementThe parties to proceedings under this Part may, at any time before a determination is made in relation to the proceedings, enter into an agreement, purporting to be a child support agreement, in relation to the child support payable for the child in relation to whom the determination may be made.98M Decision on child support agreement(1) Subject to subsection (2), if the Tribunal is satisfied that an agreement entered into by the parties to proceedings is a child support agreement, the Tribunal must accept the agreement.(2) If the carer entitled to child support who is party to the agreement is in receipt of an income tested pension, allowance or benefit, the Tribunal must not accept the agreement unless he or she is also satisfied that it would be: (a) just and equitable as regards the child, the liable parent, and the carer entitled to child support; and (b) otherwise proper; to accept the agreement.(3) Subsections 117(4) to (9) (inclusive) apply to the Tribunal in the exercise of his or her functions under subsection (2) as if: (a) any reference in those subsections to the court were a reference to the Tribunal; and (b) any reference to the making of a particular order under Division 4 of Part 7 were a reference to the acceptance of an agreement.(4) If the Tribunal accepts the agreement: (a) sections 94, 95 and 96 apply; and (b) the Tribunal may not make a determination under this Part in relation to the proceedings. (5) If the Tribunal is not satisfied as required by subsections (1) and (2), the Tribunal must refuse to accept the agreement. (6) If the Tribunal refuses to accept the agreement: (a) section 96 applies; and (b) the Tribunal must proceed to make a determination under this Part.Division 7—Pending applications98AG Pending application not to affect assessmentSubject to section 140 (Stay orders), the fact that proceedings are pending under this Part in relation to a person does not, in the meantime, interfere with, or affect, any administrative assessment made in relation to the person. Any such assessment may be registered under the Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 1988 , and amounts of child support and other amounts recovered in relation to the assessment, as if proceedings were pending.The purpose of my amendments is to abolish the review process and introduce an external review process through the magistrates courts. It involves the setting up of a child support tribunal, drawing on the successful experience of the small claims tribunals and the small debts courts around the country. These bodies operate all around the country and are part and parcel of the magistrates court system and the courts of petty sessions in the various states and territories.An applicant could seek a departure order, varying child support upwards or downwards. The procedure would be inexpensive and efficient. The tribunal would be constituted by a magistrate who would hear and determine applications for departure orders based on the principle of the needs of the child and the capacity to pay of both parents.To establish needs and capacity to pay, evidence would need to be called on oath. No lawyers would be allowed, unless in exceptional circumstances such as literacy problems or proven incapacity. No experts would be permitted to give evidence. There would be no appeal on fact.The magistrate would not be bound by the administrative assessment in exercising a discretion to make a departure order. The magistrate could take into account, by clause 98G of the proposed amendments, whether the applicant has been permitted and able to exercise contact to a child. In other words, where there has been deliberate withholding of contact, the magistrate may make an order reducing the child support payment in those circumstances.This unique provision is needed because of the powers of this tribunal and the stringent powers of the Child Support Agency generally. The tribunal would have power to orally examine a non-payer on oath and have power to summons the person to appear before it to be orally examined. In these proceedings, leave would be granted for lawyers to represent that person on the application of the Child Support Agency.The Child Support Agency could, if it finds a liable parent to have deliberately, wilfully and without lawful excuse failed to pay a sum of child support, be found guilty of contempt. It is not unique in this sense, since at common law and under the criminal codes of the states and territories parents are under a duty to provide the necessities of life to their children. A breach of that duty is a criminal offence with serious punishments following. I see no difference between that situation and a situation where a person deliberately withholds child support and, accordingly, significant penalties follow.What is the background to this? During the second reading debate it was said time and time again that, prior to the Child Support Act being introduced, fewer than 30 per cent of parents were paying or receiving child support. I do not know what the basis for that assertion is. I have been avidly trying to discover the basis, but I have not been able to by myself or through my researchers. One leaps from one paper to the next, always seeking, but never finding, a reliable primary source.However, I did just get passed to me a moment ago a document called Child Support—Social Justice Project 1986, which talks about a figure of 37 per cent of persons who were on the widow's pension or supporting parent's pension. Is that where the figure comes from? I do not know. I am still waiting to find out. It is important, because we should not keep repeating falsities until we discover the source of these sorts of statements. The argument suits the bureaucrats and the Child Support Agency, but it is not the full account. I suspect that the more accurate figure is greater than 50 per cent in fact.But let us face it: the agency is in the business of perpetuating itself. That is not to say that the agency cannot perform a role, but it ought not to perform the role of judge, jury and executioner; that is why we have courts. They are the checks, balances and safeguards which make society tolerable. Presently, the people subject to this system find it intolerable.No-one has worked harder on this issue in the House since I have been here. I have spoken about this more times than any other person, and I have devised what is a very good scheme to make it fairer. What people on both sides of the House do not seem to recognise—and, I regret to say, what people in the executive of this parliament fail to recognise—is that this system is unfair. (Time expired)13:49:003382Bradford, John, MPMr BRADFORDFT4McPhersonIND10—What the member for Dickson (Mr Tony Smith) has done today is a fairly brave move, because he has actually put before the parliament a very good idea. That probably is giving it the kiss of death; nevertheless, what he has said has considerable merit.What I am confused about, though, and what he did not make clear, is whether the government is supporting his amendments or whether he, in fact, is doing this of his own initiative without the support of the government. I suppose in time we will see whether in fact the government supports him. His being a member of the government, and it being a good idea, I would hope that it is supported by the government.As the member for Dickson has said, he as much as, and perhaps more than, anyone in this place has, as a lawyer, dealt with a lot of family law matters. He obviously understands better than most members the problems that exist within the existing regime of the Family Court and the Child Support Agency.I think he put quite eloquently his case for the formation of this particular tribunal and so I will not go into great detail other than to say that it does have merit and ought to be supported or taken seriously as a suggestion, but it remains to be seen whether in fact that occurs at some point in the future.The member for Chifley (Mr Price) spoke in this debate, and to his credit—and I think it is credit that is due widely in this place—he chaired the Joint Select Committee on Certain Family Law Issues, which reported in November 1994. That committee made 163 recommendations, most of which I suggest—and the member for Chifley might correct me—have not yet been seriously addressed by this parliament. Yet from my reading of that report and from following its deliberations—it went for a very long time and was a very good committee that made a lot of recommendations which ought to have been accepted—the legislation that we are now dealing with in detail again is just a picking through some of those recommendations and, indeed, putting more bandaids on what is quite patently a totally ineffective system of dealing with the very difficult problems that are created when marriages break up. The member for Chifley, of all people, I think, can speak with some authority and some credibility on these particular issues.I do not pretend that I have the solutions to the problems that the Child Support Agency represents but, having an understanding of what is involved, I do not believe the sorts of changes we are dealing with here today go anywhere near solving the problems.I know from my former life, which was not so long ago, that members of the government parties are very concerned about it. They said publicly, and I can say to people who are listening that they certainly were very vocal privately, that the Child Support Agency was responsible for more complaints in their electorate offices than any other individual matter with which they were confronted as members. I think that is still the case. It is simply the case because the government continues to fiddle. Instead of actually fixing it up, doing something with it, and getting back to basics, it continues to put bandaids on the existing problem.The member for Dickson has come in here with a radical solution to the problem, radical because it is a major departure from the paradigms within which people seem to think about this problem. We are yet to see whether there is any support from the government, or indeed from the Labor Party, for that particular suggestion.I have at the moment got a couple with whom I am dealing who are just typical of the many problems when a relationship has broken down. The number one priority it seems to me that this legislation fails to address, and which has been repeatedly overlooked, is the inability to take account of the former spouse's situation in a relationship. In other words, people are often aggrieved when a spouse, whether it be a husband or a wife, leaves and then goes into a situation where they are very well off. (Time expired)13:54:003383Anthony, Larry, MPMr ANTHONYXJ6RichmondNP10—I certainly rise to speak on this subject—4T4MELHAMMr Melham—Do you need child support from your dad?XJ6Anthony, Larry, MPMr ANTHONY—Well, I do not live with my mum. But certainly I am sure you have a very nice mother, as I have a nice father. Nevertheless, this issue has been discussed and obviously there is a lot further to go with child support. In any situation where you have a marriage break-up or a couple breaking up where children are involved, a lot of trauma and stress is brought upon those parents and particularly upon the children. A task force has been established in the last six weeks by the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) to look at some specific areas where we could go further in the legislation that is currently before the House, the Child Support Legislation Amendment Bill 1998 , looking at improving that as well as looking at the Child Support Agency. Whilst I do have a lot of sympathy with the proposal being put forward, I believe that it is important that we look at some of the mechanisms within the Child Support Agency before we walk down that path.Obviously we need to be looking at the transparency and accountability of the Child Support Agency. Many of the concerns of perhaps non-custodial parents arise when they seek a departure order from the Child Support Agency. I might add that only six per cent of parents actually seek a departure order and 50 per cent of those are actually approved, so that three per cent is where a lot of the grief comes from.Following our discovery we have requested that a review be held of the training qualifications and remunerations of the review officers within the Child Support Agency. Certainly, from some of the evidence that we had, there is a long way to go to ensure that those people who are the actual review officers are not only properly qualified but also properly remunerated. Their remuneration is actually based on the success of the case, which tends to focus on quantity rather than quality.There are a number of areas which have come to light for me and certainly other members of the task force. Let us go back and have a look at perhaps reforming the Child Support Agency as much as we can. If that is not successful, then obviously other proposals may have to be looked at. Some pilot programs, while not legislation, will automatically be established to look at access or contact, which also causes an enormous amount of grief for both custodial and particularly non-custodial parents, where they comply with the child support formula. Indeed, they do the right thing. They then obviously come to pick up their children, but they are denied access. Obviously the issue at heart, and I think this is the issue that is being discussed here, is how you actually enforce an order if it is continuing to be breached. What we are suggesting is let us run some pilot programs now, which will be community based, and perhaps also look at something within a family court or judicial area, so we can compare apples with apples and see which type of system is more effective. Certainly before the Child Support Agency was established by the previous government in 1988, the actual level of payments being made was substantially lower. There was a high default rate, and there was a quasi judicial process in place which was not effective.What we have now is a number of recommendations. I might add that the parliamentary secretary has also today talked about increasing non-agency payments up to a level of 25 per cent, and we believe that this will be an opportunity, particularly for non-custodial parents if they wish to pay for their child's schooling fees, for them to pay for essential medical or dental fees. It could be in the area of paying for utilities, such as rates or mortgages or indeed for motor vehicles, which can now be assessed within the child support formula. I might add as well that one of the other issues is access to travel. Many custodial and non-custodial parents are obviously in a situation where they have to either fly or travel to their children, or their children have to come to them, and you can apply for a departure order, as long as it is above five per cent. You can utilise that travel cost.The other area that is particularly important, and I think this is where some of the geneses of these amendments are, involves assessing the various types of income, whether it be salary sacrifice or second jobs or overtime. Certainly there will be an interdepartmental committee now which will investigate some of these issues. (Time expired)10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Order! It being 2.00 p.m., the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 101A. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.Ministerial Arrangements33843384Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I inform the House that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade, Tim Fischer, will be absent from question time today and Monday, 25 May. He will be on an official visit to Europe and Russia, engaging in investment and trade promotion activities with the International Wool Secretariat, the World Trade Organisation and the Joint Commission for Trade and Economic Cooperation. The Minister for Foreign Affairs will answer questions on his behalf.Questions Without Notice338433843384Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, have you seen the statement today by the Australian Council of Social Service, the Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and Uniting Church, which states that these groups:. . . vigorously oppose any increases in taxes on consumption to pay for income tax reductions as both regressive and economically unnecessary?Why are you now planning to ignore this sound advice?Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—When government members are silent, I will call the Prime Minister3384Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—In the preparation of the taxation package, the government has already had some very extensive and some very constructive discussions with a number of the organisations that were mentioned in the Leader of the Opposition's question. Indeed, only two nights ago I personally had a discussion with the president of ACOSS, Mr Raper, and I found that discussion constructive. I found him willing to understand the need for taxation reform.Let me take the opportunity of saying to the Leader of the Opposition that, when the tax package comes out, the battlers of Australia will be well pleased. When the taxation package comes out the battlers of Australia will see it as a fair and decent and honest attempt to make the Australian taxation system fairer. Let me also take the opportunity of saying that I have, for a long time in my career in public life, pursued the cause of fundamental taxation reform. I intend to preside over a reform of the Australian taxation system that not only takes the economy of Australia into the 21st century in a positive way but also is fair and equitable to the low-income earners of Australia.It is those who sit opposite who betrayed the interests of low-income earners. It is those who sit opposite who gave the battlers of Australia home mortgage rates of 17 and 18 per cent and who gave to the small businesses of Australia interest rates of 20½ per cent. It is my government which has given this country and the battlers of Australia the lowest housing interest rates in more than 30 years and it will be my government that will deliver taxation justice to the battlers of Australia.33853385Slipper, Peter, MPMr SLIPPER0V5FisherLP10—My question today is addressed to the Treasurer. Treasurer, can you advise the House how the coalition's third outstanding budget has been received? What are the reasons for this very positive reception?3385Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—I thank the honourable member for Fisher for his question. Can I say, on behalf of the government, that the government faced a choice when it was putting this budget together of making sure that we met the social and economic priorities of Australia while we were, at the same time, strengthening our economy against the turbulence in the Asian region and while we were dealing with the failures of the Keating-Beazley Labor years.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—I apologise for 4½ per cent growth.CT4Mr COSTELLO—It would have been easier for Australia if the Keating-Beazley Labor government had not racked up $80,000 million of debt in its last five years in government. The $80,000 million debt did not just disappear when we were elected—we wish that it had. It meant that this government had to engage in sustained good economic policy, first to get the budget back into the black—to get it back on track—and then to go forward and start reducing the $80,000 million from the Keating-Beazley Labor government.In relation to the budget, there has been a very strong reception to it. The Business Council of Australia said:This is a budget that is absolutely right for the times.The Australian Retailers Association welcomed it, saying:The economy is on course for moderate but reasonable growth.I think on this side of the House one of the things that we were most proud to be able to do in the budget was to look after the self-funded retirees in a way that they had never been looked after before. Maureen Kingston, from the Association of Independent Retirees said this:The Association of Independent Retirees is delighted that the government has listened to the voice of the independent retirees.We were delighted to listen to it and to be able to deliver to another 220,000 Australian retirees the opportunity to take a health care card so that they can buy their pharmaceuticals at $3.20 and, after 52 pharmaceuticals, have them free. The Master Builders Association, Australia's leading building and construction industry association, has also welcomed the budget.In addition to all of those groups, the state Chamber of Commerce in New South Wales, after being addressed by the Minister for Finance and Administration the morning after the budget, actually did a survey of reactions to the budget, giving it a score of eight out of 10 after the address of the minister, who did an exceptionally good job at that meeting. They said this:. . . 75.8 per cent of respondents felt that the Howard government would deliver its forecast surplus and 75.4 per cent felt that the business community was ahead after three Costello budgets.Good economic policy does not come by chance. It is not a matter of luck, as the Leader of the Opposition seems to think it is; it is a matter of hard, disciplined work. It is a matter of overcoming the sabotage of the previous administration and all of the efforts that Labor undertook to defeat good policy. Australia is lucky that Labor did not defeat good policy. Australia is lucky that it is back in the black and back on track.33863386Evans, Gareth, MPMr GARETH EVANSVD4HoltALP00—My question is to the Treasurer and it also is about the reception of the budget, this time by the foreign exchange market. How can the Treasurer credibly claim that his budget strategy has fireproofed the Australian economy against contagion by the Asian economic crisis when at the very first test of that proposition yesterday—the events in Indonesia—the Australian dollar was marked down by financial markets to a 12-year low?3386Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—I have never before heard a political party try to question the exchange rate of Australia. I have never before seen a group of people—Opposition members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members of the opposition will remain silent! The member for Rankin, the member for Port Adelaide, the member for Burke!CT4Mr COSTELLO—who would try in relation to matters like that to score cheap political points.Opposition members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members of the opposition will remain silent!CT4Mr COSTELLO—The thing I would say to markets, which I hardly need to say to them, is that there is no more reason to take notice of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on this issue any more than they would take notice of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on any other issue.VD4EVANSMr Gareth Evans—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order on relevance. My question was about the extent to which the Treasurer had succeeded in fireproofing the Australian economy against external contagion. Will he not answer that question which is squarely and directly related to domestic economic policy and the extent of its insulation which has obviously been put in question by yesterday's events?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Deputy Leader will resume his seat. The question is being answered and it is entirely in accordance with standing orders.CT4Mr COSTELLO—Since the Deputy Leader of the Opposition seems to be interested in the steps that are being put in place in Australia in relation to the Australian economy, let me give him the facts: the lowest inflation rate since 1962; the lowest mortgage interest rates since 1969; and the lowest small business interest rates, at 7.7 per cent, in 33 years. In 1998-99 we will not be running up debt at the rate of $13,000 million a year as the Labor finance minister did, but repaying the Keating-Beazley Labor debt with a plan to reduce it by half by 2001 in proportion to GDP and—something that the Labor Party did not do—get the budget back into surplus. These are the fundamentals of the Australian economy.Let me ask the opposition this question: where would Australia be today in relation to the Asian turbulence if Labor had had its way and kept the budget in deficit? Where would we be if we were still racking up $13 billion, $14 billion and $15 billion deficits? Where would we be if Australia had had another three years of wasted Labor incompetence? We would have been dangerously exposed—this is a point worth making—by a party which, when Asian growth was running at 10 per cent, had Australia in recession. In 1990, Labor had Australia in recession when East Asia was running a 10 per cent growth rate. Where would we have been if the opposition had been running a recession on a 10 per cent growth rate when East Asian growth turned down?These were the steps taken and they were fought all the way. If those steps were wrong, why is it that the Labor Party now adopts our policy? Why is it that the Labor Party now says it commits itself to three years of surplus budget? If that policy is not right, why has the opposition now adopted it? Because this is the level of the opportunism, the complete opportunism, of the Labor Party, which says, `We will fight you all the way for your achievements and then we will try to steal them.' That is the opportunism of the Labor Party which has no credibility on this issue.33873387Gallus, Christine, MPMrs GALLUSCU4HindmarshLP10—My question is addressed to the Treasurer. In recognising the great contribution older Australians have made to our nation, can the Treasurer advise the House what steps the government took in Tuesday night's budget to recognise and better assist older Australians—4T4MELHAMMr Melham—Can't you read the budget papers?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Banks!CU4Mrs GALLUS—and the thinking behind the government's measures?3387Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—As I said earlier, one of the things that the government was pleased to be able to do in the budget was to look after older Australians and to say to the older Australians, those who have saved for their own retirement, that they would be recognised; that, like pensioners who are getting subsidised pharmaceuticals, those who have saved should similarly have access to subsided pharmaceuticals. On budget night, for 220,000 self-funded retirees, the government was able to deliver. But it is not only in relation to health care and the Commonwealth seniors health care card. Also funded out of Tuesday night's budget for those veterans who served Australia against hostile forces in the Second World War the government was able to deliver on the gold card; a gold card which says to those veterans who have served their country against hostile forces that they will be entitled to treatment as private patients, that they will be entitled to podiatry, chiropractic, physiotherapy—YK6WILTONMr Wilton—Where are those 220,000?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Isaacs will remain silent.CT4Mr COSTELLO—The member for Isaacs is interjecting. He apparently does not approve of it, Mr Speaker. But we do. We think that Australia's veterans do deserve free podiatry, free dental, free physio and free chiropractic. We think that it was an important measure to give the gold card to those World War II veterans and, in addition to the gold card, they will pay no Medicare levy. Their treatment will be entirely free. That is a great thing for Australia's veterans. In addition to that, the government's staying at home package for older Australians provides community age packages and provides more eligibility for domiciliary nursing care benefits. Isn't that good news, Mr Speaker?ET4BEVISMr Bevis—They can't afford the nursing homes.CT4Mr COSTELLO—Again the Labor Party interjects. They cannot stand good news for older Australians—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Brisbane!CT4Mr COSTELLO—but the domiciliary nursing care benefit is one of those great advantages. The other thing that the Labor Party interjects about is of course those who are on pensions.4T4MELHAMMr Melham—That's right.CT4Mr COSTELLO—`That's right,' they say.4T4MELHAMMr Melham—Give them back their dentures.ZD4HOWARDMr Howard—Oh!CT4Mr COSTELLO—That's right, they say. The first government in Australian history to legislate the aged pension to 25 per cent of average weekly earnings is this government.4T4MELHAMMr Melham—Oh, come on!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Banks!CT4Mr COSTELLO—Labor didn't do it in year one. Labor didn't do it in year two. Labor didn't do it in year three. Labor didn't do it in year four. Labor didn't do it in year five or six, or seven or eight, or nine or 10. Labor didn't do it in year 11. Labor didn't do it in year 12. Labor didn't do it in year 13. If only they had had a 14th year! If only they had had one more year they might have done it.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—A point of order!Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—When the House is quiet, I will call the Leader of the Opposition. I ask the members of the government to be quiet.LL6BALDWINMr Bob Baldwin—Is this another twist and shout? 10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Paterson will remain silent.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. He was asked specifically by his backbencher, with a dorothy dixer, what in the budget there was for the elderly. He is now canvassing the fact that the Labor Party introduced the 25 per cent mark for pensioners when he brought it down to 22.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition has made his point of order. The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. The Treasurer is answering the question within its ambit.CT4Mr COSTELLO—You always know when they are stung. You always know when he is stung: when he moves from that chair to that dispatch box and starts yelling in the way that he did.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Treasurer will answer the question.CT4Mr COSTELLO—It wasn't in year one or two or five or eight or 13. Labor had 13 years to do it, but couldn't. He asked what there was in this budget, funded from this budget, although the consumer price index did not rise, for aged pensioners. The age pension went up $6.80 and it went up $6.80 because this government legislated it. That is an achievement of a coalition government which the Labor Party could never have matched.33883388Ferguson, Martin, MPMr MARTIN FERGUSONLS4BatmanALP00—Rents went up by more than $6.80.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The honourable member for Batman will ask his question.LS4Mr MARTIN FERGUSON—My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that since the slashing of skillshares and other job programs the number of long-term unemployed has now grown from one in four to one in three of all unemployed? Has the Prime Minister seen today's figures which show a 6,400 increase in the number of long-term unemployed for April in seasonally adjusted terms?3388Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I think all members of the House remain concerned about the level of unemployment and about the level of the long-term unemployed. That is no secret, and there is no monopoly of concern about that. But let me take the opportunity of saying to the honourable member for Batman that since we came to office we have created 280,000 new jobs. It would do the honourable member for Batman well, and it would do his colleagues well, to understand that since August of last year this government has created almost 140,000 new jobs. I ask—rhetorically, of course—how many new jobs were created in the last six years of the Labor government? Twenty thousand—20,000 new jobs. In other words, in two years we have created seven times more full-time jobs than Labor was able to create in the last six years it held power.Of course, the Labor Party is now led by a man who has the inglorious distinction of having presided over, as employment minister, the largest level of unemployment in Australia seen since the years of the Great Depression.CT4COSTELLOMr Costello—Oh gee; who was that?ZD4Mr HOWARD—That was the Leader of the Opposition. In the early 1990s he presided over an unemployment rate of 11.2 per cent, which is the highest unemployment rate that Australia has suffered since the years of the Great Depression.So, Beazley: employment minister—highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Last six years of Labor: 20,000 full-time jobs created. First two years of government: 140,000 full-time jobs created—280,000 new jobs created since my government came to office. Of course the nation has a long way to go with unemployment. Of course 7.9 per cent is still too high. But we are making progress, and what is also important is that we are doing a lot better than you were doing.338810000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I call the honourable member for Wakefield, the Chief Government Whip.DT4CREANMr Crean—Oh! You don't refer to me as the shadow minister.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I will be delighted to.3388Andrew, Neil, MPMr ANDREWHE4WakefieldLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Can the minister inform the House of the measures that the Australian government will take following India's five nuclear tests this week?3389Downer, Alexander, MPMr DOWNER4G4MayoLPForeign Affairs10—I thank the honourable member for Wakefield for his question. He is, indeed, a very fine Chief Government Whip, and as a South Australian I can tell the House that he is a very fine member for the electors of Wakefield as well.4T4MELHAMMr Melham—He is getting a diplomatic posting, is he?4G4Mr DOWNER—Well, there is a thought. I'll tell you who won't be getting one. Nor will the Deputy Leader of the Opposition either, just in case he is wondering—Gary. The Australian government has made it very clear that we utterly deplore and condemn India's action in conducting a series of nuclear tests on 11 and 13 May. India's actions have deservedly attracted near universal condemnation and are the act of a government which has put itself beyond the pale of accepted international norms of behaviour. It is clear that India is completely out of step with what the international community has been trying to achieve, and particularly a country like Australia has been trying to achieve, for a very long time in the area of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.The international community cannot let India's actions pass without a substantive response. We have used regional international forums to register our opposition to India's nuclear testing and made direct and very strong representations here in Australia and in New Delhi to the Indian government. I have recalled Australia's High Commissioner from New Delhi to Canberra and I have also spoken at some length with the Indian High Commissioner here about Australia's concerns.In the light of India's indefensible behaviour, the government believes that further action is required, both to register our concern to the Indian government and to send a strong message to other nations that might be considering going down the same nuclear path. In that regard, the government has decided to implement a number of actions: first, the suspension of our bilateral defence relationship with India, including the withdrawal of Australia's defence adviser in New Delhi; and the cancellation of ship and aircraft visits, officer exchanges and other defence related visits. Australian Defence Force personnel who are training in India will be withdrawn and we will request the immediate departure of three Indian exchange officers currently at Defence colleges in Australia.The government has also decided to suspend all non-humanitarian aid to India. Those programs which are specifically humanitarian will continue, as will student programs. High level aid consultations scheduled for later this year have also been cancelled. The government will also suspend ministerial and senior official visits. In addition, the government will continue to pursue a strategy of concerted action in international fora, including the United Nations in New York and, importantly, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, to register our strong views. These actions will leave the Indian government in no doubt of Australia's views—not just the Australian government's views, but I believe the people of Australia's views. We are deeply disappointed that India has chosen a course of action which has cast such a major shadow over what was otherwise a positive bilateral relationship.Let me also say that we have and will continue to urge India's neighbours, particularly Pakistan, to exercise restraint in the face of this unacceptable provocation. Yesterday I called in the Pakistani High Commissioner, following a similar calling in of the High Commissioner by my department on the previous day. Today, during lunchtime, I telephoned the Pakistani Foreign Minister and I explained to the Foreign Minister not only our condemnation of the action that the Indian government had taken in detonating five nuclear devices, our sympathy for the change in the security environment of South Asia that these detonations had caused, of course in particular for Pakistan, but also our very strongly held view that Pakistan should not go down the same path as India and simply contribute to the undermining of what has been up until now such a successful nuclear non-proliferation regime.The government considers that India's actions could have most damaging consequences for the security of South Asia and, indeed, globally. Australia noted the announcement by the Indian government that it had concluded the planned series of test and we strongly urged that India conduct no further tests. But this does not excuse India's actions. India must immediately sign the comprehensive test ban treaty and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, thereby legally forswearing the development and use of nuclear weapons forever.33903390Evans, Gareth, MPMr GARETH EVANSVD4HoltALP00—My question is to the Treasurer. I remind him of the question he declined to answer yesterday as to how his budget can be forecasting employment growth to go up when GDP growth, private consumption and business investment are all forecast to go down? If his answer, when he gets around to giving one, is the only logically possible one—that there is going to be a major fall in productivity—how does he reconcile that with the statement in the budget papers that the economy is seeing `an improved productivity performance'? Is it the simple truth of the matter that your employment growth figure is shonky, plucked out of the air as the one necessary to get you through the election campaign by giving you an unemployment figure at the end of next June that just happens to be lower than where we are now?3K6CAMERONMr Ross Cameron—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order.4T4MELHAMMr Melham—What election date did you nominate in the sweep? They are running sweeps!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Will the member for Banks resume his silence.Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Can I have some silence on the government benches because I cannot hear him, even if you can.3K6CAMERONMr Ross Cameron—The question actually infringes six different provisions of the standing orders: firstly—exactly from the member's words—it repeats a question asked in identi cal terms yesterday; secondly, it contains a lengthy introductory statement; thirdly, it contains multiple questions; fourthly, it suggests an answer; and, fifthly, it contains comment, argument and opinion. I think on the basis of those five, it ought to be ruled out of order.UNKNOWNOpposition membersOpposition members—You said six! What is the sixth?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members of the opposition!DT4CREANMr Crean—Can't you count, you dummy!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—When the members of the opposition are silent, does the member for Parramatta have a sixth?3K6CAMERONMr Ross Cameron—I have been asked to provide a sixth. In fact, I will provide a seventh as well. It contains an invitation to debate, and it is not a genuine press for information or for action.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I thank the honourable member for Parramatta. While the question certainly is reminiscent of those that are generally regarded as being in order in the other place, it was a little long and tendentious for our chamber. Nonetheless, I shall ask the Treasurer to respond.3390Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—No.33903390Forrest, John, MPMr FORRESTNV5MalleeNP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business—it will be shorter. Has the minister heard reports that the Maritime Union of Australia is manoeuvring to gain control of a crucial creditors meeting? Can the minister inform the House how this would effect competition on the Australian waterfront and therefore be detrimental to the huge number of exporters in my electorate of Mallee?3390Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—I thank the member for Mallee for his question.Opposition members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—When the members of the opposition are silent, we will resume question time.WI4Mr REITH—I do acknowledge the member's interest because he does have a lot of primary producers in his electorate, a lot of citrus growers and others, and they rely on having an efficient wharf. It is very important for the competitive position of all of those businesses that they can get their produce across the Australian wharves, which have something like $62 billion worth of goods going across them on an annual basis. If we can have an efficient waterfront, that is dollars in the pockets of those exporters and those businesses.Opposition members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members of the opposition will remain silent. Nobody can hear what is going on. The member for Hotham! The member for Batman! The member for Perth! The minister has the call, and nobody else.WI4Mr REITH—What we now have is the spectacle—YU5TANNERMr Tanner—You are on shaky ground.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I warn the member for Melbourne. The member for Melbourne will remain silent.WI4Mr REITH—We have the spectacle of the MUA, in cahoots with the Leader of the Opposition, doing all that they can to pressure the lawful and due conduct and process of an administrators meeting, which is the creditors meeting due at the end of next week. It says a lot about the MUA. They will do anything and say anything. As the MUA once said, no-one should ever forget that John Coombs said in February of this year—YU5TANNERMr Tanner—How many times have you said that?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Melbourne I have already warned.WI4Mr REITH—that if necessary he would take legal action and if necessary he would take illegal action to defend the stranglehold monopoly of the MUA. Who is publicly supporting the taking of illegal industrial—Opposition members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The minister will resume his seat. If the members of the opposition behave like that, it is quite impossible to conduct question time in a normal way. I suggest to you that, whether or not you agree with the answer being given by the minister, civilised behaviour might suggest that you at least allow him to make his argument. I call the minister and suggest that the next member from the opposition who insists on intervening will be named.WI4Mr REITH—This union has said quite clearly and publicly that they will act legally or illegally to maintain their monopoly. That is on the public record. It has never been denied. The Leader of the Opposition is publicly shoulder to shoulder with John Coombs in the making of that statement. We have seen the arrogance of this union in the last few days come to light.KP6DARGAVELMr Dargavel—You talk about arrogance!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Fraser! I have warned everybody.WI4Mr REITH—A week or so ago the claim they were making for damages was a claim of $300 million to $400 million. A few days later they revved up their claim to a claim of $700 million for damages. Yesterday, Greg Combet, on behalf of the ACTU and the MUA, announced that their latest claim was for a million dollars a wharfie. He wants every wharfie to be on the BRW rich list. They are already the world's greatest rorters and now you are publicly supporting—WU5O'CONNORMr O'Connor—Where are the rich wharfies?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Corio will remain silent.WI4Mr REITH—these people with these absurd and ridiculous claims, which demonstrate the arrogance of this union and the paucity of leadership on the Labor side as they have the gall to stand and defend the indefensible.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—Mr Speaker, I take a point of order.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—It is interesting that there is a lot more silence now than when the minister was trying to give his reply. The Leader of the Opposition has the call.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—Ought not the minister to declare a personal interest in the matter if he is going to go on to discuss the level of damages that might be directed—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Order! The Leader of the Opposition will raise a point of order or will resume his seat.4G4DOWNERMr Downer—The fact is he is the Leader of the Labor Party: there is a conflict of interest.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—When the House is silent, I will hear the honourable member for Melbourne.YU5TANNERMr Tanner—My point of order is that this is clearly sub judice. The minister is reflecting on the potential order of damages in a case that is on foot and he shouldn't say a word.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—As far as I understand, it is not at that stage. There is no sub judice rule that prevents the minister replying as he is. The minister.WI4Mr REITH—I am invited to talk about conflict of interest.NV5FORRESTMr Forrest—A point of order, Mr Speaker!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The minister will resume his seat. There is another point of order.NV5FORRESTMr Forrest—I remind the members of the House of standing order 55. I have asked this question specifically on behalf of a large number of my constituents who want to hear the answer. I insist, Mr Speaker, that you enforce the order of the House.UNKNOWNGovernment membersGovernment members—Hear, hear!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the House will resume his answer. I draw the attention of all members to the fact that I have already issued a general warning. The Leader of the House, in response.WI4Mr REITH—The point I make is that the Labor Party has aligned themselves with the MUA. They have aligned themselves with the tactics of the MUA. They have aligned themselves with the violence, the intimidation, and the breach of secondary boycott laws in this country, and they have done so to maintain the monopoly and the stranglehold that this union has had over this country for as long as anybody can remember. A classic example is the Columbus ship, now off the US coast, which has been the subject of boycott action.5A5BROWNMr Robert Brown—Hear, hear!WI4Mr REITH—Yes. `Hear, hear!', they say. That is a classic. There you have in the national parliament a statement straight out of the Labor Party where they are publicly supporting the boycott of a ship with Australian goods bound for an export market. That is a classic statement. I challenge the Leader of the Opposition to publicly stand up now and to repudiate his own back bench on this issue. I tell you, you won't have the guts to do so because you are supporting illegal action by the MUA against Australian businesses and Australian exporters. You have proof positive here in the chamber today, Mr Speaker—FI4MORRISMr Allan Morris—I take a point of order!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member will resume his seat. When the House is silent, the member for Newcastle on a point of order.FI4MORRISMr Allan Morris—Mr Speaker, the minister is speaking to you. I suggest you either answer him or bring him into line.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The minister will give his answer through the chair. The minister.WI4Mr REITH—Mr Speaker, you would be interested to know that that cargo on the Colombus Canada has been stranded off Los Angeles since Saturday. It has been the subject of an ITF campaign. John Coombs is on the public record saying he would run an international boycott campaign against Australian produce. He said that on Melbourne radio. You have now got support from the Labor back bench. There are 46 containers of refrigerated cargo such as Australian beef on that ship. There is another 107 dry cargo containers, including car parts, wine and others. The value of that cargo runs into millions of dollars. Today in this parliament we have had a classic demonstration from the Labor Party that they are supporting the boycott of Australian goods as they go to export markets.UNKNOWNOpposition membersOpposition members—Rubbish!WI4Mr REITH—Well, if it's rubbish, your opportunity now is to stand up and to publicly condemn this boycott being run by your mates in the MUA.Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—When the members of the government are silent—Government members interjecting—UNKNOWNOpposition membersOpposition members—Name them! Name them!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members of the government will behave themselves.Government members interjecting—Opposition members interjecting—10000Mr SPEAKER—Members of the government and of the opposition! Members of the opposition and the government will be silent.33933393Filing, Paul, MPMr FILINGQT4MooreIND00—Is the Treasurer aware of proposals that a general deduction of $1,500 could be made available to PAYE taxpayers who elect not to submit a tax return? What is the government's response to this?3393Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—I actually have read about such a proposal. As I recall, the proposal came from the member for O'Connor.SJ4TUCKEYMr Tuckey—No, it came from Price Waterhouse.CT4Mr COSTELLO—I am corrected; it came from Price Waterhouse, I assume on the recommendation of the member for O'Connor. I always take suggestions from the member for O'Connor with utmost seriousness and consider them carefully. I am not entirely sure of the arithmetic, but it is true that it would be worthwhile reform to simplify taxation returns. Positive contributions on the subject will always be carefully examined by me.33933393Tuckey, Wilson, MPMr TUCKEYSJ4O'ConnorLP10—My question is directed to the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism.UNKNOWNOpposition membersOpposition members—Where is he? Who is he?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members of the opposition will remain silent.4I4McLEAYMr Leo McLeay—Will he stand up?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The honourable member for Watson!SJ4Mr TUCKEY—Minister, in light of the fact that the coalition government has now delivered its full three budgets without any increase to business, personal or indirect taxes and commenced the process of repaying Labor's $90 billion debt through a $2.7 billion budget surplus, what is the response to the industry measures that are also contained in this excellent budget?QJ4THEOPHANOUSDr Theophanous—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. Under standing order 44, the member claims certain things as facts in the preamble. They are quite obviously not facts in his preamble, and therefore the question is out of order. He is not entitled to make a statement of what he claims to be facts in relation to the question in the preamble.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I thank the honourable member for Calwell but, as I heard the question, it was in order. I think it is a matter of contention as to whether or not they are facts.3393Moore, John, MPMr MOOREEI4RyanLPIndustry, Science and Technology10—I thank the member for O'Connor very much for his question. He is one of the members of the House who pays the most attention to his electorate, especially in terms of small and medium sized business. I am very pleased to hear that he has been spoken to and reminded of the great qualities of the federal budget and the tremendous work that has been done by the federal government in terms of bringing government spending under control, which has brought about lower interest rates, a lower inflation rate and greater confidence within the business community of Australia.Because of that, I have received an enormous number of comments from all sorts of business people in Australia—large, small and medium—who have commended the government very much for the effort they have made in three budgets to bring government spending under control. In particular, they congratulate the Treasurer on the hard work that goes towards all these matters. When I look through the list of people who sent in messages, there is the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Manufactures, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Australian Retailers Association and the Master Builders Association. It goes on and on. Then I found a press statement from the member for Hotham. He just sort of dropped in. I do not want to press the point too much, but I have not heard from the member for Hotham since the government announced its industry statement in September last year. I have not heard one word.4G4DOWNERMr Downer—He must have asked you a question.EI4Mr MOORE—For six months the member for Hotham has not asked one question on industry in this House. I assumed that he had given up on industry and become a plumber. He is down there digging around with all the dirt and slinging it around. He has not got time for industry policy. He is not the spokesman for industry policy now; he is just the House's plumber. We should not worry about him too much.To show how out of form he is, most of the assertions he makes in the statement are wrong. The member for Hotham was a former minister, so he should know the answer to the question:Not one cent has been set aside for the textile, clothing and footwear industry assistance package.You were not a bad spender as a minister. You knew how to spend a few bob. So you would have known where to look things up in the budget. In the budget statement Budget Measures on page 173 there is a little chart which you can follow, and there is the money. It is all in there.Now we press to the second point. The second point he came up with was a continued decline in the support for manufacture. In fact, it has gone up. What did go down in the last Labor budget in the spending for manufacture in this sector was $200-odd million, just $300 million less than the current government is going on with. That is how far out you are, and you were not a bad spender, as I said before. A third assertion made here which was completely wrong relates to R&D spending. You used to know quite a bit about R&D spending. Do you remember syndicates? They were not too bad. They are the ones that you used to fix up in the back seat of the Roller. In here you assert that they are going down. It goes to show how little you understand of industry at all because, once again, they are going up. You have no understanding of what goes on. While the nation applauds the government on the budget, the spokesman on industry turned plumber makes a statement full of colour, short on fact and misses the mark completely.33943394Macklin, Jenny, MPMs MACKLINPG6JagajagaALP00—My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the 1998 budget introduced harsh new rules for people who receive lump sum compensation payments for pain and suffering, a measure which will deny social security payments to people for up to one year? Is it not a fact that an unemployed person who loses a leg in an accident and receives a payout of $25,000 will lose his unemployment benefit for 12 months? Is it not a fact that an age pensioner who seriously injures herself after a fall and receives a payout of $15,000 will lose $46 a fortnight out of her age pension for one year? Prime Minister, are you aware that you have gone after people who are injured through no fault of their own for a $50 million saving? How can you deny that your surplus is not built on the backs of low income Australians?3394Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I do not accept the description that has been put on it by the member. This particular measure arose partly as a result of discussions which had been going on between state and federal jurisdictions and, when the detail of it is examined, it is perfectly fair.33943394Broadbent, Russell, MPMr BROADBENTMT4McMillanLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Family Services. Can the minister inform the House of the reaction to the health initiatives announced in Tuesday night's budget? What advantages do professional and community groups see for these initiatives in my electorate of McMillan as a consequence of this most excellent budget?3394Wooldridge, Dr Michael, MPDr WOOLDRIDGE8E4ChisholmLPHealth and Family Services10—I thank the honourable member for his question. There has been a great response to the health initiatives in the budget, including responses from people who do not normally give us good responses.The Australian Medical Association has welcomed the Medicare GP rebate increases, the additional money for public health and medical research and for Aboriginal health. The Public Health Association of Australia has described the budget as being `a shot in the arm for public health', which it certainly will be. The Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia has said that this is the first time in over 10 years that a Commonwealth government has significantly increased support for drug treatments, prevention and education programs—a direct result of the Prime Minister's intervention and the Prime Minister's interest in this area. The National Rural Health Alliance has welcomed the fact that expenditure on indigenous health is the fastest growing area in the entire health portfolio.With research, one of our major initiatives, the Public Health Association has said that the government's commitment to maintaining NHMRC funding is good news. We have had strong support from the Australian Medical Research Institutes Association, from the Australian Medical Scientists Association and from the Western Australian Institute for Child Health Research.In aged care, the Council on the Ageing says that health is the most important public policy issue for older people—as it is—and our focus in this area is welcome. Volunteering Australia has been very strongly supportive of the program for volunteer management. Finally, the AMA, which is not known for giving compliments to me, has said that it is better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick—which is about the nicest thing they have said to me for a long time, and I welcome it.I am also told by my friend and colleague next door, the Minister for Finance and Administration, that the response in his electorate has been the same as mine; he has the Southern Highlands Garden Club here in the gallery. I have to say that, with the response to my electorate office, the single biggest thing that has been welcomed by constituents has been extending the seniors card. This is essentially about security. It does not require a large amount of money per person, but it means that older Australians can have the security of knowing that, if they get ill, they can afford pharmaceuticals, without any worry whatsoever. It is a great initiative, and the begrudging acceptance by the Leader of the Opposition shows where his thoughts on this really lie.33953395Lee, Michael, MPMr LEEMG4DobellALP00—My question is also addressed to the Minister for Health and Family Services. Minister, when you failed yesterday to explain the $369 million GP savings in your health budget, did you say:It's the Department of Finance's figures, not ours. Perhaps you should talk to them. Whatever the magic behind it, as I said, talk to the Department of Finance.When questioned about the massive changes in the estimates for private health insurance, did you say:The predictions on that are from the Department of the Treasury. We merely go along for the ride.Minister, on top of this, are you aware that, of your claims of a 15 per cent real increase for public hospitals, your former boss Dr John Hewson said yesterday, `It shrinks to one per cent, and that's why the states are screaming'? Minister, if you cannot explain your own budget savings, and the best you could do at your press conference yesterday was to claim ignorance or blame your colleagues, why should the Australian public believe your figures at all?3395Wooldridge, Dr Michael, MPDr WOOLDRIDGE8E4ChisholmLPHealth and Family Services10—I am certainly not blaming anyone at all. What I was trying to do was explain a formula driven process—and one journalist out of the 15 there seemed not to understand my explanation. I am happy to plead guilty to that. If that is the worst crime I commit, it will be a pretty good week. You get good articles and bad articles; I am happy to take the odd bad one with the odd good one.The simple thing about the savings on the changing to GP registrars is that it is a formula driven approach that has been used by the Department of Finance and Administration for a long time. In fact, I asked my department just before question time how long we had used this formula with the Department of Finance and Administration. They said, `At least five years.' Who was the Minister for Finance five years ago? Kim; it was your formula. So, if there are any problems with the formula, talk to him.33963396Pyne, Chris, MPMr PYNE9V5SturtLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Can the minister inform the House what benefits the budget is bringing to schools in Australia? Is the minister aware of inaccurate comments on funding for schools, and what is his response to these comments?ZD4HOWARDMr Howard—Hear, hear! Mr Literacy!3396Kemp, Dr David, MPDr KEMPBT4GoldsteinLPEmployment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs;Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—Thank you, Prime Minister. As the Prime Minister has just commented, this government is committed to raising the quality of education for all Australian school children. That is evidenced by the fact that we now have agreement on Australia's first national literacy standards. It is evidenced by the fact that we are now putting more and more money into schools to help vocational education and training courses get under way for the 70 per cent of students who are not going straight on to university.This budget reflects the coalition's commitment to increasing the quality of education for all Australian school children in government and non-government schools. The simple fact is that the coalition government has increased funding for schools, has put more money into schools, and is putting more money into government schools.The only people who do not seem to realise this are the Australian Education Union and their ventriloquist doll here in the House, the member for Werriwa, who has issued at their behest one of his very rare press releases on education. We rarely hear from the member for Werriwa on education and this is a matter of concern to those sitting beside him, but because the Australian Education Union has provided him with a few figures he has decided to put out a press release on funding for government schools.He claims in this press release that funding for government schools diminishes in real terms by some $89 million in this budget. This is absolutely wrong. He has reached this extraordinary conclusion because he has tried all sorts of statistical manipulations and used figures which are not correct. Let me correct them. He quotes a figure for the enrolment benchmark adjustment of $270 million. The correct estimate is $70 million; he was only $200 million out.CT4COSTELLOMr Costello—He is the author of their tax policies.BT4Dr KEMP—You can imagine how their spending and taxing policies are going to look after the member for Werriwa has applied his great mind to them. In this press release he also applies a discount for price increases derived from the price increase between two years, 1994-95 and 1995-96, to the difference between this year's school funding and last year's school funding. Absolutely incorrect. Let me put the actual figures on the record for members of the House. In comparison to the last year of the Labor Party in government this government is spending $147 million more on government schools than in 1996. In New South Wales government schools are getting $47 million more than they did in the last year of the Labor government. In Victoria and Queensland government schools are getting $32 million more. And so it goes on across all the states and territories. Western Australia is getting $17 million more for its government schools and South Australia is getting $9 million more. The member for Werriwa has completely overlooked the funding in the joint schools programs. He has completely overlooked the money coming from the Australian National Training Authority for vocational education and school to work programs in schools. He has completely overlooked the funding coming to schools through the financial assistance grants as well as the specific purpose grants. This government is committing more money for government schools.Let me comment on what is perhaps the saddest element of the claims being made by the member for Werriwa and the Australian Education Union. They are going out there telling parents in this country that government schools are being run down. They are prepared to sacrifice the interests of government schools on the alter of their short-term political interests with these totally misleading, viciously untrue statements being made by the member for Werriwa. We will continue to put on the record the fact that this government is committing more resources to government schools, not less, and government schools and government school students are better off than they have ever been before as a result of this budget.33973397Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—My question is directed to the Minister for Sport and Tourism. Can the minister confirm that the budget papers indicate that the Australian Tourism Commission will receive an extra $14.7 million this year? Is it not a fact that this funding will come from a $3 increase in the departure tax and a new $50 visa charge, raising a total of $49.8 million this year? Given that over the budget period you will be raising from the tourism industry five times more tax than you will be spending, can the minister explain where the $35.1 million raised this year alone and the $244.2 million over four years will go? Will the minister admit that the election commitment reiterated by the finance minister yesterday of `no new taxes or increases in existing taxes' is now a non-core promise?3397Thomson, Andrew, MPMr ANDREW THOMSONFB6WentworthLPSport and Tourism;Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Sydney 2000 Games10—I thank the honourable gentleman for his question. What is clear to those in the tourism industry is that this is the best budget the tourism industry has ever seen. This is the best government the tourism industry has ever known. I do not make those assertions lightly. Indeed, among the remarks made after the budget there was one made by a man called John Brown.8I4MARTINMr Martin—On a point of order, Mr Speaker, my question was specifically about where the funding as outlined in the budget papers would be directed given that it is far in excess of the money that this minister claims is being directed to the tourism industry.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The minister will resume his answer and should respond specifically to the question.FB6Mr ANDREW THOMSON—What is clear is that this year's budget has seen an increase in the promotions budget of 13 per cent. Over four years that is $359 million to the Australian Tourism Commission. This is the highest appropriation ever made to the Tourism Commission by any government in the history of this nation.33973397Entsch, Warren, MPMr ENTSCH7K6LeichhardtLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Countries around the world have been experiencing a growing trend in the illegal movement of people. In recent times this has been of particular focus and concern in my electorate of Leichhardt. Can the minister inform the House what the government is doing to protect the integrity of Australia's borders and to work towards ensuring that only bona fide visitors are allowed into Australia?3397Ruddock, Philip, MPMr RUDDOCK0J4BerowraLPImmigration and Multicultural Affairs10—I thank the honourable member for Leichhardt for his question. I know that he is very interested in issues relating to tourism and also to the important protection and integrity of Australia's borders. In that context, I think honourable members ought to be aware that one of the growth industries in the world recently has been the business of smuggling people into what are often seen as soft targets. This government is keen to assist with the development of tourism from emerging markets but it wants to do so in such a way that we do not allow criminals and other non-bona fide travellers to enter Australia.8I4MARTINMr Martin—And a $50 fee will stop that, will it?0J4Mr RUDDOCK—Yes, it will have a significant role in that issue. I am surprised that the honourable member does not have a real interest in this matter. What we are seeking to do here is to balance the legitimate interest of Australia's tourist industry in expanding opportunities in what are seen as emerging markets. They are markets which are essentially very vulnerable to exploitation by people who want to enter Australia for other purposes and other reasons.The fact is that we have seen a growing number of people seeking to enter Australia for non-bona fide reasons and frequently using fraudulent documentation. The fact is that every non-bona fide traveller who enters Australia and pursues every legal avenue to remain can cost the Australian taxpayer up to $60,000 in application processing, litigation and removal charges. It is important that the tourist industry is aware of the potential and large costs to the Australian community as a whole if we do not manage these sorts of issues very effectively.The fact is that with the emerging markets of China and India, where there are significant middle-class populations but also very large numbers of people who seek to move, clandestinely and for immigration purposes, the only way in which that growth is going to be managed is if you have, effectively, a better and more effective visa processing system in place in such offshore places. The $50 charge that will apply to tourists from countries where the electronic travel authority is not available is a charge that will be used to manage extra resources that will be required to properly ensure that the inherent risk in those emerging markets is not seen.The fact is that 70 per cent of tourists seeking permission to come to Australia at the moment are issued with the electronic travel authority. They will not pay a $50 charge. In the majority of markets, such as Japan, the overwhelming majority of tourists apply for, and receive, an ETA and do not pay any government charge at all. The ETA has been a very successful operation in a very short period of time. It provides certainty and it avoids the down side for countries which have implemented visa-free arrangements, where there are delays at airports, particularly for unprocessed but incoming passengers.The charge will contribute to an efficient visa processing system and a more robust border monitoring capacity, while ensuring that the streamlined capacity for bona fide travellers is in place. It will ensure that we undertake more rigorous assessment in those countries which have a high overstay risk, but where emerging markets are seen. It will ensure that we able to post more Australian based staff, employ more locally engaged staff in countries where there is a known risk of fraud—DT4CREANMr Crean—Is he reading this, Mr Speaker?0J4Mr RUDDOCK—No, I am not. It will also ensure that we have more effective immigration staff at Australia's international airports. We will have an upgrading of our movement alert system and, if I might say for the honourable member for Leichhardt, we will also be placing extra staff in the Torres Strait to deal with the problems that have been identified there. The fact is that these arrangements can only benefit the tourism industry. They will play a very important part in ensuring that the great majority of tourists are able to access Australia fee free but, in those countries where there are high risks—and they have been clearly identified—there will be charges that are comparable to the charges made by other countries that operate similar systems in high risk locations. It is important to understand that it is not the Australian taxpayer who is going to have to suffer a significant cost as a result of abuse of the visa entry system, it is those who come from countries where there are high risks involved who will be playing a part in meeting the costs of ensuring that we are able to properly assess those who want to enter Australia.5I4McMULLANMr McMullan—Can I ask that the minister table the document from which he was so extensively quoting.0J4RUDDOCKMr Ruddock—No, the document is confidential.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The document is confidential.33983398McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMULLAN5I4CanberraALP00—My question is to the Minister for Finance and Administration. Is it true that your budget statement of fiscal risks includes a number of instances of litigation in train but makes no provision for the litigation in train against the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business for conspiracy in the Patrick mass sackings? Given that 10 of our highest judges have said that there is an arguable case, how can you justify not including that litigation in the statement of risks? Is it because you—3K6CAMERONMr Ross Cameron—Mr Speaker—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The honourable member—ET4BEVISMr Bevis—He gets to complete the question.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—It is relating to subjudice, so it is slightly different. The member for Canberra will resume his seat. I presume that is what the point of order is about.3K6CAMERONMr Ross Cameron—That matter is currently subject to legal proceedings in a court of law. I would have thought it soundly offended the provision of the standing orders.7T4CROSIOMrs Crosio—Well, you are wrong again.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The honourable member for Parramatta will resume his seat. When the member for Prospect is quiet, the member for Canberra wishes to address that issue.5I4Mr McMULLAN—The budget papers extensively refer to a large number of cases where litigation is in train as a statement of risk, which is a very good thing which they should do.CT4COSTELLOMr Costello—Which you never did!5I4Mr McMULLAN—No, I support it. It is a good thing. I am trying to raise with the minister an exclusion in the budget papers which we think is of no different character from all those matters which are in the budget papers.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The honourable member for Canberra will resume his seat. The advice that the chair has is that no charges have been laid and therefore there is no issue before the courts. Therefore, the question is in order.7T4CROSIOMrs Crosio—You lost again, Cameron.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Prospect will remain silent.Honourable members interjecting—5I4Mr McMULLAN—That is a big ask, Mr Speaker!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—It might well be but I suggest that she might well do so. She has been going very close to the line today. The member for Canberra might stop defending her and perhaps ask his question.5I4Mr McMULLAN—Given that 10 of our highest judges have said that there is an arguable case, how can you justify not includ ing that litigation in the statement of risks? Is it because you and the Treasurer do not support an indemnity for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business?3K6CAMERONMr Ross Cameron—On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I suggest that, if there are no charges before the court, this must be raising a hypothetical matter.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I suspect that might be a matter to which the Minister for Finance and Administration, who will now give his reply, will address his answer.3399Fahey, John, MPMr FAHEYHQ5MacarthurLPFinance and Administration10—I think the very first point that must be made in response to that question is that the budget papers under this government take a comprehensive look at all matters which are at risk and very much up-front indicate what those risks are. That of course comes under the charter of budget honesty, and the transparency of this government's budget, is in stark contrast to the way in which we saw cover-ups and other issues hidden constantly when Labor was in government.What the honourable member did suggest is correct: a number of aspects relating to litigation are considered by the government. That is a process which Finance looks at, which Finance seeks advice on and which then ultimately is placed, particularly where it relates to litigation, in some of those areas of compensation relating to, for example, the Voyager decision and some of those other matters in the defence services.In respect of those matters which are at risk, there is a comprehensive look at it; it is done sensibly; it is done objectively. It is done in the same way as it was undoubtedly done by Finance when the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Finance. The way in which it is presented, of course, is much more transparent these days.On the question of indemnity, let me also say that is a matter in which the rules have not altered, and I make no further comment in respect of the matter.33993399Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH2K6LongmanLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Sport and Tourism. Can the minister inform the House how the tourism industry has reacted to funding measures announced in his portfolio?3400Thomson, Andrew, MPMr ANDREW THOMSONFB6WentworthLPSport and Tourism;Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Sydney 2000 Games10—I thank the member for Longman for his question. Indeed, Treasurer, with your budget this week there has been an outbreak of laudatory comment. Among the great chorus of those heaping praise on the budget is the tourism industry. The streets and avenues of this continent are ringing with praise. In Darwin, for example, Mr George Dunn, CEO of the Northern Territory Tourism Commission, has welcomed the federal budget's allocation of extra funds to tourism. Mr Bruce Baird, the Chief Executive Officer of the Tourism Council of Australia and another great Australian, has welcomed a record increase in funding for tourism's budget. But more than that, others have joined the chorus. A Mr John Brown, who may be known to some of those on the other side—CT4COSTELLOMr Costello—John Brown?FB6Mr ANDREW THOMSON—Yes, the John Brown, a former Labor minister for tourism, is reported as follows:Chairman John Brown congratulated the Federal Government and Tourism Minister Andrew Thomson for the significantly increased allocation for tourism in the Budget handed down tonight. Mr Brown was fulsome in his praise for Mr Thomson's efforts.Modesty forbids me from going further.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—We wil agree with that, it was fulsome!FB6Mr ANDREW THOMSON—Are you sure you want to hear it? Mr Brown says:The minister deserves the applause of the industry and its one million workers for the Budget results.What is clear is that this has been a great budget for tourism and a very bad budget for Labor.34003400Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, when you told the coalition party room earlier this week that it was particularly unhelpful for individuals in the party to publicly declare how they would allocate preferences for the One Nation Party in their own seat, did you have the Treasurer in mind? Will you now resolve the dilemma for your cabinet, backbench and party officers by taking the lead and determining that One Nation be placed last on all your cards?3400Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I wonder whether this question was run past Wayne Swan because, at a meeting of the federal parliamentary shadow cabinet, they had a discussion recently on the native title legislation. To put it bluntly, the instruction from the Leader of the Opposition was that perhaps, when you are talking to certain groups in Australia, you should drip with compassion but, when you go to Queensland, be careful of what you say. When you go to Queensland, you run your remarks past Wayne Swan before you utter anything about native title.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—Oh, relevance, Mr Speaker!Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Prime Minister will resume his seat. The members of the government will remain silent. Members of the front bench!WI4REITHMr Reith—Oh, Kim! You will be sorry that question time is not over!10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the House!Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members of the government will remain silent. The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order?PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—Yes, on relevance, Mr Speaker: the question was specific. It went exactly to his intentions in relation to preferences for the One Nation Party, no other matters.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I call the Prime Minister.ZD4Mr HOWARD—Perhaps he ought to call in the plumber from Hotham. Or perhaps he was responsible for the report in the newspaper. This is also the man who authorised Ross Free, the Labor candidate in the Lindsay by-election, to do a sleazy preference deal with Australians Against Further Immigration. You are the last man in Australia who has got any credibility to ask me a question like that.34003400Nairn, Gary, MPMr NAIRNOK6Eden-MonaroLP10—My question is directed to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business. Minister, with small business being by far and away the most dominant employer in my electorate of Eden-Monaro, can you please outline to the House what will be the impact of some recently announced small business initiatives on the small businesses in my electorate?3401Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—I am happy to answer that question from the member for Eden-Monaro. I thank him for an excellent function last night. But I must say that he has really asked me the wrong question. I am a bit disappointed by the question, because I have been sitting here the whole question time waiting for my Dubai special and it never came. Why don't we spend the rest of the afternoon and give them a chance to give us a belting? The leaking plumber there announces the tactics and the tactics committee dismiss him and we do not get our Dubai questions. I am in Dubai withdrawal here. Dubai is a wonderful place to go to and I highly recommend that people go to Dubai. It is a great place for training, a great place for a holiday. It is about time this weak, pathetic opposition asked us a few questions.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—Relevance again, Mr Speaker.Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The members of the government parties will come to order. The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—My point of order goes to relevance, Mr Speaker. I know the minister has been more than usually Radio Rental in this particular question time—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition will address his point of order.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—but the question was not a travelogue on Dubai.WI4Mr REITH—You know what you had to do when you stood then? You had to repudiate the member for Charlton. That is what you had to do.ZD4HOWARDMr Howard—Stand up for Australians!WI4Mr REITH—You ought to stand up for Australian exporters for a change, instead of standing shoulder to shoulder with the MUA and your leaking plumber mate.DT4CREANMr Crean—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order.Honourable members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—When the House comes to order.WU5O'CONNORMr O'Connor—Where are the dogs?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Corio will remain silent. The member for Hotham on a point of order.DT4CREANMr Crean—The point of order is on relevance. Isn't the only thing that the minister for workplace relations has to do is to answer the question about small business, seeing he has made a hash of the waterfront.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members who rise on a point of order, I suggest, do so and do not add intervention or argument. The Leader of the House.WI4Mr REITH—On behalf of all those small business people who have got cargo on the Columbus Canada , we say that it is about time that you for once stood up against the thuggery of the MUA.I want to put aside my disappointment about the failure of the opposition to mount any sort of attack today and say, however, as this is the last question for the week and therefore the last answer, that I was in Eden-Monaro last night. I tell you what people in small business were saying. They were saying, `Treasurer, you did a damn good job with your budget.' That is what they are saying. They compliment this government on giving priority to small business, because it is the engine room of this economy. This government is proudly pro small business. One of those practical measures in the budget was about the millennium bug. I confess I do not know how to use the VCR, let alone understand the millennium bug, but I do understand that it is a problem. This government understands the problems of small business, and that is why we are doing things about it.As we saw in the budget, we provided some tax concessions for dealing with this problem. It allows for initial diagnosis of the problem, modification of computer software to make it compliant, modification or complete replacement of a computer chip to make the com puter compliant with the Y2K problem and acquisition of new software, including upgrades or the substantial rebuilding of current software which is predominantly aimed at ensuring Y2K compliance. Prime Minister, this is just another example of where your government stands for small business and does the right thing. This is the best tax concession, I am told, pretty well anywhere in the OECD for small business. It demonstrates again in a practical way that helps small business that this government is for small business and small business is going to grow and prosper as a result.ZD4HOWARDMr Howard—Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper .Miscellaneous340215:20:003402Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—On indulgence, I want to say a few words to mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. I know the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley) will do likewise. I think all members of the House would agree that there are few icons in our nation quite so uniquely Australian as the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Since its first flight on 15 May 1928, the flying doctor has provided continuous medical service and support to rural and remote communities across much of the vast expanse of the Australian continent, in the finest traditions and in accordance with the wishes of its revered founder, the Reverend Dr John Flynn. Over the past 10 years, more than 1.2 million Australians have received medical services from the flying doctor. Flynn's great ambition was to provide a mantle of safety across outback Australia. Today the flying doctor addresses the medical needs of people living in four-fifths of Australia's land mass, from Christmas Island to Lizard Island and all areas in between.The 70-year history of the flying doctor is a cameo of tremendous change and invention throughout this period of our history. Throughout this time it has made major contributions to our use of new and emerging technology. It pioneered, as all Australians know in their childhood, the use of pedal radio and countless innovative medical treatments. Innovation continues as one of the hallmarks of the flying doctor. The enduring value of John Flynn's legacy and the great national significance of the flying doctor to bush communities and the Australian psyche was properly measured in the decision to depict the Reverend Flynn on the 20-dollar bank note when it was issued in 1994 in its current form.The story of the flying doctor that has become folklore is the noble and romantic one in many ways of defying terrible odds at any hour of the day or night to fly in all weather to rescue people in life-threatening emergencies. We are perhaps less familiar with the important preventative and primary health care function performed by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This work not only alleviates pressure on acute care settings such as hospitals but also helps to bolster morale and bind together otherwise very isolated communities.Like all Australians, I have always held a special place in my affections for the flying doctor. I also understand that affection and grace alone cannot sustain such a service, and raising much needed funds has always been a vital role and often a struggle in the life of the service. The significant contributions from voluntary sources from all parts of Australia have helped the Royal Flying Doctor Service continue. The first and highly successful fundraising drive was held only months after the first flight in 1928. An old grazier, Jack McNamara, had just been rescued by the fledgling service after breaking his leg and a few ribs in a nasty accident mustering cattle. Celebrating his rescue, Jack passed his hat around the McKinlay Hotel and raised the first then £200 to support the work of the flying doctor service.It is important that such tremendous voluntary contributions go on. In addition to this, however, on behalf of the Australian people—who I know would want this government to ensure that the future funding of the service is made more certain and more predictable to enable better operational planning—I announce an $82 million five-year government commitment to the flying doctor service. From 1 July this year, the Commonwealth will enter for the first time a five-year agreement with the National Office of the Royal Flying Doctor Service that will provide $16.56 million a year. On behalf of the government, and I know on behalf of all Australians, I want to congratulate the Royal Flying Doctor Service on reaching its 70th anniversary—a great milestone in service to isolated and outback people in our country. Throughout this period, the service has captured the hearts and the imagination of Australians, as I know it will continue to do for young Australians years into the future. It is a testament to the high principles, the worthy endeavour, the resourcefulness, the resilience and the daring of so many Australians who seek to bring our more remote communities just that much closer to all of us.15:26:003403Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—Mr Speaker, on indulgence, I join the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) in his kind remarks to what is definitely one of Australia's icons—one of a number—and one which I have enjoyed the odd opportunity to witness and to which I occasionally send messages through the telethons and appealathons which are occasionally conducted on their behalf and which, I might say, draw such a good response. They are generally conducted by the ABC, and they do a very fine job with them.It is 70 years now since Dr George Simpson chose the first flying doctor base at Cloncurry, from which the first flying doctor flight departed in May 1928. His dream of establishing a flying doctor service was invaluably aided by Mr Hudson Fysh, the founder of Qantas Airways, and Mr Alfred Traeger, the radio engineer who invented a combination transmitting and receiving set powered by bicycle pedals. This fledgling service survived the Great Depression and other setbacks until in 1933 Reverend John Flynn established the Australian Aerial Medical Service proper, later becoming the Royal Flying Doctor Service.John Flynn began with a simple idea: to give people in the outback access to a general practitioner in a flying emergency room. He aimed at transcending the tyranny of distance in this country and overcoming what he called in a very evocative phrase `the little imps of loneliness'. While the noble goal has not changed, the method of contact between patient and doctor has altered significantly. Initially morse code was used, followed by the old high-frequency radio, but now Telstra has standard telephones almost everywhere, replacing the need for HF radios.For the 400,000 people who are part of the flying doctor's territory, the service it provides is not only medical but also an emotional support. Both are desperately needed. A mere 312 doctors, flight nurses, pilots and radio operators occupying 13 bases cover an area of almost 700 million square kilometres, providing the people with a sense of security and emotional wellbeing. It is tireless work for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which makes 154,000 patient contacts a year. That is approximately 3,000 a week. The doctors are prepared to go 24 hours without sleep to ensure the service remains the best and most comprehensive air and medical emergency and health care organisation in the world.The clinics help isolated individuals in the outback experience a sense of community spirit and connection with other Australians. About 95 clinics a week are conducted to help people in remote areas help themselves. The majority of planes used to transport the doctors and nurses are pressurised turbo props, flying above the weather frequently at 30,000 feet. The enormity of the flying doctor's task is exemplified by the fact that the planes fly about eight million kilometres a year—equivalent to 650 times round the equator. The specific services the Royal Flying Doctor Service provides are extensive, such as an emergency service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in the transfer of patients in the outback between hospitals and homes. The valuable service of conducting a regular program of field clinics in isolated areas is also organised by them. Lastly, they coordinate the communication services for teachers and children of the well-known School of the Air and supply 2,500 medical chests for remote locations.The flying doctor is a non-profit, non-denominational organisation that is completely independent in its administration. While 80 per cent of the $15 million annual cost of running the service comes from federal and state grants, the community raises the remaining 20 per cent. A deep-rooted sense of an Australian community underpinning the ideals of the service will help it continue to be a symbol of Australian determination, ingenuity and, indeed, a significant contribution to medical treatment in the 20th century. I support the measures announced today by the Prime Minister to further strengthen their financial security in the critical work that they do for our nation.Personal Explanations340415:30:003404Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?PE4Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEY—Yes.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Please proceed.PE4Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEY—The Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) suggested that I supported the idea that boycotts ought to be organised on Australian shipping. I have made amply clear, as he well knows, from the outset of this that I do not support boycotts against Australia on anything. I would also point out to the minister that it is his illegality and his incompetence which has produced this situation, which is a serious problem for people in the bush.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition is stretching the bounds of personal explanations.WI4REITHMr Reith—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition is no longer making a personal explanation.WI4REITHMr Reith—If he has stopped—but you ought to call on John Coombs.Questions to the Speaker340434043404Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—I have a question for you, Mr Speaker. As you would be aware, Alison Porritt, the manager of the parliamentary Health and Recreation Centre, is retiring next week. I wonder whether you might, on behalf of all those of us in the place who utilise the recreation facilities here and who have benefited from the fitness programs that she has put together, write and thank her for her exemplary activity here and the work that she did on behalf of us all.3404Mr SPEAKERMr SPEAKER10000PON/A10—I thank the honourable member for Cunningham. As a former occupant of this chair I know he is only too aware, as many members are, of the tremendous contribution Alison has made towards keeping some of us not quite as like Norm as we might be. It is with great pleasure that I will take up the honourable gentleman's suggestion.34043404Slipper, Peter, MPMr SLIPPER0V5FisherLP10—I have a question for you, Mr Speaker. My question relates to standing order 99, which states:Upon a question of order being raised, the Member called to order shall resume his or her seat, and, after the question or order has been stated to the Speaker by the Member rising to the question of order, the Speaker shall give a ruling thereon.Yesterday, when the honourable member for Dobell asked a question, I took a point of order with respect to incorrect allegations being made by the member for Dobell and you advised the House that it was appropriate for the member for Dobell to finish his question before you would consider the point of order raised by me. Logically, this precedent should also be applied to ministerial answers, which would mean that a point of order taken by the opposition against a minister would not be considered until after the minister had finished his answer. That, of course, would be quite bizarre. In the circumstances I would ask whether, in future, you would be prepared to strictly apply the wording of standing order 99, which means that, when a question of order is raised, the question of order will be immediately determined before the question is allowed to proceed.3404Mr SPEAKERMr SPEAKER10000PON/A10—I thank the honourable member for Fisher. There is difficulty, often, in terms of a question in determining a point of order in relation to a part of it. If you have the whole question before you, it is a lot easier to gather the context of the question to determine therefore whether or not the whole question is in order or not. There are some exceptions to that, as I have indicated, for example sub judice. It is obviously essential that you consider that at the point that the sub judice is raised. I understand the application and intent of the standing orders but believe you need to take that into account in the context in which a particular issue or point of order is taken. I note the honourable gentleman's concern and I will have it in mind in future rulings.34053405Lawrence, Carmen, MPDr LAWRENCEXS4FremantleALP00—I have a question for you, Mr Speaker. Are you aware of difficulties which have already been created by your decision to move the Hansard staff from their position at the foot of the table? I draw your attention in particular to a speech that I made last night in which I said, and I quote from the proof Hansard :It is worth quoting from Justice North's original decision.The minister at the table at the time, Mr Moore, interjected by saying, `Another flunkey.' I then repeated that remark:Another flunkey? We get an interjection from the minister at the table. Justice North is described by the minister at the table . . . as `another flunkey'.This interjection has in fact been confirmed by a number of other people in the House, but there is disagreement with the minister himself. Hansard, unfortunately, says no more than `Mr Moore interjecting'. The tape unfortunately is not sufficiently clear, so that disagreement cannot be resolved. That is a problem not only of the attitude expressed toward Mr Justice North in calling him `another flunkey' but also by the fact that it is not possible for the record to stand clear on that point because Hansard reporters have been moved away from a point where they could also have heard that interjection from a minister of the Crown.3405Mr SPEAKERMr SPEAKER10000PON/A10—I note the concern that the honourable member has. There have been, on many occasions, times when members feel that their particular expressions have not been picked up. However, the movement of Hansard to various places in the course of this week has been in an endeavour to see which is the best position from which they can hear. I am told, from the record, that there were some considerable number of interjections which were not picked up from their original position. Those are matters to be considered by the House Committee, which, as members may not be aware, is to meet on the first possible occasion, which is the next sitting Monday. I will put the question that you have raised with me to Mr John Templeton and to officers of Hansard and will ensure that that is also considered by the House Committee.34053405Morris, Allan, MPMr ALLAN MORRISFI4NewcastleALP00—Mr Speaker, I have a question for you. The clippings service that was being provided outside both lobbies in the previous session seems to have been discontinued. It has not been here this week. Has it been cancelled?3405Mr SPEAKERMr SPEAKER10000PON/A10—I know nothing of a clippings service, nor have I benefited from it. If the honourable gentleman could see me later, I will find out what it is all about. I know nothing of it. It is certainly no ruling of mine. Perhaps you could see me afterwards and tell me about it.34053405Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSONRW5BradfieldLP10—I have a question for you, Mr Speaker. I would ask if you would consider making a ruling on the physical restraint of one honourable member by another. I noticed, at a quarter past three, the honourable member for Hotham went to the dispatch box to raise a point of order, presumably an important one, and he was physically restrained from doing so by the Leader of the Opposition. In my opinion, this is unacceptable behaviour. I do not think that one honourable member, no matter what his position in this parliament, should restrain another physically in an intimidating manner from conducting the business of the House.3405Mr SPEAKERMr SPEAKER10000PON/A10—The honourable member for Bradfield raises a fundamental right of every member of this place not to be interfered with in the course of the conduct of their parliamentary duties. I did not observe that particular instance. If it did occur, then I would suggest to the Leader of the Opposition that he should have in mind that neither he nor any other member should restrain other members from the conduct of their duties. But, knowing the honourable member for Hotham, I would be surprised if he was so restrained.Auditor-General's Reports340610000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I present the following Auditor-General's audit reports Nos 43 and 44 for 1997-98: No. 43—Performance audit—Life-cycle costing in the Department of Defence and No. 44—Performance audit—Australian Diplomatic Communications Network—Project management .Motion (by Mr Reith)—by leave—agreed to:That:(1) this House authorises the publication of the Auditor-General's audit reports Nos 43 and 44 of 1997-98; and(2) the reports be printed.Documents34063406Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—Papers are tabled as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members. Details of the papers will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings and Hansard.The schedule read as follows—Finance—Budget 1998-99—Science and Technology Budget Statement 1998-99.Treaties—Joint Standing Committee—7th Report—Australia's withdrawal from Unido and Treaties tabled on 11 February 1997—Government response.Motion (by Mr Reith) proposed:That the House take note of the following papers:Finance—Budget 1998-99—Science and Technology Budget Statement 1998-99.Debate (on motion by Mr Crean) adjourned.15:38:003406Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—I present papers on the following subjects, being petitions which are not in accordance with the standing and sessional orders of the House:Opposition to the closure of the National Australia Bank in Langwarrin from the member for Dunkley—398 petitionersOpposition to the TGA Amendment to the Advertising Code relation to public information about natural health products from the member for Dobell—23 petitionersSpecial Adjournment3406Motion (by Mr Reith) agreed to:That the House, at its rising, adjourn until Monday, 25 May 1998, at 12.30 p.m., unless the Speaker fixes an alternative day or hour of meeting.Committees340634063406Motion (by Mr Reith)—by leave—agreed to:That Mr Bradford be discharged from attendance on the Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority and that, in his place, Dr Southcott be appointed a member of the Committee.Matters of Public Importance3406340610000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I have received a letter from the honourable member for Dobell (Mr Lee) proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:The inability of the Minister for Health to satisfactorily explain the details of his public hospital and private health insurance policies.I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—15:40:003406Lee, Michael, MPMr LEEMG4DobellALP00—The budget comes once a year and it is the one time a year that the Australian people get a chance to work out what the federal Minister for Health and Family Services, the member for Chisholm (Dr Wooldridge), is going to do about the Australian health care system.What is the position today across the country? We have public hospitals in crisis in every state and in every territory. We have dental waiting lists—waiting lists for emergency and preventative dental care are going through the roof. We have pensioners and low income Australians being asked to pay the highest amounts ever for pharmaceutical care. We have private health insurance coverage at their lowest ever. This was the climate when this Minister for Health and Family Services brought down his health budget last Tuesday.To understand the context of these papers we have to go to an article in the West Australian of 22 August last year under the headline `The Third Man':That is how Health Minister Michael Wooldridge talks privately about his leadership prospects. He knows Treasurer Peter Costello and Industrial Relations Minister Peter Reith are the frontrunners should Prime Minister John Howard hand over the reins or be removed. According to colleagues, Dr Wooldridge is looking beyond the next election. He wants the finance portfolio, where he hopes to stake his claim for the leadership.Anyone who saw Lateline last night saw another bid for anything but health from the current minister for health. But to be the Minister for Finance Dr Wooldridge has at least got to understand the finances of his current department—the department of health. The article in the West Australian headed `The Third Man' went on to say in a very revealing paragraph:Those close to him—that is, Dr Wooldridge—say that he is cautious, cunning, manipulative, has a grasp for detail and knows how to woo voters.It is that grasp for detail that we have some doubts about. It is that alleged grasp for detail that was put to the test at a press conference that the minister organised for the health correspondents in Parliament House yesterday. It was an absolute shocker. The minister for health gave probably his worst performance in the two years he has been minister for health. Why do we say it was an absolute shocker? Firstly, the minister handed out some extra money for GPs which he said will be funded by some savings. How is the government going to fund the increase in GP rebates? If we turn to page 1-46 of Budget Paper No. 2, the following claim can be seen:New funding under this measure of $367.0 million over the period 1998-99 to 2001-02 will be offset by savings of $369.1 million, principally from changes in the remuneration arrangements applying to GP Registrars.That is what is in the budget papers. At the absolutely shocking press conference the minister gave yesterday he was asked by some of those present how these savings would be achieved. I quote from Laura Tingle's article in the Sydney Morning Herald today under the headline `Minister in dark over estimates'.Mr Martin interjecting—MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—Today in question time the minister claimed that the correspondent from the Sydney Morning Herald did not understand. I will let the listeners and the people in the gallery reach their own conclusions. This is what the article in the Sydney Morning Herald said today:At a press conference yesterday, Dr Wooldridge was asked how the Government would raise $90 million in savings from a scheme which would see trainee GPs paid a flat government salary instead of receiving fees for service under Medicare.He said under the proposed scheme "the registrars would get a reasonably similar income to what they do today".But asked how doctors receiving similar salaries could produce such large savings he said:"We've convinced the Department of Finance, and they're the Department of Finance's figures, and not ours. So perhaps you should put that to them."Questioned further, Dr Wooldridge said the "formula . . . seemed to have worked in the past whatever the magic behind it".The real reason the minister has increased the GP rebate is something that he could never admit to. The real reason the minister has increased the GP rebate is that bulk-billing has slumped. The Labor Party has now been predicting for a year and a half that as this government squeezes the GP rebate more and more doctors would switch from bulk-bulking to charging up-front fees.For nine of the last 10 months we have seen a decline in bulk-billing rates because of the actions of this minister. That is the reason why he was forced to do a humiliating backflip on Tuesday night and provide, one-off for one year, an increase in the GP rebate. We are entitled to ask: where is the minister going to get that $369 million? When he is pressed at the press conference yesterday he says, `Don't ask me, ask the department of finance.' It is not much if you are the person who wishes to become the next Minister for Finance of the Commonwealth of Australia.He was also asked at the press conference about the private health insurance figures. He was asked why they were massively readjusted and why they showed that there would be a steady decline of more than 30,000 people a year over the forward estimates. His answer—this time it is not Finance's fault; this time it is Treasury's fault—and I quote him: `Treasury initially overestimated the cost'—again, the predictions on that are Treasury's—`we merely go along for the ride on their predictions.' So this time it is Treasury's fault. He was also asked how much money the government would raise through the Medicare levy surcharge that was introduced last year. This was the minister's response:I would be surprised if the one per cent surcharge would raise $130 million. I do not think it would be anything like that. I mean, I am only talking off the top of my head, but when we thought about it two years we were looking at maybe $18 million to $20 million—nothing like $130 million.Only a few weeks ago the minister was saying that there were 100,000 couples earning more than the $100,000 threshold before they get hit with the Medicare levy surcharge. He claimed there were another 110,000 singles earning over $50,000 who then get hit by the surcharge. You do not have to be an Einstein or a rocket scientist to work out that that means that the figures are a lot closer to $130 million than the minister's off the top of his head estimate of $20 million.At the end of the day, you would expect that the day after the budget the federal Minister for Health and Family Services would understand the budget figures for the department of health. You would think that, if he called a press conference with the health correspondents, he would at least try to make sure he understood where he was plucking these fistfuls of dollars out of the air to fund the increase in rebates for GPs. Is it any wonder that we have doubts in the minister's ability to explain where he gets these numbers from? Is it any wonder that other people perhaps question what is going on?We even get it from people such as the minister's former leader. You will remember the glory days when John Hewson was the leader of the Liberal Party and the current member for Chisholm, the future member for Casey, was then the deputy leader of the Liberal Party.K26LATHAMMr Latham—He was the second man then.MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—He has gone from being the second man to the third man. I thank the member for Werriwa for his interjection. Let me remind the House of what Dr Hewson said yesterday in a speech he gave. This is in response to the government's claim that there is a 15 per cent real increase in this budget in funding for public hospitals—the area of the health system that is in crisis today and the area of the health system that was in greatest need of extra funding last Tuesday night. What is Dr Hewson's response to the Prime Minister's claim that there is a 15 per cent real increase? This is Dr Hewson:Well, it is true that on the numbers there is a 15 per cent increase, but if you allow for things like population, if you allow for the ageing of the population, if you allow for the service delivery considerations, that 15 per cent shrinks to one per cent and that is why the states are screaming.When the states came before the Senate committee a week or two ago we had the states indicating that if the government does not increase its offer to the states there will be 1.4 million Australians who will not get the hospital treatment that they deserve and are entitled to because of this government's refusal to put any extra money into public hospitals.When I go around and visit hospitals in the various states I get a very clear message that public patients in public hospitals are under enormous pressure these days. If you talk to the nurses or the doctors who are treating these patients, if you talk to the people in the waiting queues, you get a very clear message that people are suffering because of the crisis in public hospitals.The worst example I have come across was a four-year-old who had on several occasions had treatment at Fremantle Hospital cancelled and postponed—a boy who suffered from glue ear, a boy who, on every day that an operation was delayed, was suffering from a restriction in his ability to learn to hear, his ability to learn to speak and his intellectual development—because of the fact that that hospital kept putting off the operations that he and his family were fighting for.It is because this government is not prepared to put extra money into public hospitals that those waiting lists affect not just young children but also many retirees. It affects their ability to get the hospital care that they are entitled to in a speedy and timely fashion. That is why the states have been fighting this federal government to get extra funding.What was the response in the budget two nights ago? Not one extra dollar for funding for public hospitals on Tuesday. There was not one extra dollar on the table that was not on the table when the Premiers walked out of the Premiers Conference two months ago. Despite the fact that this government now has a more than $2 billion surplus, it reached the decision that not one extra dollar could be spared to help those public patients like that young four-year-old boy who suffers from glue ear, because this government is not prepared to increase its offer to the states to try to address the crisis in the public hospital system.It is not just in the public hospitals that we have difficulties. This government abolished the $400 million Commonwealth program for dental care. Day after day in this House we have raised examples of ordinary people who have been affected by this government's abolition of the federal dental health program. We have had the pensioner from the Illawarra, Mr Jones, who has had to use superglue to keep his dentures together while he waits in the queue for treatment. We have had the woman who was told that she had to wait for each of her teeth to develop pain before they would be removed one by one, even though the dentist reached the conclusion that every one of her teeth had to be removed. We had the gentleman from Newcastle who was told that, even though he had a broken tooth, he was not entitled to care unless there was blood coming out of his broken tooth. Is it any wonder that the waiting lists for dental care are exploding because this government has basically halved the public funding effort that is going into dental care right across Australia? Public hospitals and dental care are the areas that Labor has said are the two highest priorities, but there was not one extra dollar for public hospitals and not one extra dollar for dental care in the budget last Tuesday.The great announcement in the budget was, `We are going to give 220,000 self-funded retirees the senior health care card.' The government forgot to mention that senior health care card holders used to get free access to dental care and free access to Australian hearing services but that that was scrapped for senior health care card holders in the 1996 budget. But for 220,000 self-funded retirees they give out access to cheaper pharmaceuticals. They forgot to mention that the very same self-funded retirees were hit with higher charges for pharmaceuticals in the 1996 budget and that for every one of the self-funded retirees who benefits from cheaper pharmaceuticals in the 1998 budget there are 20 pensioners and low income families who are health care card holders who have been hit by higher pharmaceutical charges in the 1996 budget. For every one who benefits on Tuesday, 20 were hit two years before. So on pharmaceutical charges this government has run a campaign to force people to pay more, yet we have the government claiming that the health system is in good hands. This minister for health is doing such a great job he let the Treasurer (Mr Costello) announce yesterday that he is going to re-engineer the whole health system.Government members interjecting—MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—On Foxtel, on the John Laws program.UNKNOWNA government memberA government member—What does that mean?MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—We are entitled to ask what that means. The last time this government had an inquiry into health insurance we had the Productivity Commission wheeled out to make recommendations to the government. They reported almost 14 months ago. This minister went out and did a doorstop saying that he supports in principle, and he has cabinet support in principle, for the introduction of lifetime community rating. Fourteen months later we still know nothing about it; 14 months later, the minister is still running dead on lifetime community rating. Yet the Treasurer announces that he is going to re-engineer the whole health system.At the end of the day we are entitled to ask: was that article in the West Australian right? Does he have a grasp of the detail? If you look at all of his mistakes at the press conference yesterday, it is quite clear that he does not have a sufficient grasp of the detail to even be the health minister, let alone the finance minister. The article also claims that he knows how to woo voters. If he knows how to woo voters, why has he decided to jump ship from the electorate of Chisholm with a margin of only 2.7 per cent to switch to the electorate of Casey with a margin of 6.6 per cent? He wishes good luck as he waves goodbye to the 16 other National and Liberal members who are on a margin of less than two per cent, and he waves goodbye to all of those people on the public hospital waiting list, the dental waiting list, the people who are paying more for their pharmaceuticals—the people who this government has turned its back on; the people who are entitled to fair and decent hospital care and fair and decent access to dental care. (Time expired)15:55:003410Wooldridge, Dr Michael, MPDr WOOLDRIDGE8E4ChisholmLPHealth and Family Services10—What a pathetic contribution by the shadow minister for health, the member for Dobell (Mr Lee). Two years and two months plus into the term of this government and the shadow minister for health does not have a word to say on what he might do should he fluke the position of minister for health or how he might address some of the difficult long-term issues facing the Health portfolio. All he can do is read from an article from last year from the West Australian and pick up one trivial point out of a press conference that went for 50 minutes, the transcript of which goes to 18 pages. I will answer the shadow minister's points in detail, then I will talk a bit more generally about health.Firstly, I will read the totality of what was said in relation to that question about the estimates of the general practitioner savings from changing trainees from being on fee for service to being on salary.Opposition member interjecting—8E4Wooldridge, Dr Michael, MPDr WOOLDRIDGE—I would be happy to. Question: how do you make the savings because, as I understand it, for this measure alone it is going to cost you $180 million in salaries but you actually save $360 million on the MBS. Answer: the way the Medicare benefits schedule is calculated is that you take the number of doctors and multiply by certain on-costs, such as radiology, pathology, other orderings and a certain number of rebates per person—which applies to specialists. Using that formula—and we have used that for 14 years with the Medicare benefits schedule—you take a certain number of doctors out of fee for service and it is assumed you make certain savings on the Medicare benefits schedule. It is fairly precise; the totality of it all has been remarkably accurate in predicting the cost of the MBS. So, using that longstanding formula, that is what the Department of Finance and Administration has come up with for the estimate of savings.I am fully prepared to admit that might be difficult to understand. I am fully prepared to admit that one journalist out of the 15 may not have understood it. I am not quite sure why it provoked the article that it did, but you would know as well as I that in this job you get some good ones and you get some bad ones. I tend to take them as they come and not hold grudges. I would have thought that, if a journalist had not understood something at the press conference, they might have chosen to ring to have it explained. We had, as far as I know, no follow-up after that press conference seeking further explanation.The whole point of this is that much of government is driven by formulas: you have to make estimates; you have to make assumptions. I could not in all honesty go through every assumption that underpins a formula that the Department of Health and Family Services and the Department of Finance and Administration jointly use to calculate the $6½ billion program which is the Medicare benefits schedule. If I could, I would probably be wasting my time having learnt it. The point is, I tried to give an honest and open explanation, one person seemed not to have understood it, one person seemed to take exception to it. That is fine, but for that to be the basis on which, two days after the budget, the whole attack on health is directed at the government shows that this opposition is completely devoid of any ideas at all, and they think that they can get through opposition in health by in fact saying nothing.The shadow minister made a number of other comments that I should really talk about. The first is that he did talk about this article from the West Australian. I was handed a copy of it. The journalist is Grahame Armstrong. As far as I know, I have never met Grahame Armstrong or talked to him in my life. I do not believe I have ever talked to a colleague in this place—certainly not in the last four or five years—about any aspirations I may have for leadership. The reason is fairly simple: I think if I did and it was reported, the locks would be changed on the front door when I got home. I do not know where that article came from. It certainly did not come from me and I do not accept it as accurate. I find it an enormous privilege to do this job, I find it an enormous privilege to serve under John Howard and I am going to be working to make sure he stays there as long as humanly possible.The shadow minister then went on to make a whole number of incorrect assertions. I have got a long list of them. It is going to be a fairly disjointed reply, but I do think that they need to be responded to. He said that bulk-billing rates had slumped. Bulk-billing rates today are higher than they were two years ago. More services are bulk-billed today than they were two years ago, so that is hardly a dramatic slump.He talked about the estimates of revenue and how these were rubbery. I am not trying to blame anybody. I am just trying to explain how a formula process works when you have to make certain assumptions, where you have swings and roundabouts, where you are dealing with a very complex area. It does pretty well because the MBS comes in year on year within one half of one per cent of the estimates that we have, and that is pretty good for a program of $6½ billion.The shadow minister talked about my former leader, John Hewson. I am pleased he is taking an interest in health. I get a great deal of excitement when people take an interest in health. I am afraid I cannot understand his comments. They are simply not accurate. The point is that, if you take out all the factors that we allow for, you will reduce the rate of increase. As well as what the shadow minister mentioned, increasing for age and increasing for population, we also make an allowance for any possible reduction in private health insurance.If you take out the ageing of the population, if you take out the fact that the population is growing, if you take out the fact that there is a reduction in private health insurance, of course the reduction will be lower. But, even taking out all those things, in the agreement that we are offering the states there is still a 1½ per cent increase per annum for what we call `utilisation drift', and that basically means for all the factors we cannot otherwise account for, probably determined by technology. It is not one per cent; it is 1½ per cent per year for five years, which is very different. Dr Hewson does not seem to have accounted for this. Nonetheless, I am not trying to get stuck into him or criticise him. The more people who take an interest in health the better.The shadow minister then talked about the very unfortunate case of a four-year-old child at Fremantle Hospital. Any of us who have children ourselves or doctors who have dealt with children know how difficult these sorts of cases are. But I am puzzled, because she is being treated under the current agreement signed by the Labor Party. If he has some criticism to make, he is making it of the agreement that was signed in 1993 by the Labor Party, which is still current, because what is being argued about between the Commonwealth and the states is what will apply from 1 July this year. So he is effectively criticising the incompetence of the people in the Labor Party who signed the last agreement. I can understand him doing this because there is a lot in the last agreement that you would criticise.The biggest single problem in the last agreement, signed by the Labor Party just before the 1993 election in haste, was that, when the Commonwealth put more money in, the states just pulled it out. Do not take my word for this. This was the excuse used by the then member for Swan, the now Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley), during the 1996 election when he was trying to justify why hospitals were in the position they were in. The fact is they signed a dud agreement. And yes, hospitals are under pressure at the moment, and if there is one person to blame you can blame Paul Keating, who was the person who signed the agreement in haste and stitched up the deals to get them out of the way before the 1993 election.I feel very sorry for the four-year-old girl. She will be able to get better hospital treatment because of the 15 per cent increase in funding that we are offering over the next five years. She will be able to get better hospital treatment because of the extra flexibility that I am offering Western Australia and other states, flexibility that has already been taken on board by Queensland and by the ACT.Just to give you an example of that, Mr Deputy Speaker, the Chief Minister for the ACT rang me up a while ago and asked if I could help her fund an asthma campaign that she wanted to run here in Canberra. Given that the whole idea of this campaign is to prevent illness, to keep people out of hospital, I said that I would be very happy for her to use some of her hospital money to try to keep people out of hospital. That was because we had signed an agreement that gave her flexibility she had never had. She could not do that under the agreement that had been signed with the Labor Party in 1993. If she wanted to run a program in the ACT to stop elderly people breaking their hips, and if it had been stunningly successful and reduced by half the numbers of fractured necks of femur in the ACT, the ACT would have been penalised under the old agreement for doing fewer operations, even if the reason it was doing fewer operations was that it had spent money to prevent the illness happening in the first place. What a ridiculous agreement to sign. That sort of flexibility is what will re-engineer the health system. That sort of flexibility is now operating in Canberra and is now operating in Queensland by two ministers who are getting on with the job.The shadow minister said that there was not one extra dollar in the budget papers beyond what was offered at the Premiers Conference in late March. I am sorry, he might be criticising me because one journalist does not understand what I say, but I am afraid he is showing that he cannot understand the budget papers and he certainly does not have the details in his head of Veterans' Affairs funding. What we announced in the budget was a gold card for 50,000 extra veterans. A gold card gives full cost treatment in the public system or the private system. Where it occurs in the public system, it is on a full cost purchasing basis. So we are taking 50,000 veterans and paying for them outside the Medicare or health care agreements. That is going to cost us $150 million a year. Given that the population base that the states have to fund has reduced, we would have every right under the current agreement to take the money that would have been treating those 50,000 veterans out of the hospital system. We would not have to do anything that is in the current agreement because the population base would have changed. That would have saved us $80 million a year, or $400 million over five years. We made a deliberate and conscious decision, as a government, not to take back that money, even though we were entitled to. We were not going to attempt to get treatment for our veterans on the cheap. We were going to be as generous as possible.What this means is that as a result of that decision on budget night the offer to the states has effectively gone up $400 million, because they have exactly the same amount of money to treat 50,000 fewer people. If we had used our indexation formula, which is based on population, that is one thing. With the population going down the index could have gone down. We have chosen not do that. So he is quite wrong. The budget in that respect is very generous to hospitals.He talked about Mr Jones using superglue for his dentures. That puzzles me, because I did not think the dental program the Labor Party introduced covered dentures. I do not know how he would be any better or worse off because the program no longer exists. The program no longer exists because it was a four-year program to treat 1.5 million people. It was announced again in the dying days of the 1993 budget. We treated 1.5 million people and the program ended as it was conceived.In the end what the shadow minister has to come to grips with, if he ever hopes to be minister in this area, is the Labor Party's own failings in health when it was in government. I have already talked about the failings of the Medicare agreements—rigid agreements that did not allow flexibility that meant as soon as the Commonwealth put money in the states would pull money out of the bottom. They are not my words; they are Kim Beazley's words.When I came to be minister two years and two months ago, I had a look in the budget forward estimates and found there was not a dollar there to run the third national HIV-AIDS strategy. The forward estimates had zero. When I had to look at running all my public health programs, there was not a dollar in the forward estimates. There was zero. We had to find money just to keep basic women's health programs going, such as breast screening and cervical screening programs. When I became Minister for Health and Family Services two years and two months ago, immunisation in Australia ranked 68th in the Western world. It is still far too low, but the average completed childhood immunisation rate for a 12-month-old now is above 76 per cent. In two years time we expect it to be above 90 per cent.The year before we came to government, the private health system was bleeding to death with losses that it had not experienced previously. It was doing that because of a decade of neglect. It was doing that because of costs that had been piled onto it by the previous government. Premiums were 39 per cent higher than they would be otherwise because of just four decisions the Labor Party made that affected the level of private health insurance premiums. With general practitioners, morale was at an all-time low. There was a massive oversupply of doctors. General practice was considered by many to be the dumping ground of the medical profession. It was where you went if you could not get a job in a speciality. It is far from that. It is the cornerstone of primary health care in this country. We have stopped that.We have made it so that the only people going into general practice now are those who have fully completed their training. And we have stopped the massive rort of people coming in from overseas countries by various routes, one of which was New Zealand. People became New Zealand citizens and then used it as a staging post to come to Australia, blowing out our medical work force and meaning there was an oversupply of some 5,000 doctors in capital cities alone. They are the failings the Labor Party has never come to grips with. They are the things that we have attempted to address, and address with quite some success. Health is a difficult area, and by the tirade today with not one single policy idea in it the shadow minister has shown that the Labor Party still has not worked out where they went wrong. If they cannot work out where they went wrong in the past, they have no future.16:10:003413Ellis, Annette, MPMs ELLIS5K6NamadgiALP00—It gives me great pleasure to rise in support of the matter of public importance of the member for Dobell (Mr Lee) this afternoon. As an observation, listening to the Minister for Health and Family Services (Dr Wooldridge) for the last few moments, one would believe that every member of the public and every member of my community who comes to me and tells me how concerned they are about the state of health services in this country must all have something terribly wrong, if you believe every word that the minister has just been putting.After 26 months in office, this minister's legacy is a public health system that is lurching from crisis to crisis; a private health insurance system that is sinking further and further into the mire. One has only to look at a graph that I have here showing the target rates for private health insurance set by this government at 96. Look where they have reached now and one really understands the reason why people are questioning the competency of this government in relation to health insurance or health provision generally. In the last 48 hours the minister has demonstrated a complete inability, in my view, to satisfactorily explain the details of his government's public hospital and private health insurance policies.I want to take this opportunity to assist the minister in explaining his policies by reminding him of his achievements in this portfolio so far. As health minister, Dr Wooldridge has overseen the Liberal-National government's $3.6 billion cuts to public health. These cuts include $1.4 billion from pharmaceuticals, achieved by increasing co-payments for everyone including pensioners; removing more than 20 drugs from the PBS altogether; introducing therapeutic group premiums which force people to pay more if they want the newer and safer drugs; $1 billion from Medicare achieved by freezing GPs' fees in 1996, which forced down those bulk-billing rates; closing 43 Medicare offices; and restricting provider numbers; $800 million from public hospitals, making waiting lists and the crisis in public hospitals even worse; $400 million from dental care by abolishing the Commonwealth dental health program, which funded emergency and preventative dental care to almost four million adult health card holders. The attempt to refute this by the minister during his address to the House a moment ago was pretty lame. If what he says is true, how could they as a government possibly have boasted a saving of $400 million in the 1996 forward estimates, a declared saving by this government? It was not a scheme already closed off by us. It was one we prepared and were ready to continue with. They were the ones who cut it.These cuts come with a huge social cost. For example, we have seen a massive slump in the level of bulk-billing for GP consultations. I do not know quite where the minister gets his figures from, but I know that my constituents are telling me that it is harder and harder to get bulk-billing services. Bulk-billing rates for the March quarter are almost a full percentage point lower than the corresponding figure of last year. A one per cent drop in bulk-billing means patients will be forced to pay up-front for more than one million extra GP consultations per year. Every time a GP switches from bulk-billing to charging the AMA scheduled fee, their patients have to pay up to $37 up-front, and even after receiving the Medicare rebate they are $16 a visit out of pocket.I turn now to the government's heartless decision to scrap the Commonwealth dental scheme. In my view, this would have to rank up there with one of the meanest budget decisions ever made, as I am sure the member for Gilmore (Mrs Gash) would particularly agree. In my electorate of Namadgi, waiting times for emergency dental care have blown out to over 24 months. If that is the case, and I believe it to be, why does the minister stand in the House here and say that it has nothing to do with him? He should reinstate that program immediately. I understand that waiting periods in other parts of the country are even longer.Given the disaster that is unfolding before us in public health, one would have expected that the government would have taken some steps in the budget to redress the situation. However, I am disappointed to inform the House—this side does not need informing—that the budget announced by the Treasurer (Mr Costello) on Tuesday night offers no solution to the nation's public health crisis. There is not one extra dollar in that budget for public hospitals that was not offered to the Premiers before their walkout of that famous Premiers Conference.There is not one extra dollar in the budget for dental health, despite the continuing blow-out in waiting lists for emergency and preventative care. There is not one new idea in private health insurance, and the government's own budget papers show that it expects the numbers in private health insurance to continue to fall—and, again, I refer to the graph. That is right; the numbers in private health insurance are expected to continue to fall.The government's much trumpeted private health insurance incentives have failed miserably to address the decline in private health insurance. The hundreds of millions of dollars that the government has wasted on those incentives would have been much better spent directly on the public health system.The minister's close friend, that famous Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, was absolutely correct when he described the incentives as a complete waste of money. When asked why the private health insurance figures had to be massively readjusted in the budget and why they continued to show a steady decline of more than 30,000 people a year into the future, the best the minister could come up with was to blame the Treasury. In his press conference the minister's excuses were:. . . Treasury initially overestimated the cost.And:. . . Well again, the predictions on that are the Treasury's . . . we merely go along for the ride on their predictions.Perhaps it is time for the minister to get on with his job, to do some hard work. Perhaps he could stop blaming others. I notice that he tends to do that an awful lot in this place. He should start working towards solving the crisis.I note that the state and territory health ministers, most of whom are of the same political ilk as this minister, have also condemned the budget and the minister for failing to meet the growing demand for health services. What have the state and territory health ministers had to say? Here is one quote:This budget will barely help us keep up with the growing demand for heart surgery alone.And another:The federal government seems to think the Medicare negotiations are just a political game, in which they can push and pull figures at will.It is hardly a ringing endorsement of the minister's performance. Perhaps Jeff Kennett was right when he said that this minister, despite being a `nice bloke', was simply not up to the job as the nation's health minister.The states are right to complain about the budget. Despite receiving that $300 million windfall—I suppose we could call it—from the failure of the government's private health insurance measures, there is no increase in the funding offer to the states for public hospitals. The minister's claims about extra public hospital funding are based on extremely dodgy figures. No-one should believe his claims. He has shown no ability to come to terms with the crisis before him.Unless the Prime Minister intervenes—and, while I suggest that, I do so with a certain amount of query; `trepidation' is a good word—and takes immediate steps to rectify this crisis, there will be more than one million extra patients on public hospital waiting lists. That will be this governments's legacy to the people of Australia.The bottom line in this debate is really very simple and, as members of this place, I am sure that every day we hear and see examples of it. At the end of the day, it is people—it is families, it is our older Australians, it is our children—who, when they need it, should expect to get and receive appropriate adequate health care. Petulant and smart alecky behaviour on behalf of this government fails that community completely.16:19:003415Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSONRW5BradfieldLP10—It gives me great pleasure to speak to this matter of public importance. The member for Dobell (Mr Lee) has suggested some spurious ambition that the current health minister might have for another portfolio including finance.All I can say is that the member for Dobell has a number of problems. The first of them is that the Liberal Party has endorsed in the seat of Dobell a doctor—someone who actually understands health, who might understand that teeth do not actually bleed when fractured; someone who understands that dentures do not come under the Commonwealth dental health program; someone who understands—a bloke's bloke, I might add—that, debilitating as a chronic ear effusion may be—Opposition member interjecting—RW5Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSON—I will tell you something: when Mr Kennett—who has been critical of the government, and the minister in particular, over the hospital financing agreements—made some claims in January 1995 that there was not a problem in his public hospitals, I went there to have a look at them. These were under the Medicare agreements that were negotiated and signed in haste, as the minister said, by the previous Labor government—by Mr Brian Howe, the then health minister, and Paul Keating, the then Prime Minister of Australia.Whilst not for one minute wanting to trivialise the discomfort, the pain and the inconvenience of a chronic ear effusion, I found two people in an 18-bed neurosurgical ward at St Vincent's Hospital, one with hemiparesis and the other with hemiplegia—that means, completely paralysed on one side of the body. Having been filled up with steroids to reduce the pressure on their brains from brain tumours, they had been waiting for elective surgery for three weeks.The reason that had occurred was because the previous federal Labor government had done two things. It had withdrawn every financial assistance and subsidy that had been provided since 1983 to private health insurance—that is, reinsurance arrangements; making sure that the private health funds paid 25 per cent of Medicare benefit schedule fees; putting expensive prostheses onto basic tables; and withdrawing bed day subsidies. Also, it had withdrawn all political support for private health insurance—and this, of course, had escalated the demand on the public system, whilst reducing the number of people in the community who were caring for themselves.But what it also did in those 1993 Medicare agreements, which these hospital financing agreements now replace, was to set in place a program that actually discouraged the public hospitals from treating privately insured patients. So the income that was derived from public hospitals treating privately insured patients significantly declined. Mr Kennett himself and his government contributed substantially to the problems that his hospitals faced because, whilst introducing casemix funding for public hospitals in Victoria, he took $211 million out of the Victorian public hospitals system. In fact, after the Commonwealth had increased funding by 12.6 per cent in that first year, the states reduced it by 12.9 per cent.We came to government at a time of collapsing aged dependency ratios, a rapidly ageing demographic. We were propping up consumption, as the previous government had propped up consumption through debt and asset sales. We were spending four per cent of our GDP in financing our debt and equity obligations. Those, amongst other things, exposed us to exchange rate depreciations, which begs the imagination as to where under Labor we would be now, with the problems that are occurring with our Asian neighbours.In health specifically, in the Medicare benefit schedule we would face 5.6 per cent real growth in outlays per annum over the preceding three years and 9½ per cent nominal growth in the preceding decade. The pharmaceutical benefits scheme had increased in the year before we came to government by 14.5 per cent and was predicted to grow 50 per cent over the next four years. Cost shifting was estimated at the time to be worth $400 million a year. That is an activity about which Mr Kennett and the other state premiers should know a great deal—shifting costs from public hospitals at a state level back to the Commonwealth. We also had a significant maldistribution of the medical work force; there was estimated to be 4,000 too many general practitioners in city areas. We also had a decline in private health insurance participation in excess of two per cent per annum.When the opposition speak with some derision of the current Minister for Health and Family Services (Dr Wooldridge) and his performance in this role, it is worth reminding them of some of their own performers—not people I would describe as top performers. Mr Brian Howe was the health minister in the Hawke government and then in the Keating government. In April 1992 the then health minister, Mr Brian Howe, said of private health insurance:Private health insurance makes an insignificant contribution to health financing.It was Mr Howe as the health minister in the 1991 budget who introduced a medicare co-payment. He said that those people who were not in receipt of social security benefits would be liable for a Medicare co-payment and at the same time he took $430 million out of health to put it into his better cities program—to play with houses. In other words, it was a Labor government that did everything it could to reduce bulk-billing participation.One hundred million dollars was put aside in the 1993 budget—a pre-election commitment, by the way. That is a significant amount of money. That was to put public patients into private hospitals—it is a bit like sending kids from public schools to the private education sector as a way of dealing with educational crises. Of course, when Senator Graham Richardson became the health minister he had to very quietly slip out the back door with that one because it was simply unworkable. Basically, the $100 million that was budgeted went out the window. Thankfully, Richardson put it into some other more worthy and effective programs.We also had a GP strategy. The GP strategy came out of the 1991 budget and was subsequently financed in the 1992 budget. This was to do a number of things to provide opportunities for general practitioners to provide services in a non fee-for-service environment. The forward estimates on that were $560 million. Two years into that program, do you know how much of that $560 million had been spent? In two years something like $130 million had been spent. In other words, it was a significant overbudgeting and underspending in what was a very important area for patients and general practitioners.During the 1993 election, Mr Keating, at the time reported to be worth something like $5 million—I am still trying to find out how one makes that sort of money here—told Australia that people did not need private health insurance. He said that people were wasting their money and that the public health system could look after everybody—that Medicare could look after everybody's services. Then I noticed that the Keatings, the Whitlams, the Hawkes and other luminaries of the Labor movement were all booked into St Vincent's Private over the ensuing Christmas break—as they had every right to be. But the hypocrisy of telling the nation to do one thing and then doing something else for themselves and their families sticks in my craw. Then the current member for Fremantle (Dr Lawrence) became the health minister. One of the things that that minister did was to introduce the Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No. 2). This was to introduce the concept of contracting between doctors and private health insurance companies. The way it was introduced, and in particular the way the legislation was set, it was to be disruptive and administratively complex. There were something like $136 million in medical gaps that were unaccounted for and $200 million in hospital gaps that the legislation did not account for. The indirect cost of introducing casemix at the time in the private hospital sector was estimated to be $140 million as a capital one-off cost and $44 million in recurring annual costs. None of that was allowed for in the legislation.In fact, I recall the then health minister, the member for Fremantle, being interviewed by Mr Kerry O'Brien on Lateline. He asked, `What if you have broken your leg and you are in an ambulance and you have a contract with one insurance company?' Such was her ignorance of the health care system that she said, `You could ring your insurance company and see if you could find another one.' That is not something that I would encourage anyone who has any experience with the health system to suggest people do.She also talked about efficiency. The government under that health minister was going to make the private health system efficient. The fact is that at the time you would have needed 709,000 extra bed days every year to achieve the same efficiency in the private system that you were achieving in the public system and $50 million just to get to the same level of efficiency as the top 10 diagnostic related groups.When I was president of the AMA I asked Access Economics to give me some briefings on the budget each year and for the 1993-94 budget they said:By restricting optometry—Remember that? The backbench of the Labor Party overthrew this one, such was the effi ciency of the management of the then Labor government—and some ophthalmology services to card holders only, the government projects to save $48.6 million in this year rising to $107 million next year. These figures appear to be somewhat rubbery as they make no allowance for any run-on of services before the 1 November implementation. Also somewhat rubbery are the estimates of savings over the next four years from combating overservicing and fraud under Medicare.The then health minister said, `I think it is worth something between $220 million and $330 million a year.' Within six months of that budget estimate he admitted that it was probably worth about $20 million a year. In other words, we are dealing with a period of ineptitude and mismanagement and we are now trying to bring things back to order. (Time expired)10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)—Order! The discussion has concluded.Bills3418r4903418Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy presented.Ordered that the bill be taken into consideration forthwith.Bill agreed to.3418Bill (on motion by Mr Ronaldson)—by leave—read a third time.Bills3418r4913418Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy presented.Ordered that the bill be taken into consideration forthwith.Bill agreed to.3418Bill (on motion by Mr Ronaldson)—by leave—read a third time.Bills3418r4963418Bill returned from Main Committee with an unresolved question; certified copy of bill and schedule of unresolved question presented.Ordered that the bill be taken into consideration forthwith.Unresolved question—That the words proposed to be omitted (Mr Lee's amendment) stand part of the question.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.3418Bill (on motion by Mr Ronaldson)—by leave—read a third time.Bills3418r4983418Bill returned from Main Committee with an unresolved question; certified copy of bill and schedule of unresolved question presented.Ordered that the bill be taken into consideration forthwith.Unresolved question—That the bill be now read a second time.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.3418Bill (on motion by Mr Ronaldson)—by leave—read a third time.Bills3418r5053418Bill returned from Main Committee with an unresolved question; certified copy of bill and schedule of unresolved question presented.Ordered that the bill be taken into consideration forthwith.Unresolved question—That the bill be now read a second time.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.3419Bill (on motion by Mr Ronaldson)—by leave—read a third time.Bills3419r5223419Bill presented by Mr Truss, and read a first time.341916:37:003419Truss, Warren, MPMr TRUSSGT4Wide BayNPCustoms and Consumer Affairs10—I move:That the bill be now read a second time.The government came to office with a commitment to reform the anti-dumping system. The coalition outlined this commitment in its primary industry policy `Reviving the Heartland', in which it undertook to `improve existing countervailing and anti-dumping procedures to ensure Australian producers are not disadvantaged', and to `reduce the inquiry period for anti-dumping and countervailing cases'. The policy proposed `a maximum total investigation period of 155 days'.Australia has committed itself to anti-dumping and countervailing legislation which is consistent with the obligations imposed by the relevant agreements of the World Trade Organisation, WTO. Of particular importance is the obligation that `throughout an investigation all interested parties must have a full opportunity for the defence of their interests', including the opportunity to see all relevant information, to acquaint themselves with the opposing views and to offer rebuttal arguments.At present Australia has a two-stage, two-agency, investigation process involving Customs and the Anti-Dumping Authority, ADA. Customs undertakes a preliminary inquiry within a statutory period of 100 days (extendable to 120 days in certain circumstances). Where there is a positive preliminary finding of dumping causing material injury Customs can impose provisional measures (securities). Following such a finding the investigation is referred to the ADA. The ADA calls for additional submissions, gathers further information and will essentially re-do what Customs did in its preliminary investigation, although using different information. The ADA process is to be completed within a statutory maximum time frame of 120 days. The minister then decides on appropriate measures.This system is a legacy of Labor's period in office. It has been criticised by industry on many counts: the time to impose provisional measures where necessary, by which time long-term damage may have been caused to the Australian industry; the time taken to reach a finding is too long; and, the two-agency structure creates duplication, inconsistency, uncertainty and additional cost to parties.The anti-dumping system has been reviewed five times in the last 11 years. The most recent of these reviews, the 1996 Willett report, Review of Australia's anti-dumping and countervailing administration, made a number of recommendations for the reform of the system, including abolition of the ADA and the introduction of a single-agency system leading to shortened investigations. These recommendations reflected many of the concerns of industry expressed in earlier reviews. The changes which the government now seeks to introduce draw heavily on Willett's conclusions, whilst recognising that not all his recommendations may be desirable or workable.Willett recommended a two-stage, single agency process: 100 days for the investigation phase (at which time a Statement of Essential Facts would be published)—followed by a review period of 55 days, conducted internally, with a final finding to go to the minister at day 155 (but with an overall investigation period of 175 days for cases of greater complexity).Under existing arrangements, a positive finding is referred to the ADA for a de novo investigation (often mistakenly referred to as a review). The ADA continues the investigation by seeking and verifying additional information to that which was before Customs. This adds 110 days (120 in complex cases) to the inquiry and has given rise to the criticism of duplication and delay. Willett acknowledged that the only way to achieve reduction in the time taken to 155 days was to substantially reduce the time available for review. He suggested this be done by eliminating the second agency, and introducing a more limited review by the first agency (ie. internal review).At first glance, the Willett model would deliver the reform sought by industry. However, the Willett model has serious shortcomings: its compressed investigation phase would prevent thorough examination of the issues; the opportunities for interested parties to defend their interests would be inadequate; and, its proposal that Customs conduct internal reviews of its own findings would call into question the credibility and impartiality of the entire process.The government has therefore formulated modifications to the Willett model which will overcome these deficiencies. The government's model meets the objective of a total investigation period of 155 days but delivers to interested parties greater opportunity for a comprehensive consideration of the facts and an additional process of external administrative appeal of the merits.Under the government's model the ADA is to be abolished and Customs will take on the sole responsibility for the conduct of investigations. An independent body, the Trade Measures Review Office, to serve the newly created public office of Trade Measure Review Officer, TMRO, the person charged with reviewing dumping decisions, will be established within the Industry, Science and Tourism portfolio. Provisional measures in the form of securities will be available from day 60 of an investigation onwards if Customs determines that there is sufficient evidence to warrant their imposition. This is in conformity with the requirements of the relevant WTO agreements.A Statement of Essential Facts will be issued by day 110, 10 days more than Willett allowed for the initial investigation phase. This additional period will address a major concern of industry, namely that information, particularly regarding exporters, only becomes available late in the initial investigation. Consequently, the local industry has a limited opportunity to raise concerns regarding this information and more importantly the investigating authority has a limited time within which to address those concerns. The additional 10 days will enhance the opportunity for all interested parties fully to defend their interests and will enable Customs to issue a comprehensive Statement of Essential Facts reflecting its reasoned conclusions on all relevant issues.After issue of the Statement of Essential Facts, interested parties will have a 20-day period within which to lodge submissions in response. Customs will then have a further 25 days to complete the investigation, having regard to matters raised in the submissions. It should complete its investigation on or before day 155. Customs will then forward a detailed report and recommendations to the minister. The minister's decision in response to the Customs recommendations will constitute a final finding. The investigation will thus be completed within a 155-day time frame in conformity with the coalition's election undertaking. Only in exceptional cases will the minister authorise an extension of the investigation period.In formulating these reforms the government recognised that anti-dumping and countervailing investigations and reviews can be disruptive for all interested parties. Investigations may give rise to trade chilling effects, which are to the detriment of exporters, importers and consumers alike. Australian industry views such investigations as creating uncertainty within the marketplace which may delay investment decisions thereby retarding their economic development and overall efficiency.The Government accepts that it is in the best interests of all parties for these investigations and reviews to be completed as soon as is practicable. It is convinced that its proposed reforms have struck a balance between, on the one hand, the desirability of speedily resolving investigations and, on the other, doing so in a manner which is not only consistent with our WTO obligations but in certain respects exceeds those obligations.However, this balance can only be maintained if all interested parties are subject to a discipline which requires that if they wish to participate in the investigation or review process they must ensure that their submissions are lodged promptly. Therefore, at various milestones throughout the investigation or review process the Government's reforms confer a power upon the relevant decision maker to disregard any submissions which are received after specified periods, if there is insufficient time remaining for their proper consideration. Without such powers, the statutory deadlines would never be met and the balance which such deadlines are designed to preserve would be undermined.The 155-day investigation phase contains sufficient safeguards to ensure that all interested parties will have sufficient time to identify any errors or other deficiencies in Customs findings of fact and reasoning. A 155-day investigation phase will also ensure that Customs will have sufficient time to be able to respond to such concerns before forwarding a recommendation to the minister regarding a final finding.Nevertheless, if grounds exist, parties to the case will have the right to have the minister's decision reviewed by the TMRO. Parties will have a maximum of 30 days following publication of the minister's final finding within which to lodge an application for review. The application must contain particulars of the basis upon which it is alleged that the investigation was flawed. Other interested parties will then have 30 days within which to lodge responses. The TMRO will then have a maximum of 30 days to consider the matter and to make a recommendation to the minister. If the TMRO considers that sufficient doubt attached to any aspect of the investigation such as to call into question the Customs recommendation to the minister, the TMRO can recommend to the minister that that aspect of the investigation be remitted to Customs for reconsideration.The significant feature of the appeal mechanism is that the TMRO will not undertake an investigative function. It will be limited to examining the investigation record in light of the arguments raised in the application. This will ensure the outcome of dumping inquiries is decided as quickly as possible, providing certainty in the marketplace.With the transfer to Customs of the investigative functions of the ADA in relation to applications for continuation of measures after the statutory five-year time limit and applications for review of anti-dumping measures, it is proposed to extend the current 120-day limit the ADA has to conduct such inquiries to 155 days. This is to provide consistency across the range of investigations to be undertaken by the ACS so as to ensure that the opportunities for all interested parties to fully defend their interests are consistent.Finally, it is proposed to confer on the TMRO the ability to review decisions made by the CEO as to whether an investigation should start, or should be terminated because there is no good reason to continue it, and as to the amount of customs duty paid on particular consignments of goods. I commend the bill to the House, and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Tanner) adjourned.Bills3421r5213421Bill presented by Mr Truss, and read a first time.342116:50:003421Truss, Warren, MPMr TRUSSGT4Wide BayNPCustoms and Consumer Affairs10—I move:That the bill be now read a second time.The purpose of this bill is to make consequential amendments to a taxing act, the Customs Tariff (Anti-Dumping) Act 1975, made necessary by amendments to the Customs Act 1901 proposed in the Customs Legislation (Anti-Dumping Amendments) Bill 1998.In Item 57 to Schedule 1 to the Anti-Dumping Amendments Bill referred to above, it is proposed to repeal, amongst others, subsections 269TJ (4), (5), (6), (7) and (9) of the Customs Act. These provisions currently permit Australia to take retaliatory countervailing action against another country in certain circumstances. They are inconsistent with Australia's obligations to the World Trade Organisation. These obligations require that WTO dispute settlement procedures be exhausted before such action can be taken.In that context, the government has decided to remove from the Customs Act the provisions enabling retaliatory countervailing action to be taken. In consequence, the capacity to impose countervailing duty pursuant to those sections should also be repealed. It is proposed to do this in this bill. I commend the bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Tanner) adjourned.Tariff Proposals342216:52:003422Truss, Warren, MPMr TRUSSGT4Wide BayNPCustoms and Consumer Affairs10—I move:Customs Tariff Proposal No. 3 (1998).Customs Tariff Proposal No. 3 (1998), which I have just tabled, contains alterations to the Customs Tariff Act 1995 to give effect to the government's commitment to remove tariffs on inputs to the manufacture of information industries equipment.The `investing for growth' industry statement of 8 December 1997 announced that the government would remove tariffs on inputs to the manufacture of information industries equipment after a short consultation process with local component suppliers to assess the likely impact on them. The issue with tariffs on inputs has been one of negative assistance. Most fully assembled information industries equipment is imported duty free. However, many inputs used in local production of the same equipment attract either a five per cent tariff or a three per cent rate under a Tariff Concession Order (TCO).Following consultation with industry, we are taking action on two fronts. The central element is an acceleration of duty reductions already scheduled under the information technology agreement (ITA). With the exception of a small range of finished goods, we will be bringing forward by 18 months the tariff reductions to which Australia is committed under the ITA. A zero duty rate will now apply from the 1 July 1998. The goods that will be excluded, and for which 1 January 2000 will remain the operative date for a zero rate, include: line telephone and other telephone sets; facsimile and telephone answering machines; digital still image cameras; pagers; and antennas/aerial reflectors.The second element of the approach is the establishment of a new schedule 4 item in the customs tariff for those inputs not covered by the ITA. This will allow duty free entry for other inputs which are currently subject to a TCO. The new item will cover inputs to the manufacture of information industries equipment. Information industries equipment will be defined in terms of a series of tariff headings listed in a by-law. Inputs to manufacture are goods that are an integral part of the manufacturing process for this equipment, and include goods that are incorporated into the equipment or consumed during the manufacture of the equipment as well as certain capital equipment utilised in the manufacturing process. In consultation with industry, an initial list of TCOs covering relevant inputs has been developed. The coverage will be expanded as new TCOs are established for inputs.Australian information technology manufacturers will benefit from duty free access to key inputs which will strengthen their competitive position. The cost to government is estimated at $80 million over the next 18 months, and this should translate into reduced costs for industry, and lower prices for consumers. Australia's position in the context of the ITA will also be enhanced at a time when some countries are calling for accelerated action on trade liberalisation. A summary of the alterations contained in this proposal has been prepared and is being circulated for the information of honourable members. I commend the proposal to the House.Debate (on motion by Mr Kelvin Thomson) adjourned.Miscellaneous3423342316:57:003423Miles, Chris, MPMr MILESBI4BraddonLP10—On indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker, earlier in the day one of the supplementary explanatory memorandums for the Stevedoring Levy (Imposition) Bill 1998 was not tabled, and I now provide that.QI4PRICEMr Price—Mr Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: could I inquire as to when this serious omission was first detected and when were you advised of it?10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)—I am not too sure whether the parliamentary secretary wants to be provoked, but if he does—BI4MILESMr MILES—I knew about it two minutes ago.Committees3423342334233423Mr DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)10000PON/A10—The Speaker has received a message from the Senate acquainting the House that Senator Bolkus has been discharged from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Native Title and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Fund and Senator Reynolds has been appointed a member of the committee.Bills3423The following bills were returned from the Senate without amendment or request:Student and Youth Assistance Amendment Bill 1998 Law Officers Amendment Bill 1997 Committees34233423342316:58:003423Lieberman, Lou, MPMr LIEBERMANXU5IndiLP10—I present the 18th report from the Publications Committee sitting in conference with the Publications Committee of the Senate. Copies of the report are being circulated to honourable members in the chamber.Report—by leave—agreed to.Bills3423r4453423Bill returned from the Senate with amendments.Ordered that the amendments be considered for the next sitting.Bills3423s1583423Bill received from the Senate, and read a first time.Ordered that the second reading be made an order of the day for the next sitting.Bills3423r4373423Consideration resumed.17:01:003423Price, Roger, MPMr PRICEQI4ChifleyALP00—The member for Dickson (Mr Tony Smith) has moved amendments and our spokesman, the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson), will shortly be moving some amendments, but I wanted to particularly address those—and I know he has only spoken part of the way in what he wants to address—in the member for Dickson's proposals. I often remember Paul Keating talking about the marketplace of ideas. I have always welcomed those who put ideas before indifferent forums and it is in that context that I welcome his suggestions, although I hope to explain why I will not be specifically supporting them. I do want to say, very strongly, that I share one aspect and that is that I really think there is a need for a tribunal in family law where lawyers are precluded from appearing. Although there are constitutional difficulties with that, I believe that they can be overcome.What the member for Dickson is addressing by way of his amendments are very important issues. Firstly, I think in administrative law there is a well established principle that citizens have a right to have an internal review of administrative decisions. The difficulty with the review office is that it purports to operate because the review offices are external, as though it were a proper external body of review, similar to that we have in the Department of Veterans' Affairs or the Department of Social Security. I want to make it clear that I believe we should have a robust system of internal review but also of external review, one that is efficient, cost effective and based on a similar way in which these two departments operate.During the second reading debate the member for Richmond (Mr Anthony) suggested that the government was going to institute a review of review officers to return a degree of consistency and predictability in the way in which they reach decisions. I think that, particularly for an external review body if not internal, this is absolutely vital. Citizens ought to know what reasonable chance they have of success when they appear before it.During the committee's inquiries, we were being assured 3½ years ago or more that this very same thing was happening. The point I wanted to make to the government members in particular is that you are really faced, at the moment, with two choices: one is the proposals that are being elaborated on by the member for Dickson here in this chamber today and the other is the original proposals the committee put forward, which have been substantially ignored.I want to reiterate what would happen under those proposals. The existing system is internal review, not external review, and therefore a significant departure from normal administrative practice. We should institute a proper basis of internal review, as operates under other departments. The registrar would have the first right, if you like, to fix a mistake of his own volition or as a result of internal review. But if parties, after having made that request, were dissatisfied then they would have this right to go to an external body like the Social Security Appeals Tribunal. If they were not happy there they would, as they do with the Social Security Appeals Tribunal, go to AAT or the Family Court.It is fatuous to suggest, as the government has tended to, that the proposals either by the member for Dickson or those originally proposed in the committee report are more expensive time wasting. I think these are basic rights that any citizen should have when dealing with departments and even agencies like the Child Support Agency. It is an absolute tragedy that nothing has been done to fix up this serious error of administration. So much of the administrative recommendations have been picked up, I admit that, but not this particular one. (Time expired)17:06:003424Smith, Tony, MPMr TONY SMITHSK6DicksonLP10—What the member for Chifley (Mr Price) is basically alluding to there is the need to have procedural fairness in all of this. We do not have procedural fairness while there is justice, so-called, behind closed doors. As I said in my speech during the second reading debate, the very soul of justice is publicity. For people who are not subject to the normal rigorous processes of outside scrutiny, as the review officers are not, it is all very well to say there is an appeal from the review officer, but who can afford to go to the Family Court on appeal from a review officer? Nobody. They are exercising tremendous power, yet story after story that comes to my office indicates that they are not behaving according to the rules of natural justice.I want to address the question of fairness, which is the purpose behind my amendments. Will anybody in this House say it is fair for a non-custodial parent to pay $1,200 a month for a two-year-old child and that the same amount should be paid for a 16-year-old child? That is the current system and that, in itself, is inherently unfair and inequitable.Is it fair and equitable, for example, for $100,000 to be paid in child support, tax free, to a custodial parent and for that parent still to be able to get the pension? They are still able to get the pension and get $100,000. That is the way the system is at the moment. We cannot have a system that works in this way and is not subject to external review. It is not equitable, it is not logical, and yet the system continues.I emphasise this: it is no good saying, `We have to balance both sides,' when the scales are tipped so far the other way. I am not ashamed to say that. They are tipped in favour of the custodial parent. Let us be honest—they are. As other members have said, it is no good us having a cherry picker approach to the report of the member for Chifley. We have got to look at the whole of that report, the totality of that report. Frankly, having sat on a lengthy inquiry into the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is highly insulting for a later group to come along and say, `Thanks very much. You've worked very hard, but we'll just have a little flick through this report. We'll grab one here and one there and then make a point of saying that we are adopting schedule or part such and such of the report.' It is an insult to the people who served on those committees and the people who heard the evidence. We have got to listen to all these things.The major problem is, in my view, apart from anything else, the unfairness aspect. We must look at matters such as the cost of children. I have before me a document outlining two approaches to the cost of children: the `basket-of-goods approach' and the `expenditure survey approach'. The document came from the Institute of Family Studies. It is a 1998 document. I seek leave to incorporate this document in Hansard.Leave granted.The document read as follows—UPDATECosts of Children in AustraliaThere are two important differences between results obtained by using the basket-of-goods method and the expenditure survey method as presented in the accompanying Tables. First, the basket-of-goods approach provides only part of the cost of a child, while the expenditure survey measures the total amount spent on the child. Second, the basket-of-goods method indicates how much parents would spend on their children if the child was to enjoy the fruits of the basket specified by the researcher. In this sense, it provides an `ideal' or desirable costing. In contrast, the expenditure survey method indicates how much parents actually spend on their children, even though the amount spent might be considered inadequate or excessive by the objective standards of the basket-of-goods method.Basket-of-Goods ApproachBased on Lovering 1983Adjusted to CPI figure September Quarter 1997Age of child2 years5 years8 years11 yearsTeenage Low income families (below average weekly wage)Per week31.7340.7249.9452.9678.89Per year1655.332161.292603.412762.834114.00 Middle income families (average weekly wage and above)Per week47.7553.5669.1589.51131.26Per year2490.042794.783605.614551.976844.60Note: Included are food and clothing, fuel, household provisions, costs of schooling (not fees), gifts, pocket money and entertainment. NOT included are housing, transport, school fees or uniforms, child care, medical or dental expenses. Holidays are a component of the middle income figures only.Source: Lovering, K. (1984), Cost of Children in Australia, Working Paper no.8, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne. Expenditure Survey ApproachBased on Lee 1989Adjusted to AWE figure September Quarter 1997Age of child (years)FoodTransportRecreationHousehold goodsHousing and utilitiesClothingOther*Total expenditure weekly0-131.9847.1832.7732.5626.3117.7417.64206.302-428.1236.6526.1930.0216.8515.5715.14168.775-729.6338.2239.4027.1321.2718.0011.94182.548-1041.3753.2439.6528.5014.3816.6226.22220.1711-1345.5945.1836.9131.6630.3724.0430.69244.84* Includes medical and dental costs, education costs and other miscellaneous costs. Costs of children vary according to the number of children in the family, the parents' incomes and whether one or both parents are working.Note: The figures in the table relate to a one-child, one-income family with an income of $693.80 gross per week. The Lee data show that two children cost about 55 per cent more than one child, while three children cost about twice the cost of one child. The dollar costs of children are relatively `flat' compared with rises in family income: children in poor families cost proportionally more, and children in rich families proportionally less than those in middle income families.Source: Lee, D. (1989), Calculations of the direct costs of children based on the 1984 ABS Household Expenditure Survey, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne.Australian Institute of Family Studies 1998SK6Smith, Tony, MPMr TONY SMITH—The basket-of-goods approach is the cost of such things as food, clothing, fuel, household provisions, schooling—not school fees—gifts, pocket money and entertainment. Not included are things such as housing, transport, school fees, uniforms, child care, medical or dental expenses. The expenditure survey approach, said to be based on Lee 1989, chose a much higher figure.It must be realised at the outset that expenditure does not equal cost. The problem with the expenditure survey approach is that it is said to be based on a regression analysis. Even in the expenditure survey approach we can see in the document references to the expenditure approach and then cost as if those terms were interchangeable—they are not. So inherent in the survey is an inherent defect.Attempts to track down Mr Lee to find out exactly what that means have been unsuccessful. The document upon which it is based is at the moment unprocurable, yet the document is being peddled by the Institute of Family Studies and frequently forms the basis of orders by courts as to the amount of child support to be paid and government policy in this area. This is simply not good enough. Mr Price's committee recommended that the income of new partners be taken into account. (Time expired)17:11:003426Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSONUK6WillsALP00—What an extraordinary little political drama we are witnessing being played out this afternoon. We have here a member of the government, the member for Dickson (Mr Tony Smith), moving amendments to the government's own bill, the Child Support Legislation Amendment Bill 1998 . Certainly in my time in this place I have not seen it happen before, and I wonder just how far back in history we would have to go to see such an event.We have not heard from the government. My question is: what is the government's position in relation to the amendments moved by the member for Dickson? Is the government going to support the member for Dickson or is the government going to oppose him? This is a sign of a government in disarray and, indeed, a Liberal Party in disarray.When I first came into this place three members were sitting on the cross benches as Independents: the member for Oxley (Ms Hanson), the member for Moore (Mr Filing) and the member for Curtin (Mr Rocher). They were previously members of the Liberal Party. Since that time we have seen the member for Lowe (Mr Zammit) cross the floor and become an Independent and we have seen the member for McPherson (Mr Bradford) cross the floor and become an Independent. Indeed, the member for McPherson has, I understand, seconded the amendments moved by the member for Dickson. It would appear that the member for Dickson is off on a frolic of his own, unsupported by his own government. We now need to hear what the position of the government is in relation to the amendments moved by the member for Dickson.This is a sign of a government in disarray. We have seen a plethora of ministerial resignations, of parliamentary secretary resignations—including the Deputy President of the Senate—in all these things. I do not think we have seen anything like this since the Stalin cabinet of 1920.SK6SMITHMr Tony Smith—Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. The amendments that I have moved are about specific matters in relation to the setting up of a tribunal. The speaker should address those matters, not embark on a political exercise, which he is doing.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Mossfield)—There is no point of order, but I will ask the speaker to address his remarks to the amendments before the chair.UK6Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSON—Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I certainly intend to do that, but I thought it was worth drawing the attention of the House to what is a fascinating small political drama being played out here this afternoon. But in relation to the amendments before the House, the opposition has not had an opportunity to consider them. They were not provided to us by the member for Dickson, which gives rise to some questions about how seriously he has been pursuing these things. Indeed, we will not be supporting the amendments which have been moved. We think that the concerns which the member for Dickson raises can be better addressed in other ways. Nevertheless, we have listened with interest to the observations that he has made concerning the operation of the scheme and we will be listening to further contributions from him in the course of the debate.17:14:003427Smith, Tony, MPMr TONY SMITHSK6DicksonLP10—This is too important an issue for it to become political. It really is a very important issue that is facing so many people around this country. I am trying to raise the profile of this issue. I say to the last speaker, the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson), that, as a result of my indicating these measures, there have been further moves, and these moves have been reflected in subsequent amendments and foreshadowed amendments to the legislation. The very fact that I came in here, said these things and foreshadowed what I was going to do has at least got the ball moving a little. We have a long way to go, but I am thankful for what has happened so far. I was informed only in the last hour that much more work is being done on this across the board.We have a system that urgently needs addressing. People are committing suicide because of this system. We cannot ignore that in this country. We have got to do something about it. The only way to do it is to get back to the basics: determining the needs of children, the capacity to pay of both parents, the circumstances of the blended families, and so forth. As I said before, the committee of the member for Chifley (Mr Price) has done some good work on it. The backbench committee—the new task force committee—has done more good work. It needs to go a lot further.Going back to the regression tables that I was talking about a moment ago, and which now appear to be lost, an essential tenet of the proposition was that `two families spending the same amount on food eaten at home are said to have the same standard of living'. I would have thought that this is a preposterous suggestion. Yet this sort of information is being pushed to found government policy. The previous government was basing policy on some of this stuff. People out there are hurting.In my respectful submission, we should not adopt a piecemeal approach. What is needed is an approach that addresses this issue. My amendments do that. During the second reading debate many honourable members opposite were calling for a free and open debate on this issue—one with no political restraints. The member for Throsby (Mr Hollis) was one of those who was saying that, and he is right. It is important for families that we have a free and open vote in this parliament on this issue, bearing in mind that many families are affected by the break-up of marriages and by the pain and heartache involved. The children, in particular, are pulled hither and thither.These amendments, far from being indicative of a government that is in disarray, are showing the strength of the system on our side of the parliament that forces a review of these things. It is a conscious move by members who are concerned—and it is not just me. There has been a lot of support expressed for this issue both in the Main Committee stage of the debate and also privately. We need this system to be overhauled. My proposals effect that. We have magistrates courts and courts of petty sessions in place all around the country; the cost factor involved is not a lot. They are there now. Each person around the country affected by this system—each divided family by this stage—can go in there and have their case individually treated by a magistrate in a fair and open way, with evidence on oath; all of these things.As I said at the outset, we need a conscious and urgent approach to fix this system. Progress has been made but much more needs to be done, and done urgently. The message is finally getting through that that is the case. I submit to you that we will need this debate to continue and that these amendments should be accepted.17:19:003428Bradford, John, MPMr BRADFORDFT4McPhersonIND10—I made a contribution earlier on in this matter. I am disappointed that the Labor Party is not going to support the amendments of the member for Dickson (Mr Tony Smith). I am not sure what the government will do at this stage, but I look forward to the Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet) to the Prime Minister (Mr Miles) informing the parliament of his intentions. He has brought forward some positive suggestions to improve the Child Support Agency regime. The problem is that this is bandaid legislation. Nobody is saying that this legislation is not positive or that it is not making improvements, but it is only bandaid legislation. It is only fiddling with the problems.There are no government members in the chamber, with the exception of the Minister for Customs and Consumer Affairs (Mr Truss), the parliamentary secretary and the member for Dickson. They know that I know they are all very concerned about this matter. What is more, they have been very outspoken about it. They were very disappointed with the response of the Minister for Social Security (Senator Newman) on this issue, and I assume they still are. She has been very reluctant to do anything substantial in this area and has been very timid and overly cautious about it.The member for Dickson came in here with a well thought out plan to address many of the fundamental problems. We can expect the government, of which he is a member, to not support his amendments, otherwise they would not be coming up in this form. Unfortunately, the Labor Party does not see fit to support them either, although I know the member for Chifley would generally be sympathetic to what is being proposed by the member for Dickson.I am disappointed with the way in which this whole issue is proceeding. As I said, every member of this place gets more complaints about the Child Support Agency than any other issue. From my experience with government members, I know that they remain very concerned that the government has not yet done enough to address many of the fundamental problems which exist. Instead of addressing the fundamentals and coming to grips with them in the fairly radical way proposed by the member for Dickson, we have a large list of minor tinkering at the edges which only amounts to, as I said, bandaid solutions.This agency—this system—is haemorrhaging so badly and adversely affecting so many people in our community that bandaids are just not going to work and are not enough. What is needed is a fundamental rethink. The principle involved of making parents responsible for their children—in most cases making fathers responsible for the children of relationships that they have been in—is a sound one. We all accept and understand that that is the case. But the way that it is being put into effect is not working.As I was saying earlier today, I have a case at the moment of a couple who are receiving a double whammy. The husband in the new relationship has a former wife who is living the life of Riley with the wealthy man she is now with. The wife in the new relationship's former husband is in the same situation with the lady he is now attached to, but he refuses to pay maintenance and has no income. So this particular family finds themselves almost destitute and they owe the Child Support Agency money which they keep getting reminded about. Every time they get reminders in the mail the situation is made a hundred times worse.I commend the member for Dickson for what he has done and I support his amendments. I do not know where it will go from here but at least somebody—and that is the member for Dickson—in this place is actually trying to get to some of the basics and to look for fundamental solutions to the problems rather than just doing as this legislation does—albeit improving the situation to some extent, it nevertheless only manages to tinker with the edges.17:24:003429Smith, Tony, MPMr TONY SMITHSK6DicksonLP10—I thank the member for McPherson (Mr Bradford) for his considered remarks. He has always gone on record as someone who has desired a significant reform of this system. One of the things that I also want to point out in pointing to these amendments as a way to go is what is sometimes forgotten. If I can give just a very short lesson on the common law here, what I am proposing is that the tribunal would exercise the old common law principle with only one departure in that I use the word `parents' rather than `parent'. The old common law just had the principle `the needs of the child and the capacity to pay of the parent'. In this modern time both parents are working in a lot of cases. A lot of parents both have the capacity to pay, therefore we take the whole bundle together these days. That is the only update there.Another point that I wanted to make clear is that when we are talking about child support what we are talking about is maintenance. At common law, again, an applicant for maintenance could rarely get arrears of maintenance beyond one or two years. It was highly extraordinary to get maintenance beyond that time for the simple reason that the child is two—or sometimes five—years older than the time when that amount of money accrued, and what we are talking about then is a capital payment, not child support, because the child has moved on. It is important to bear that in mind because of the culture of the Child Support Agency. There is the notion that it is just the same as tax because it is part of the Taxation Office; it is not. It has been said that the money is a debt to the Commonwealth.This is about money for children but it is also about fairness. It is not about creating a situation where a person wears the pendulum of a debt, going back five or ten years in some cases, with absolutely no chance of paying it back. It is hanging like a millstone around their neck. We have to get away from that culture and get to the culture of appreciating that this is about ongoing maintenance of children; it is not about large debts that will turn into capital payments if repaid in the future—which has nothing to do with child support.The child could be over 18 and there could be a debt of $10,000. Does that mean that at some stage in the future, if the liable parent wins the Casket, suddenly $10,000 goes straight to the person? This has nothing to do with child support unless the person who is the custodial parent has changed his or her position in consideration of not having daily maintenance; that is a different situation. If they have borrowed money and all those sorts of things, that can be considered. I point out that a court can look at these things but a bland agency, with one person exercising great powers with the stroke of a pen, has this myopic view of things. It has no appreciation of the way the common law works or the reality of these things: that this is not about debts; it is about ongoing maintenance. I emphasise that, particularly in relation to the suggestion that there are going to be greater powers in the departure orders that are talked about.This is not the time to talk about that, but bear in mind that the reason behind this particular amendment is to ensure procedural fairness, to ensure the right of every individual to be heard. It is part of my political philosophy that every individual couple out there can be heard, whether they send their kids to state schools—I used to go to a state school; Salisbury High School—or to Grammar. They all have their opportunity to be heard and to present their case. They are special in the eyes of the court, in the eyes of this tribunal, because they are all given their go, they are all given their day. That is what this is really about. So, without wanting to take any more time of the House, I do urge this proposal upon the House and I thank members for listening to me.17:28:003430Bradford, John, MPMr BRADFORDFT4McPhersonIND10—I have just got one other point that I would like to make. I appreciate the patience of the government. The Chief Whip has asked me to make my remarks brief. I told him if he would give me 30 seconds, I would cooperate. I am using up the seconds anyway.I wanted to ask the parliamentary secretary just one question which he might address at some stage, that is, what is the effect of this legislation requiring the introduction of a minimum income of $260 in calculating the amount of child care payable in respect of a day? Is that related to the fact that people are required to pay now regardless of their circumstances? I understand that is the minimum amount that they now have to pay. I am not sure how they are going to do it if they do not have any income, if they are unemployed. They are not liable for a child support payment under those circumstances, but I got the impression that this was a requirement that, regardless of the person's means, they would have to pay a minimum amount. I am not sure where that came from and I would just like to understand where, if the people are destitute, they are going to get even that $260 from.17:30:003430Miles, Chris, MPMr MILESBI4BraddonLP10—To address that amount of $260 to begin with, the government's position on this is that every parent has an obligation to their children. I do not think any parents who have come to me have rejected that concept or principle. To give an example to the member for McPherson (Mr Bradford), we are expecting those people who are unemployed to contribute $5 per week for 52 weeks—the $260. That is going on the principle that every parent has a responsibility to the children they have brought into this world. Hopefully, that gives the honourable member a sense of direction in regard to what he is asking about.The member for Chifley (Mr Price) indicated—and I did not get up at that time to reply—that he believed the bill nets the government $47 million over four years. We do not believe that is the case. It does not. The savings from one measure—for example, private collection funds—fund the other measures, such as the increase in pay as exempt income and allowing credit for the 50 per cent of child support paid to determine the entitlement to family payment. I hope that is helpful to the member for Chifley. Whether he agrees with it is up to him; I recognise that.To come to the amendments which are now before the House, I make the following comments. The proposal is for a small claims child support tribunal. We believe that this tribunal would not provide a new service and would not assist parents to have contact with their children. There is a range of issues we could go into but I want to come to the point quickly. In regard to the recommendations from the government task force, as announced already here today, the existing process to depart from formula assessment will be examined to develop a range of options that will improve its transparency and accountability. Changes are to be considered in 1999, the 2000 budget process.Secondly, there will be a review of the training, qualifications and remuneration of officers contracted to determine applications to depart from formula assessment which will report to the Assistant Treasurer (Senator Kemp) by 30 June this year. This review will include legislation, procedures, information needed by clients, physical location and accountability of officers, and notification of decisions and appeal mechanisms, including an evaluation of the proposed legislative amendment which introduces objection provisions for the departure decisions. So we believe we are moving forward on this.One or two comments were made earlier in regard to which I make these comments. The government has responded to all of the 163 recommendations of the joint standing committee. We did not accept all of them. The government does not accept the amendments which are now before the House. But I have to say to members of the previous government, now members of the opposition, that the previous government responded to about 50 of the 163 recommendations, whereas we have at least responded to all of them, and the previous government did not introduce any legislation. We believe that this is a definite step forward in regard to this issue. Some people in this parliament are obviously saying it does not go far enough. I guess in that sense that even within the government we are a broad church on a whole range of issues, but these are steps forward and we trust that they will be of benefit to families and children in this country. I state again that the government is opposed to these amendments.Amendments negatived.17:35:003431Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSONUK6WillsALP00—by leave—I move:(1) Page 141, after line 31, insert:Schedule 19A—Further amendmentsChild Support Assessment Act 1989(2) Page 141, after line 31, insert:1 Section 38 Omit the section, substitute:38 Liable parents' child support income amount The liable parents' child support income amount in relation to the days in the child support year is, subject to Division 3, the sum of: (a) the liable parents' taxable income under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 for the liable parent's last relevant year of income in relation to the child support year; and (b) the value of any fringe benefits, as defined in the Fringe Benefits Assessment Act 1986, received by the liable parent during the liable parent's last relevant year of income in relation to the child support year.(3) Page 141, after line 31, insert:2 Section 45 Omit the section, substitute:45 Custodian's child support income assessment The entitled custodian's child support income amount in relation to the days in the child support year is, subject to Division 3, the sum of: (a) the entitled custodian's taxable income under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 for the entitled custodian's last relevant year of income in relation to the child support year; and (b) the value of any fringe benefits, as defined in the Fringe Benefits Assessment Act 1986 , received by the entitled custodian during the entitled custodian's last relevant year of income in relation to the child support year.(4) After section 49, insert:49A Registrar entitled to take account of certain payments(1) The Registrar may adjust the annual rate of child support that would, apart from this section, be payable in relation to a day in a child support year by reducing the annual rate to take account of payments made by a liable parent which are accepted by the Registrar as being in the interests of the child.(2) A reduction under this section must not exceed 25% of the sum of child support that would otherwise be payable.(3) Where the custodian agrees a reduction under this section may exceed 25% of the sum of child support that would otherwise be payable, with the scope to increase that sum by a further 35% if agreed to by both parents.(4) The regulations may provide for the manner in which adjustments may be made under this section.(5) Page 141, after line 31, insert: 3 After section 55 Insert:55A Registrar to be notified of value of fringe benefits received(1) a liable parent or an entitled custodian must notify the Registrar, within 30 days of the end of each financial year, of the value of any fringe benefits, as defined in the Fringe Benefits Assessment Act 1986 , received during the year.(2) The regulations may set out the form in which the information required by this section is to be provided.55B Updating of value of fringe benefits received In working out a person's child support income amount in relation to the days in a child support year, the value of any fringe benefits, as defined in the Fringe Benefits Assessment Act 1986, received by the person during the person's last relevant year of income is to be multiplied by the inflation factor (if any) applicable to the child support year under the regulations.(6) Page 141, after line 31, insert:4 Section 60 Insert: (3A) If a person has made an election under this section and that person subsequently becomes aware that his or her income for the year is likely to vary by 15% or more than the sum estimated for the purpose of the person's election, the person must notify the registrar of the details of the estimated variation at the first available opportunity.(7) Page 141, after line 31, insert:5 Section 75 (3A) Without limiting subsection (1), the Registrar must amend any administrative assessment if satisfied that information provided by a liable parent or a custodian entitled to child support establishes that the liable parent's monthly taxable income has varied by 15% or more from that recorded in that person's child support assessment.(8) Page 141, after line 31, insert:6 After section 154 Insert:154A Review of certain arrangements(1) As soon as practicable after to commencement of the Child Support Legislation Amendment Act 1998 the Minister must arrange for an independent inquiry to be conducted to assess and report on: (a) the impact on the relative disposable income of liable parents and custodians of the value of benefits provided by all levels of Government to parents who are recipients of benefits under the Social Security Act 1991 ; and (b) the extent to which use is made of devices to reduce income tax in order to reduce or avoid obligations under this Act.(2) The Minister must cause a copy of a report prepared under subsection (1) to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the Minister receives the report.(9) Page 141, after line 31, insert:7 After section 159 Insert:159A Statements made recklessly etc.(1) A person who recklessly: (a) makes a statement to an officer which is false or misleading in a material particular; or (b) omits from a statement made to an officer any matter or thing without which the statement is misleading in a material particular; is guilty of an offence. Penalty: 5 penalty units(2) In a prosecution of a person for an offence against subsection (1), if, having regard to: (a) the person's abilities, experience, qualifications and other attributes; and (b) all the circumstance surrounding the alleged offence; the person has acted without taking reasonable care as to the accuracy and completeness of the statement, or with wilful disregard to the requirements to obtain and provide relevant information, the person is to be taken to have acted recklessly in making the statement.(3) A reference in subsection (1) to a statement made to an officer is a reference to a statement made to a person exercising powers under or in relation to this Act, whether the statement is made orally, in a document in any other form, and includes, for example, a statement: (a) made in an application, form, notification, appeal or other document made, given or lodged, or purporting to be made, given or lodged, under this Act; or (b) made in answer to a question asked of the person under this Act; or (c) made in any information given, purporting to be given, under this Act.159B Failure to notify required information(1) A person who, intentionally or recklessly, fails to notify the Registrar of information required by subsection 60(3A), or subsection 66(1A) is guilty of an offence. Penalty: 5 penalty units.(2) In a prosecution of a person for an offence against subsection (1), if, having regard to: (a) the person's abilities, experience, qualifications and other attributes; and (b) all the circumstances surrounding the alleged offence; the person has acted without reasonable care or with wilful disregard to his or her obligation to notify the Registrar as required by subsection 60(3A) or subsection 66(1A), the person is to be taken to have acted recklessly in failing to notify the Registrar.I want to recap briefly on the child support debate as we find it now. The starting point, I guess, in terms of discussion of these issues is the report on the child support scheme by the Joint Select Committee on Certain Family Law Issues, chaired by the member for Chifley (Mr Price). As has been mentioned, that committee attracted an extraordinary level of interest. It received over 6,000 submissions. A hotline organised by the joint select committee generated 150,000 calls in two days of operation. That indicates the level of community interest and indeed concern about this issue.It is also borne out by the fact that, according to the 1995-96 Commonwealth Ombudsman's report, the Child Support Agency accounts for some 16 per cent of all complaints to the Ombudsman's office. The Child Support Agency receives in excess of 4,000 letters a day. Indeed, during the period from 1 July 1997 to 30 November 1997 it received over 17,000 applications for departure from the standard formula. So it is an area that has attracted a lot of community interest.The government, with the bill before the House, the Child Support Legislation Amendment Bill 1998, is essentially acknowledging a lot of the value of the child support scheme by only tinkering at the margins. I think anyone who has had a detailed look at this legislation will acknowledge that the changes are very small indeed and are very much at the margin, a point made by the member for Chifley in some of his earlier remarks about the financial impact of this legislation.That point is also clear if you look at some of the examples given by the government in its own explanatory memorandum. If you do some calculations on this you find that if your income is $50,000 and you are a payer then presently you have to pay around 22 per cent of your income in looking after two children. Under the government's proposed changes you will still have to pay 22 per cent. In other words, there is no effective change. If your income is $40,000, current payments of 21 per cent move to 20 per cent, allowing for rounding in these matters. So the changes are very much at the margin.In the hypothetical examples given in the explanatory memorandum of a couple that go by the names of Peter and Francine, we see that Peter's child support annual rate changes from $11,163 to $10,795. In another calculation in a hypothetical example, Peter ends up having to pay Francine $7,663 compared with $7,686 under the current legislation. That is $23 per annum less and hardly cause, as I said in the second reading debate, for breaking out the champagne.In the second reading debate I indicated amendments that the opposition would be moving. I asked that the government might see their way clear to support these amendments. Indeed, I noted that, if you have pioneering and trailblazing legislation like the child support legislation, it is reasonably predictable that that kind of legislation will require tinkering and adjustment in the future. I asked that the government consider the amendments that we put forward. It is very clear from the amendments which the government propose to move later in this debate that they have considered our proposals and have, to some extent, taken them on board. We welcome the fact that the government have done that. We do want to ask the government some questions about their amendments, but we welcome the fact that they are taking on board some of the proposals that we put forward and flagged during the debate in the second reading on this issue.I want to run through some of the issues that we are proposing with our amendments, and we will persist with them because we have not had the opportunity to look at the government's amendments in any detail. They have only been flagged within the last 24 hours. We may have the opportunity to consider them more between this place and the Senate. But, given that we have not had those opportunities, and there appear to be some differences between what we have been putting forward and what the government has now agreed—(Time expired)17:40:003434Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH2K6LongmanLP10—Like many of my colleagues, I have been intimately involved in this process since entering the parliament in 1996. I have not spoken to this bill until now. The work I have done, like many of my colleagues, has been done in back rooms talking to ministers and convincing them as to what has to occur.K26LATHAMMr Latham—How do we know?2K6Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH—The bottom line is that the proof is in the pudding or in the eating. What we have now is something before the parliament which is actually going to occur. I find it very interesting that the opposition—and I see the member that chaired the report in this parliament—brought down an excellent report. But the bottom line was that the opposition, then in government, did not have the gumption to do one damn thing about this whole issue. They let down both the mothers and the fathers that had been out there striving to come to grips with this system.It is my opinion that the system when introduced in 1988 set the pendulum from one that supported the non-custodial parent to one that supported the custodial parent to such a degree that there was no balance. So we have gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. What I and many of my colleagues have been about is trying to put some balance back into this so that all parties can gain. What the opposition has done is nothing more than play pathetic politics. The bottom line is that, if they actually wanted to do anything, they had since 1988 to do something about it. They did not do anything about it.Now when they come into this place with these amendments they do so with the protection of knowing that they do not have to actually make a decision. We in government have strived very hard to ensure that both the payers and the payees were looked at in a respectable and a responsible manner. We have responded not only to the report but also to the people who have come into our electorate offices. In my opinion this is yet another attempt by the opposition to take some of the gloss off what are incredibly good amendments to this legislation. It supports people's rights. It puts back some flexibility into the system, and it provides those parents who find themselves in this disastrous situation with some sort of hope for the future.Why was it not good enough for you to do this in 1990 or 1991? Why was it not good enough for you to do it in 1993 or after the report in 1994? After the report was brought down in 1994, you had two full years. What did you do about non-agency payments? Nothing. What did you do about improving the rights of parents to have an appeal process? Nothing. You listened to them, but you closed your ears and your eyes and did nothing to help them. What we have done since being in government is to move this process forward. I condemn the opposition for playing politics with people's lives. I had no intention of speaking to this bill for the simple reason that what we need to do is not make this a headline issue but simply rectify it so that people can get on with lives. As the member opposite who chaired this report has said, we are dealing with the corpses of dead relationships, and they are awfully emotive. It is not in this forum or any other forum that we should be standing up here and trying to score political points when people's relationships—K26LATHAMMr Latham—What are you doing right now?2K6Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH—I am responding to your pathetic attempt to pull yourself out of the quagmire which you put yourself in because you were unable to deal with it.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Mossfield)—Order! I ask members to address their remarks through the chair.2K6Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH—Mr Deputy Speaker, I accept that you would like comments to be addressed through the chair, but we get pathetic interjections like this which try to tell us that they were good enough and were going to do something. As the Treasurer (Mr Costello) often says, it is always the 14th year. With this issue you never had the numbers in your party room. You did not have the backbone or the spine to do anything to help either payers or payees.You stand condemned by your silence and your inaction when you were in government. The fact is that in opposition you hide behind the fact that you put legislation or amendments into this parliament knowing that they would not be enacted. I am very pleased that this government, the ministers and the backbenchers have worked very hard over the last two years and that the steps we have taken are going in a very positive manner to address this difficult issue. It is unfortunate that marriages do break down. It is unfortunate that children are put into these situations, but this legislation will go a long way to assisting them, and the opposition has done nothing but put condemnation on their own actions as a result of their amendments tonight.17:45:003435Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSONUK6WillsALP00—I do not want to go through and outline to the House what our amendments actually are. But I do need to take up some of the remarks of the member for Longman (Mr Brough), who has said that we did not deliver in relation to this.Let us have a quick look at the history of the issue of direct payments in the child's interest. The history of this issue is as follows. The government brought forward its legislation, its amendment. It had absolutely nothing to say about direct payments in the child's interest. During the second reading debate I flagged that, to pick up this issue, the opposition would move amendments in the consideration in detail stage that would allow the Child Support Registrar the discretion to credit certain non-agency payments as child support when, in the registrar's opinion, these payments were in the interests of the child, subject to a 25 per cent limit.Now, lo and behold, we find the government, after that second reading debate, coming into the chamber this afternoon with some amendments of its own. What do we find? We find schedule 11A, non-agency payments up to a limit of 25 per cent—picking up our suggestion in its entirety.That is good. We welcome that. We intend to support the government's amendments, as moved. But the point is that the only reason these amendments are now coming forward from the government is that we moved them from opposition. That will be quite clear to anyone who wants to follow the history of the legislation.I will make some remarks about the amendments we are proposing. Amendments 2, 3 and 5 relate to the issue of fringe benefits and seek to pick up recommendations 143 and 144 of the joint select committee. We are concerned about avoidance issues, as the joint select committee properly was; therefore, we propose to move these amendments.The government has suggested that it is going to have an inquiry into these matters. An inquiry may or may not produce something of value, and we would be interested in hearing some more from the government on exactly what it is seeking to do concerning child support avoidance. But we are proposing, and will persist with, amendments 2, 3 and 5, which are directed to the issue of fringe benefits.Amendment 4 goes to this issue of direct payments—the one we were proposing in the second reading debate, which the government has now picked up and adopted. We will be looking at the government's response closely. But, on the face of it, it is something that we would be happy to support. We think there is a case for ensuring that non-custodial parents are more directly involved in the parenting of their children.Amendments 6 and 7 relate to the issue of changes in income and the need for more up-to-date assessments. This is a hot issue on both sides, if you like. In a situation where the non-custodial parent's income drops by less than 15 per cent of the estimated income, they end up paying child support which they are unable to recover but which does not reflect their actual income—and I think people are entitled to say that that is a bit steep. Conversely, you can also get the situation where, if your income drops below 15 per cent and you put in an amended assessment later, the custodial parent finds the tax office coming to them and saying, `Well, in fact, you owe the child support agency money'—and that is very difficult where you have spent that money or made other provision for it.This is a hot issue both ways. There is a need to have more up-to-date income assessments. We do not believe that what the government has put forward is sufficient in this regard, although it represents an improvement—they are talking about the last taxation year, rather than the last taxation year but one. We feel that joint select committee recommendations 126 and 127 may be better in terms of addressing this issue, and we are keen to see more up-to-date assessments so we do not get into the problem of sudden changes in income.Amendment 8 refers to the need for a review and the issues of future modelling, as picked up by joint select committee recommendations 162 and 163. We want to know whether the government's review is addressing this and, if so, how. Regrettably, the task force that it set up was only for the government party; it was a secret task force. We want to find out some more about the nature of the review being proposed. Amendment 9 concerns the issue of statements being made recklessly and picks up joint select committee recommendations 128 and 129.We feel that these are positive changes, that they would improve the operation of the child support legislation. Therefore, we do propose to support them here. Between here and another place, we had every opportunity to consider them further. (Time expired)17:50:003436Marek, Paul, MPMr MAREKLK6CapricorniaNP10—I rise to speak on this topic—and I have spoken just about every time there was an opportunity—because, after listening to comments some of the speakers have rabbled on with today, I think it is absolutely imperative that some of the points be commented on. As far as the Smith amendments are concerned, I must say that they are easy to support. But, as far as I am concerned—K26LATHAMMr Latham—Why don't you vote for them then?LK6Marek, Paul, MPMr MAREK—Already we have people interrupting, Mr Deputy Speaker. I demand to be heard in silence.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Mossfield)—Order! I would ask members to address their remarks through the chair, and then we will not have any difficulties.LK6Marek, Paul, MPMr MAREK—Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. As far as the Smith amendments are concerned, they are easy to support. But, as far as I am concerned—and I am sure that a lot of the people in the government or the committee are concerned—the amendments, or the way his process is concerned, there are other methods to make this happen. I am sure that there are. I believe that we could try to implement a system that would probably cover what Mr Smith is trying to achieve, but I think we could try to do it without creating more bureaucracy.That is something that the Labor Party always worked very heavily on—trying to introduce more bureaucracy. I guess that is the problem we have today. We have a Child Support Agency that is basically run by bureaucracy, and people just do not have a real opportunity in relation to fairness and equity. As far as that is concerned, that is my personal point of view.The increasing of the discretionary amount by 10 per cent, I think, is a great initiative. It is something that a lot of the people out there, the non-custodial parents, have wanted for quite a while. I must speak to the comment we hear being made by the Labor Party that it wanted a greater increase. Why didn't you do it? Why didn't the Labor Party do it? Why don't you vote for them then?Opposition member interjecting—10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order!LK6Marek, Paul, MPMr MAREK—They ask the question, Mr Deputy Speaker, they comment; you have to give them the opportunity.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! All remarks should be made through the chair.LK6Marek, Paul, MPMr MAREK—I did, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am just giving them the opportunity. But, as we can see, Labor had no plans. They have no clothes and they have no credibility on this issue. You don't.Let us have a closer look at it. We have the member for Chifley (Mr Price) over here. Why doesn't the member for Chifley actually come clean and admit that Keating would not allow you to introduce the amendments that needed to happen? That is exactly what happened. You would never ever get any of this sort of stuff through; with your socialist welfare mentality, it just would not work.As far as this is concerned, Keating would not let it happen. I give the member for Chifley credit where it is due; the man tried to have a go but Keating and his people would not let it happen. You know damn well that that is the case; you just will not admit it.What does it say for democracy? Absolutely nothing. That is why I say to you that it is absolutely incredible that you people get up and talk about it. You have no credibility; you have no clothes on the issue and you should be condemned for what you say.As far as the non-custodial and the custodial parents are concerned, in the last 2½ years we have delivered more for the people embroiled in this issue than the Labor Party has. It is very easy to see that. All you have to do is go out there and talk to the people who are representative of the people who are embroiled in it. There are various groups—Lone Fathers, all those sorts of people. They are genuine. They do not want to get involved in politics. They are not politically motivated or orientated. They just want a fair go. That is how I went about trying to get involved in this issue and that is what we have delivered—a fair go for all.As far as I am concerned, there is more to be done on this topic. It is going to take some time. If people thought it was going to happen overnight, they were sadly mistaken. This is going to be a tough job to try to sort it out for everybody. Ultimately people have to understand the fact that if they are your children you have a responsibility to look after them. That is where the people who are on unemployment benefits and not paying child support come in. They will now have to pay the $260 per year. I will argue with anyone that that is a good initiative. People must be responsible for their own children and their own actions. Two hundred and sixty dollars a year is not a lot to ask to support your own children. The reduction of the custodial disregard amount to bring both closer together to make it fair and equitable is a great initiative. (Time expired)17:55:003437Fitzgibbon, Joel, MPMr FITZGIBBON8K6HunterALP00—It is true that there is no area of government responsibility that draws emotions like family law and the Child Support Agency. That case has just been well put by the member for Capricornia (Mr Marek) in his rather emotional contribution coming on the back of the rather emotional contribution we heard from the member for Longman (Mr Brough), who said he had no intention of speaking on this bill originally but he decided that he had to get up and defend the government's honour on this issue because, as he put it, the Labor Party was trying to make some sort of political capital out of this important issue.I have listened to this debate very intently. There are three things that we can all agree on. The first is that the child support scheme is a necessary scheme. I do not need to go over again the terrible situation we had in this country prior to the Labor Party's introduction of the scheme where fathers in particular—I do not want to single them out—were not taking any responsibility for their children.The second thing we would agree on, I think, is that in some cases custodial parents are being disadvantaged by the system. The system is not tough enough on those non-custodial parents who seek to avoid their obligation. The third thing I think we would all agree on is the fact that the pendulum has swung a little too far. My main reason for rising to speak is to clearly put my position on the record. I think the pendulum has swung too far and the whole system is acting to the disadvantage of non-custodial parents who, in the bulk of cases—at the risk of singling out males again—are non-custodial males.We go to the question as to what we are going to do about it. This raises again the charge from the member for Longman that the Labor Party has been politicising this issue. The Labor Party was doing something about it. In the chamber at the moment we have the member for Chifley (Mr Price), who did chair the joint select committee. That committee came up with something like 163 recommendations, many of which were adopted by the former Labor government. That report was around for about 18 months before the last election. I thought the progress on those recommendations was fairly good—not good enough, I accept, but pretty good.Around that time, or just before the last federal election, the members of the now government were roaming the width and breadth of the country screaming blue murder about the inequities contained within the Child Support Act and promising to do something about it. Let us look at what they have done. The last time I spoke on this issue was in May 1997 when I was contributing to the second reading debate on the Child Support Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 1996. What a weak bill, indeed, that was. It did very little to assist non-custodial parents but, when challenged back then in May 1997, what did the government tell us? They said, `Don't worry, we're going to set up a task force and all will be well.' We don't know who is on the task force. We do not know what their reference is; we do not know what recommendation is likely to come from it, but we are still waiting. We are almost to the end of a full term of this government and we still have nothing that is going to give relief to non-custodial parents.Where is their integrity on this issue? I know this is a very sensitive gender issue but why can't the parties put the politics aside? You have the member for Dickson (Mr Tony Smith) in here with a very strong view and with, I have to say, some amendments worthy of consideration. You have the member for McPherson (Mr Bradford) in here sharing the view, I think, of the majority. You have members of the National Party in here recognising that the pendulum has swung too far; so why can't we, as a parliament, get together and sort out this mess? I invite the government to widen the membership of their task force and to include the Christian Democrats, to include the Labor Party and to include the Independents in this place. Let us see whether we can work together to make a better system. (Time expired) Question (by (Mr Miles ) put: That the question be now put.18:04:00The House divided. (Mr Deputy Speaker—Mr F.W. Mossfield)65Anderson, J. D. Andrew, J. N.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bishop, B. K.Bradford, J. W. Brough, M. T.Cadman, A. G. Cameron, E. H.Cameron, R. A. Causley, I. R.Charles, R. E. Cobb, M. R.Dondas, N. M. Draper, P.Elson, K. S. Entsch, W. G.Evans, R. D. C. Forrest, J. A.Gallus, C. A. Gambaro, T.Gash, J. Georgiou, P.Grace, E. J. Halverson, R. G.Hardgrave, G. D. Hawker, D. P. M.Hicks, N. J. *Hockey, J. B.Johnston, R. Lieberman, L. S.Lindsay, P. J. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S. *McDougall, G. R. McLachlan, I. M.Miles, C. G. Moylan, J. E.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Pyne, C. M.Randall, D. J. Reid, N. B.Reith, P. K. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Sharp, J. R. Slipper, P. N. *Smith, W. L. Southcott, A. J.Stone, S. N. Sullivan, K. J.Taylor, W. L. Truss, W. E.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.West, A. G. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Worth, P. M.44Adams, D. G. H. Albanese, A. *Baldwin, P. J. Beddall, D. P.Bevis, A. R. Bradford, J. W.Brown, R. J. Crean, S. F.Crosio, J. A. Dargavel, S. J.Ellis, A. L. Evans, G. J.Evans, M. J. Ferguson, M. J.Filing, P. A. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Griffin, A. P. *Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Latham, M. W. Lawrence, C. M.Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L.Martin, S. P. McClelland, R. B.McLeay, L. B. McMullan, R. F.Melham, D. Morris, A. A.Morris, P. F. O'Connor, G. M.O'Keefe, N. P. Price, L. R.Quick, H. V. Sawford, R. W. *Smith, S. F. Tanner, L. J.Theophanous, A. C. Thomson, K. J.Willis, R. Wilton, G. S.Howard, J. W. Beazley, K. C.Kemp, D. A. Kemp, D. A.Ruddock, P. M. Brereton, L. J.Scott, B. C. Grace, E. L.Williams, D. R. Ferguson, L. D. T.* denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the affirmative.Original question put:That the amendments (Mr Kelvin Thomson's ) be agreed to.18:10:00The House divided. (Mr Deputy Speaker—Mr F.W. Mossfield)42Adams, D. G. H. Albanese, A. *Baldwin, P. J. Beddall, D. P.Bevis, A. R. Brown, R. J.Crean, S. F. Crosio, J. A.Dargavel, S. J. Ellis, A. L.Evans, G. J. Evans, M. J.Ferguson, M. J. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Griffin, A. P. *Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Latham, M. W. Lawrence, C. M.Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L.Martin, S. P. McClelland, R. B.McLeay, L. B. McMullan, R. F.Melham, D. Morris, A. A.Morris, P. F. O'Connor, G. M.O'Keefe, N. P. Price, L. R.Quick, H. V. Sawford, R. W. *Smith, S. F. Tanner, L. J.Theophanous, A. C. Thomson, K. J.Willis, R. Wilton, G. S.67Anderson, J. D. Andrew, J. N.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bishop, B. K.Bradford, J. W. Broadbent, R. E.Brough, M. T. Cadman, A. G.Cameron, E. H. Cameron, R. A.Causley, I. R. Charles, R. E.Cobb, M. R. Dondas, N. M.Draper, P. Elson, K. S.Entsch, W. G. Evans, R. D. C.Filing, P. A. Forrest, J. A.Gallus, C. A. Gambaro, T.Gash, J. Georgiou, P.Grace, E. J. Halverson, R. G.Hardgrave, G. D. Hawker, D. P. M.Hicks, N. J. *Hockey, J. B.Johnston, R. Lieberman, L. S.Lindsay, P. J. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S. *McDougall, G. R. McLachlan, I. M.Miles, C. G. Moylan, J. E.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Pyne, C. M.Randall, D. J. Reid, N. B.Reith, P. K. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Sharp, J. R. Slipper, P. N. *Smith, W. L. Southcott, A. J.Stone, S. N. Sullivan, K. J.Taylor, W. L. Truss, W. E.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.West, A. G. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Worth, P. M.Beazley, K. C. Howard, J. W.Brereton, L. J. Ruddock, P. M.Ferguson, L. D. T. Williams, D. R.Grace, E. L. Scott, B. C.Sercombe, R. C. G. Kemp, D. A.* denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the negative.Amendments negatived.18:15:003439Miles, Chris, MPMr MILESBI4BraddonLP10—by leave—I move government amendments Nos 1 to 5:(1) Clause 2, page 2 (line 2), after"other than", insert "by Part 2 of Schedule 11A or".(2) Clause 2, page 2 (after line 3), after subclause (2), insert:(2A) Part 2 of Schedule 11A commences on 1 July 1999.(3) Schedule 9, item 60, page 49 (lines 16 and 17), omit the item.(4) Page 54 (after line 34), after Schedule 11, insert:Schedule 11A Non-Agency paymentsPart 1—Amendments commencing on 1 July 1998 Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 19881 Section 71Omit "Where", substitute "Subject to section 71D, if'.2 Paragraph 71(b)Repeal the paragraph, substitute: (b) the payer or the payee applies to the Registrar to have the amount received by the payee treated as having been paid to the Registrar;3 Section 71AOmit "If', substitute "Subject to section 71D, iS'.4 Paragraph 71 A(b)Repeal the paragraph, substitute:(b) the payer or the payee applies to the Registrar, in the manner specified by the Registrar, to have the amount, or part of the amount, received by the third party treated as having been paid to the Registrar; and(c) the amount paid, or a part of the amount paid, was intended by both the payer or the payee to be paid in complete or partial satisfaction of an amount payable under the enforceable maintenance liability in relation to the child support enforcement period;5 After section 71AInsert:71B Payments not in money(1) For the purposes of sections 71 and 71A, if both the payer and the payee of an enforceable maintenance liability so intend: (a) a payment in a form, other than money by the payer; or (b) a transfer of any property or right by the payer;is taken to be an amount paid in complete or partial satisfaction of an amount payable under an enforceable maintenance liability. (2) For the purpose of determining the amount to be credited under section 71 or 71A, in relation to the payment or transfer, against the liability of the payer to the Commonwealth, the amount of the payment or transfer is taken to be: (a) the amount agreed by the payer and the payee; or (b) if no amount is agreed, the amount determined by the Registrar.71D Registrar may refuse to credit amounts in special circumstancesThe Registrar may refuse to credit an amount under section 71 or 71A if satisfied that, in the special circumstances of the particular case, the amount ought not to be credited.Part 2—Amendments commencing on 1 July 1999 Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 19886 At the end of section 28AAdd:Amounts that would have been credited under section 71C(7) To avoid doubt, a reference in this section to an unpaid amount payable under a liability does not include a reference to any amount that would have been credited against that liability under section 71C if the liability had been an enforceable maintenance liability at all relevant times.7 At the end of section 39A Add:Amounts that would have been credited under section 71C(8) To avoid doubt, a reference in this section to an unpaid amount payable under a liability does not include a reference to any amount that would have been credited against that liability under section 71C if the liability had been an enforceable maintenance liability at all relevant times.8 After section 71 BInsert:71C Other payments of up to 25% of child support liability(1) Subject to subsections (3) and (5) and section 71 D, in relation to any month for which the payer of an enforceable maintenance liability has an uncredited amount, the Registrar must, in spite of section 30, credit: (a) if the uncredited amount does not exceed 25% of the payer's enforceable mainte nance liability for the month—that uncredited amount; or (b) if it exceeds 25% of that liability—so much of that uncredited amount as does not exceed that liability; against the liability of the payer to the Commonwealth in relation to the amount payable under the liability in relation to that month.(2) if (a) the payer has made a payment, to the payee of the enforceable maintenance liability or to another person, that is a payment of the kind specified in the regulations; and (b) the amount of all such payments made by the payer in respect of the liability exceeds the sum of all the amounts credited under this section against the liability in relation to all the months preceding the month in question;the payer has an uncredited amount equal to the amount of that excess.(3) Subject to subsection (4), the Registrar must not credit an amount under this section in relation to a month for which the payer has not paid to the Commonwealth an amount equal to the difference between: (a) the amount payable by the payer to the Commonwealth under the enforceable maintenance liability in relation to that month; and (b) the amount that is to be credited under subsection (1), or that would be so credited but for this subsection, in relation to that month.(4) if the payer: (a) did not pay that difference to the Commonwealth within the time required under section 66; and (b) subsequently pays the amount of that difference to the Commonwealth;the Registrar may credit against the liability of the payer in relation to the amount payable under the enforcement maintenance liability in relation to that month the amount that, but for subsection (3), would have been credited under subsection (1).(5) This section does not apply in relation to a liability covered by section 18.9 Section 71DOmit "or 71A", substitute ", 71A or 71C".I would just like to make the following brief comments. Non-agency payments: the ar rangements for direct non-agent payments in lieu of the child support liability have been changed to make them more flexible and allow payers more choice in the form in which child support is paid by them while protecting payees and meeting the basic needs of children.The changes are the following. Certain payments can be credited towards a payer's child support liability up to a limit of 25 per cent without requiring the payee's agreement, provided the balance of child support is paid. The following items will be included in the child support regulations: fees charged to the school or preschool at which the child is enrolled; essential medical and dental fees; payee rent, including bond and body corporate charges; payee rates; payee mortgage; payee utilities; payee child-care costs; and payee motor vehicle costs, including registration, insurance, service, tyres, repairs and panel beating.Thirdly, special circumstances will no longer be a criterion for crediting direct payments for up to 100 per cent of child support where both parents intend the payment to be for child support. Fourthly, payments in kind will also be permitted where both parents intend it to be for child support. Fifthly, payments will be able to be made this way from 1 January 1999.This proposal is consistent with the JSC recommendation 67 that the Child Support Registrar be given discretion to credit certain payments that are made in the best interests of the child. The agreed items will provide a degree of certainty for payers making non-agency payments and they do not preclude situations where both parties intend that a payment or in-kind payment was for child support purposes, with the removal of the need to demonstrate special circumstances before payment can be credited. I commend the amendments to the House and present the supplementary explanatory memorandum.18:17:003441Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSONUK6WillsALP00—In view of the time, I certainly do not want to detain the House with an extensive debate on this matter. I simply put on the record that what has occurred is that the government has introduced in the past 24 hours amendments which appear to take up very much the thrust of some opposition amendments which were flagged during the second reading debate. We are pleased that the government has seen fit to take up amendments which we proposed. We note that they did this as a result of pressure from the opposition. We will seek some explanation of the detail of these between now and the Senate, but on the face of it these seem to be reasonable and supportable amendments and therefore we do not intend to oppose them.18:18:003442Bradford, John, MPMr BRADFORDFT4McPhersonIND10—I believe that these amendments are in fact supportable, and I am pleased to hear the parliamentary secretary in the remarks that he made talk about the best interests of the child. Very often it is not the best interests of the children that end up being paramount in this particular debate. I take it that everyone is keen to have dinner before the reply to the budget by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley), so perhaps it would be unwise of me to go on at any length. I was disappointed that the government nevertheless saw fit to gag the debate while the opposition amendments were being debated. Some of them were supportable, in my view, but I was not able, because of the gag, to hear sufficient debate on them. I was disappointed that on balance I was, in a sense, not able to make a decision about the opposition amendments. I was pleased to hear the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson) say that he now understands that the amendments that have been introduced by the government in fact do pick up some of the opposition amendments. On balance, I would like at some point to find out which of those amendments have in fact been incorporated.I wanted to say very quickly that the member for Longman (Mr Brough), who is not in his seat and will not be able to interject, was being slightly disingenuous in the remarks that he made. He talked about balance between the custodial and non-custodial parent. I have heard him on many occasions—I will not tell too many tales out of school here—complain about the lack of balance that there is now in the system. My friend in the opposition alluded to the fact that there was, despite the legislation we are dealing with today, a serious imbalance between the interests of the custodial and the non-custodial parent. The point is that this legislation does not yet go nearly far enough. Some of the amendments may have gone towards that, but that remains to be seen. I, like the member for Wills and the opposition, will watch the debate in the Senate. That seems to be, I might observe as a Senate candidate, the place where things actually get debated and seriously considered, so I am looking forward to being elected to the Senate in due course so that I can actually make a real contribution and listen carefully to what other people say.I realise people are being very patient with me here. I asked the parliamentary secretary a question relating to that $260 a year payment. The answer really does concern me, though it will not cause me to oppose the legislation when it comes to a vote. I accept the argument that this is all about making parents responsible for their children. I totally accept that principle. But I now understand that, if someone is on the dole and they do not have an ability by virtue of that to pay child support, they will have $260 a year taken out of their dole. I am not sure that that has been spelt out by the government, because I have people who are very angry at the moment getting letters from the Child Support Agency telling them they owe money. They get them every month and every month the late fee is added. Every month they get the letter they get very angry; violent on occasions. I want to make the point because I do not think the point has been made clearly, and it slipped out, in an aside almost from the parliamentary secretary, in relation to people on the dole. They have often gone on the dole because they have given up on the system. They have been on a good income and they have just given up. They have said, `Look, I am throwing it all away. I refuse to deal with this system. I am going on the dole. I won't have anything more to do with it,' and that is where they end up. Now, if you are on the dole, you will have $260 a year taken out of your dole. I am not arguing about the principle of people being responsible for taking care of their children, but I do not think that has sunk in.If you are in that family situation we have talked about where you are struggling to pick up the pieces and you have a new relationship with a person who has three children for whom she does not get any assistance from her former husband, you are in a mess if you are on unemployment. And the government is now going to take $260 off them. Come on! Let us make sure people know that that is what the government's intentions are. Although it probably should, it will not cause me to vote against the bill because on balance it is an improvement. Let us hope that it is further improved with the amendments. But that does concern me.18:23:003443Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH2K6LongmanLP10—I want to correct the record. The member for McPherson (Mr Bradford) said that I was disingenuous with my comments. That is totally incorrect. The fact is that this system had imbalance in it. We are trying to redress that balance, and this goes along way towards it. If there is one thing that both sides agree on, it is that we are both trying to redress that balance.18:24:003443Price, Roger, MPMr PRICEQI4ChifleyALP00—I want to say to the parliamentary secretary that, having had a look at the explanatory memorandum a second time, I still stand by those earlier figures, but could he just respond to a couple of issues? What was it that motivated the government to pick up the 10 per cent figure? Did they do modelling and was that the result rather than the 20 per cent recommended? What prompted the new average weekly earnings figure that is used for disregarded income as opposed to the pension cut-off point? Having commissioned the University of New South Wales study into the cost of the children, could he advise the House in what way this study has influenced the government's decisions in this bill and these amendments? In relation to the amendments, why was the additional 35 per cent by mutual agreement in terms of non-agency payments not picked up, given that, at the urging of the shadow spokesman, the honourable member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson), they have picked up the 25 per cent, and I applaud them for that?18:25:003443Miles, Chris, MPMr MILESBI4BraddonLP10—With respect to what the member for Chifley (Mr Price) has just requested, I do not have those details here with me, but I will look into that for him and provide him with an answer. I am happy to do that. I know that the member for Chifley has done a lot of work on this in the past and has a very genuine record in this area.To correct the record for the House, I made the statement that 25 per cent of non-agency payments would start from 1 January 1999. That is incorrect; it is actually 1 July 1999.Amendments agreed to.Bill, as amended, agreed to.3443Bill (on motion by Mr Miles)—by leave—agreed to.Sitting suspended from 6.27 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Bills34433443Debate resumed from 12 May, on motion by Mr Costello:That the bill be now read a second time.19:31:003443Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—One of the newspaper cartoonists yesterday gave us the ultimate `I'd like to see that' of Australian politics: the Treasurer (Mr Costello) in pigtails and a blue dress, skipping off down the yellow brick road to the sunny land of Oz, where worries melt, I am told, like lemon drops and every resident munchkin is relaxed and comfortable and raking in shares in AMP.But there are always messages between the lines, because who can think of Dorothy without her supporting cast? I look across at this government and I find the audition hall overflowing for the parts of the lion without courage, the tin man without a heart and, perhaps most oversubscribed of all, the scarecrow without a brain. So somewhere over the rainbow, there you will find the Treasurer, far up and away and off with the bluebirds on his technicolour journey, skipping and singing, singing and skipping.We all have our sustaining fantasies and, listening to this budget on Tuesday night, I realised that we are not in Kansas any more, because only in the Treasurer's fantasies can there be good in this budget surplus, built on a million small deficits in the lives of ordinary people. The teeth not fixed. The pills not bought. The kids in backyard care or the mother out of work. The apprenticeships not found. The holiday not taken because of the cost of a mother's nursing home. The university degree out of reach and the fulfilling career therefore not had. The shame of the young school leaver's hundredth unsuccessful job interview. The corroding despair of the long-term jobless and the alarm of their families. The grief of the parent farewelling a child leaving town for good. The factory closed. The trauma of selling up and moving. The hundred unspoken small goodbyes of ordinary people to their ordinary lives.These are the human losses on which this accountants' surplus was built by a government that has long since ceased caring and has never learned to care. These indeed are the hard yards. These are the long hauls. The shouldered burden of battling Australians somehow fuels the happiness of a Treasurer long unacquainted with the ordinary needs of his fellow Australians. The griefs and consolations and the quiet unprotested sufferings underpin the triumph of his numbers and the failure of his government's decency.The government will have you believe that all that pain was essential. It was not. If it was essential, why did Tuesday's budget contain spending increases of $10 billion over the next four years? If it was essential, why is it that when we look at the effect on financial year 1998-99 of the three Costello budgets we find that, in net terms, he cut $6 billion in the first budget, $1 billion in the second and then put back $2 billion in the third? Why didn't the Treasurer explain here on Tuesday why he has effectively run down two flights of stairs and back up one on fiscal policy? He did not because the admission would be too great.In the first two budgets we had selective leaking and pre-announcement of the bad news. This one has been selective leaking and admission of failure in small instalments, the only instalments a battered, unpopular and fundamentally untrustworthy political outfit can afford. He was wrong and he cannot admit it. But the net effect of this government's policy changes on financial year 1998-99—the net effect of going down two flights of stairs and up one—was $5.4 billion. Subtracting that $5.4 billion from the surplus announced by the Treasurer leaves us with an underlying `no policy change' deficit of $2.7 billion—no cuts, no surcharges, no fees and no pain.Let me tell you something that my deputy, Gareth Evans, said about an alternative budget strategy for Australia—not this week, not last year, but two years ago after the coalition's first budget. And I quote:We say we can get to budget balance within a reasonable time—in fact, within the lifetime of this parliament, by 1998-99—with a much less savage budget strategy . . . We can get to that by targeting savings of no more than $3 billion by that third year.In other words, $1 billion of new savings each year in three budgets would have produced a starting point surplus this year of at least $300 million. On top of this, the higher economic growth, which Labor's budget strategy would have allowed, would have seen a 1998-99 budget surplus of similar dimensions to the one announced on Tuesday.Our argument was then, as it is today, that fiscal consolidation in the economic climate this government faced in 1996 was necessary but did not need to be nearly as harsh as what they immediately embarked upon. We had to get that budget back into balance but we did not need to take the harsh measures you took. We need surpluses of the kind that Labor delivered four years in a row, not long after inheriting a $25 billion deficit from the then Treasurer, John Howard—surpluses built on jobs and growth. John Howard told that electorate, back in 1983, that things were fine when he had on his desk a briefing note from the Treasury of a $25 billion deficit. We put that budget into surplus and we provided universal health care and we provided tax cuts and we dramatically increased higher education. We need to retire public debt, but we must keep that issue in perspective too. Despite what the Jeremiahs might say, Australia's fiscal position was very good by international standards when this government came into office. That is not to say that we should become complacent—we should not—but it does seriously question why, for example, the government would sell Telstra to reduce what in our last year in government was the third lowest public sector debt in the industrialised world. That debt as a percentage of GDP was less than half Canada's and two-thirds the proportion of France, Germany, the United States and even Britain after a decade of Maggie Thatcher's budget cutting and privatisations. This government inherited the third lowest public debt in the industrialised world and they want to sell Telstra to take us to the second lowest.Why then should we allow up to $20 billion worth of Telstra, this great national asset, to go to foreigners? After only four years we will lose more in Telstra dividends than we will save on our interest bill; dividends that would otherwise be there for generations to pay for hospitals and schools, railways and roads. This budget puts aside $580 million for the financial managers as costs and commissions for the Telstra float—$580 million to sell Australia's patrimony. That is more than half a billion dollars we could save tomorrow and keep a great national asset into the bargain.In any budget that spends money like this one there are things to be welcomed and we should offer praise where it is due. Two praiseworthy ideas are the extension of the gold card to all World War II veterans and the extension of the health care card to more self-funded retirees. Labor was proud to establish both cards in our time in government. It is unfortunate, however, that benefits for a small number of our retirees should accompany reductions for the vast majority. Twenty times as many have experienced those reductions as have now received benefits.Furthermore, had those self-funded retirees obtained their card under Labor, they would have had access to free dental care, lower priced prescriptions and free hearing aids. Those are the benefits those self-funded retirees would have had, with the rest of the pensioners, if the system had been extended under the terms and conditions that operated under Labor. But even so, with this so-called gesture to the elderly that is supposed to be contained within this budget, 220,000 benefit, four million lose. But all of them—those who benefit and those who do not—now confront a massive expense on entry to essential care in nursing homes.Our specific policies will be announced closer to the election, but I can say two things: we will restore capital funds cut from nursing homes in full and none of our retirees—or any other Australian, for that matter—will have to pay a GST on any of their goods or services.But even though this budget has spent some money it leaves too many questions unanswered. It cannot answer the people who ask themselves what all the pain was for in the first place or why someone else's pain was more worthy of being reversed than was theirs. How precisely did the government make the decision not to restore Commonwealth dental funding? How did it decide it was relaxed about the situation of one woman whose letter to the Liberal member for Gilmore (Mrs Gash) was submitted to a recent Senate inquiry—a woman who had been informed that all her teeth needed to be extracted? Despite living in constant pain, it will be 18 months before she can be treated. Even then, she will have to wait for each individual tooth to cause her pain before she is entitled to have that tooth extracted. What thought process, what overarching philosophy, what quality of mercy goes into that kind of decision?How did the government decide it was relaxed about elderly Australians in their hour of greatest fragility still having to sell the family home to pay for entry into a nursing home—that after all the backflips and reversals (some 14 of them) the fees remain, the government still circles the family homes of our elderly. How did it decide that it could go right ahead and spend that money elsewhere—$150 million a year?How did it decide there was no relief for women forced out of the work force by spiralling child-care fees? How did it decide instead to factor their despair into its employment projections? The bad employment estimates in this budget are still heroic. At a minimum they only stand up because of the thousands of women driven out of the work force by this government's decisions on child care. The Prime Minister (Mr Howard) thinks that that is about family values; it is not. It is simply a collapse in the living standards of middle and low income working families.How, after all its claims, can there not be one single dollar more for public hospitals in this budget than was on the table when the Premiers walked out on the Commonwealth's last offer in disgust? Let me say to John Hewson, who seems to have picked the impact of the Asian crisis far better than this government, that he was absolutely right when he said today that this health offer is nothing like the 15 per cent over five years touted by this government. This government deals dishonestly with the states, but in dealing dishonestly with the states it deals dishonestly with the thousands on waiting lists.There is one large group of Australians which suffers most from these three budgets. I am speaking, of course, of the unemployed. To see why, we need to remember the level of economic growth before John Howard came into power—the level of economic growth, and the economy as a whole, that John Howard was pleased to describe to international bankers when he came into power as having inherited an economy better than good in parts. In the financial year 1993-94 Labor's growth figure was 4.6 per cent. In 1994-95 it was 4.4 per cent. In 1995-96 it was 4.1 per cent. Australia's economic growth rate for John Howard's first full financial year in office was just 2.7 per cent.We had four per cent growth plus under Labor; not even two-thirds of that in the first year under the coalition. And we are meant to accept that this pathetic performance had nothing to do with the entire government frontbench preaching economic doom for a full five months before the first budget in 1996 and nothing to do with that budget which took $27 billion out of the economy over four years? Growth got above the parapet of three per cent last year, and now it has been forecast to flatline back at three per cent, with unemployment stuck around eight per cent.But when the Treasurer was asked about the unemployment rate on Tuesday night, this is what the Treasurer of this nation said on the unemployment rate, boasting about his budget:No, it bounces around a bit. You know, it's 7.9, it's 8, it's 8.1. We think it's around the 8 mark at the moment . . . but it will bounce. It's been bouncing for a year.I am sick of that kind of talk. I am sick of people like the Treasurer, with a screen full of teeth, making glib analogies about real lives. These are real people, Mr Treasurer, not footballs, not Dr Kemp's rubbery statistics. They are real mums and dads with real children dependent on them trying to get a start in life. You were not elected to bounce unemployment around. You were elected to get it down.Before March 1996 the unemployment rate had been falling for three years. This government came in and worsened the unemployment position immediately. In our last two years in government, Labor created 550,000 jobs. In his first two years, John Howard created not half as many. The difference was 315,000 people—three MCGs jam-packed full of people who would now be in work and not on the dole queue if the coalition had just managed to keep up the pace we set. And anything it has managed to do on unemployment, or might manage, has to be judged against another MCG crowd of nearly 100,000 people who have simply given up looking for work since this government came into office.And what of those left on the dole queue longer than they ever feared because of the growth this government put on hold? The number of people unemployed for a year or more fell by over a third during Labor's last term in office. So far, during this government's term, it has actually risen. This is a stroke of true genius—it has actually risen. When you started cutting into skillshare and other labour market programs in May 1996, there were 206,000 long-term unemployed Australians. Figures released this morning show that their ranks have now increased by 33,000 people as a result of this government's policies. Long-term unemployed used to be a quarter of all unemployed. Today they are a third and rising.And they have been ill-served by a government which has wrecked the support systems and put long-term unemployed people into work—exemplary programs emulated around the world put on the scrap heap; or, worse, some of them put into the hands of people with no office, no staff, no experience, some without even a telephone! It cares more about an $8 million expenditure of public funds to boast its wares than it did about effective delivery to the long-term unemployed.This is where we count the cost of this budget. Having counted the beans, the government has closed the book on Australian families. It is not going to redress the pain of the last two years. It is not going to tell them where it wants to take them next century. As far as this government is concerned, there are only two more stops in the journey—the GST and an election.So let me talk about their GST—the dead heart of the hidden tax package. John Howard has built a career avoiding the unequivocal, but three years ago this month he was absolutely unequivocal. These are his words, and we remember them:No, there's no way a GST will ever be part of our policy . . . Never, ever. It's dead. It was killed by the voters at the last election.CT4COSTELLOMr Costello—That was three years ago.PE4Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEY—The Treasurer says to me that it was three years ago. When was three years ago? Just before the last election. Peter Costello has built a career avoiding being quiet, but his budget speech was silent on the issue of a GST. He was like Basil Fawlty: `Don't mention the war!' Don't mention the GST!The budget papers on Tuesday included $20 million for the administration of this tax package, so we are now in the farcical situa tion where the coalition will tell us what it will cost to implement the tax package but it will not tell us what is in it. But one thing is for sure: the GST has come back when no-one thought it would. This tax on jobs, this tax on the poor, this tax on families is back. As we prepare for its stealthy arrival, we need to remember that it comes back with none of the integrity that was there in its initial presentation, when John Hewson put out his fully costed package, openly and frankly, more than a year out from an election.John Howard told his party two days ago that we could be in the last parliamentary session before an election. Just weeks to go, but the voters are not going to see the tax package yet. It is something to be dropped and then scuttled away from to the polls before anyone can get the wrapping off and find out what is underneath.That changes where we stand as a party. Those of us who oppose a GST now have only one course of action. I want to make it quite clear tonight that the Labor Party believes that John Howard has forfeited any right ever to claim a legitimate mandate for his GST. And our opposition will be there whether we win or lose the next election. A vote for Labor is a guaranteed vote against the GST. If we are elected, you will not get one, and if we are in opposition we will oppose it in the Senate.We do this because the lateness of the hour means we are expected to take the Prime Minister on trust. But we see nothing in this government's record to trust that the package will be fair or equitable. The Treasurer has explicitly refused in this place to rule out a GST on the following items: doctors' bills, dentists' bills, school fees, university fees, power bills, food, nursing home fees; local government and water rates; and even rent.And we see nothing in this government's record to trust that its awesome complexity would become, in their hands, anything other than a complete disaster—a disaster for businesses, workers, and all consumers—implemented in the usual manner, with all the grace and poise of Inspector Clouseau in a ball-bearing factory. We refuse to help John Howard get his agenda into place and we will not inflict his tax on the Australian people.Modern government, as we approach a new century, is about skills, innovation, infrastructure and exports. It is not about bean counting. It is not simply about achieving a surplus by any means. It is about achieving a surplus in periods of moderate economic growth at the same time as creating a modern, successful state which rewards, advances and enhances excellence. For Australians, this means recognising something about our own country. It means recognising that many other countries have advantages we do not. We are a nation in nobody's trading bloc. We make our own way in a region where the big countries are growing by an amount equivalent to our entire population every single year, while we occupy a great proportion of that region's real estate. It also means recognising what makes us proud to be Australians—our history of innovation, our scientific endeavour and our national courage.Too often, as we have approached issues of reform over the last 15 years or so, we have been critical of Australians' willingness to work hard, innovate and change based on their own convictions, rather than on some official view. Too often, we have underestimated how much Australians pride and value their own work and their achievements. Too few Australians, too few members of this House, know that Victoria and South Australia combined have won more Nobel Prizes in the sciences than Japan.Government must value and enhance those great Australian characteristics. Microeconomic reform is not about depriving people of wages, depriving people of leisure, depriving people of things which make for a constructive family life. We must be about enhancing skills, building on our record of innovation and developing our outward-looking attitude to opportunities in our region. Just try to find anything substantial in these three budgets from this government which builds on any of those strengths and does not detract from them.Instead, the vast bulk of savings made in three budgets have been at the expense of this Australia. They have come from our universi ties, from labour market programs helping to keep our population permanently skilled, from research and development incentives and from assistance to exporters to gain a foothold in international markets.The effects are clearly documented in this budget. It forecasts a drop in net export growth. It shows business investment growth slowing throughout the year. Recent figures show growth in business spending on research and development, which reached an all-time record of $4.3 billion in Labor's last year, stopped dead for the first time in a decade following the swinging cuts to R&D support in the coalition's first budget.This is why there is no point in delivering a surplus ringed by deficits. A surplus bought from the million deficits in family budgets. A surplus sitting alongside a level of foreign debt which has worsened by $28 billion since the coalition came into power, and with a current account deficit forecast to grow by another $31 billion over the coming year—and nearly every single independent analyst thinking that is an understatement.This is why we need a government with a broader vision, why we need a government that will restore the balance and why we need a government that sees where it can forge a partnership with the Australian people: a partnership supporting family life, supporting the unemployed, supporting industry, supporting investment and supporting exporters. We need partnership and we need to have ambitions as well.Two years have told us all we need to know about John Howard's ambitions for Australia. He wants an Australia with him as Prime Minister, and that is where his vision ends. He wants an Australia moulded into the shape he thinks will keep him there—a nation riddled by division, neatly carved up into the few groups whose dislike of each other, encouraged by this government, he thinks, will keep him in power forever.Labor will go into this next election believing in a different Australia. We believe in a proud, confident and intelligent Australia. Labor believes in an Australia that wants security in its workplaces, peace of mind in a strong health system and opportunity flow ing from an education system which gives its citizens the best chance they can get in a global economy. We understand with absolute clarity the importance of the Asian financial crisis for the Australian economy—described last year by the Treasurer as `scarcely measurable'—and the corresponding need for fiscal restraint in that environment.I promised back in February that Labor would deliver three underlying surpluses in our first term in government, and that promise stands as long as this government's projections for the budgetary position and economic forecasts stand. But Labor is going to look at priorities. We are going to look at where this government has spent money wastefully and at where the money could be used more intelligently and to greater benefit for greater numbers of Australians. We are not going into this election year with a fistful of dollars as a grudging apology for pain rendered over the previous three years. We are going into this election year with a vision of where we want Australia to go, what Australians want in their everyday lives and how, within the means available to us, we can go in that direction.These three budgets have sacrificed the security and opportunity of our population to Liberal Party prejudices. This is a government that has forgotten its responsibility to govern for all Australians and is now prepared to experiment with an unfair, job destroying tax in a period of great uncertainty—an appalling time to introduce such a tax. In the last two years, over the last three budgets, the Australian people have learned what they were getting when they elected this government. I maintain that they deserved something better than what they got.Normally, it would be hard to close the book on a government after only three budgets. Normally, it would be hard to say a government is not worth considering again, when it has only been around for two years. Normally, a first-term government just turns up in the queue for another term like it is waiting for dessert. But this isn't a normal government. This isn't the normal run of events at all. This is John Howard's government and John Howard's Australia.We know that millions of Australians want no more to do with this government: no more of this government that loses seven ministers in just 18 months; no more of this government that puts black shirts, balaclavas and dogs on chains in our workplaces; no more of this government that defends ministers with tens of millions of dollars in their family trusts and that wants working Australians to pay a GST on their grocery bills and their clothing, their rent and their rates; and no more of this government with a quarter of a billion dollars for companies that want to sack all their workers—ignoring the legalities—and nothing for those who want to keep them on.Well, these were your three budgets and they're over. If there was a time and a place for a government as harsh and chaotic as this, it is long past and in another, lesser country. And if there is a place for it now to go, it is out: out of our lives and out for good.A disturbance having occurred in the gallery—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The members in the gallery will resume their seats.20:01:003449House adjourned at 8.01 p.m. until Monday, 25 May 1998 at 12.30 p.m., in accordance with the resolution agreed to this day.Notices3449The following notices were given:Mr Sercombe to move—That the House of Representatives:(1) expresses its absolute condemnation of India's five nuclear tests;(2) considers these tests to be actions of a government with no regard for accepted norms of international behaviour;(3) considers India's actions constitute a grave threat to regional and international security;(4) calls on India to cease immediately all further nuclear testing and to commit itself to never test again by signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty without reservation;(5) calls on Pakistan to exercise restraint in its response to India's actions and to likewise sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; (6) further calls on both India and Pakistan to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty; and(7) calls on all nuclear weapons states to take further significant steps toward nuclear disarmament as recommended by the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.Mr Mossfield to move—That the House:(1) notes the decline in family home ownership in Australia for low income people; and(2) calls on the House to agree to refer the issue of declining home ownership to the Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs to consider ways of increasing home ownership in Australia with particular reference to (a) the feasibility of using the Family Payment towards the deposit for a first family home and (b) how this might assist low income families to purchase their own home.Documents3450The following papers were deemed to have been presented on 14 May 1998:Australia New Zealand Food Authority Act—Direction to the Australia New Zealand Food Authority 30 March 1998.Civil Aviation Act—Civil Aviation Regulations—Exemption 1998 No. CASA 18.Defence Act—Determinations 1998 Nos. 13, 14.Financial Management and Accountability Act—Determination to establish component of the Commercial Activities Fund 12 May 1998.Determination to establish component of the Reserved Money Fund 12 May 1998.Insurance Act—Determinations—1998—Insurance (Lloyd's Security Trust Fund Arrangements).No. 1.Insurance (Agents and Brokers) Act—1998—Approval of form No. 1Approval of form (and manner) No. 2.Rules 1998 Insurance (Designated Security Trust Funds).Migration Act—General direction under section 499 1998 No. 6.Taxation Administration Act—Determinations 1998 Nos. TD 98/8, TD 98/9, TD 98/10.Telecommunications Act 1997—Determination under subsection 7A(1).1998-05-14Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Nehl) took the chair at 9.40 a.m.Statements by Members3451345109:40:003451Hollis, Colin, MPMr HOLLISDH4ThrosbyALP00—Monday, 4 May, was an historic day for workers and the trade union movement. The victory, emphasised by the High Court's affirmation, cannot be underestimated. Three separate court decisions in four weeks recognised fairness, decency and justice. In short, these decisions recognised the Australian way.The decision to order the reinstatement of 2,000 illegally sacked waterfront workers was an outright repudiation of the sneaky, shallow, murky, smelly and underhand way the workers and their statutory rights were violated by Patrick Stevedores and the National Farmers Federation.The Howard government, particularly the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith), supported and endorsed at each step the strategy of Patrick and the NFF. Ideological and pathological unsustainable hatred so wilfully practised by the Howard government is no substitute for the right to freedom of association by workers and the role of trade unions. This is the real story of the court decisions over the past four weeks.On Friday, 8 May, I joined many workers, unionists and community members at the gateway of No. 6 jetty at Port Kembla to welcome back on the job the illegally sacked waterfront workers. It was a moment of triumph. Despite the bitter, frustrating fight, it was a moment of enormous pride to see those workers walk through the gates which had been closed to them four weeks earlier. I paid tribute to those workers on Friday, and I restate that tribute today. Through quiet, dignified resolve, each of those illegally sacked workers and their families took on a fight and won.Throughout the dispute and for two years prior to it, the Port Kembla workers were subjected to daily ridicule, attack and abuse by the minister. To their credit, along with each of their colleagues in terminals around Australia, they stood their ground for their rights, the survival of the union they choose to belong to and for workers everywhere. They stood at the front line to defend decency and fairness, because they understood that ultimately, if they were defeated, no worker was safe.I pay tribute to the leadership of Mark Armstrong, the secretary of the MUA at Port Kembla. I have always had a good working relationship with Mark. To see him deal with the pressures of this dispute, accepting the burden to fight for his members' rights, was incredible. He led with a cool, level head and grace under pressure.The dispute also brought unexpected focus on the potential of Port Kembla. For the first time in 12 years Port Kembla has handled containers. In the last few weeks Port Kembla has handled more than 2,000. We also saw the establishment of Port Kembla Stevedoring cooperating with the MUA and its members—the same union and the same workers that Patrick, the NFF and Minister Reith hate so much.Port Kembla has once again shown that it can meet expectations during a crisis. An efficient, effective port was put to the ultimate test and passed it. The Illawarra has always been a united community led, without apology, by the labour movement. We are united when attacked by anyone. We will continue to be united, no matter what the attack or its source. (Time expired)345209:43:003452Katter, Bob, Jnr, MPMr KATTERHX4KennedyNP10—I rise today to say a few words about the pernicious fly-ins to inland Queensland. The three statistical divisions of inland Queensland have lost population in the last five years, as seen in the last census. The populations of all of the major towns in the central west and the mid-west—inland Queensland, if you like—are down about 40 per cent, on average, from where they were some 20 or so years ago. We are watching the complete annihilation of the population of inland Australia—other areas are no different from Queensland.In fact, if you take a narrow 60 kilometre band off the east coast of Australia and drop off most of Victoria and a little bit around Adelaide and Perth, you still have a map of Australia and about 90 per cent of the continental land mass. Yet that 90 per cent of the continental land mass is occupied by the same population numbers that were here when Captain Cook arrived. There are about 500,000 people now, and there were about 300,000 people when Captain Cook arrived here. Mr Deputy Speaker, we really are not doing a good job in this country.One of the great ways that we have of turning this around is in our mining towns. In this, the most enlightened government and the most successful government in Australian history by every measure that one can find was the Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland. People voted with their feet. We doubled our population with people coming from your states. People made the decision with their feet. They said, `We don't like your states. We don't like your government. We are going to Queensland.' In that period, we doubled the average weekly earnings in the state of Queensland. In the last 12 years, your government took the average weekly earnings down by two per cent and increased the top 20 per cent by 30 per cent. So when you laugh, just check on your figures and you will find that you have a very sad tale to tell. Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish I could go sideways, but I cannot.In Western Australia, as far as prosperity goes—I do not know about other aspects—the Charles Court government was one of the most successful governments in Australian history. Both those governments banned fly-ins and the pernicious regime of fly-ins to the mining towns is destroying family life. It is destroying the heart and soul of this country. It is placing great dangers upon these people and it is delivering a most inefficient mining industry to Australia, one of our most important industries. (Time expired) 345209:46:003452Wilton, Greg, MPMr WILTONYK6IsaacsALP00—It is a privilege to follow the member for Kennedy (Mr Katter) and talk on the issue of jobs, an issue that I am sure is a little less close to his heart than it was, given that his government has closed the CES in Mareeba. This is indicative of its tendency to shut CESs around the country and indicative of what I believe is its lack of commitment to do anything meaningful for Australia's rising numbers of unemployed. I say rising unemployment because, even though the figures issued last week were 7.9 per cent, the government's own budget forecast put unemployment for the course of the next financial year at eight per cent, which means clearly it is going to rise—0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—Less than eight per cent.YK6Wilton, Greg, MPMr WILTON—Clearly it has got to rise to eight per cent. Clearly it has got to rise to 8.1 or 8.2 per cent if it is to average eight per cent over the course of the next year. Let me also say that, in its first two years of office, the Howard government has only created 25 per cent of full-time jobs that were created by the outgoing Labor government in the last two years of its office. The Howard government's decision to ignore Australia's unemployed, for what is now three consecutive budgets, shows very clearly that it has got no real desire, drive or plan to create jobs for the unemployed of this country.0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—What about Job Network?YK6Wilton, Greg, MPMr WILTON—The member for Fisher asked me what about Job Network. My office is overwhelmed by calls—in fact we would get one call at least per day, which is a significant number—with people complaining about the new job placement arrangements. I had a letter from a woman this week—and the member for Fisher (Mr Slipper) might take due heed of this—whose son is registered as unemployed. He is waiting on an interview with Centrelink, but he needs to receive a benefit before Employment National will assist him with job placement—a parlous and disgraceful situation. His mother writes, `Our society is forgetting about people, especially those who politicians have little interest in, the unemployed and those with little money. I think the sooner the Liberals stop damaging what caring programs we have, the better.'Those sentiments are reflected across my electorate of Isaacs. People know that this government has now had three chances to do something positive. Three strikes and they are clearly out. They are out of ideas and I am sure they will be voted out of office at the next election based on their disgraceful performance on the issue of job creation because, on their own figures, unemployment will rise over the course of the next financial year.345309:49:003453Hardgrave, Gary, MPMr HARDGRAVECK6MoretonLP10—I wish to place on the record just how much this government has done for older Australians and also to make the point that there are so many people in my electorate of Moreton who have been constant in their contribution by raising with me so many of the issues that were ignored for so long by the previous government, which have now been addressed and dealt with over three budgets by this government.Let us look at total aged care funding by the coalition. It is now more than $4 billion a year. There has been announced a $280 million staying at home care and support for older Australians package, specifically to support older Australians in their own homes. A tax rebate to the value of the pensioner tax rebate has been introduced for self-funded retirees, a tax break of $1,299 per year. We are rebuilding nursing homes, with a $20 million package.The national industry restructuring package targets nursing homes most in need. And, boy, weren't there nursing homes in need? The previous government presided over a drop in capital funding of approximately 75 per cent during its last four years in office. In fact, when we came to power, the Howard government found that 13 per cent of nursing homes did not meet fire regulations, 11 per cent of nursing homes did not meet health regulations and 51 per cent of nursing home residents were sharing their bedroom with three or more people. Is it any wonder we had to act.The good news for people such as self-funded retirees in my electorate is that finally there is a government in this country prepared to do something for them and give them some dignity, some reward for their effort in saving for their retirement. The seniors health card is now available to an additional 220,000 self-funded retirees. That is simply because the income test threshold has been raised to $40,000 for singles and to $67,000 for couples. That means that there are many self-funded retired people in my electorate of Moreton who will be paying $3.20 a script for 52 scripts a year, and then they are free.There is also a free flu vaccine for over-65s, and age pensioners and war widows now have a government in power prepared to tie—in law—their income, their pensions, to 25 per cent of average weekly earnings. On top of that, World War II veterans finally have a government that is prepared to provide a gold card to those over 70 who faced danger from hostile forces.Those simple measures that have provided dignity to older Australians are proof positive that there is a government that is not only listening constituent by constituent, electorate by electorate, but also taking a whole of government approach to older Australians. We have delivered for older Australians and it is right that we do so.345409:52:003454Albanese, Anthony, MPMr ALBANESER36GrayndlerALP00—I rise to draw the Main Committee's attention to the answer to a question I put on notice to the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr Downer), No. 2701. That question concerned the expansion of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967. I think that what we see at the moment with the breakdown and impasse in the Middle East peace process is a tragedy for both Israelis and Palestinians, and indeed for everyone in the region and the world.At a time when we see peace being advanced in Northern Ireland and on other most difficult questions such as Cyprus, in the Middle East the expansion of these settlements is against the interests of both the Israeli population and the Palestinian population. They have a legitimate aspiration to have a state of Palestine created within the borders which have been occupied since 1967. Whilst there are no doubt legitimate concerns for the security of Israel and I certainly support the right of Israel to exist within those secure borders, the settlement activity is a breach of the prospect for peace in that region.I am particularly concerned that perhaps Australians are playing a bad role in the settlement activity. I am concerned at the possibility that tax exempt funds from Australia are being used to assist settler groups in these occupied territories. In the city of Hebron, for example, where there are 400 Israeli settlers and where settlements continue to expand in a very provocative way, the massacre of 27 people occurred in the mosque last year. I am concerned to find that there is almost a shrine to that mass murderer in the settlement area of Hebron. It is that sort of provocation which does nothing to advance the cause of peace in the region.There is a need for the extremists on both sides of the debate, whether they be Israeli or Palestinian, to be sidelined because unless the Oslo peace accord is proceeded with and peace advanced there can be no security for either Israelis or Palestinians in the region.345409:55:003454Grace, Elizabeth, MPMrs ELIZABETH GRACEML6LilleyLP10—On 5 April, on a bright, sunny, autumn afternoon, a group of young people and interested adults joined together in what was classed as the Lilley Youth Forum Conference. On 26 March I spoke in this place about the run-up to the Lilley youth conference and listed what was going to happen there. I would like to report back that the whole exercise was an outstanding success. The young people there expressed their views and opinions openly and freely, and they were very grateful that they had a `hotline' to the government and were able to get their message across to their parliamentary representative.One of the more interesting resolutions that was passed on that day was one where they asked that a school counsellor be provided in their schools for each school year; these counsellors would be to meet the needs of the young people. The resolution was that these counsellors or mentors would be able to be contracted for a five-year term and would follow a grade through the whole school, throughout the whole time that that grade was in school, and follow their progress. The feeling was that these counsellors would then get to know the students and would be able to help and assist in times of stress and in times of family problems, if they arose.It was suggested that these counsellors would also be able to help guide the students in choices of careers and with follow-on programs after they left school. They were very keen that the same person would follow them through the five years they were in high school. They felt that being left alone, and having changes every year, they did not get the consistency that they would if they had the same counsellor for that length of time. I thought it was a very commendable and very worthwhile comment.Among the speakers who were there were Professor Cheryl Hurst, who was Queenslander of the Year this year. Professor Hurst is also Chancellor at QUT. She spoke very strongly on the need for children and young people to stay at school and to gain their education. But she also emphasised the fact that there needs to be education in the form of life skills. It is very important that we start looking at programs whereby young people are taught, from a very early age, some of the life skills and other things they will need to face the outside world.Some of the things that they did suggest would be further training, which this government has implemented, and life experience programs for all people. They feel that the transition period between primary, secondary and tertiary education needs to be looked at and programs implemented for that. All in all, there were in the vicinity of 12 resolutions passed. (Time expired)10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! In accordance with sessional order 275A, the time for members' statements has concluded.Bills3455r490Billsr491Bills3455Debate resumed from 2 April 1998, on motion by Mr Vaile:That the bill be now read a second time.09:58:003455Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TANNERYU5MelbourneALP00—The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 1998 and the Interstate Road Transport Amendment Bill 1998 are both very straightforward and are supported by the opposition.The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 1998 creates an opportunity for people with vehicles registered under the Interstate Road Charge Act 1985 to register their vehicles for periods of less than one year. The opposition supports this. The value of this amendment is that there are certain groups in the community, particularly farmers, who will have vehicles that require registration that they may need to use only for a certain proportion of the year—in other words, for seasonal use. It is unduly oppressive to ask them to register these vehicles for an entire year when they may only be used for three or four months of the year. This legislation creates an opportunity for the vehicles to be registered only for a portion of the year, and we support that.The Interstate Road Transport Amendment Bill 1998 is similarly straightforward. It provides for the recognition of ACT self-government and brings the ACT into the uniform national road transport scheme. It also provides for certain technical amendments to penalties which ensures that provisions with respect to the ACT are brought into line with the rest of the country. The opposition also supports this legislation.10:00:003456Grace, Elizabeth, MPMrs ELIZABETH GRACEML6LilleyLP10—I wish to contribute to this cognate debate on the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 1998 and the Interstate Road Transport Amendment Bill 1998 . Road transport reform is vital to Australia. There is little point in having highly efficient mining and agricultural industries, industries that are vital to Queensland in particular, if the product cannot be exported in the most efficient way possible, and the Howard-Fischer government is committed to transport reform to bring this about.At this very moment we are addressing reform on the waterfront, a major impediment in the transport chain. Current waterfront practices are a barrier to efficiency and competitiveness and cost jobs and economic growth in the whole of Australia. The Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith) has said in this House many times that our government has promised to fix up the waterfront—its rorts, its inefficiencies and its archaic work practices.We are absolutely determined to do all in our power to promote greater competition in the stevedoring industry. Our international competitiveness depends on achieving this goal. The potential benefits of road transport and waterfront reform are of vital significance to our national interests.The government is determined to address inefficiency because delays and uncertainties are bad news for the transport industry and small business, and that is why the Howard government is acting to improve the Australian transport system. The government aims to create a productive and reliable transport sector that contributes to economic growth, job creation and greater opportunities for business. This reform process will encourage spirited and real competition across the nation.Governments across Australia must keep up with and embrace change. For example, the road transport industry may develop a new motor or suspension system for a vehicle which is then immediately taken up by transport operators, but since federation, governments across the land have not been able to pass uniform transport legislation.National uniform rules will give Australia world's best practice in every area of transport. The government's industrial relations reforms, supported by Cheryl Kernot, provide the necessary framework to address this important area. However, there are regulatory impediments to road transport efficiency.Phil Russell, who owns a large transport company in my electorate of Lilley, says that despite the fact that all his vehicles are registered and licensed in Queensland and conform to all the rules and regulations of the state, when they travel 150 kilometres south into New South Wales they are then subjected to a new set of authorities, standards, licences and permissions. One minute you are operating within the law, the next minute you are acting outside it.He says the dangerous goods licence is another example of inefficiency. Companies need a separate licence to travel into New South Wales and again another licence to use vehicles for dangerous goods in Victoria. Why is it when you cross an invisible line, a state border, you can be operating outside the law? I agree with the former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, when he described this situation as a total nonsense.These inconsistencies have been a total nightmare and a blight on Australia's transport industry. The work of the National Road Transport Commission and the passage of the Interstate Road Transport Amendment Bill 1998 and the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 1998 will provide the greatest improvement since the 1950s when free trade across state borders was supported in the High Court.The Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 1998 has provisions to include flexibility in road vehicle registration. For example, it contains a charge formula for the registration of vehicles for less than one year; it provides for shorter periods to be utilised by operators such as farmers to register vehicles seasonally to transport crops, and for smaller operators balancing cash flow by paying charges quarterly; it provides for 10 priority initiatives from the Ministerial Council on Road Transport Second Heavy Vehicle Reform Package; it returns all revenue from charges to states and territories for road maintenance; and it clarifies the inconsistencies in the treatment of short-term registrations between jurisdictions that have caused a number of constituent complaints. This last measure should limit the problems for farmers and small operators to some extent.The Interstate Road Transport Amendment Bill 1998 deals with the administrative amendments related to the appointment of inspectors to take into account the ACT self-government. It also reduces penalties for excess load masses from 3,000 to 2,000 to comply with the Crimes Act of 1914, where penalty for a corporation should be five times that of an individual.In my state of Queensland, we need to have access to a flexible transport regime. Unfortunately, the ALP supports 1950 work practices so it is doubly important that the federal government works on reforms that will produce real gains and jobs for Australians.The challenge for Australia and the transport sector is to produce excellence. The coalition is working with industry to maximise and foster best practices and, unlike the Labor Party, we do not support the inefficient work practices of unions such as the MUA.Regulation of industry is necessary and the coalition government has been working in participation with industries to create real gains for all Australians. However, we cannot ask industry to be innovative and competitive and accede to government regulations without removing unnecessary regulatory impediments.The road transport industry is showing that it can and will compete in the world's best practice and the challenge is on for all Australian governments to help them meet this goal. We must produce world's best practice regulations and not tolerate the myriad of conflicting state regulatory regimes.The Interstate Road Transport Amendment Bill 1998 and the Interstate Road Transport Charge Amendment Bill 1998 are small steps in producing government best practice.0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—But important ones.ML6Grace, Elizabeth, MPMrs ELIZABETH GRACE—Very important ones. Efficiency should be at the forefront of business and governments have a responsibility to regulate because business and many people's jobs are dependent on the cooperation of all Australian governments. I must compliment the Road Transport Commission for their determination to ensure better uniform standards on the roads to the benefit of all Australians.10:07:003458Ronaldson, Michael, MPMr RONALDSONXT4BallaratLP10—Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is my great pleasure to sum up on behalf of the Minister for Transport and Regional Development (Mr Vaile), who is hard at work and due back shortly.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—He is always hard at work.XT4Ronaldson, Michael, MPMr RONALDSON—He is always hard at work. Can I just say that while there has not been quantity of speakers today, there has been quality and the previous speaker summed this up very well.I think the important part is that there are a number of people in my electorate, as indeed there will be many farmers throughout Australia, who will appreciate the fact that we have moved these provisions. By reducing times available, we will see that there will be reduced costs for farmers and others such as small operators who may wish to opt for three-monthly intervals on registration charge payments to help maintain their cash flow.These are good measures. The government believes that its reform agenda in relation to road transport has been important. It was a matter that we came into government promising. We have delivered on that. Minister Vaile is driving this process very hard with the states and territories and it is a further example of the government's commitment to road transport reform.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—If no member wishes to consider the bill in detail, I will put the report question forthwith. The question is that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bills3458r4913458Debate resumed from 2 April, on motion by Mr Vaile:That the bill be now read a second time.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—If no member wishes to consider the bill in detail, I will put the report question forthwith. The question is that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bills3459r496Billsr498Billsr505BillsBills3459Debate resumed from 8 April, on motion by Ms Worth:That the bill be now read a second time.10:10:003459Evans, Martyn, MPMr MARTYN EVANSN36BonythonALP00—My colleague the member for Dobell (Mr Lee), may have the opportunity to participate in this debate later if he arrives. In his absence, I am very happy to take this matter for the opposition. This bill principally concerns protecting the health and safety of the public from the harmful effects of radiation.The bill establishes the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency and a licensing scheme for the regulation of nuclear installations operated by the Commonwealth or Commonwealth entities, from construction right through all stages of operation to decommissioning. The licensing scheme also extends to the regulation of ionising sources and certain non-ionising sources and establishes the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council.These are entirely reasonable and laudable objectives and the opposition has no intention of opposing the bill. Indeed, we wish to support it. There are a number of matters though which the bill raises which I think could well be addressed by the government, either in the reply to summing up this debate or in another place. The explanatory memorandum, for example, refers to the council membership being drawn from state and territory health agencies, peak industry groups, scientific and technical experts and consumer groups, but the make-up of the council is not specified in the bill at all and is left entirely to ministerial discretion.We would certainly raise some concerns about the way in which that is left open and the fact that it does not include any members of the public—for example, consumer interests which might be represented by those living adjacent to the established nuclear facilities like Lucas Heights. A local government council, the Sutherland Shire, would have a very substantial interest in nuclear safety and matters associated with that. It would not be at all unreasonable for groups like that to be represented in the decision making apparatus established by this bill.There are also quite extensive powers provided for the inspectors under section 53. While the wording of this section is eminently reasonable on the face of it, these are quite extensive powers. There are few limitations on the way in which they can be exercised under the bill. The opposition would want to question the extent of those powers arising in cases, but not where there is a serious issue of nuclear safety arising because there we would want all those powers to be available. There are few limitations which restrict them. They might be available to be used under circumstances which are not as desirable as those where there is a nuclear safety question arising.I think there are a couple of issues which we would like to see further discussed in relation to this bill. Whether that takes place at the summing up here or in another place is a matter which can be left to the discretion of the government at this stage. Certainly we will be raising those issues again.The whole question of nuclear safety and the establishment of Commonwealth nuclear facilities is the central matter behind this bill's creation. The opposition does have some concerns with regard to broader policy in respect of nuclear facilities in Australia. Australia has never been a nuclear power in the sense that we have sought nuclear weapons or sought to use the nuclear fuel cycle to generate electricity. However, we have for many years now had a nuclear facility in the form of the research reactor at Lucas Heights.When this facility was first established, the Cold War was very much in operation and many people were concerned about issues of nuclear security from the point of view of nuclear weapons production. Australia did not have a public policy of moving into this area in the years following the war, but quite clearly it would have been in the background of government decisions at the time. Indeed, while I personally believe that that was never an option for Australia, one can understand why a government might, in the climate of the day, have those issues in its mind and want to establish a research reactor which, while ostensibly being for medical and other nuclear research purposes, could serve an alternative purpose if government thought that an urgent necessity at the time.Those days, though, are now well past. Indeed, the world is moving against the nuclear fuel cycle and against nuclear weapons, most specifically. Events in India in the past few days have amply demonstrated the world's view about those states which move towards nuclear weapon status. That is something that we all in this parliament condemn, and I know that the government and the opposition will indeed be making their views even clearer on this in the days ahead, as will all of the other states of the world that support the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.We are left with the question of Lucas Heights. Unfortunately, the reactor there has only a limited life left to it. The current Nuclear Safety Bureau is refusing to relicense that reactor after 2003-2005. In that period, the reactor will cease to function, because it would not be particularly safe to continue to operate it, given its age. It is a perfectly reasonable end to the reactor's life cycle: all things have a cycle in their existence, and nuclear reactors might normally be expected not to operate for quite so long.Indeed, ANSTO has managed to extract the maximum value for the Australian dollar from that facility over the very many years in which the reactor has been in operation. ANSTO is an organisation which commands respect from both sides of the House and from the general public. It has operated the reactor very safely over a long period of time, and has ensured that Australia has been able to take from the reactor the maximum value from the science that was available. Indeed, it has done so in what is now very much a suburban part of Sydney.However, the issue of the replacement reactor is now before us. The government has taken a firm decision to replace the reactor with a new reactor at Lucas Heights. There is an environmental impact statement now in preparation, and I understand that a report is likely in July or August, with a two-month period for public comment following that and then a final decision based on the environmental impact statement. However, in the interim, the government is certainly of the view that it wants to replace that reactor and build a new reactor at Lucas Heights.That raises a number of questions. Firstly, there is the issue of cost. The new reactor, as a capital expense, will cost in the order of $300 million. There will be extensive costs over the remaining 50 years of that reactor's life. There will be significant costs for removing and processing the spent fuel rods from the reactor. There will be substantial costs at the end of that 50-year period for decommissioning the reactor, just as there will be significant costs for decommissioning the existing reactor.So Australia faces a choice. We can spend $300 million, plus who knows how many other tens of millions of dollars over the life of that reactor, or we can consider alternative courses of action. The previous government established the research reactor review just over five years ago, which produced a very extensive report, following a wide ranging public discussion of the subject. That reactor review reached a number of conclusions. Overall, it said that if the government of the day—which is the government we now have—were satisfied that the national interest required a new reactor to be built, then that decision should go ahead, but that it should go ahead only on the basis of the public interest argument.If you look at the reactor review report closely, you will see that they came to that conclusion not on the basis of medical or scientific evidence but only on the basis of the national interest: in other words, our foreign affairs policy and our ability to participate in nuclear safety debates around the world. If the government felt that those interests were paramount, then it could reasonably reach the view that the reactor should be replaced and a new reactor built. But the research reactor review was not confident that one could come to those conclusions only on the basis of the medical uses of the reactor or only on the basis of the scientific uses of the reactor. It had to be the third factor of national interest that tipped the balance in favour of a new reactor.Obviously the present government have come to that conclusion, because they have very much endorsed the establishment of the new reactor. So we can assume that they have taken into account the international questions, the national interest and national security and have decided that it is worth proceeding with that expense, based on those criteria. However, those criteria are not public. They are very much a private matter which the government takes into account and keeps its own counsel on. We can only look at the moment at the scientific and medical issues that are before the parliament, and not so much at issues of national security and national interest.If one looks at the medical question, when Peter McGauran, the former minister, announced in parliament the decision to build the new reactor, he very much took the line that it was the medical question that was paramount. I think that was an unfortunate way to proceed because it certainly generated a strong emotional argument in relation to medical treatment. The reality is that there are many alternative mechanisms for generating radioisotopes, which the minister failed to discuss. He did not bring to our attention the very reasonable alternatives that exist and thereby allow an informed public debate to take place about what is our most substantial science expense to date.The medical alternatives arise from a number of sources. Firstly, one can reasonably import medical radioisotopes. Some 98 per cent of these are used for diagnostic purposes and only two or three per cent are used for therapeutic purposes. So one can look at alternative diagnostic techniques as well.In the area of medical radioisotopes, a great many countries import their medical radioisotopes. For example, the United States, the United Kingdom and many countries in Europe import a number of radioisotopes. Countries which we would compare ourselves with also use imported radioisotopes. So that is not out of the question, especially when one considers that, during periods when the research reactor is closed for maintenance, Australia imports substantial quantities of radioisotopes mainly from South Africa but also from Canada and the United Kingdom, and those radioisotopes are able to work very effectively in the Australian medical context.So that alone is not a compelling argument because we also have available to us cyclotron technology. There is a cyclotron in Sydney and a smaller one in Melbourne, and there are plans to build other units at major hospital facilities around the country. They generate a great many of the radioisotopes which are used in medicine. There is some difficulty at the moment in generating molybdenum which is then allowed to decay into technetium, which is one of the favoured medical radioisotopes. But there are alternative strategies under research at the moment in California which would allow the production of molybdenum and technetium from cyclotron technology and not only from a reactor technology.There are also medical radioisotopes which are produced by cyclotrons but which are not able to be produced by a reactor. So the issue is not clear cut as far as the medical debate is concerned. I think it is unfortunate that the government opted for the emotive medical argument as its first-run argument rather than allowing a more informed public debate about this to take place so people could make a more rational choice as to whether or not the reactor was necessary.There is also the question of the scientific and industrial uses of the reactor. For science, reactors are very helpful. There is no doubt that a reactor is useful for the pursuit of some areas of nuclear science. I think ANSTO has done an excellent job in recent years in ensuring that Australia was well represented in those areas. I do not discount the value of that in any way.Of course, science can be done in a number of ways. There are particle accelerators which use electricity to accelerate particles rather than using the flux of a neutron reactor. There are other mechanisms by which one can undertake studies of materials, for example, spallation sources. Spallation technology is well established. Although that is also expensive and produces some radioactive waste, it is nothing on the scale of a new nuclear reactor. Again even in the scientific area and with the industrial questions of material science, there are a number of alternatives available. They also have not been properly assessed in a wide-ranging public debate.While the opposition does not per se oppose a new nuclear reactor in this country, it may well be that there are arguments to be made in favour of that. ANSTO is a very creditable and reputable organisation. Their view must be taken with all due weight and significance. Of course, they do have a vested interest in pursuing a new reactor. That obviously is their raison d'etre—the whole reason for the existence of ANSTO—and they would therefore be expected to pursue that argument as strongly as they could in the public arena.There is also the question of location. The reactor was in an isolated area of Sydney when it was first built, but housing has moved much closer to the reactor and Lucas Heights is now very much a part of suburban Sydney. There is obviously a great deal of disquiet in the area about the prospect of a new reactor and a further 50 years of a nuclear source in the middle of suburban Sydney.The opposition is very much opposed to the question of building a new reactor in suburban Sydney. While we remain open about the issue of a new reactor in Australia—there are obviously arguments to be had on the science, the industry, the environment, the medical front; all of those things must be properly discussed—we take the view that Lucas Heights is an inappropriate location for this facility. So while we are yet to be convinced by the public argument in relation to the reactor, we do not believe that Lucas Heights is an appropriate venue for it.The government have failed ANSTO and have failed scientists in this country by not putting the arguments about the need for a new reactor more fairly in the public arena. They have not advanced those arguments in the way that they should have done. They have relied entirely on the emotional impact of the medical question, without ensuring that the public were able to take a more reasoned view. Many scientists support the new reactor but many also question it from the point of view of necessity.There is the issue of the $300 million initial capital cost. That is a very large amount of money to spend on science and there are many other alternative scientific proposals which could have been funded by that $300 million. No priority analysis appears to have taken place. The government has not set one against the other in the public arena and allowed science and the public to debate which of the alternatives is to be preferred.The other issue that remains is: where is the $300 million coming from? If one looks at the budget documents presented the other night, one sees that the ANSTO figure is gradually rising. Of course their figure without the reactor is actually suffering a decline, but with the reactor included their funding is rising quite dramatically. The ARC funding—which is a very important source of funding for grants to our young people, to universities, for researchers to undertake further important studies in science—is declining in the forward estimates.ANSTO strongly put the point of view, which they say is backed by the ARC themselves, that the funding for the reactor has not come from that declining ARC grant. However, on the face of it, on the budget record itself, the government talks about the decline in ARC funding and the figures reflect a very substantial decline. In the absence of any other evidence it is reasonable for scientists and certainly for the opposition to examine the point of view that the government is funding the reactor by a declining grant to ARC.If that is the case, it will severely impede Australian science in the years ahead and severely disadvantage our young researchers, who already have very little chance of getting an ARC grant. Only about 19 per cent of applicants for ARC grants are successful, and that means some 80 per cent are not. Under the declining allocations listed in the forward estimates, even fewer people will be successful in obtaining those grants. That is a tragedy for our scientists. It is certainly a tragedy for our young scientists, who will increasingly be forced to go offshore.If this is not the case, if the government in fact has plans to increase ARC funding but they are plans which are not contained in the forward estimates, then the government should make that clear, and they should make it clear immediately. Otherwise, people will draw the conclusion that the declining ARC grant is funding the rising ANSTO grant and that scientists are funding the new reactor from their otherwise expected grants. ANSTO strongly dispute that. I understand that the ARC take a different position, but this is a government which is strongly motivated by the budget dollar.The Treasurer (Mr Costello) constantly emphasises his ability to effect savings in the Australian government's operation. He constantly emphasises the need for an economic rationalist outcome. While we have had disputes in the parliament between opposition and government about the validity of the Treasurer's strategies, certainly one can understand that the government might well take a decision to reduce one source of funding within a portfolio so that it could increase another. We understand that often ministers are told, `This is a zero sum game. If you want new expenditure, you must come up with savings.' That is a line which the government frequently uses.Therefore, it is all too easy to draw the conclusion that this has been put to the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism (Mr Moore) and that he has taken a decision to trade off ARC funding against ANSTO funding. If that is not the case, it is up to the minister to come forward quickly in the parliament and in the public arena to dispute that finding; otherwise the opposition and the public will be able to draw that conclusion very reasonably from the budget documents themselves.In conclusion, while the opposition acknowledges the fine work of ANSTO over the years and accepts that there may well be a role for a research reactor in Australia's future, we believe that that case has not been properly put by the government and that the government has failed to support ANSTO in the way that it should by ensuring that that debate is had on an informed basis.We certainly believe, though, that Lucas Heights is an inappropriate venue for a nuclear facility, given its location now as part of suburban Sydney. So we want to see a properly informed public debate take place about the need for a reactor as against the other priorities in science and as against the other alternatives in medicine, in industry and in the environmental studies which ANSTO now does. We believe that the government has not taken that view; it has traded off ARC funding against ANSTO funding. We look forward to a more informed public debate on this. I just suspect the government is not going to allow the public that luxury.10:30:003464Johnston, Ricky, MPMrs JOHNSTONNL6CanningLP10—The object of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 is to protect the health and safety of people, as well as the environment, from the harmful effect of radiation. As an extreme example of the harm radiation poses for our world, I need only refer to the tragedy that was, and still is, Chernobyl. Today, the after-effects of that dreadful event have still not been measured, nor understood in full. Exposure to high levels of radiation results in horrific sickness and destruction of human beings, as well as our environment.In the fast changing world that we live in, the usage of radiation in the home and the workplace is becoming more and more common. It is therefore important that, at all times, the health of our people and our country be protected. This is precisely what this bill will do, especially as the Commonwealth, together with the states and territories, will establish uniform radiation controls. The specific purpose of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 is to provide a regime to regulate the operation of nuclear installations and the management of radiation sources, including ionising materials and both ionising and non-ionising apparatus, where these activities are undertaken by the Commonwealth.Radiation can cause severe damage to humans and to the environment, yet radiation is also an invaluable tool in many areas of medicine, archaeology and the construction industry. It is used in the food industry and in scientific research and defence. There are many workers, including those in Commonwealth departments such as Customs and in Australia Post and Telstra, who in carrying out their daily work may come in contact with radiation. Many conflicting views on whether there is a safe level of exposure to ionising radiation have been stated. A report from the OECD notes:There is a threshold level of radiation exposure (or dose) below which no acute damage is observed. However, there is now a substantial body of evidence which shows that cancers can be caused by radiation even at dose levels that are below this threshold. There is no evidence of inherited damage in humans at any dose level, but the fact that such damage is found to occur in other life forms suggests that it could also occur in humans . . . the assumption that a dose, however small, carries with it an element of risk has become a key concept in radiation protection.Yet this assertion is not necessarily supported by other reports. The United Nations environment program report Radiation doses, effects, risks states exactly the opposite. It says:The damage done by high doses of radiation normally becomes evident within hours or days. Cancers, however, take many years—usually decades—to emerge. And, by definition, the hereditary malformations and diseases caused by generic damage take generations to show; it is the children, grandchildren, or remoter descendants of the people originally irradiated who will be affected.Although there is currently a national standard for limiting occupational exposure to ionising radiation, this bill will allow the Commonwealth to impose licence conditions on Commonwealth employees and contractors dealing with controlled material or operating controlled apparatus.This is the first time that a body—the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency—will be established in Australia. It will have a function, amongst others, to oversee and regulate activities that involve radiation and nuclear safety and to provide a mechanism where people's complaints can be heard. It is expected that ARPANSA, as I will refer to it from now on, will be set up from 1 July 1998.This bill is needed to provide a proper legislative basis for the regulation of the nuclear installations and radiation activities of the Commonwealth, none of which are presently regulated. Indeed, it would not be incorrect to say that whilst radiation exposure was covered by state laws, there persisted a regulatory gap because the laws often did not apply to the Commonwealth or its employees, and this was stated in the 1996 report, No time to waste. Thus, the bill will provide the basis for a uniform national approach to regulation of radiation activity and it will be reflected in due course in the legislation of state and territory jurisdictions for the first time.A major function of the bill will be to allow for the establishment of a statutory officer, a chief executive officer, who will be empowered to make regulations and set licence conditions for the health and safety of persons and for the protection of the environment. It will also be the CEO's function to ensure that all practical steps are taken to avoid conflicts between regulatory, research and service functions.In establishing certain safety standards, ARPANSA will ensure that Commonwealth users adhere to them by requiring all the radiation sources and nuclear facilities owned by the Commonwealth to be licensed. The organisation will also be empowered to audit performance of Commonwealth operators and users so as to enforce compliance with standards and codes of practice and to impose penalties for significant deficiencies. The ability to impose charges on licences will be introduced at the same time, as will the annual charges for facility licences and for source licences.ARPANSA will be formed by drawing together the resources and expertise of the Australian Radiation Laboratory and the Nuclear Safety Bureau, both of which are within the Department of Health and Family Services. Currently, ARL provides advice, research and services on the health and medical aspects of radiation, whilst the NSB reviews and monitors the nuclear safety of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's nuclear operations.Because of the specialist expertise of ARL and NSB, the amalgamation of these two bodies will provide a strong and uniform regulatory environment in line with international best practice. At the same time, ARPANSA will fill the regulatory gap currently left by dealings involving radioactive material that are not already done by government.It is also important to note that new functions—such as regulation of a new research reactor, X-ray apparatus used by Customs, and medical and industrial radiography by Defence and other departments—will be fully cost recovered by licence fees. Large organisations will be issued with licences that cover multiple radiation sources and will be required to pay annual licence fees based on the numbers and types of sources. However, the government will continue to provide funding at the present level for the existing functions of both ARL and NSB. Any moneys raised by ARPANSA from charges for the provision of services will be retained by the agency, as currently happens with ARL and NSB, to cover the cost of existing functions.As I have said already, all Commonwealth bodies that use radiation which may affect the health and wellbeing of the public, employees and the environment will be regulated by ARPANSA. These include research agencies such as the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the CSIRO, and a variety of radiation users that I have already mentioned. Consultations with these bodies have taken place, and they will continue.The Commonwealth's radiation protection and nuclear safety activities which need regulatory controls at Commonwealth level include: the operation and decommissioning of ANSTO's nuclear research reactors and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel: the siting, design, commissioning, operation and eventual decommissioning of the proposed replacement research reactor; the Maralinga rehabilitation project; the establishment of a near-surface radioactive waste repository; and the current and future radiation activities of Commonwealth entities, including the use of X-ray equipment and radioactive sources, and the use of non-ionising radiation sources such as lasers, radar and general microwave sources.This legislation will ensure arms-length decision making responsibilities for the CEO of ARPANSA. Such decisions can therefore be made free from government and other stakeholders and ensure appropriate separation as recommended in the Senate select committee report No time to waste.The CEO will prepare and give to the minister quarterly and annual reports on his or her functions which will be tabled in each house of parliament within 15 days of receipt. Additionally the CEO may arrange reports in the parliament at any time provided the minister has been given a copy of that report.In keeping with this government's philosophy, public scrutiny, input and comments will be sought in the preparation of standards and codes of practice on radiation, health and nuclear safety. There will be community representation on appropriate committees and working parties responsible for advising ARPANSA and the minister through the CEO.This bill has been prepared following extensive consultations with the states and territories whereby a template was developed which defines a common general shape, an approach to radiation protection legislation. Indeed this bill follows very closely that template and is consistent with both state and territory laws.Let me just briefly now turn to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1998. This bill will deal with matters arising from the enactment of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 and for related purposes. Schedule 1 repeals those parts of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Act 1987 that created the Nuclear Safety Bureau and ANSTO safety review committee. These changes are very necessary because once the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 is passed the NSB will be incorporated into the new ARPANSA and the safety review committee will become redundant.Schedule 2 provides for the transfer of assets and liabilities of the NSB to the Commonwealth. It also provides for the CEO of ARPANSA to have all the powers and functions conferred on the director of NSB in relation to ANSTO during the transition period, the period of six months beginning on the day on which the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 commences.It is pleasing to know that not only has the third Howard budget delivered a surplus but it has increased nuclear research funding by more than $60 million over the next three years.0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—How much?NL6Johnston, Ricky, MPMrs JOHNSTON—ANSTO has been allocated $80 million. The first sum was $60 million. ANSTO has been allocated $80 million this year towards the new research reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney and the overseas shipment of spent nuclear fuel rods. By making these allocations the government demonstrates its commitment to the high standards within the industry.Before I conclude I just want to point out that ANSTO only recently, as late as this weekend, announced that it was able to win a substantial contract to help build new nuclear facilities in Thailand. It is also pleasing to know that in doing that, they will be using mainly Australian content, which is very good for our economy and of course also for our employment situation.I want to conclude as I started. Regulating activities that involve radiation and nuclear safety is extremely important. The setting up of ARPANSA is therefore welcomed and I am sure everybody in this parliament would agree with that, as the measures that are contained in this bill will ensure that regulation does take place. It is important that the health and safety, not only of the people who work within that industry, but indeed of the whole of our country, are protected at all levels so that we can continue to work within this industry, with certainty and safety.10:43:003467Lee, Michael, MPMr LEEMG4DobellALP00—I apologise for not being able to speak earlier in this debate but there was another matter in the House of Representatives chamber at that time.The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 , the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1998 and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Licence Charges) Bill 1998 establish the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA, covering all Commonwealth agencies where they involve radiation and nuclear safety. As several previous speakers have mentioned, the legislation flows from the Senate select inquiry report entitled No time to waste.ARPANSA will be a user-pays entity. The legislation seeks to address conflicts of interest between regulatory, research and service functions. The chief executive officer of ARPANSA will regulate Commonwealth activities which involve radiation and nuclear safety. It will also work with the states and territories to develop uniform regulatory controls, will advise the government and the public about radiation protection and safety and will undertake related research. The legislation also establishes the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council to give advice to the chief executive officer.The government claims the bill will result in a centre of excellence for regulation, advice, research and services supporting nuclear safety and radiation protection for employees, the public and the environment. This bill comes from, as I mentioned, the No time to waste report of the Senate Select Committee on the Dangers of Radioactive Waste. That committee was established in March 1995 and the opposition is very pleased to see the legislation now before the parliament. We note, however, that the explanatory memorandum states that the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council will include, amongst others, consumer groups. While it says that in the explanatory memorandum, it is not required under the legislation and it is, I understand, not mentioned in the second reading speech. Therefore, I move:That all words after `That' be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:`the bill be withdrawn and redrafted to provide for the appointment by the Minister to the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council of a representative of local government and a representative of affected community groups.'For the information of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Family Services (Ms Worth), I understand we cannot have votes in this chamber, so that ends up being determined in the House of Representatives.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. J.A. Crosio)—Debate may continue in this chamber, but you cannot take a vote. If you wish to have an amendment voted on, it will have to go to the parliament.MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—The reason we are moving this amendment is that we believe it is very important that the community at large is represented on that advisory council. Of course, local government has been playing a very important role in the debate about what should be the future of nuclear research in Australia. I note the presence of the member for Hughes (Mrs Vale) in the chamber. I am sure she is aware of the controversy about the Lucas Heights reactor in her own electorate. I will say a bit more about that later.For her information, one of the reasons I am moving this amendment is that David Hill, the Labor candidate who will be elected the member for Hughes at the next election, has spoken to me about the community concern about the government's changes in this area. As a result of my discussions with David, we will be making sure that this amendment seeks to provide a guarantee that local government and local residents are represented on the advisory council. We think this is something that is worthy of support. We will be watching very carefully how the member for Hughes decides to cast her vote on this proposal. For the information of the member for Hughes, the proposal will come to a vote not here but in the other chamber at some time in the future.0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—She hasn't seen the amendment yet.MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—It has just been circulated in the Main Committee. The amendment asks the government to withdraw this bill and to redraft it so the advisory council does include a representative from local government and a representative from community groups.I will go through some of the background as to why we think this is an issue which will be of vital importance to local residents in the Sutherland Shire area in southern Sydney and also to the local councils in that area. If anyone was listening to the AM program this morning, they would have heard that the nuclear reprocessing plant in the United Kingdom that is reprocessing some of the Lucas Heights waste has had some difficulties. There is now apparently some doubt about the manner in which the Australian nuclear waste will be reprocessed and the form in which that material might be returned to Australia. That in itself means that this is a very topical issue. We do not quite know what is going to happen to waste that we thought was going to be reprocessed in the United Kingdom.I draw the attention of the Main Committee to an article by Murray Hogarth in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 September, headed `Revealed: reactor rods corroded by water'. The article begins:Water has breached the supposedly airtight `dry storage' tubes for the highly radioactive spent fuel rods at Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, a document obtained by the Herald reveals.The water became contaminated by `fission products'—produced when nuclear fuel is used—says a briefing note for Sutherland Shire Council by a member of the reactor's confidential Safety Review Committee. The only community representative on the committee, Dr Garry Smith, reported in the note this week that in the most extreme case 90 litres of water had half-flooded a 15-metre-deep sealed storage tube.`These tubes were designed to be dry and filled with an inert gas to prevent corrosion of the highly radioactive fuel, he reported. ` A number of rods have corroded and released radioactive fission products into the water.'Dr Smith advised that an urgent investigation was required because he feared that ground-water off the site might become contaminated, despite reactor officials having said that the leaks were caused by rainwater.The revelation highlights fears surrounding the safety of storing old fuel rods at the 39-year-old reactor, and coincides with this week's Federal Government decision to build a new $300 million reactor at the site.To be fair to ANSTO, the article goes on later to state:But the executive director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), Professor Helen Garnett, confirmed yesterday that water had infiltrated parts of the main storage system.`It could well be that water has been there for several years.' Tests had shown that the source of the water was rain, discounting Dr Smith's ground-water concern. `I would prefer it did not happen,' Professor Garnett said. `But it is not a safety or environmental hazard to anybody.'ANSTO and the Federal Government have said repeatedly that the crowded and aging stockpile of about 1,600 spent fuel rods is safe.But the Mayor of Sutherland, Councillor Kevin Schreiber, said a `serious breach of safety standards' had been revealed. Dr Smith is Sutherland Council's principal environmental scientist.`I don't see how the minister can continue to refuse a full and independent inquiry into ANSTO's nuclear fuel storage when serious breaches such as these have occurred and are still to be publicly reported by ANSTO,' Cr Schreiber said.An article by Simon Grose in the Canberra Times on 26 September 1997 is headed `Lucas Heights exceeds own emission levels, criticised over audit methods' and it begins:The Nuclear Safety Bureau has found that the Australia Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's HIFAR nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights has not complied with audit criteria for the documentation of procedures and validation of monitoring methods.In its 39th quarterly report for the three months to June 30, the bureau also reported that:. Discharges from HIFAR of argon-41, a short-lived radioactive gas produced during the preparation of radio isotopes, exceeded levels set by ANSTO but were low compared with levels recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council.. ANSTO had agreed to radiographically examine above-ground welds in the reactor's secondary cooling system but examination of underground welds may not be undertaken.Despite these findings, the report concluded that the operational safety of the reactor was satisfactory during the period. The director of the bureau, Donald Macnab, told The Canberra Times yesterday that it looked `at things in a far more conservative fashion than ANSTO does.'This is very relevant to the need to have local representation on the advisory council. The next paragraph of the article is very relevant to explain the need for local council and community members to be represented on the advisory council. Mr Macnab stated about ANSTO:Their responsibility is to operate the reactor safely; our responsibility is to look over their shoulders and make sure they do it that way.If we needed any further evidence that this was an important issue, let me quote from an article in the Sunday Telegraph of 23 March 1997:Federal Liberal MP, Mrs Danna Vale, whose seat of Hughes covers the area, has written to Coalition senators urging them to support the inquiry, which will go before the Senate this week.That is the inquiry that produced the report that has triggered the legislation.She said that the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) had existed at Lucas Heights for 40 years and the community had accepted its existence.`But this acceptance has only been on the basis that at some stage the facility would close and be relocated to a more appropriate site,' Mrs Vale wrote.We will be keen to know if that is still the view of the member for Hughes, given the trouble she took to put that in writing to her Senate colleagues.We in the Labor Party believe that it is very important that the advisory council have, by legislation, local government representation and representatives of local communities. If you were looking at all of the local councils, right across Australia, Sutherland Shire would have the greatest claim to be the representative on that nuclear advisory council, because Sutherland Shire is the only council of Australia that has contained within its area a functioning nuclear reactor. You would have to say that, if Lucas Heights continues to have a nuclear reactor operating, then Sutherland Shire Council should have that right.Certainly, local government should be represented by law on that advisory council, and I am sure that the National Local Government Association would see the need for Sutherland Shire Council to be local government's representative on that advisory council. The very strong view that I have had from the Labor candidate and the future Labor member for Hughes, David Hill, is that he is going to fight very hard to make sure that the voice of the local residents is heard.0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—No-one could fight harder than Danna Vale.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! The honourable member for Dobell has the floor.MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—The assistant junior whip, the member for Fisher (Mr Slipper) states that no-one will fight harder than Danna Vale. She has not been too successful in having the nuclear reactor shut down and moved to a more appropriate site. That was the view she expressed—0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—She is a very successful local member.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—You will make your remarks through the chair. The debate is on the floor.MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—She was not too successful on that one.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! I call the member to order through the chair.MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—As we know, since that letter was written, the government has announced that it is going to build a new reactor at Lucas Heights. This emphasises the need to make sure that this amendment is carried so that local governments and local residents are represented on the advisory council. There is no point in relying on an explanatory memorandum, or assurances in this chamber, by people such as the parliamentary secretary who, with the best of intentions in the world, might be promoted on a future occasion. If Mr Howard is re-elected, this parliamentary secretary could be the person who is the next minister for health, given the comments on Lateline last night when the Minister for Health and Family Services (Dr Wooldridge) said that he wanted another job, basically. Or it might be the member for Bradfield (Dr Nelson) who becomes the parliamentary secretary looking after nuclear radiation matters. How do we know that any commitments given by the current parliamentary secretary would be bound by—Government members interjecting—MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—In the unlikely event that the Howard government is re-elected—10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMadam DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! I call the member for Dobell and I call—MG4Lee, Michael, MPMr LEE—In the very unlikely event that this mob gets back, what will be even more unlikely is that the member for Fisher ends up a minister in any re-elected government of the coalition. But even if the current parliamentary secretary gives us an assurance that local government and local communities will be represented on the advisory council, we have got no guarantee that that will be followed by a future minister for health, or a future parliamentary secretary, and that is why we need to make sure. There is even a possibility that this minister might give an assurance and then not keep it. But we know that would be unlikely.The only way we can guarantee that the residents of the Sutherland Shire and local government are represented on this advisory committee is to have this amendment carried, to require the legislation to be withdrawn, and for the legislation to be amended to guarantee that these two groups are represented on the advisory council. I would be very interested to know the views of the honourable member for Hughes on the amendment.10:58:003471Vale, Danna, MPMrs VALEVK6HughesLP10—It just absolutely amazes me to hear the comments from the member for Dobell (Mr Lee) on this particular legislation. Would that his party had acted on it in the 13 years that they were in government, and would that they had acted on it even after their own report from the reactor research review was handed down in 1993 when they had three years to act on the recommendations in that report. Would that that had happened. There would have been a lot greater protection for me, my family and my constituents in this particular area.This can be absolutely nothing but a political stunt. He talks about having representation from the local council and their representatives. Of course they are going to be on this committee. The regulations will cover that. As a matter of fact, the member for Dobell and his friends on the other side of the House might be interested to know that it has been the subject of some lobbying on my part since August last year, before this was before the cabinet.I extend my gratitude to my government, the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) and cabinet, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Family Services (Ms Worth), for actually having this legislation today before the House for debate. And isn't it just typical of the member for Dobell to say that he wants this amendment put in when it is going to delay the progress of this important legislation through the House? It is important for my constituents because for the first time in 40 years, since the establishment of that facility, they are going to have an agency that will protect the people and the environment.It will be responsible to the Minister for Health and Family Services (Dr Wooldridge), not the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism (Mr Moore). It will actually operate at arms-length from the activities of ANSTO—and that is not to take anything away from the activities of ANSTO at all, not in any way whatsoever. This is in keeping with what is understood now in practice worldwide: to have an independent regulatory agency that will act for the people and for the protection of the people and the environment.The government is to be commended because it is acting in that regard, and this is the recommendation from the review committee. It absolutely appals me that this facility has existed for 40 years without this kind of regulatory authority. It has taken this government and this member to get up there and force this through. I am grateful that they have listened. They have listened because it is important to my government, it is important to the Prime Minister and it is important to every member of cabinet that my constituents can be assured that they have the protection of this agency, and that is exactly what they are going to get.I will now continue with my formal speech. It gives me great pleasure to rise today to welcome the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 , together with enabling bills to cover licensing charges and consequential amendments. I have a particular and special interest in seeing this legislation come into force because Australia's only nuclear reactor is in my electorate of Hughes.It is located in the bushland suburb of Lucas Heights and it is operated by the Australian Nuclear Scientific and Technology Organisation. I will correct something here so that the parliament understands where it is situated. While it may be in a bushland suburb, there is still a buffer zone of almost two kilometres around the facility. The house that was the closest to ANSTO, when it was first established back in 1958, is still the closest residence to the establishment. But it is located in bushland and I think that should be noted for the record.It should also be noted that the bushland—I think the buffer zone is 1.6 to nearly two kilometres around—is a feral proofed area. Within that area, there is a population of wallabies and kangaroos which apparently grow so very well there that they are culled and used to stock national parks throughout New South Wales. That is just a bit of additional information about how well the establishment is operated.The reactor is a research reactor, and let me explain to members here how that differs from a power reactor: this reactor operates at 10 megawatts, whereas a power reactor operates at 3,000 megawatts. By way of history, the reactor was built at Lucas Heights in the Sutherland Shire in the mid-1950s. It was completed in 1958. I was a child living in the shire at Sylvania at the time, and I can recall the excitement in the local community about the reactor being built. It was considered to be a significant scientific milestone for Australia to have such a facility, and children in schools across Sydney were encouraged and inspired to study science and to look towards science in their future careers.The research reactor has now been operating in my neighbourhood for almost 40 years. At that time, and, most importantly, in recent years, with the significant growth in world consciousness about scientific safety and environmental protection, the facility established a sound safety record, which it scrupulously maintains in accord with community expectations. The facility employs between 800 and 900 local people, many of whom are my constituents and, with its policy of positive support for local businesses and tradespeople, it contributes over $50 million to the economy of my electorate.In the wider Australian context, it produces nuclear isotopes which are used in the delivery of diagnostic and therapeutic services to thousands of Australians. As a matter of fact, the isotopes produced at Lucas Heights save many Australian lives and are depended upon by an increasing number of Australians as medical science expands and adapts its application of nuclear medicine.I did hear what the member for Dobell said about the use of cyclotrons. But cyclotrons, I am informed, do not, and cannot, produce the full extent and the high sophistication isotopes that are produced from a nuclear facility. That is something that I am sure the member for Dobell will learn about as he proceeds with this debate.However, it has long been a concern of mine that, although the facility has been operating safely now for 40 years, its regulatory regime has been significantly inadequate for the operation of this kind of facility. Given the growing world consciousness regarding health and safety issues, and the heightened awareness of our responsibility to our environment over the last decade and a half, it is amazing that the previous government never had the political will to provide a proper legislative basis for the appropriate regulation of nuclear installations and radiation activities in Australia.The facility was thought to operate under conditions laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but this was dismissed by the research reactor review in 1993. So the other side has well had notice of this situation. Up to now, ANSTO has operated under authorisation issued by its board to its executive director. The Nuclear Safety Bureau had referred to this as, amongst other things, a de facto licence. Minutes from meetings of the safety review committee show that in certain areas of operation there has been regular confusion between the Nuclear Safety Bureau and ANSTO as to who has jurisdiction in certain areas of operation.Although the International Atomic Energy Agency has set the ground rules for independent regulation of the nuclear industry by which most countries abide, the previous Labor government had allowed the situation to drift along. The research reactor review, in 1993, concluded that this state of affairs could no longer be allowed to continue, but the previous government did absolutely nothing in the next three years of its office to change this situation. Its negligence and inactivity in this regard was nothing short of a national disgrace.As a long-time resident in the shire and neighbourhood of Australia's only nuclear research reactor, I have long been very concerned about this situation and very much aware that my family—and, since 1996, my constituents—did not have the protection of legislation to regulate such activities in the interests of health, safety and the environment. It has been of immense personal concern to me since my election as the member for Hughes to ensure that proper regulation comes to fruition. It is with immense personal satisfaction that I have been able to successfully lobby the government and the cabinet to take the actions necessary to put into legislation the recommendations of the research reactor review in this regard.The prime object of these bills is to protect the health and safety of the people of Australia, and to protect the unique Australian environment. These bills give effect to the cabinet decision to enact legislation to provide this protection by the regulation of all the Commonwealth's radiation and nuclear activities, and to provide the statutory base for the regulatory safety agency, to be called the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA.As directed by cabinet, the resources and expertise of the Australian Radiation Laboratory, ARL and the Nuclear Safety Bureau, NSB, to form the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency comes within the health and family services portfolio. Both the ARL and the NSB are health and family services portfolio agencies. The Australian Radiation Laboratory currently provides advice, research and services on the health and medical aspects of radiation. The Nuclear Safety Bureau reviews and monitors the nuclear safety of ANSTO's nuclear operations. Because of the high specialist expertise of both these bodies, their amalgamation as ARPANSA will provide a strong and informed regulatory environment in line with international best practice.ARPANSA will establish a regulatory scheme to oversee the operation of the Lucas Heights facility and the management of radiation sources, including ionising material and apparatus and non-ionising apparatus, where such activities are undertaken by the Commonwealth, Commonwealth entities and all those who do business with such entities. This legislation will provide a complete independent oversight body for the better protection and assurance of all my constituents. Most importantly for my constituents, a Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council will be established under the legislation and there will be capacity within the working groups for local representation.It will apply to all Commonwealth departments, including the Department of Defence. It will apply to corporate bodies of the Commonwealth, like ANSTO and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, and Commonwealth business enterprises, like Australian Isotopes. It will apply also to non-Commonwealth contractors working under contract to one of the aforementioned entities—for example, the public company Thiess, which is already contracted to the Department of Primary Industries and Energy for the Maralinga clean-up operation.All Commonwealth bodies that use radiation which may affect the health or wellbeing of members of the Australian public, employees or the environment will be regulated by ARPANSA. These include a variety of radiation users such as the Department of Customs, Australia Post and airport surveillance operators.ARPANSA will also impose regulatory controls on the operation and decommissioning of ANSTO's research reactor and the disposition of spent fuel. It will regulate and license each stage of the life of the replacement research reactor. This will include the siting, design, construction, operation and eventual decommissioning of the proposed replacement research reactor, which will only be authorised to proceed by ARPANSA when the agency is totally satisfied that there will be no undue risk to the health and safety of persons or the local environment.Many of my constituents have expressed real and justifiable concern about the storage of radioactive wastes on the site at ANSTO. This is also a matter which I have brought to the attention of this government. That we have not had a proper place to store Australia's radioactive waste is because of a lack of interest by successive federal governments, most especially the previous Labor government, whose member for the seat of Hughes then was also a minister of that government for eight years. What possible defence can be offered to the constituents of Hughes for such disinterest and neglect over 13 years in office?Now we have the member for Dobell standing up and acting as if all of a sudden it is the most important concern in the hearts of those opposite, when they had 13 years to do something about it for my constituents. Constipated by their own inactivity and ineptitude in the face of such a challenge, and in careless disregard for the people of my electorate, the previous Labor government allowed a de facto nuclear waste dump to be created in my electorate of Hughes at Lucas Heights.In the conclusion to section 17 of the research reactor review of 1993, which was Labor's research review, one of the review's onerous conditions was the crucial issue of the `final disposal of high level wastes, which depends on identification of a site and investigation of its characteristics'. It went on to say:A solution to this problem is essential to any future decision about a new reactor.Since that review, the Senate Select Committee on the Dangers of Radioactive Waste was convened. Part of its report was a recommendation that an above-ground dry storage repository be built on an appropriate site suitable to store all levels of radioactive waste. Such a repository would ensure that the waste was safe, secure and retrievable so that if and when permanent disposal methods are developed they can be put into action.ARPANSA will also regulate the establishment of a national nuclear surface radioactive waste repository. This national repository will provide for low- and intermediate-level waste suitable for shallow ground burial and arrangements for the safe storage of material not suitable for disposal in this way.Waste generated from nuclear reactor operation is a real problem and is of great concern to me and my constituents. It is with significant interest and appreciation that we welcome this government's announcement of its selection of a designated site in South Australia, near Maralinga, and its decision to set up an environmental impact statement to investigate this site's suitability as a national repository for radioactive waste, as recommended by the Senate select committee. It is this government that is doing that. This government is committed to the health and wellbeing of the Australian people and the Australian environment. Its actions in implementing the recommendations of the Senate select committee show that commitment.ARPANSA will work to develop jointly with the states and territories guidelines for the safe management of all radioactive wastes produced in Australia. In line with this government's determination to regulate Commonwealth entities, it will prohibit those entities from dealing with radioactive materials, radiation apparatus like X-ray machines, lasers, microwave transmitters and nuclear facilities, including the nuclear research reactors and the radioactive waste repositories, unless licensed to do so.It is important for my constituents to note that these bills will provide that compliance with licences, that conditions will be monitored, and that penalties will be imposed for breaches. It will also empower the gathering of evidence to support any prosecutions. Generally speaking, Commonwealth agencies and ANSTO have been responsible in protecting the health and safety of their employees and the public. I make the point that, rather than there being any evident need of regulation of ANSTO by the safety agency, it is not only appropriate but long overdue, in view of the contemporary world standards and public expectations, that such a body be subject to independent scrutiny by an agency with the necessary regulatory powers.This legislation will assure my constituents and all Australians that ANSTO continues to operate at, and meets the criteria of, international best practice. ARPANSA will maintain involvement with international organisations, such as the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation. Best practice will be ensured by incorporating their guidance into regulations and codes of practice. My constituents can be assured by this government that Australia is a party to international conventions on nuclear safety and radioactive waste management.It is important to note that the bill will provide ARPANSA with a statutory chief executive officer who will: establish the protocol for the regulation of activities of radiation and nuclear safety; jointly with the states and territories develop uniform protection and safety controls throughout Australia to protect workers, the public and the environment; provide advice on radiation protection and nuclear safety to the government and the public; and undertake research and provide services of a high standard to ensure radiation protection and nuclear safety.The council's functions will include advising the chief executive officer on matters of nuclear safety and radiation protection. There will also be capacity in the council's working groups to have local representation from members of the public. Furthermore, any concerns from the general public will also be able to be investigated by this agency at arm's length from the operations of ANSTO itself.It is to be noted again that this legislation is under the portfolio of the minister for health and not the minister for science, again signalling to the constituents of Hughes that it will operate at the strictest possible level of independence from ANSTO.I congratulate cabinet on its direction on this legislation, and I congratulate the government and the minister for health. I congratulate also the parliamentary secretary for the work she has done in bringing this important legislation to fruition. It demonstrates to my constituents and to the world not only that this government is proud of the achievements at ANSTO but that it will move also to assure the constituents of Hughes they will have the greatest possible protection. It is with pleasure I commend this legislation to the House.11:17:003476Cobb, Michael, MPMr COBBMF4ParkesNP10—I wish to contribute to this cognate debate on the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 , the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Licence Charges) Bill 1998 , and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1998 . I particularly want to congratulate the previous speaker, the member for Hughes (Mrs Vale), for her excellent and well prepared speech. Her local constituents must be very proud to have such a diligent and energetic member. I am sure she will continue to represent them into the future.The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 is about establishing a scheme for the Commonwealth to oversee the operation of radiation sources in Australia that are produced by the Commonwealth or by Commonwealth entities. That can include such mundane things as Customs running X-ray machines right through to the grander nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights that the previous member spoke about.The government has set up a regulatory framework to do this because it did not exist before—quite surprisingly, I have to say. The states and territories look after things that are produced by states and territories and private undertakings but there has been no fully comparable regulatory and oversighting body to look after Commonwealth agencies until this time. There are many departments and entities that are involved here, including the Department of Defence, CSIRO and ANSTO.I want to join with the previous speaker in congratulating the staff of ANSTO for the tremendous work they have done for Australia in recent decades in saving lives through the medical aspects of radioisotopes, and also for the work they have done, which is not as well recognised, in assisting the environment and assisting industrial safety through their necessary and very valuable work at Lucas Heights.From 1 July this year the Nuclear Safety Bureau and the Australian Radiation Laboratory will be combined, in a sense, into this new body called ARPANSA, and it will be managed by a CEO. It will be an independent statutory office that will provide independent scrutiny of such bodies. It will apply world's best practice to these activities and it will endeavour to get uniform regulatory controls throughout Australia.It will advise the government where appropriate about safety and protection. It will issue Commonwealth entities with licences so that you will need a licence to operate. It will monitor and enforce compliance and it will have the power where necessary to gather evidence for prosecutions if there are any transgressions.In short, this is all being set up for the safety of the public and for the safety of the environment. I am particularly interested to see that it is being done in such a way that it is not being too prescriptive. It will be quite flexible because this is an area which is evolving and changing all the time.For the rest of my comments I particularly want to speak about what may happen in Australia in the future and how this body will be beneficial in advising the government and ensuring the safety of the public and the environment. Thoughts that I have had in this area as to what might happen with nuclear radiation and power in this country were crystallised recently with an article I read by that eminent scientist Leslie Kemeny. He nowadays is the scientific and technical editor of the International Nuclear Energy Academy. He is a director of his own company as a consulting engineer and physician. He puts some interesting thoughts down on paper. It is relevant because we have finished within the last few weeks the Kyoto climate summit in which they talked about lowering greenhouse gas emissions around the world.I was disturbed with the great push of the Greens and the left wing in this country in wanting, without great thought, to shut down to a large degree the coal industry in Australia which does earn $7 billion to $8 billion of export income. I am the first to admit there is going to be increasing pressure on the coal industry in the future. What those critics did not talk about is what happens if this is wound down and what alternative energy sources we will have in this country. In particular let us have a decent debate about nuclear energy.It is interesting to look at the types of energy production sources around the world such as they exist. Hydro energy of course has been traditionally quite important. In Australia it generates about 10 per cent of our electricity. Canada is the highest. It generates about 60 per cent of its electricity there. But, generally speaking, the opportunities for expansion of this are quite limited and, even if there are good sites to build dams in the future, they are going to be increasingly difficult to do because of the environmental push.Oil I do not think is an alternative for electricity production. It is far too expensive and far too valuable a resource. Gas does have considerable possibilities particularly in Australia that is gas rich and we should look at this more and more.Coal has traditionally been burnt for electricity around the world particularly in Australia. The United States produces about 60 per cent of electricity from coal, Australia about 80 per cent and the rest of the world, including Europe, something of the order of 15 to 30 per cent. Coal is quite polluting. It churns out tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide as well as acid rain products like sulfur dioxide and has been known to poison literally thousands of lakes across Europe including in what we think are environmentally clean countries like Sweden. We are going to have to look more and more at the damage that coal does in the future.Solar power, while having a definite role, nevertheless is very limited in its use. It is very expensive. It is quite polluting in the sense that you have got to go out there and mine all these metals and minerals to make solar panels. If you were going to supply for example the city of Sydney with solar power, and that was to be the only source of power, you would probably want at least several hundred square kilometres of panels occupying the environment somewhere in this country. It does have its limitations, as desirable as it is. It is unreliable. I have White Cliffs in my electorate, for example. If there is a town in Australia on which the sun beats down on a regular basis, it is White Cliffs, but even there it was not successful in providing an electricity source.The other source of energy is nuclear power. France already produces more than 70 per cent of its electricity via this source and Sweden produces a little less. What does Australia produce from this source? Absolutely zero. It is one of the very few countries in the world, particularly developed countries, that does not produce any of its electricity from nuclear power. As we move into the 21st century that is perhaps an irresponsible position to be in. I think Australia has to look more to that.We produce about 175 terawatt hours of electricity in this country, which is a very small amount compared with the United States, which produces 3,500 terawatt hours. Nevertheless, we have to make our contribution. As more and more pressure is put on us to get down our carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, this is something that we cannot ignore. Electricity generation is a very high energy growth area around the world, not only in the established economies of the world but also in the developing countries. Nuclear power is overall providing 17 per cent of that but that is growing rapidly indeed.Nuclear power, despite the tragedy and the horror of Chernobyl, still has the best track record of all the energy sources. It provides extremely clean power. The emissions are almost zero. It is becoming more and more cost-competitive, and the supply of it is unlimited. Until we move to fusion power, this is something we are going to have to look more at in this country.Australia, it can be said, has very high and cheap coal supplies close to the markets. If we switch to nuclear power, particularly in the eastern part of the country, it would be more expensive to provide electricity at this stage. However, we have just seen the Loy Yang A 2,000-megawatt plant in Victoria, which runs on brown coal, sold to Horizon Energies for $4,855 million—a considerable sum of money. That happened last year. It makes you wonder just how much longer coal is going to beat uranium as a competitive energy source in this country.It was interesting at the Kyoto climate conference that those who were criticising Australia's contribution were sitting there in the international convention centre in that magnificent city, reading their documents from the light that was provided and enjoying the airconditioning from power at least partly supplied by 54 nuclear power stations throughout Japan.If some of the more extreme elements of that conference had had their way and had been able to shut down nuclear power in Japan, then those 54 nuclear power stations would have had to switch to, say, coal and that would have pumped out another 287 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Think about that. Because those 54 nuclear power stations are allowed to operate, and operate as cleanly as they do, they are saving the polluting of the world's atmosphere to the tune of 287 million tonnes equivalent of carbon dioxide every year. That is equivalent, in round figures, to about three-quarters of Australia's total emissions alone. So it is food for thought, indeed.Australia mines a lot of uranium. We are very rich in uranium: we have about 30 per cent of the world's reserves, even though we only sell about 10 per cent of the world's supply, because of restrictions that we have had in this country with the two-mine and three-mine policies. Our uranium is sold to approximately 11 countries, including Japan, so that the light and the airconditioning that the delegates who were critical of our policy at Kyoto were enjoying was actually supplied by Australia's uranium. I do not know whether they ever stopped to think of that.We mine uranium in this country in the Northern Territory and in South Australia. It is interesting to contemplate that to dig 25 tonnes of uranium out of the ground and send it to an overseas country—and we sell several thousand tonnes of it per year—saves one million tonnes of carbon dioxide belching into the atmosphere every year, when that uranium is used for electricity generation—which all of it is used for: none of it goes into nuclear weapons, of course.During the Kyoto conference, the ABC was running opinions from every nut case and fruit loop that Australia was able to put up—some of them coming from the Senate. All I thought they were demonstrating was a lack of intellectual honesty and a pious and arrogant disloyalty to Australian workers and Australian taxpayers, let alone to the environment overall. It seemed to me that no credible alterative was ever put at any stage in terms of what was supposed to be replacing coal in the short term. No doubt, if you had mentioned nuclear energy, they would have gone into some sort of tailspin themselves.The fact of the matter is that the world has 445 nuclear power plants operating now, and another 35 are being built. If we closed those down and switched to coal, we would be belching out another 2,300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. On balance, they are doing the environment a service, and this should be applauded. By all means we should continue to strive for safer nuclear power plants. In former Communist countries where they have run shoddy plants—0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—Chernobyl.MF4Cobb, Michael, MPMr COBB—Such as Chernobyl.0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—You have been there, or close to it.MF4Cobb, Michael, MPMr COBB—I have been close to Chernobyl: Bulgaria was the closest I got to it. We have to put pressure on those countries to pull those plants into line. But, where they are run properly, we have no particular worries.RW5NELSONDr Nelson—India is a worry.MF4Cobb, Michael, MPMr COBB—The member for Bradfield remarks that India is a worry. India, in its recent actions, has been incredibly irresponsible. But what we are debating today is about the clean and safe production of nuclear energy to generate electricity, and not about the detonating of bombs.The Australian Conservation Foundation in October last year proposed an $8 per tonne carbon tax in this country, which would have added about 0.22c per kilowatt hour to the cost of electricity in this country. The more pressure they put on the coal industry in this country, the more pressure there is going to be for a nuclear power plant to be established.Until now, hydrocarbon energy production in the world has been in many ways quite wasteful, often quite expensive and, as I have said, very polluting. The only reason they are getting away with it is that often you cannot see what is being belched out. You can see a bit of smoke coming out a smokestack, but each of these smokestacks is dropping into the atmosphere what are often thousands of tonnes of pollutants, some of which are actually radioactive. Many people do not realise it, but there are radioactive elements in coal and, when it is burnt, if the filters particularly are not working well on the stacks of these plants, these radioactive elements are poured out into the atmosphere to a disturbing degree. That fact has to be considered, as well.I believe that the hydrocarbons in this world are becoming more limited and a lot of thought has to be given to rationing them to supply the feedstock requirements of the industrial, agricultural, pharmaceutical and chemical industries of this country. These are some thoughts that I have laid out for consideration. I believe that this bill today, which sets up a regulatory mechanism, will be well placed and will have the framework to be able to regulate such industries if we get to that stage in this country. I say `if we get to that stage', though it is, of course, inevitable. Some people might deny it but, even if nuclear power generation in this country is some time off, it will come some time next century, and probably sooner than people realise.With those closing comments I congratulate the government for setting up these regulatory mechanisms in the way that they have. It has been long overdue in this country; it is quite remarkable that it has not happened before. I congratulate the government and the Minister for Health and Family Services (Dr Wooldridge) for their foresight and diligence in this area.11:36:003480Wakelin, Barry, MPMr WAKELINHV5GreyLP10—The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998, as we know, introduces a regulatory control for all Commonwealth radiation and nuclear safety activities in Australia. The bill will protect the health and safety of the people and environments that are subject to radioactive practices undertaken by the Commonwealth. It will apply to Commonwealth entities, employees and those non-government entities contracted by the Commonwealth, for example, Defence, CSIRO and ANSTO. In fact, a Commonwealth entity must be licensed by this legislation in order to deal with radioactive materials, equipment and nuclear facilities. There are certain exemptions, notably for defence and national security purposes.The origin of the bill was a recommendation of the Senate Select Committee on the Danger of Radioactive Waste which identified a regulatory deficiency in this field. State and territory governments have been particularly supportive of this reining in of unchecked Commonwealth powers. From 1 July, the functions and resources of the Nuclear Safety Bureau and the Australian Radiation Laboratory will combine to form the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency which will be part of the Department of Health and Family Services. The role of the agency will be to regulate Commonwealth activities involving radiation and nuclear safety; to work with states and territories to develop uniform regulations; to inform and advise the government and the public on radiation protection and nuclear safety, and undertake related research. This organisation will be responsible for the regulation of the proposed national radioactive waste repository and will be responsible for ensuring the safety of that facility. I will now just talk to that repository for a minute or two.The history of the low level radioactive waste, particularly that which has been stored in the Sutherland Shire in Sydney and in other areas, has been well documented. In 1994 the waste was transferred to Commonwealth land in Woomera and the government has proceeded with the repository proposal to stage 3, with stages 1 and 2 going back something like 10 or 15 years.It is pleasing that the government has introduced this legislation to cover, as I have already said, flaws and gaps in the legislation to make sure that this important community issue is dealt with in the appropriate way. There is always a concern in the community about these issues. Nevertheless, as a community we have an equal responsibility to manage this material.There are so many upsides to the usage. In industrial and medical areas there is a whole range of ways this material is used and now we need to have a way whereby we can store it responsibly and in the national interest. I join with the member for Parkes (Mr Cobb) in congratulating the government on introducing this bill and I am sure we all wish it well in its future.11:40:003481Worth, Trish, MPMs WORTH8V5AdelaideLP10—in reply—Mr Deputy Speaker, I will begin by thanking all members for their contributions in this debate, and especially the member for Hughes (Mrs Vale) who, as we have heard today, has put her case for her constituents so well. I can inform other members that she not only puts her case well in debate, as we have heard her so eloquently do today, but also very effectively lobbies everyone from the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) down—including on this issue.I would hate to see any delay of this legislation because of amendments moved by the member for Dobell (Mr Lee). As the member for Hughes has told us, there have been too many delays already. We need to be getting on with this legislation. Labor had 13 years and nothing eventuated. The bill must be seen through to fruition because of not only the constituents of Hughes and the rest of the Australian community but also our international obligations. The grandstanding of the opposition on this when this government is actually doing something positive about it does not stand up to too much scrutiny.The member for Bonython (Mr Martyn Evans) as well as the member for Dobell raised concerns about the membership of the council. It should be said that the council is to be an expert body. An example that easily comes to mind is the National Health and Medical Research Council. The government considers this proposed council to be important. While the detail is not in this legislation, it will be in the regulations, which are being drafted as we speak.The regulations will spell out exactly who will be on the council and the types of representation on the council. There will be community representation, state and territory representation and, importantly, expert representation. The member for Dobell was asking questions as to the guarantees I might give that another minister or parliamentary secretary may not live up to. That is not an issue: it will be there in the regulations. The government considers these things to be very important and would not leave it hanging loose like that.The whole framework for this legislation relies on a lot of detail in regulation and that is entirely appropriate. The member for Bonython also mentioned his concerns about the suitability of Lucas Heights. He should be reminded that a Senate inquiry is under way at the moment on the suitability of Lucas Heights as an appropriate place for the new reactor, and a number of other associated issues as well. I look forward to that report. I understand it will be available at the end of June.He also expressed concern about the powers granted to inspectors. Most members would want adequate powers available to inspectors, when you consider that community safety and the environment are in question. This is very similar to other Commonwealth enactments where inspectors are required to look at hazardous materials or check for potential hazards. There is one example of this in the Therapeutic Goods Act.I am sure that any concerns genuinely held by the opposition will be dealt with. I hope it is not just a question of grandstanding. I also hope that we will see this legislation through the House of Representatives and the Senate as quickly as possible, because it is particularly important legislation.Because it is also reasonably technical I would like to put those technicalities on the record. Today we are debating a series of bills designed to protect the health and safety of persons and the environment from harm arising from radiation practices undertaken by Commonwealth entities. The first bill is the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998, which establishes for the first time a regulatory framework to enable all Commonwealth radiation and nuclear activities to be regulated. The other two bills, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1998 and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Licence Charges) Bill 1998 , are adjuncts to the first bill.The ARPANS bill is a critical piece of legislation which closes a current gap in regulation where the states and territory government activities and private undertakings are regulated by state and territory radiation laws but Commonwealth agencies have operated without corresponding Commonwealth oversight and regulation. The bill applies to all Commonwealth entities and their employees and to non-Commonwealth entities when these are contracted to the Commonwealth. This includes all Commonwealth departments such as Defence, bodies corporate such as CSIRO and ANSTO, and any person who is a party to a contract with a Commonwealth entity.Under the provisions of the bill, no Commonwealth entity can deal with radioactive materials or radiation apparatus, or any aspects of a nuclear facility, unless licensed to do so in accordance with this legislation. This means that Commonwealth activities ranging from using an X-ray machine to the safe and appropriate decommissioning of the nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights are prohibited unless a licence has been issued in accordance with this bill. The bill provides for exemptions to the general prohibition, including specific exemptions for certain defence and security activities in the national interest. Criteria for other exemptions on the basis of very low risk will be set out in regulation under this legislation.There is very broad support for the aims of the bill. The value of legislation such as this has been recognised by all parties in this chamber. In 1996 the Senate Select Committee on the Dangers of Radioactive Waste produced a report, No time to waste, with the close involvement of the Greens, the Democrats, the Australian Labor Party and the current coalition government. In that report the committee made recommendations strongly supporting:. . . the proposal for an independent regulator of Commonwealth bodies' radiation activities, with functions of regulating, licensing, monitoring and imposing penalties for breaches of licences.The committee also made recommendations regarding the need to resolve any potential conflict of interest between regulatory and other functions of the new agency and the need for community representation on advisory bodies. I am pleased to report that this bill incorporates all of those recommendations and delivers on the government's commitment to close the regulatory gap identified by the committee.Regulation of Commonwealth activities is also strongly supported by all state and territory governments. In August last year I presented to all health ministers a strategy for pursuing a national uniform regulatory framework. Ministers wholeheartedly supported my proposal and since then the Commonwealth and all states and territories have worked together to produce such a framework. I am pleased to note that this bill has been crafted following close consultation with states and territories and that it complies with the template for nationally uniform radiation protection legislation which was jointly developed by all jurisdictions.The provisions of this bill have been developed in close consultation with those Commonwealth agencies and departments which will be regulated by this legislation, including ANSTO, Defence, CSIRO, Industry, Science and Tourism, Primary Industries and Energy, Foreign Affairs and Customs. As honourable members would note, the style of this bill is such that it relies heavily on details contained in regulations for its operations. The development of regulations made under this bill will be the subject of the same extensive consultation as has characterised the development of the bill itself. I am sorry that the member for Dobell is not here to hear that detail.What does this bill do? How will the regulatory framework described in the bill be implemented? The bill provides for the establishment of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, to be known as ARPANSA, within the Department of Health and Family Services. From 1 July 1998, the functions and resources of the currently existing Nuclear Safety Bureau and the Australian Radiation Laboratory will be combined to form ARPANSA. This agency will also take responsibility for the regulatory matters detailed in the bill.ARPANSA will be managed by a CEO, an independent statutory office which is created in the bill. The functions of the CEO will include regulating, in accordance with international best practice, activities within the Commonwealth which involve radiation and nuclear safety; working with the states and territories to develop uniform regulatory controls throughout Australia; informing and advising the government and the public on radiation protection and nuclear safety; and undertaking research and providing a service of a high standard to ensure radiation protection and nuclear safety.It is clearly important that the CEO has access to expert advice and input from a range of sources, including the community. The bill therefore provides for the establishment of the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council. Members of this council will be appointed by the minister for health. The council will include representatives from the community, the states and territories as well as others with appropriate experience. Each member will be appointed on the basis of their standing and their expertise in fields relevant to radiation protection.The council will oversee the work of a number of standing committees, some of which have already undertaken substantial and important work, including the Radiation Health Committee and the Nuclear Codes Committee. The standing committees will also comprise experts in the field, including community and public interest representatives.In summary, ARPANSA, under the direction of the CEO, will serve a number of complementary functions. Before I outline those, I say again that I would hope it was not ignorance on the part of the member for Dobell in moving his amendment to this bill, because briefings are available to all shadow ministers when they are required. On something as important as this, and following the Senate committee, I am sure he would have been up to date. From that, I can only conclude that he thought this might be some way to cast a red herring to in some way tarnish the best interests of the government, or perhaps it might have been just playing very local politics in the electorate of Hughes. I say again that no member could have put more effort into this issue than has the member for Hughes, as indeed she does with so many of the other issues that she takes up on behalf of her electorate. I would expect that the people of Hughes would be not pleased with little antics like this and in fact would be pleased to see that legislation is now coming before the parliament following 13 years of neglect in this area from the former government.To get back to the detail of ARPANSA's functions, it will issue Commonwealth entities with licences in respect of radioactive material, radiation apparatus, and nuclear and other facilities. Attached to each licence will be a series of conditions. It will be an offence under the legislation for a controlled person to deal with controlled materials, apparatus or nuclear and other facilities without a licence or contrary to the licence conditions. Penalties will apply to breaches of the act, regulations and licence conditions.As ARPANSA will be responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the provisions, it is important that the bill provides for appropriate powers to gather evidence to support prosecutions where necessary. It is the government's view that prosecutions would be an avenue of last resort against its own agencies, but there is no doubt that where a safety breach is significant ARPANSA will have the capacity to respond appropriately.ARPANSA will continue, and appropriately expand, the excellent research work currently undertaken by the Nuclear Safety Bureau and the Australian Radiation Laboratory. It is essential that this regulation is underpinned by an independent research capability. This will include research associated with radiation and nuclear safety, such as public health and environmental issues. ARPANSA will also continue to be involved in international fora. It is also clearly important that Australia's interests in the international arena are well served by an authoritative, independent, expert voice.The cost of undertaking functions specified in the bill will be recovered, as appropriate, from regulated Commonwealth agencies. In regard to this matter, I draw members' attention to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Licence Charges) Bill 1998 before you. The information on charges is represented in a separate bill because annual charges are treated as taxes and the constitution requires that taxes must be dealt with separately in purpose specific legislation. This bill enables appropriate cost recovery processes by providing for fees and charges to be levied on Commonwealth entities requiring a licence under the legislation. No private individuals or corporations will be required to obtain a licence or to pay any fees.For the purposes of establishing appropriate annual fees, the Commonwealth will employ an independent consultant to advise on cost recovery. All Commonwealth entities to be levied under this bill will be closely consulted during the project and during the subsequent determination of appropriate charges. It will then be possible to develop regulations under this bill to reflect the fees and charges to be levied.The third bill which is before us today is the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1998. This bill details necessary changes to existing legislation to accommodate the ARPANS bill. The effect of the consequential amendments bill is threefold. Firstly, the bill details changes that are necessary to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Act 1987. As a result of the introduction of the ARPANS bill the key change to the ANSTO Act is the repealing of those parts of the act which established the Nuclear Safety Bureau and the Safety Review Committee.As I have previously mentioned, once the ARPANS bill is passed the Nuclear Safety Bureau and the Australian Radiation Laboratory will be combined to form the basis of the new Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency—ARPANSA—within the Department of Health and Family Services. The CEO and staff of the new agency will have responsibility for administering the new legislation and regulating Commonwealth entities involved in radiation and nuclear safety activities. With the establishment of ARPANSA the Safety Review Committee will become redundant.Secondly, the bill transfers the assets and liabilities of the Nuclear Safety Bureau to the Commonwealth.Thirdly, the bill ensures that the current powers of the director of the Nuclear Safety Bureau, as set out in the ANSTO Act, are conferred on the CEO of ARPANSA during any transitional period. This will ensure continuity between the present processes and the future regulatory regime. Consequential amendments set out in this bill will ensure the appropriate and seamless operations of the two Commonwealth acts.In conclusion, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill and associated bills will result in a centre of excellence for regulation, advice, research and services supporting radiation protection and nuclear safety of employees, the public and the environment.I again thank members for their contribution and commend this bill to the parliament.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. N.M. Dondas)—The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Dobell has moved an amendment that all words after `That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. Those of that opinion say aye, to the contrary no. I think the ayes have it.3J4SAWFORDMr Sawford—The noes have it.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—As it is necessary to resolve this question to enable further questions to be considered in relation to this bill, in accordance with standing order 277, the bill will be returned to the House for further consideration.Bills3485r4983485Consideration resumed from 8 April, on motion by Ms Worth:That the bill be now read a second time.UNKNOWNMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. N.M. Dondas)Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. N.M. Dondas)—The question is that the bill be now read a second time. Those of that opinion say aye, to the contrary no. I think the ayes have it.3J4SAWFORDMr Sawford—The noes have it.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—As it is necessary to resolve this question to enable further questions to be considered in relation to this bill, in accordance with standing order 277, the bill will be returned to the House for further consideration.Bills3486r5053486Consideration resumed from 8 April, on motion by Ms Worth:That the bill be now read a second time.UNKNOWNMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. N.M. Dondas)Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. N.M. Dondas)—The question is that the bill be now read a second time. Those of that opinion say aye, to the contrary no. I think the ayes have it.3J4SAWFORDMr Sawford—The noes have it.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—As it is necessary to resolve this question to enable further questions to be considered in relation to this bill, in accordance with standing order 277, the bill will be returned to the House for further consideration.Miscellaneous34863486Debate resumed from 5 March 1998, on motion by Mr Reith:That the House take note of the paper.11:58:003486Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO7T4ProspectALP00—Can I say at the outset that I am actually continuing a debate that was brought on very quickly on 5 March of this year. It is ironic when one thinks that the report that we are talking about, the national report into local government which under the 1995 Commonwealth act requires the minister to table it in the House, should have a little bit more debate than what we seem to be doing. It was brought on very quickly at the end of the session when there were only four or five minutes left to debate the issues and now we seem to be having it again at the end of a Main Committee sitting because we have a few moments left over.I believe it is doubly ironic that we have got this report now before us just two days after the Commonwealth has brought down its 1998 budget. Prior to that we had the Australian Local Government Association putting pressure on all representatives right across Australia requesting that they get the message over very clearly to the government about the effects of the cuts that had occurred in the 1997 budget and how that had affected local government.The 1997 budget cuts totalled $14.7 million and in my state of New South Wales we lost $4,754,758 as a consequence. When you distribute that through local government in New South Wales it adds up to a number of services which local government has had to cut.I believe when the Treasurer (Mr Costello) in 1997 suspended that agreement there was no formal assurance that the agreement would be reinstated and the funding base restored to an appropriate level for the 1998 budget. That was despite, even then, strong representations to the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) by all the premiers of all of the states and territories. In April of this year local government was again asking us as elected representatives at a Commonwealth level to put pressure on both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to make sure that those grants were restored to their original area of priority.What we saw then following the budget on Tuesday night was that, even though the local government financial institutions funding was restored, in real terms the fact remained that the 1997 budget had permanently cut the funding base to local government by something like $15 million per year. That has not been restored following the budget on 12 May and what that really means then is that the increase that has come to local government this year of $24 million, which I am sure the government is going to get up and crow about all over Australia, really should have been $39 million.There should have been a commitment by this government to restore those originally suspended funding cuts to local government. Our urban areas are going to suffer from that because there is going to be continual, ongoing loss to local government and, more importantly I think, regional areas very much are going to be hard hit.I believe that local government now Australia-wide has certainly put in measures on where they expect funding to go and also what they expect to do in their own areas. But, more importantly, in a report such as this we have the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business (Mr Reith), when he tabled the report, saying that the Commonwealth has become a major contributor to the funding of local government and is providing the expertise. We are expecting overviews and we are expecting local government to get their act together. I believe what we should be doing is honouring commitments that have come about in the past and those for the restoration of that funding suspended in 1997.I can talk more personally of only my own areas that I represent. Not only have we had cuts in financial assistance grants and not only have we had cuts in road funding grants but we have had the absolute abolition of all flood mitigation programs. That has caused a great deal of discontent in areas such as mine. I was very pleased on Saturday when I launched the flood icon that was put together by Fairfield Council and funded by them and the state government of New South Wales. We were able to bring together an education program through the combination of a school—our Fairfield High School students—and local artists and very graphically educate people in the area about flood mitigation.I bring that up during this local government report because I am very concerned that we have now had not only general cuts not restored in the 1998 budget but we have had no flood mitigation money restored in the 1998 budget. It means areas like mine are going to be grappling with great difficulty in trying to fund what should have been ongoing programs to protect the community I represent. We also have a very difficult problem because flooding does not occur every day of the week and people seem to become immune to the fact that it has not occurred for quite a few years. That is why it was very important that last Saturday we were able to launch a very intensive education program but more importantly an icon that shows very descriptively how the flood levels of our area had been in the 1956, 1986 and 1988 floods.I might add that in 1988 I had in my local area houses under two and three metres of water and something like 500 people had to be rescued. You do not think that happens in residential areas of an urban part of a local government but, believe me, it does and it has occurred on more than one occasion. That is what I am trying to bring in together. We cannot continue to expect local government to deliver its services while at the same time at a Commonwealth level we do not give them a guarantee of funding. Nor can we expect them to keep programs that are going to better the communities as a whole when we have a stop-start arrangement in regard to how funds are going to be allocated.In the meantime, I can only say to local government, particularly the areas of Fairfield and Holroyd, to keep up the good work. Let us be assured that we are going to have some sensible application at a Commonwealth level on where local government is going to go in the future not only with the tabling of this report but also I believe from contributions from the Australian Local Government Association as well as local councils across Australia. We need to make sure that this government is kept on its toes and kept informed of the loss to the community and how much it suffers when governments do not meet their commitments.This report will talk about efficiency in local government for the 1996-97 year. Because the minister is obligated to table reports in the House, it will probably be time to have another report tabled when we still have not finished the debate on the one before us. It is time to reiterate that we did have a commitment on flood mitigation programs, from Commonwealth, state and local government, when that commitment was a two to one ratio. Certainly it was something that all governments at the time were very proud of.The Howard government abolished that urban flood mitigation program in 1996. I was hoping it would have been reinstated in 1997 and it was not. A certain amount of money was given out when cheques went missing and then came into the throw again for a very few councils in New South Wales. I think the member for Page (Mr Causley) had a small contribution made in 1996 and, because of the outcry of the state government at the time, they realised that they had to at least make contributions to a number of metropolitan councils who were well ahead in the allocation of priorities in that flood mitigation program. My council of Fairfield, in particular, got something like $700,000.When you make contributions on a two to one basis, for every $2 it is spending the Commonwealth is getting $5 worth of work done in that community and the people overall are gaining from that type of contribution. Yet we have seen that excellent program scrapped. In my area it is going to mean that something like $33 million is still outstanding on flood mitigation works and that is in about today's dollars. Council had a program and an estimate of completing all their flood mitigation works over the next 15 years. That is certainly going to go on a lot further now. They will not be able to meet anywhere near that target.It worries me because populations change, particularly in urban areas. People move in. We have not had a major flood there since 1988. When people have moved in they have become very blase about it. They say, `It can't happen. It won't affect me.' I can tell you it does affect people. During the last flood, we even had the Hume Highway closed off for something like two or three days. If not for the tremendous effort at local level with the state emergency services, we could have lost lives.I appeal again to the Commonwealth government that, if you want value in programs, you have to look at involving all levels of government, particularly when you are thinking about the programs that local government becomes very much involved in and becomes very efficient in implementing on the ground. If we look at microeconomic reforms, and at the contribution that local government makes, we have to take that into account.Another area that also worries me, as far as local government is concerned—and I probably will not have time to bring it up during this debate with the report now being tabled—is where we are going to go with the so-called tax package of the Commonwealth government. Local government has also become very aware that a GST could be on the cards for them. They are going to be suffering enormously if a GST is introduced. Some of the surveys that they have done estimate it is going to cost local government millions and billions of dollars if the type of GST that is being talked about is introduced in this tax package, whenever it sees the light of day.I would appeal that consideration be given to all of these authorities who are expected to implement certain policies that we direct at a Commonwealth level. They are expected more and more to implement them without the means or the funding with which to do it. As you know, in New South Wales we do have rate pegging. It is something that I have always supported over a long period of time, even though councils object to it and feel that they do not adequately have the means to move their programs around to meet circumstances as they come forward. When one looks at the differentiation between one council and another, and how they move their rates about, perhaps that is something that we have to have in circumstances where better estimation of budgets has to come about.This report talks about particularly reform. I want to talk about more than just reform. I want commitment. I want commitment given through the Commonwealth through their budget and through the states through their budgets, so that the local authority can implement their programs. We always have that cliche that local governments are closest to the people. I can assure the Commonwealth members that they are. You only have to have your local residents come in at times to complain that the garbage is not picked up or of other things that are happening. People are aware of lack of services but, more importantly, they are aware that the Commonwealth government has reneged on its funding.(Time expired)12:08:003489Filing, Paul, MPMr FILINGQT4MooreIND00—I am grateful for the opportunity to finally speak on this report.0V5SLIPPERMr Slipper—How many times have you rehearsed this speech?QT4Filing, Paul, MPMr FILING—I do not need to rehearse speeches because I speak from the heart, as the member for Fisher knows, and on behalf of my constituents.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. N.M. Dondas)—Order! I would ask the honourable member to direct his remarks through the chair.QT4Filing, Paul, MPMr FILING—Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am always prepared to represent my constituents in a sincere and efficient manner without fear or favour, and, for that matter, without the fear of the party whip interfering with me, because I am an Independent. I am grateful for this opportunity.In this report, parliament recognises the legitimate roles of local government in the areas of service delivery and various other functions to which it is suited. These are crucial functions, as the third tier of government in our system—that of local shires and city councils—is essential in the provision of basic services, ranging from waste management through to planning approvals, to health and cultural services, and to roads and infrastructure work. Local government is also important in its complementary function in conjunction with state and federal services. Without healthy, properly representative and accountable local government, our overall system of government is significantly weakened.This brings me to the state of my own local government authority, the city of Wanneroo. Members in this place will remember that, in the past, I have stood as a strong critic of corruption in the city of Wanneroo. My efforts in part forced the state government to open an inquiry, and later a royal commission, into what was known as Wanneroo Inc. As a result of the inquiries, one-time Liberal mayor Wayne Bradshaw has been imprisoned, and former perjured Liberal state member Wayde Smith is now in jail.Accusations went deeper, however, and the then Attorney-General and her husband were alleged to have strong links to the group of people that control the Liberal Party in the district that supported and nurtured the control that Mayor Bradshaw had over the city council. They were later cleared of wrongdoing within the terms of the reference of the royal commission.Although the matters relating to Wanneroo Inc. took place well before the last federal election, its effects continue to be felt. I believe that my stand against corruption in this matter in the northern suburbs, and the subsequent loss of tens of thousands of dollars of illegal fundraising, were an important feature of my not being endorsed as the Liberal candidate for Moore in 1996.In 1997 and 1998, with the royal commission as a catalyst, the state coalition government decided to suspend all of the democratically elected councillors in Wanneroo and subsequently to split the council into the city of Joondalup and the shire of Wanneroo. The suspension of the councillors beggars belief. The state coalition government actually used the pretence that things had not changed since the days of Bradshaw in order to justify their actions. But the reality is that three former councillors from those days sit on the state government's benches. In other words, three of the people from the days of Wayne Bradshaw's term of office, or from the period when Wayne Bradshaw had strong influence in the city of Wanneroo, now sit on state government benches, deemed to be above suspicion—while councillors who were not even in office during the Wanneroo Inc. days have been suspended.In fact, the only three councillors who remain from those days and have thus now been punished were in fact whistleblowers. They were people who went to make complaints against what they thought was wrongdoing in the local government authority. What kind of message is that? A cynic could be excused for thinking that they were being punished for blowing the whistle on a very cosy arrangement in the northern suburbs, an arrangement that suited the former mayor, Wayne Bradshaw, very well indeed.The suspension of councillors allowed the state government to go ahead with its plan to split Wanneroo without serious coordinated opposition from them. The way that it has been done makes it look like a serious misuse of political power by the state government in order to achieve its ends more easily. Whether this is the case is difficult to say: throughout the process, the state government has provided scant detail on why it was necessary to split the city of Wanneroo.This is made more difficult to understand when one knows that the same state government has made a detailed exploration of amalgamating cities and shires elsewhere, as in the case of Albany in the south-west. Their rationale is to achieve economies of scale that will significantly enhance efficiency and improve services to ratepayers there. The process mirrors a long and substantial process undertaken by the Victorian government. The member for Maribyrnong (Mr Sercombe), who is present today, will of course know about that process, whereby a number of small shires and councils have been amalgamated in order to achieve efficient operations in the third tier of government in that state.What then is the rationale for splitting Wanneroo, which has achieved a range of efficiencies and economies by virtue of its size and corporate knowledge? Not only can it deliver services at reasonable levels of rates and charges but it also has successfully operated substantial business activity on behalf of its ratepayers, in order to subsidise its services without recourse to significant increases in rates and charges.The neighbouring city of Stirling, also earmarked for being broken down, commissioned an independent review of the effects of a split. This showed an estimated increase in running costs, owing to losses in economy of scale, of $16 million or 22.78 per cent per year. In the current climate, this will only be offset by increased rates, reduced scope of services to residents, improvements in productivity and increased charges for use of facilities and services.Importantly, the state government has not indicated what it believes will be the real effect on the residents of Wanneroo—A division having been called in the House of Representatives—Sitting suspended from 12.15 p.m. to 12.34 p.m.Adjournment349110000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—Order! It being past 12.30 p.m., I propose the question:That the Main Committee do now adjourn.349112:33:003491Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TANNERYU5MelbourneALP00—On Monday I am visiting the electorate of McMillan to talk about road funding issues and I would like to make some reference to one particular issue that is of considerable importance in the electorate of McMillan. Before so doing, I would like to make some comments on the context, particularly in the light of the budget of a couple of days ago.National highway funding in Australia in the 1995 budget—the last Labor budget—was $834 million. In last year's budget that went down to $697 million. In the budget two days ago, for 1998-99, it was again slashed, to $675 million. So we have had a drop, within the space of three budgets, from $834 million to $675 million. It is also important to acknowledge that, on the basis of the government's own figures, over four years funding for the national highway maintenance program, which is roughly half of the total, is going to be reduced by half. That will obviously cause severe problems down the track for the national highway in many parts of Australia.It is also important, as a matter of context, to point out that funding for Victoria as a proportion of total federal road funding has diminished considerably since Labor lost office. Throughout the 1990s when Labor was in office, the average percentage of total federal road funding that went to Victoria was between 20 and 21 per cent. However, that dropped to below 16 per cent last year. That percentage can be contrasted with the 22 per cent of total roadways which are in Victoria and the 25 per cent of total fuel excise receipts which Victoria contributes to the Commonwealth.The specific matter that I wish to raise today concerns the Pakenham bypass. This is a part of the Princes Highway which I know very well for two reasons. Firstly, having lived in Orbost in my early life, I travelled many times through this particular part of what is now the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Secondly, and more particularly, I know the area well because my mother lives in Berwick and has done so for some time and so I have cause to travel in this area quite a bit now.The road is one of the heaviest parts of the Princes Highway in terms of traffic. It currently has about 26,000 vehicles per day and it is estimated that by the year 2010 it will have about 37,000 vehicle movements per day. It is one of the critical growth areas of the greater Melbourne area and it currently suffers from a very high accident rate.On 9 December 1997 the mayor, Councillor Edwin Hume, wrote to the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) with respect to the Pakenham bypass, seeking road funding for that project, and I have a copy of the letter here with me today. I should add that Councillor Hume is the Mayor of the Cardinia Shire which has the greatest interest in this bypass proposal. Unfortunately, it took the Prime Minister four months to organise any response to his letter. Finally, on 3 April this year his parliamentary secretary, the member for Braddon (Mr Miles), wrote back stating amongst other things `the delay in replying is regretted' and stating that the Pakenham bypass is a Victorian government responsibility.It is interesting to note that the government was refusing to provide any roads of national importance funding for the Pakenham bypass yet it seems able to provide roads of national importance funding—it has announced that it will—for Main Road 92 in New South Wales in the marginal coalition electorate of Gilmore, and parts of that road currently are gravel.We have therefore a situation where the government seems unable to provide roads of national importance funding for a road which currently has 26,000 cars and trucks per day, and it is anticipated that within barely a decade it will have 37,000 vehicles a day, but it can provide funding for a relatively minor road, parts of which are only gravel at the moment, because it happens to be in an electorate where the Prime Minister obviously wants to assist the cause of the incumbent member.What does this tell us about the member for McMillan (Mr Broadbent)? Obviously, he is not a very good lobbyist for his electorate. Obviously, he does not have the ear of the Prime Minister. He does not have the ability to get the Prime Minister to respond to the needs of his electorate. He could not get an answer out of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister took four months to even respond to the correspondence. And whereas the Prime Minister is prepared to provide funding for a relatively minor road in the electorate of Gilmore, he seems unable to do that for the member for McMillan in what is obviously a very important case, the Pakenham bypass.349212:38:003492Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLP10—I suppose one legacy that all of us would like to leave our electorates, apropos of the comments of the previous speaker, is better transport infrastructure. I would like to very much see better transport infrastructure on the Warringah peninsula.People have been talking about this issue for more than 100 years. In the 1870s there was talk of a railway to Narrabeen. Dr Bradfield, the builder of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, proposed a railway to the northern beaches. In the 1970s the Warringah Expressway began construction and, as you know, it does not go anywhere near Warringah; it ends up at Gore Hill. In the early 1990s a section 22 planning committee was established by the former coalition state government but it was wound up by the present Labor state government before it had a chance to complete its work.After 100 years of procrastination, what the peninsula needs is six months of decision making and then three years of construction to give the people of Warringah the transport infrastructure they need. But what in fact are we getting? From the current state Labor government—absolutely nothing.Late last year, I wrote to Premier Carr asking that some consideration be giving to using Sydney Water's impending infrastructure tunnel for a transport right of way. In part, I received a response from the state transport minister, Carl Scully, who pointed out that there were no major transport initiatives intended in that part of Sydney in the medium future. Worse, he said that the state government was considering putting a transit lane on Warringah Road. He wrote:Provision of a transit lane on Warringah Road is being considered as part of this program to further enhance public transport usage.Tens of thousands of people use Warringah Road every morning and every night in the peak hours. It is already, according to the NRMA, massively congested along the whole of its length. It is on some mornings one of the world's longest parking lots and this proposal from the state government is just going to make things massively worse. Tens of thousands of Warringah residents use this road and what is going to happen under this state government proposal is that the existing three lanes of traffic will be forced to merge into two lanes of traffic. What will happen is that tens of thousands of commuters will have 10, 20, 30 minutes a day added to their daily journeys. As they are sitting there in their traffic jams, they will have one person to thank and that is Bob Carr—and he should be appropriately rewarded, if this insanity goes ahead, at the next election.It is absolutely wrong for the state government to attempt to avoid its responsibility to provide decent transport infrastructure in Warringah by turning car commuters against bus commuters. This pathetic `divide and rule' strategy simply cannot be allowed. What the Warringah peninsula desperately needs is greater transport infrastructure because that will enable both public and private transport to proceed better in an important part of Sydney.I call on the state government to immediately repudiate Carl Scully's comments that a transit lane is being considered for Warringah Road and I also call on the state government to immediately reconvene the section 22 planning committee so that these issues can be considered and decided and acted upon.349312:43:003493Mossfield, Frank, MPMr MOSSFIELDMK6GreenwayALP00—I would like to speak in this adjournment debate about the issue of child care. I think this is an important issue that the federal government seems to have forgotten. The economic facts of life for many young families, particularly low and medium income families, is that if they are to own their own family home there is a need for two incomes to assist in paying off the mortgage.The McMahon government introduced government financial support for child care in the 1970s. Economic requirements, plus the desire of many married women to retain their employment skills to enable them to continue with their careers, have meant that the demand for community and council run child-care centres has increased considerably since that time. Parents with children in before and after school child care, and I quote directly from a circular sent from one child-care centre in my electorate, are being told:In short, we are losing all our funding. Our only income will be through the collection of fees and fundraising. As a result, our fees will be increased dramatically. This centre has not had a fee increase for at least five years so the increase might come as a shock to some parents. But in the same circular parents are being advised that the income that the federal government saves by not funding centres is to be allocated to fee relief for eligible families. However, this is not happening. Operators advised me that only a small number of families have registered with Centrelink for fee relief. Figures quoted are that only 18,000 out of an expected 70,000 have registered. This shortfall is causing concern, with serious problems expected during the school year as more children fall into risk due to inadequate care and supervision before and after school.In its submission to the Senate inquiry on child care, the New South Wales government said, on pages 23 and 24 of their submission:It is well recognised that women still maintain the primary responsibility for care given in the family, often caring for both children and older family members.. . . . . . . . .These women are more likely than men to reduce or leave paid employment in order to fulfil these responsibilities. The primary carer's inability to participate in paid employment may add financial pressure to other pressures experienced by carers.The facts are that, due to government policy, child care has become too expensive for many ordinary families. This has meant that women's ability to remain in the work force has been jeopardised, and the ability of sole parents to get off the pension and their children to access quality child care have all been threatened. A number of community based before and after school centres in my electorate, such as Seven Hills West and Blacktown North, are struggling to survive. Operational subsidies for care of school-aged children and block grants to vocational care were abolished in the federal government's budget of 1997. These decisions came into effect in April this year and amount to a loss of over $10 million in New South Wales.Many families are unable to pay the increased fees brought on by the removal of the operational subsidies. Some examples of the fees increases are that Blacktown North fees have increased by $20 to $70 a week and daily after school care rates have increased by 25 per cent to $15. Daily morning care and after school care fees have increased by $5 to $8 and $8.50 respectively, while recreational care has doubled from $10 to $20 a day.Many centre operators are saying everything is basically on trial for the next three months. If they lose too many children, they will have to cut staff. All families will be paying different amounts depending on their income. In many cases, it is a choice for parents of whether to pay the mortgage or send their children to child care.One of the biggest problems facing the centres is the enormous amount of paperwork administration connected with the government's new procedures. In talking to operators of community based before and after school care centres, I am told many parents are dropping out of child care because of an increase in fees. On the other hand, they are also pulling out because of confusion over how the government's new funding arrangements work.One long day child-care centre in my electorate that I previously mentioned in this House is the Lalor Park centre. This centre previously had 60 children in it. The centre was unable to operate efficiently with the removal of the operational subsidy and closed its doors at Christmas. The Blacktown Council, to its credit, intended to reopen this centre but, due to increased fees, only a handful of children have enrolled. This is a clear indication that the Howard government's economic policy is placing child care out of the reach of ordinary Australian families. (Time expired)349512:47:003495Elson, Kay, MPMrs ELSON6K6FordeLP10—Last night, in the House, I paid tribute to a very special group of people, the recipients of the 1998 Forde Community Contribution Awards. I established these awards as a way for the local community to say thankyou to these very special people who work quietly and tirelessly in many voluntary organisations. These are people who give our community its heart and soul. They never seek recognition for their efforts. They are modest, dedicated people who believe in helping others. They make our local area a better place to live because of their hard work. This year I was pleased to be able to recognise 28 local residents in a very small way and to say thankyou wholeheartedly to them from a very grateful community.Last night, I paid tribute to 20 of the Beaudesert Shire recipients. Time ran out, so I am back here today to seek recognition for the other eight people in our Beenleigh recipients awards. They include David Bennett for his many hours of work with the Beenleigh and District Rugby Union Club, and also his recent efforts, along with his wife Sandy, to establish the Eagleby Redbacks and help provide supporting services for young people.I would also like to pay tribute to Eve Harling who was nominated for her tireless efforts with the Kiah Club at Mount Tamborine. This very special lady, for the last 20 years, has supplied morning and afternoon teas and birthday cakes to our local elderly. The person who nominated her said she has never let them down.Diane Michels has been a district leader of the Girl Guides Association and is always willing to lend a hand. The person who nominated her said she is always available, leading and teaching them by example. She is a great role model for our young people.Merv Musch was nominated for his long and tireless work as a member of the Lions Club. Merv never missed a meeting for 27 years. He had 100 per cent attendance. I think that shows sheer dedication to any service group.Arthur and Ivy Somerfield were nominated for their many years of service to Beenleigh Red Cross and especially for their work at the Medical Loan Centre. They have also worked very hard with their local Meals on Wheels.Mark Tully was also nominated for his hard work in helping establish Studio Village Community Centre and for his strong community work within the village and Helensvale communities.Marion Willmann is another great worker for the Beenleigh Red Cross and Meals on Wheels, and she has also given a great deal of time to help others.This year for the first time we had a very special award for an extremely dedicated local community group, the Beenleigh Senior Citizens Entertainment Group. Today I also recognise their tremendous work. This dedicated group—the oldest member is 98 and she can do the cancan on stage like no-one I have ever seen before—puts on shows for local residents in nursing homes. Most of the people in these nursing homes are younger than the entertainers on the stage, and so it is absolutely wonderful to see them work. Their songs bring great memories back to the old people and joy to all who hear them perform.They are a lively, generous group of people who bring a smile to the faces of so many of our local elderly. I would like to quickly run through their names and thank them: Edith Brown, Barbara Bullis, Win Burton, Rozalie Charters, Kevin Charters, Allen and Irene Cook, Beryl Davies, Marjorie Fels, Don and Doreen Fraser, Merle Golinski, Wal Henderson, Robert Herse, Gordon Herse, Len Holmes, Bill Howden, Ken Jones, Maisie Karppinen, Monty and Fuchsia Kerkin, Margaret Leadbetter, Les Leibinger, Laurie Loveless, Ivy Lubach, Ruth Mahoney, Ruth Rasmussen, Bernice Robertson, Wilf and Pearl Simmonds, Mike Smith, Larry Storey, Sheila Talary, Pat Thurlow, Royce Watt, Ray Watt, Bob Wild, Alan Wilke, Elvina Wiltshire, Esther Wyatt, Albert and Jean Yates, and Joyce Zipf.I am sure all honourable members will join me in recognising and congratulating the members of the Beenleigh Senior Citizens Entertainment Group, as well as the very special 28 local individual recipients. I am pleased to be able to stand here today in parliament and thank them all once again. I believe that their sense of community spirit helps enrich and brighten the lives of many others. The community is very grateful for their work, and I am honoured to be able to represent these very special people.349612:52:003496Sercombe, Bob,MPMr SERCOMBEQK6MaribyrnongALP00—I use this opportunity to call on the Commonwealth government again to have a very close look at an extraordinary act of environmental vandalism which the Victorian government is presently involved in. This vandalism in my electorate involves the Minister for Planning issuing a directive to the Moonee Valley City Council to grant a planning permit with respect to the filling of a quarry hole with contaminated and toxic wastes. The particular quarry hole is in a residential area. It is cheek by jowl with a very substantial number of residential properties in the suburbs of Niddrie and East Keilor. It is an area which is very heavily populated, with schools in close proximity to the site.It beggars description as to how the Minister for Planning in Victoria has come to the extraordinary decision of directing the local council to issue a permit. He further compounds his environmental vandalism by providing—in the planning arrangements that he is dictating to the council—access to the site through a park, a very well established and delightful little park that runs alongside a creek. This park is going to be converted, if the minister has his way, into an access way for large numbers of trucks rumbling through a residential area and depositing toxic wastes for the next 10 years.There are issues here that the Commonwealth ought to look at very closely. I believe that there are issues in relation to the proximity of this site, which will involve substantial amounts of earth movements, to the flight paths into both Melbourne airport and Essendon airport. I believe that there is an imperative need for the Commonwealth to look very carefully afresh at this proposal, in order to ensure that this project does not create problems for aviation by any association of the area with birds. There are also very important issues in relation to leeching of contaminated wastes out of the site into the Maribyrnong River, which is not very far away, and ultimately into Port Phillip Bay.The Minister for the Environment and others in the government have made great play in recent times about the natural heritage fund and the role the Commonwealth is now claiming to play in relation to environmentally upgrading waterways in coastal areas. Yet we have the Victorian government directing that a proposal proceed that undoubtedly will lead to the contamination of the Maribyrnong River and, ultimately, Port Phillip Bay.Further, there are areas in Port Phillip Bay that are covered by the Ramsar agreement to which Australia is a party. The Ramsar agreement is an international agreement that relates to the protection of wetlands that are important to migratory birds. There are certainly areas in Port Phillip Bay which, I would suggest, may well be affected by contaminated materials coming ultimately from this site, and this provides a basis for the Commonwealth to act.It seems extraordinary to me that, while the Commonwealth is paying some attention to coastal areas and to waterways, and, presumably, the Victorian government has its hand up for some money for those sorts of activities, the Victorian minister is making directions that this outrageous proposal proceed.I urge the Minister for the Environment to look very closely at this matter. He was kind enough last night to meet with me and the member for Lalor (Mr Jones), who faces a comparable issue in his electorate of Lalor, and I hope that the minister, as a consequence of the representations we have made to him, will be prepared to act in terms of the Commonwealth's interests in these matters, and in ways that protect the residents of the western suburbs of Melbourne.349712:56:003497Draper, Trish, MPMrs DRAPER0L6MakinLP10—I would like to take this opportunity to reply to the comments made by the member for Grayndler (Mr Albanese) in the House last sitting session.It was the most extraordinary, vicious and personal attack I have ever heard on one of the members in this place, and the person so vehemently attacked was none other than the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), the leader of our country. The member believes that because the Prime Minister wore shorts and long white socks during the 1960s; did not drive a tie-dyed kombi van; was not out there demonstrating against the Vietnam war; or listening to the Doors, that somehow this decreases his ability to lead the country.The member's comments obviously demonstrate that he missed the very essence of what the flower power children of the 1960s were trying to convey. Much of their sentiment and the movement of the 1960s was a backlash against people being judged and excluded on the basis of gender, disabilities, religion, age, race, economic status and, yes, appearance. Perhaps the member is a little bitter and envious because he missed the era of the flower power children.As the member for Grayndler is a self-proclaimed socialist democrat, I am surprised that he has not paid much attention to South Australian political history. A certain former premier of socialist leaning, the former member for Norwood, Don Dunstan, often wore long white socks and shorts—pink, for that matter—in the parliament of South Australia. I would be very interested to hear what the member for Grayndler would have to say in relation to one of his mentors wearing white socks, pink shorts and/or safari suits, notwithstanding, of course, that this was the accepted trendy fashion dress of the times.In fact, my father and many others of that generation wore long white socks and shorts during those years. My father by that time was busily establishing his Volkswagen repair business to provide for his young family and was more concerned to provide food and housing for his wife and children than running off in a tie-dyed kombi van because others thought he should. Although as a Volkswagen mechanic one of his jobs was to repair kombi vans, we never spied a tie-dyed one—maybe that is a New South Wales thing. Many flower power people, hippies, drop-outs and the movers and the shakers during the 1960s drove other cars, I am sure, apart from tie-dyed kombis.Music was not restricted just to the Doors. We were listening to Credence Clearwater Revival, the Beach Boys, Tiny Tim, Normie Rowe, the Beatles, Deep Purple, Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin. Yes, my family did attend church functions on Saturday nights and church on Sunday mornings. It has been well documented through anecdotal and researched evidence that the 1960s was an era of unprecedented illicit drug abuse and other such activities, perhaps even by some who did drive tie-dyed kombi vans during that era. I am very pleased and proud that my father, along with John Howard and millions of other Australians, continued to work in a responsible and dependable manner—after all, in my father's case, someone had to keep the kombis on the road.As I stated in my first speech, although my father has been in business for more than 40 years, at 67 he still works every day in his garage and washes his hands with Solvol, as I often did, probably more times than have all of those who sit on the opposite side of the House. I must ask the member for Grayndler: does he believe that only people in their late 20s during the 1960s, who drove around stoned in tie-dyed kombi vans, are fit for leadership at this present time? Is this his vision for what an Australian leader should be?The vision and leadership of John Howard as the Prime Minister of Australia is clear: solid fiscal and economic management to lead Australia into the 21st century; a stable and secure economy for the benefit of all Australians in an increasingly unstable economic outlook for our near neighbours; establishment of a culture of mutual obligation at not only a familial and community level but also at a societal level; promotion of the wellbeing of families and the nurture of our children; combating the increasing level of illicit drug use in our society, to protect our children as much as possible from the ravages of drug abuse—surely a commendable vision; and provision of a sustainable, workable aged care system for our ageing population into and beyond the 21st century, as well as a sustainable and workable child-care system.While the Prime Minister has been criticised for having old-fashioned Christian values, as I see it, there is nothing wrong with caring for the family values and Christian ethics. Australia could do with some more, which is an improvement, may I say, on the stoned, tie-dyed kombi van driver of the sixties.349813:01:003498Anthony, Larry, MPMr ANTHONYXJ6RichmondNP10—I wish to speak on the benefits that the government has provided in the budget, particularly regarding veterans. I say this in light of an article that appeared in my local newspaper today, The Daily News , which states:Wealthy war vets `only ones better off' after Budget.The article particularly focuses on the comments by a Tweed Heads legal advocate, Mr Rob Martin, who said that this budget has a `slash and burn' approach to the welfare of veterans. He goes on to say that the government is `wrong, wrong, wrong' to suggest that veterans will be better off.Let me put the record straight. The total budget for the veterans' affairs portfolio for 1998-99 is $7.25 billion, the largest ever. It represents over a 7.4 per cent increase, or around $500 million. This will be particularly relevant to the electorate of Richmond where we have one of the highest aged populations, with over 24,000 people over the age of 65. Indeed, around 7,500 individuals receive a veterans' affairs pension. The announcement made last night regarding extending the gold card, which is clearly to World War II veterans who served abroad, will benefit about 840 veterans in the electorate of Richmond. They will be significantly better off than they were prior to the budget announcement.It is particularly important for Mr Martin to recognise that $150 million of the budget of the veterans' affairs portfolio is being spent—over 600 over four years—to purchase, directly, hospital services for veterans. This is in addition to $194 million to cover health services, which reflects the increased health needs of our ageing veterans.Those veterans who did not serve abroad, and who are self-funded retirees, will also benefit through the announcement made last night that the Commonwealth seniors health card will be made available to self-funded retirees on an income of up to $67,000 for a couple, and around $40,000 for a single. This is significant because it gives them access to the pharmaceutical benefits scheme and it gives them back the equivalent benefits that many pensioners receive. This is significant for the veterans community and for those individuals who did not see active service outside the country, particularly in World War II.Main Committee adjourned at 1.04 p.m.Answers to Questions in Writing3500The following answers to questions were circulated:3500(Question No. 2409)24093500Latham, Mark, MPMr LathamK26WerriwaALP00 asked the Prime Minister, upon notice, on 23 October 1997:(1) Has a Prime Minister of Australia written to a Premier of New South Wales concerning the nomination of the Sydney Opera House for inscription on the World Heritage list; if so, when.(2) Has a Premier of New South Wales written to a Prime Minister of Australia concerning such a nomination; if so, when.3500Howard, John, MPMr HowardZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) The Prime Minister wrote to the Premier of New South Wales, the Hon Bob Carr MP, on 19 August 1996 concerning nomination of the Sydney Opera House in its Harbour Setting for inscription on the World Heritage List.(2) The Premier of New South Wales wrote to the Prime Minister on the same topic on 24 October 1996 and 27 March 1997. The then Acting Premier, the Hon Andrew Refshauge MLA, also wrote to the Prime Minister on the topic on 25 July 1996.3500(Question No. 2632)26323500Kerr, Duncan, MPMr KerrRH4DenisonALP00 asked the Minister representing the Minister for Social Security, upon notice, on 2 March 1998:(1) Are advance payments to recipients of social security benefits to be restricted to one per year; if so, why.(2) Is it possible for recipients to defraud the existing advance payment system; if so, how.(3) Will the Minister review the justification for changing the advance payment scheme.3500Ruddock, Philip, MPMr Ruddock0J4BerowraLPImmigration and Multicultural Affairs10—The Minister for Social Security has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:(1) Advance payments to recipients of social security benefits were restricted to one per year from 1 January 1997. This reflected community and welfare group concerns that customers who re ceived more than one advance per year were placed in unnecessary financial hardship and also resulted in an unsustainable increase in pressure on welfare services provided by these groups.(2) The advance payments scheme is simply a lump sum payment of a customer's future entitlement of income support. The Department of Social Security (DSS) is aware that fraud can occur in respect of a small number of income support customers. However, there are various measures in place in order for fraud to be detected and minimised. For example, when a customer is granted a payment, Centrelink records are checked to identify whether the customer has any outstanding debts resulting from a previous period on an income support payment. Centrelink customer data is matched with Australian Taxation Office Employment Declaration form data to identify customers who have failed to notify that they have commenced or recommenced employment.(3) The Department is currently in the process of conducting a broad review of the advance payment scheme in order to identify areas of improvement.3500(Question No. 2647)26473500Ferguson, Martin, MPMr Martin FergusonLS4BatmanALP00 asked the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, upon notice, on 2 March 1998:(1) Has the Minister or the Minister's Department provided grants to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) or bodies related to the ACCI since 2 March 1996; if so (a) in each case, (i) what was the nature of the grant and (ii) for what purposes was it provided and (b) what total sum was provided.(2) To what boards, committees or other bodies for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility have (a) Mr Mark Patterson, the chief executive of ACCI, or (b) other officers or staff of ACCI been appointed since 2 March 1996.(3) What sums has the Commonwealth paid in sitting fees, board fees, travel costs and related expenses with respect to each appointment referred to in part (2). 3501Kemp, Dr David, MPDr KempBT4GoldsteinLPEmployment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs;Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) Details of grants provided to the ACCI and State/Territory Chambers of Commerce and Industry (including information on the nature of the grant, the purpose it was provided for, and the total sum provided), since 2 March 1996, are detailed in Table 1 below.It is not possible for the Department to identify whether any payments have been made by ACCI to other bodies using funds they have received from the Commonwealth, because this data is not held by the Department.(2) Appointments of ACCI officers or staff to boards, committees and other bodies for which I have portfolio responsibility, since 2 March 1996, are detailed in Table 2 below.(3) The amounts paid in respect of each appointment are also detailed in Table 2 below.TABLE 1:Grant made to:Date/Timing of GrantNature of GrantPurpose of GrantTotal Sum ProvidedAustralian Chamber of Commerce and Industry24 December 1994Employment and Training Field Officers (ETFOs)Establishment of a network of ETFOs to identify and secure job vacancies and training opportunities, particularly for the long term unemployed$12,088,850ACT and Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry31 March 1996Workplace Language and LiteracyLanguage and Literacy training$46,628ACT and Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry3 February 1997Workplace Language and LiteracyLanguage and Literacy training$88,559ACT and Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry10 February 1998Workplace Language and LiteracyLanguage and Literacy training$54,628Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA(1)4 April 1997 to 30 April 1998Grant in Aid under New Apprenticeships SystemConduct of Contracted Entry Level Training Agency (CELTA) Demonstration Project$557,615Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry2 May 1996—30 September 1998Payment for Indigenous Employment Program (IEP)Funds for IEP are for items such as IEP managers, marketing, travel, vehicles, administrative costs, project evaluation and Indigenous promotions. (2)$1,495,916Chamber of Commerce and Industry of WA4 May 1997 to 30 April 1998National Skills Shortage (Metals)To redress welding and fabrication shortages within WA.$921,000Chamber of Commerce and Industry of WA25 August 1995 to 31 Dec 1996National Skills Shortage (Metals)To redress welding and fabrication shortages within WA.$1,297,965Chamber of Commerce and Industry of WA29 April 1997Funding to WA CCI through the WA Dept of TrainingUser Choice Pilot Project$50,000Chamber of Commerce and Industry of WA8 May 1997Funding to WA CCITo promote, through a CCI newspaper advertisement, the United Construction Fabrication Shop in Kwinana$1,180Queensland Chamber of Commerce and Industry26 June 1996Office of Labour Market AdjustmentFeasibility study into a business incubator in Cairns$30,000NT Chamber of Commerce and Industry17 September 1997Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples Employment StrategyCo-ordinate Woolworths trainee strategy$26,000 Top End Business Development Centre7 August 1996Regional Assistance Program Facilitator Champion$20,000Top End Business Development Centre30 June 1997 & 4 February 1998Regional Assistance ProgramDarwin/Palmerston Business Incubator$180,000; $70,000Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry26 June 1996Business response to youth unemploymentDevelop an industry approach to youth unemployment, identify the existing material and approaches to addressing youth unemployment and increasing education and training opportunities, and to identify barriers to young people extending schooling beyond Year 10.$25,000(1) Bodies related to the ACCI in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland also received CELTA grants indirectly via their respective State Governments. The bodies involved where the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI), the Australian Business Limited (ABL) in NSW, and the Queensland Chamber of Commerce and Industry (QCCI). Victoria received $1,555,890 in CELTA funds, NSW received $1,025,288, and QLD received $1,740.00.(2) Funding is not of a specific grant nature but for procurement of goods and services.TABLE 2:Name of Person AppointedName of Board/Committee/Body Appointed toDate of AppointmentCommonwealth ExpensesMr Mark Paterson, Chief Executive, Australian Chamber of Commerce and IndustryNational Training Framework CommitteeOctober 1996—Mr Mark Paterson is the Chair of the National Training Framework Committee established under Section 10 of the ANTA Act. In this capacity Mr Paterson also attends meetings of the Australian National Training AuthorityNTFC—$4,014; sitting fees; $3,834 travel costs; ANTA—$5,459 sitting fees; $6,513 travel costsMr Steve Balzary, Australian Chamber of Commerce and IndustryEnterprise Education Reference GroupMarch 1996$578 sitting fees; $577 travel costsMr Steve Balzary, Australian Chamber of Commerce and IndustryCommonwealth State Committee on Marketing Apprenticeships and TraineeshipsAugust 1996Nil3502(Question No. 2665)26653502Ferguson, Martin, MPMr Martin FergusonLS4BatmanALP00 asked the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, upon notice, on 2 March 1998:(1) Has the Government eased the visa requirements for the citizens of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).(2) Is it a fact that PRC citizens have the fifth highest incidence of overstaying visas. (3) What strategies will his Department adopt to (a) monitor visa applications for possible overstayers and illegal immigrants, (b) ensure there is not a sharp increase in onshore refugee applications from PRC citizens, (c) have effective systems to police and expel overstayers and (d) have appropriate protocols with the PRC to ensure that it can speedily and effectively accept its citizens expelled from Australia for breaking visa requirements.3502Ruddock, Philip, MPMr Ruddock0J4BerowraLPImmigration and Multicultural Affairs10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) No. There has been no easing of the visa requirements for the citizens of the Peoples Republic of China.The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) has located a Principal Migration Officer (Compliance) in Beijing to assist the Migration Officers stationed in China in visa fraud detection and prevention. Comprehensive local profiles are used to assist officers detect fraud in applications across the range of visas. Claims made in these visa applications are checked, if necessary with third parties such as employers, for accuracy and credibility.The performance of travel agents in China involved with travel to Australia is monitored to identify those who have been associated with applications for visas where it has consistently been found that there was an intent not to comply with the provisions of the visas issued.Immigration staff in Beijing closely monitor Chinese business and family visitors to ensure compliance with their visa conditions. Strategies include:. regular requests for database checks in Australia to see if persons granted visas have returned to China;. the maintenance of databases by the Australian Embassy in Beijing to identify likely organisers of fraudulent entry schemes as well as companies, both Chinese and Australian, with a history of involvement in visa scams;. ongoing liaison and exchange of information concerning visa fraud with visa officers of other embassies; and. regular training of embassy and airline staff on Australia's visa and documentation requirements.Applicants for student visas are subject to the stringent bona fides criteria which are applied to student visa applicants from all non-gazetted countries. In addition, the following criteria (first introduced in November 1992 and amended in July 1994) must be met by students from the PRC:. English language comprehension of a minimum proficiency level of 570 in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or equivalent. This does not apply to primary and secondary students (other than direct enrolments into Year 12).. Post-secondary qualifications will only be accepted from selected "known institutions".The additional criteria do not apply to:. government sponsored students;. secondary exchange students; . students enrolling in a primary school course or secondary school course (except direct enrolments into year 12); or. students enrolling to undertake postgraduate studies, ie, a course of study or research leading to a masters degree or doctorate; or. any dependants.While these additional measures are generally applied to all non-exempt citizens of the PRC, since July 1996, the Chief Migration Officer in Beijing has had the discretion to waive the TOEFL requirement for full-fee paying private students applying for a student visa to undertake a degree course in Australia where the student has:(a) successfully completed in the PRC an associate diploma course (or above) which has been conducted in English by Australian teachers employed by an Australian education provider;(b) provided evidence from the Australian education provider that they have achieved the required level of English to enable them to successfully undertake the proposed degree course in Australia; and(c) applied for the visa within 12 months of having achieved the required level of English.As you will be aware, my Department is currently in the process of finalising a Review of the Student Visa Program. Many of the submissions that were received made reference to the situation of private students from the PRC and the special entry requirements that were put in place in response to concerns over their high level of overstay and non-compliance with visa conditions. These additional policy requirements have been closely examined by the review team and I will be addressing the relevant recommendations in my response to the Review, which will be completed shortly.(2) Yes, this fact is published in the Department's `Fact Sheet' Series, in Fact Sheet 80, entitled `Locating Overstayers in Australia'.(3) (a) In addition to the safeguards inherent in a universal visa system there are other initiatives in place to counter visa fraud:. Principal Migration Officers (Compliance) are posted to overseas locations of concern to closely scrutinise applications for visas;. Airport Liaison Officers are working in overseas airports checking the bona fides and documentation of travellers to Australia;. The Border Control and Compliance Division was established in my Department in November 1997 to focus on maximising efforts to deal with fraud against the Migration Act 1958. Within the Division there is an area with specific responsibility for developing strategies to counter attempts to circumvent Australia's border controls.(b) Australia's obligations under the Refugee Convention mean that any non-citizen in Australia is able to make an application for a Protection Visa, and have that application properly assessed. The streamlined onshore protection decision making that resulted from the administrative and legislative changes introduced by the Coalition Government allowed the Department to identify quickly those Protection Visa applicants with genuine claims and to remove the benefit of a prolonged stay from non-bona fide applicants. Top priority is given to applicants in detention, victims of torture and trauma and those in receipt of Asylum Seekers Assistance (ASA).Legislative changes were introduced in July 1997 limiting the provision of work rights to protection visa applicants who have been in Australia for less than 45 days in the past 12 months. This has the effect of discouraging frivolous applications from people who have been in Australia for a significant period of time and who wish to further extend their stay.In addition, a new $1000 post-decision fee for Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) applicants who have been determined as not to be refugees was introduced. This fee was designed to deter non-bona fide applicants from seeking review by the RRT after receiving a negative primary decision from the Department.(c) Under provisions of the Migration Act 1958 (the Act), any person who is an unlawful non-citizen must be detained. Improving technology and data matching increases DIMA's ability to detect unlawful non-citizens.Section 189 of the Act requires all non-citizens to be detained unless they are the holder of a visa. Bridging visas are available to eligible non-citizens (see section 72) to ensure persons can maintain lawful status while they await the outcome of a decision on their immigration status or to depart Australia within a specified period. Unless a bridging visa is granted, unlawful non-citizens are liable to mandatory detention under Section 189 of the Act and to removal, as soon as practicable, under Section 198.Community information has been a prime source of information on overstayers until very recently—some 750 were found this way in 1996-97. The increasing use of data-matching technology is likely to overtake this:. all passengers arriving in and departing from Australia complete a card giving their personal and travel details. By checking one against the other, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs locates the names of overstayers; . those names are then matched against lists of people receiving benefits or paying tax to find a last-known address. The result is then double-checked, to ensure the person has not since applied for a further visa or left Australia. Immigration officials then follow up and locate the overstayers.Overstayers are subject to an exclusion period from returning to Australia, usually up to three years, irrespective of whether they leave voluntarily.Former overstayers cannot be given visas to return to Australia even after the exclusion period has finished until they repay the cost of their removal and detention and any post-decision fee to the RRT.(d) The PRC, like all sovereign states, accepts the obligation of receiving back its nationals and does so willingly. A formal protocol or agreement has not proved to be necessary. Difficulties do arise in determining the nationality and identity of certain individuals and this can cause delays in repatriation to their home countries. This occurs, particularly in cases where the individuals provide deliberately misleading information or refuse to cooperate in order to frustrate their removal from Australia. However, this applies to nationals of many countries.3504(Question No. 2672)26723504Ferguson, Martin, MPMr Martin FergusonLS4BatmanALP00 asked the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, upon notice, on 2 March 1998:(1) What role is his Department playing in ensuring that Australia does not continue to be a destination in the trade of females for sexual exploitation.(2) Has his Department cooperated with the Attorney-General's Department on the matter; if so, how.(3) Has he asked his Department to identify the major sources of the so-called sex slavery trade in Australia.(4) Is he able to say what are the sources and what numbers are involved.(5) Is he further able to say how the sources have changed since 1989.(6) Has his Department been able to develop a profile of the traffickers in the source countries who recruit, organise and profit from prostitution; if so, have the profiles been correlated to detect incidences between traffickers and promoters or sellers of so called $30 work visas.(7) Has it been established whether Australian citizens are actively involved in the sex slave trade; if not, what action has been taken to prevent traffickers from entering Australia to exploit their victims.(8) Has his Department identified the category of visas by which the females are entering Australia.(9) What steps is his Department taking to eliminate deficiencies in the issuing of visas.3505Ruddock, Philip, MPMr Ruddock0J4BerowraLPImmigration and Multicultural Affairs10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) My Department views the illegal entry for prostitution as an ongoing concern having wider law enforcement, community health and welfare and social justice ramifications.My Department works closely with law enforcement and other relevant agencies on matters relating to abuse of the visa system to enable women to enter Australia to work in the sex industry. Immigration officers stationed overseas assist with the investigation of illegal entry rackets and the identification of individuals involved.(2) My Department has contributed to the preparation of a discussion paper on a proposal to deal with the problem. The discussion paper was referred to the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) which considered it in late December 1997. SCAG has referred the matter to the Model Criminal Code Officers Committee (MCCOC) for examination. The MCCOC is due to report back to the SCAG Officers meeting in April 1998.(3) The predominant non-citizens working illegally in the sex industry in Australia are Thai nationals.(4) The following table shows the nationality and number of non-citizens located working illegally in brothels 1996-97:ThaiMalaysianPRCHIndonesianVietnameseUSAUKTotal3585211153 (inc 2 male)(5) During the 1990s Thai nationals have dominated the non-citizens who have been located working in the sex industry in breach of their visa conditions. This is a change from the late 1980s when nationals of the Philippines and Malaysia were more numerous.(6) It has not been possible to develop a profile of the traffickers in the source countries who recruit, organise and profit from prostitution. To date, the non-citizen women located working in the sex industry in Australia, have been reluctant to provide any information which might assist in the identification of recruiters and organisers. However, combating fraud is a high priority for my Department which:. views the entry of women to work illegally in the sex industry as an ongoing concern having wider law enforcement, community health and welfare and social justice ramifications; and. is trying to engender increased cooperation between sending and receiving countries to deal with people trafficking in all its forms—including women working illegally in the sex industry.(7) Please refer to the answer to question (6) above. My Department, however, works closely with law enforcement and other relevant agencies on matters relating to the trafficking of women to Australia to work in the sex industry.(8) The majority of women located working in the sex industry in breach of the conditions of their visas have entered Australia on visitors visas, often obtained by false representations and/or the use of bogus or fraudulently obtained documentation.(9) My Department's visa issuing process is a success. In addition to the safeguards inherent in a universal visa system there are other initiatives in place to counter visa fraud:. Principal Migration Officers (Compliance) are posted to locations of concern overseas to closely scrutinise applications for visas;. Airport Liaison Officers are working in overseas airports checking the bona fides and documentation of travellers to Australia;. The Border Control and Compliance Division was established in November 1997 to focus on maximising efforts to deal with fraud against the Migration Act 1958. Within the Division there is an area with specific responsibility for developing strategies to counter attempts to circumvent Australia's border controls.3505(Question No. 2696)26963505Ferguson, Laurie, MPMr Laurie Ferguson8T4ReidALP00 asked the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, upon notice, on 2 March 1998:(1) Did he undertake on 3 September 1997 to reduce mortgage rates for Defence Service Homes (DSH) loans with effect from 5 January 1998. (2) Has his Department advised DSH borrowers that Westpac is unable to effect reductions in DSH loan repayments until late March 1998; if so, what are Westpac's reasons for the delay.(3) What is the estimated additional cost of providing DSH loan borrowers with an interest rebate backdated to 3 September 1997 instead of 5 January 1998.3506Scott, Bruce, MPMr Bruce ScottYT4MaranoaNPVeterans' Affairs10—The answer to the honourable member's questions is as follows:(1) Yes. On 3 September 1997, I announced that the interest rates on most Defence Service Home (DSH) loans would drop to around 5.6 per cent, given the prevailing market interest rates at the time. These changes were to become effective from 5 January 1998. In fact, the monthly variable maximum DSH rate has dropped even lower, to a level of 5.24 per cent, effective from 5 January 1998. This is because average market rates have fallen from 7.13 per cent since my announcement in September 1997 to their current level of 6.74 per cent. The new arrangements guarantee a Commonwealth interest subsidy of 1.5 percentage points, leaving DSH borrowers with that discount off the prevailing market rate.(2) Some DSH loans attract capped interest rates of 3.75 per cent and 4.5 per cent. These loans are already lower than the monthly variable discounted rate of 5.24 per cent. Where this is the case, the lower rate applies. Those loans would not be affected by the 1.5 per cent subsidy guarantee unless average market rates fell below 5.25 per cent or 6 per cent respectively. The current level of subsidy up to the market rate on these loans is already greater than 1.5 per cent.In mid-December 1997, my Department and Westpac jointly wrote to all existing DSH borrowers, informing them that while the interest rate reduction would take effect from 5 January 1998, systems changes would need to be phased in between January and March 1998. The brochure enclosed with each letter also explained that any changes in repayment arrangements would be advised at a later stage. A hotline was established to answer any borrower queries. My Department advised telephone callers that they could approach the Bank in late March 1998 to inquire about reducing their repayments if that was their wish.This measure, to reduce the interest rates on DSH loans while market rates are low, represents a major shift away from the fixed rates concept which has applied since the scheme's inception in March 1919. The rates are now capped at the previous fixed effective rates, but are reduced to a rate 1.5 per cent below the average variable home loan rates applied to the largest number of owner-occupied housing loans of the five major banks each month, if the capped rate exceeds that rate. These arrangements will ensure that DSH interest rates will always be significantly lower than market rates, however far these may fall, in recognition of the nation's debt to the veteran community.In order to implement this change, considerable systems development work was necessary, both for my Department and Westpac. The bulk of that work, which commenced around the time of my announcement in September 1997, is now complete. Interest rebates covering the period 5 January to 4 March 1998 inclusive were credited to relevant accounts on 18 March 1998. Delaying reductions in loan repayments until after that phase of the task had been completed will make for a more orderly approach to dealing with individual requests.The changes to interest rates could not commence before the legislation was amended by Parliament. Three months lead time on top of the legislative timing is in accord with normal banking practice.(3) The estimated additional cost of providing DSH borrowers with an interest rebate backdated to 3 September 1997 instead of 5 January 1998 would be in the order of $5.36m.3506(Question No. 2701)27013506Albanese, Anthony, MPMr AlbaneseR36GrayndlerALP00 asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs, upon notice, on 2 March 1998:(1) What is Australia's position on the (a) existence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967 and (b) consistency of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories with the letter and spirit of the Oslo Agreements, the Hebron Protocol and all relevant UN resolutions.(2) Is he able to say whether Australian citizens, organisations or companies provide funding to support activities in the occupied territories which threaten to impede further progress in the Middle East peace process; if so, what is the Government's position.(3) What are Australia's responsibilities and obligations to prevent financial assistance being provided by Australian citizens, organisations or companies to support Israeli settlement activities in the occupied territories.(4) What action has the Government taken on the matter.(5) Is he able to say whether the use of tax-exempt funds from Australia to assist Israeli institutions or settler groups in the occupied territories is prohibited under Australian law. (6) Do his Department, the Australian Taxation Office or other Government bodies monitor the sending of tax-exempt funds from Australia to support groups or institutions whose presence or activities in a particular region are contrary to international law or UN resolutions; if so, by what mechanism.(7) Is he able to say what sums are being sent from Australia to support political organisations based in the occupied territories and to which organisations they are being sent.3507Downer, Alexander, MPMr Downer4G4MayoLPForeign Affairs10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) (a) Australia considers Israeli settlement activity in those territories occupied by Israel in 1967 to be harmful to the peace process. (b) The Interim Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority requires that neither side change the status of the West Bank and Gaza pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations. While noting that fact, the Government does not consider it appropriate or productive for Australia to interfere in an ongoing process of negotiation on issues of great difficulty, sensitivity and complexity which only the parties themselves can resolve through renewed dialogue.(2) The Government is aware of reports that there may be private Australian involvement in providing funding settlement activity in the Occupied Territories. The Government has repeatedly urged all parties to the Middle East dispute to avoid and prevent actions which may lead to a heightening of tensions in the region.(3) Under Australian law it is not illegal for Australian citizens to make donations to political or religious causes in Israel.(4) The Government has not sought and will not seek to restrict private citizens from using private funds as they wish, so long as the activity remains legal.(5) Such activity is not prohibited under Australian law.(6) No. The Government has no interest in monitoring private funding activities which are not illegal under Australian law.(7) No.3507(Question No. 2722)27223507Hollis, Colin, MPMr HollisDH4ThrosbyALP00 asked the Prime Minister, upon notice, on 5 March 1998:What was the full cost to the Commonwealth of the state funeral for Mr B. A. Santamaria and does the costing include airfares for members of parliament travelling from and to Canberra for the funeral.3507Howard, John, MPMr HowardZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:The full cost which my Department met on behalf of the Commonwealth for the state funeral for Mr B. A. Santamaria was $25,497.90. The costing does not include airfares for members of parliament travelling from and to Canberra for the funeral.3507(Question No. 2729)27293507Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr Kelvin ThomsonUK6WillsALP00 asked the Minister for Transport and Regional development, upon notice, on 10 March 1998:Has the operation of the Air Ambulance Service based at Essendon Airport been taken over from Southern Airlines by the Flying Doctor Service; if so, (a) when did the transfer occur, (b) was Southern Airlines' contract not due to expire for a further twelve months, (c) what public notification was made of the change, (d) on what basis was the change of operator made and (e) will changes be made to the service.3507Vaile, Mark, MPMr VaileSU5LyneNPTransport and Regional Development10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:The contract for the Air Ambulance service based at Essendon Airport is the responsibility of the Victorian State Government, through the Metropolitan Ambulance Service of Victoria. Accordingly, I am unable to provide the details requested.3507(Question No. 2732)27323507Martin, Stephen, MPMr Martin8I4CunninghamALP00 asked the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment, upon notice, on 10 March 1998:(1) How many applications were received from the electoral division of Cunningham for grants under the Natural Heritage Program.(2) Who was the applicant in each case referred to in part (1) and what was the nature of the application.(3) How many applications referred to in part (1) were successful.(4) Who were the successful applicants and what was the value of the grant awarded to each. (5) What process was employed to determine which applications were successful.(6) Was a committee involving local community representatives asked to evaluate the applications; if so, who were the members of the committee.(7) Was an attempt made to seek the view of the Member for Cunningham on the relative merits of each application.3508Anderson, John, MPMr Anderson4K4GwydirNPPrimary Industries and Energy10—The Minister for the Environment has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:(1) I received one application from the NSW State Assessment Panel which was later identified as being from the electoral division of Cunningham.(2) The applicant was the Blue Divers Bushcare Group. The environmental focus of the project was to regenerate the public reserve adjacent to Cassell Reserve Towradgi.(3) None(4) Not applicable.(5) Initial assessment by the Urban/Illawarra Regional Assessment Panel; subsequent assessment by the NSW State Assessment Panel; technical assessment by Environment Australia; and final consideration by myself in the overall context of projects submitted.(6) The Urban/Illawarra Regional Assessment Panel made the initial assessment of the project. The panel comprised: Mr C Huntingdon (Chair), Sydney Northern Beaches Catchment Management Committee (CMC); Mr G Whitehouse, Upper Parramatta River Catchment Management Trust; Mr R Michie, Georges River CMC; Mr P Wells; Hacking River CMC; Mr J Hull, Lane Cove CMC; Mr H Wright, Middle Harbour CMC; Ms R Muston, Illawarra CMC; Ms S Burgin, Environmental interest; Mr R Cullen, Department of Land & Water Conservation (DLWC); Ms C Beckett, DLWC (observer); Mr T Cameron, Total Catchment Management (TCM) (observer); Ms L Rawlingson, TCM (observer).(7) No.3508(Question No. 2750)27503508McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan5I4CanberraALP00 asked the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts, upon notice, on 11 March 1998:(1) How many persons have worked in each department, agency, Commonwealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsi bility under a contract for services entered into with a firm whose sole or predominant business is the hiring of labour to clients (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(2) In what sections of the department, agency, authority or company were the persons referred to in part (1) employed.(3) What are the names of the labour-hire firms referred to in part (1) which provided services (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(4) How were the labour-hire firms selected.(5) Will the Minister provide a copy of the-tender documents in each case where a labour hire firm was selected by public tender.(6) Will the Minister provide a copy of the terms of the reference for the selection of labour-hire firms.(7) Who comprised the selection panel for successful tenders.(8) What commission was payable by each department, agency, authority or company to each labour-hire firm for each person contracted for labour.(9) What total sum (a) is owed and (b) was paid to each labour-hire firm.(10) What total sum was paid to labour-hire firms in total (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(11) What projected labour requirement will be met by labour-hire firms in the departments, agencies, Commonwealth authorities or companies, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility from (a) February to June 1998 and (b) July 1998 to June 1999.(12) How many government employees have been replaced through labour provided by labour hire firms in each department, agency, Commonwealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility.3508Smith, Warwick, MPMr Warwick SmithGJ4BassLPMinister for Family Services10—The Minister for Communications the Information Economy and the Arts has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:Given the size of the Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts Portfolio, I am not prepared to authorise the committal of the considerable human resources needed for the searching of records to obtain information to answer this question. 3509(Question No. 2751)27513509McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan5I4CanberraALP00 asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, upon notice, on 11 March 1998:(1) How many persons have worked in each department, agency, Commonwealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility under a contract for services entered into with a firm whose sole or predominant business is the hiring of labour to clients (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(2) In what sections of the department, agency, authority or company were the persons referred to in part (1) employed.(3) What are the names of the labour-hire firms referred to in part (1) which provided services (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(4) How were the labour-hire firms selected.(5) Will the Minister provide a copy of the tender documents in each case where a labour-hire firm was selected by public tender.(6) Will the Minister provide a copy of the terms of reference for the selection of labour-hire firms.(7) Who comprised the selection panel for successful tenders.(8) What commission was payable by each department, agency, authority or company to each labour-hire firm for each person contracted for labour.(9) What total sum (a) is owed and (b) was paid to each labour-hire firm.(10) What total sum was paid to labour-hire firms in total (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(11) What projected labour requirement will be met by labour-hire firms in the departments, agencies, Commonwealth authorities or companies, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility from (a) February to June 1998 and (b) July 1998 to June 1999.(12) How many government employees have been replaced through labour provided by labour-hire firms in each department, agency, Commonwealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility.3509Reith, Peter, MPMr ReithWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:Part (1) (a)Part (1) (b)Group/Agency (Part 2)Department:1 person for 6 days2 people for 13 daysAustralian Government Employment Group3 people for 138 days4 people for 253 daysCorporate Strategy Group2 people for 11.5 days3 people for 87 daysMaritime GroupNone2 peopleOffice of Small Business11 people for 253 weeks17 people for 255 weeksOffice of the Employment AdvocateNone1 personPolicy Group10 people2 peopleWorkplace Services GroupAgencies:2 people for 4.5 days7 people for 92 daysAffirmative Action Agency28 people for 2367 days24 people for 1578 daysAustralian Maritime Safety Authority14 people for 136 days33 people for 470 daysComcare2 people6 peopleNational Occupational Health & Safety CommissionPart (3) (a)Part (3) (b)Group/AgencyDepartment:Quest Group Pty LtdQuest Group Pty Ltd and Wizard Personnel & Office Services Pty LtdAustralian Government Employment GroupWizard Personnel & Office Services Pty Ltd and Hays Personnel Services (Aust) Pty LtdHays Personnel Services (Aust) Pty Ltd and Library Locums Pty LtdCorporate Strategy GroupAdia Centacom and Drake OverloadProfessional Carers Australia, Kowolski Consulting and Wizard Personnel & Office Services Pty LtdMaritime GroupNoneWestern Staff Services, Wizard Personnel & Office Services Pty LtdOffice of Small BusinessAdia Personnel Pty Ltd, Adecco, Alectus Personnel, Morgan & Banks Limited and Manpower Services (Aust) Pty LtdAdecco, Manpower Services, Drake Overload Sydney, Smalls Recruiting, Choice Personnel, Select Appointments, Hamilton James & Bruce Pty Ltd and Temps & Co Recruitment ServicesOffice of the Employment AdvocateNoneWestern Staff ServicesPolicy GroupHamiltons Recruitment, Julia Ross Personnel and Metier PersonnelJulia Ross PersonnelWorkplace Services GroupAgencies:Adecco and Select AppointmentsAdecco and Select AppointmentsAffirmative Action AgencyCareer People, Drake Overload, Hays Personnel Services (Aust) Pty Ltd, Skilled Engineering Ltd and Wizard Personnel & Office Services Pty LtdCareer People, Drake Overload, Hays Personnel Services (Aust) Pty Ltd, Skilled Engineering Ltd and Wizard Personnel & Office Services Pty LtdAustralian Maritime Safety AuthorityWizard Personnel & Office Services Pty Ltd, Professional Careers Australia, Alectus Personnel, Careers Unlimited, Adia Personnel, The Quest Group, Computer People, Andersen Contracting and Computer Training & ContractingWizard Personnel & Office Services Pty Ltd and Professional Careers Australia, Effective People, Career People, Careers Unlimited, Adecco, The Quest Group, Andersen Contracting, Computer Training & Contracting and Computer PeopleComcareZenith PersonnelZenith Personnel, Library Locums Pty Ltd and Bligh AppointmentsNational Occupational Health & Safety Commission(4) The labour-hire firms were contacted directly for various reasons:. suitable people available. required specialised skills. previous satisfactory service. cost effectiveness. responsiveness of the agency. quotations supplied. PE68 firms were used for all Information Technology staff hired by Comcare(5) Not applicable.(6) Not applicable. (7) Not applicable.(8) The commission to be paid depends in each case on the duties being performed and the practice of the agency involved. Generally speaking, the commission is included in the hourly rate charged.Part (9) (a)Part (9) (b)Group/AgencyNil$1,860 Quest Group; $1,264 Wizard PersonnelAustralian Government Employment GroupNil$10,944 Wizard Personnel; $48,976 Hays Personnel; $21,469 Library LocumsCorporate Strategy GroupNil$482 Adia Centacom; $1,628 Drake Overload; $1,257 PCA; $2,112 Kowolski Consulting; $4,260 WizardMaritime Group$1,596 Western Staff Services$2,241 Western Staff Services; $27,079 Wizard PersonnelOffice of Small Business$1,650 Adecco; $777 Alectus Personnel; $1,575 Smalls Recruiting; $2,290 Temps & Co$5,777 Adia; $23,215 Adecco; $2,578 Alectus Personnel; $12,771 Morgan & Banks; $3,477 Manpower Services; $337 Drake Overload; $3,850 Smalls Recruiting; $2,770 Choice Personnel; $994 Select Appointments; $550 Hamilton James & Bruce; $657 Temps & CoOffice of the Employment AdvocateNil$3,838 Western Staff ServicesPolicy GroupNil$149 Hamiltons Recruitment; $22,877 Julia Ross Personnel; $23,476 Metier PersonnelWorkplace Services Group$7,888$230,888Department Total$4,678.23 Adecco$880 Select Appointments; $13,868 AdeccoAffirmative Action Agency$12,726 Wizard Personnel$461 Hays Personnel$851 Drake Overload$27,679 Career People; $30,054 Drake Overload; $44,286 Drake Personnel; $65,425 Hays Personnel; $72,544 Skilled Engineering; $540,859 Wizard PersonnelAustralian Maritime Safety AuthorityNil$174,186 Wizard Personnel; $21,948 Professional Careers ; $2,776 Alectus Personnel; $18,231 Careers Unlimited; $3,360 Adia Personnel; $2,327 The Quest Group; $140,960 Computer People; $194,868 Andersen Contracting; $140,866 Computer Training & Contracting; $3,615 Effective People; $14,966 Career People; $30,684 AdeccoComcareNil$55,789 Zenith Personnel; $2,412 Library Locums Pty Ltd; $739 Bligh AppointmentsNational Occupational Health & Safety CommissionPart (10) (a)Part (10) (b)Group/Agency$1,233$1,891Australian Government Employment Group$22,685$58,522Corporate Strategy Group$2,110$7,630Maritime GroupNil$29,321Office of Small Business$38,780$47,388Office of the Employment AdvocateNil$3,838Policy Group$44,677$1,825Workplace Services Group$109,485$150,415Department Total$615$14,133Affirmative Action Agency$400,873$253,000Australian Maritime Safety Authority$112,587$636,200Comcare$20,236$39,026National Occupational Health & Safety Commission(11) While it is not possible to precisely predict future usage due to labour hire being on an `as required' basis, current indications are provided below.Part (11) (a)Part (11) (b)Group/AgencyDepartment:1 person for 6 daysNoneAustralian Government Employment Group5 people for 382 days3 people for 114 daysCorporate Strategy Group2 people for 108 daysNot yet determinedMaritime Group1 person for 40 daysNot yet determinedOffice of Small BusinessNot possible to predictNot possible to predictOffice of the Employment AdvocateAgencies:2 people for 50 days40 days to cover leaveAffirmative Action Agency6 people (Award Simplification Project)6 people (Award Simplification Project)Australian Industrial RegistryCurrent usage to continueCurrent usage to continueAustralian Maritime Safety AuthorityCurrent usage to continueCurrent usage to continueComcareCurrent usage to continueCurrent usage to continueNational Occupational Health & Safety Commission(12) Due to more flexible work arrangements and temporary vacancies (secondments, maternity or long term leave), it is not possible to quantify a precise answer to this question.NB: The Remuneration Tribunal transferred to the Department of Finance and Administration effective 18 February 1998. Their entire answer will be detailed in the response to Question No 2756, provided by the Minister for Finance and Administration. The Office of Small Business transferred to this department effective 17 July 1997. The Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism will provide the relevant details prior to this date, as part of Question No 2753. Maritime Group transferred to this department effective 9 October 1997. The Minister for Transport and Regional Development will provide details prior to this date, as part of Question No 2759.3512(Question No. 2752)27523512McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan5I4CanberraALP00 asked the Minister representing the Minister for Social Security, upon notice, on 11 March 1998:(1) How many persons have worked in each department, agency, Commonwealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility under a contract for services entered into with a firm whose sole or predominant business is the hiring of labour to clients (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(2) In what sections of the department, agency, authority or company were the persons referred to in part (1) employed.(3) What are the names of the labour-hire firms referred to in part (1) which provided services (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(4) How were the labour-hire firms selected. (5) Will the Minister provide a copy of the tender documents in each case where a labour-hire firm was selected by public tender.(6) Will the Minister provide a copy of the terms of reference for the selection of labour-hire firms.(7) Who comprised the selection panel for successful tenders.(8) What commission was payable by each department, agency, authority or company to each labour-hire firm for each person contracted for labour.(9) What total sum (a) is owed and (b) was paid to each labour-hire firm.(10) What total sum was paid to labour-hire firms in total (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(11) What projected labour requirement will be met by labour-hire firms in the departments, agencies, Commonwealth authorities or companies, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility from (a) February to June 1998 and (b) July 1998 to June 1999.(12) How many government employees have been replaced through labour provided by labour-hire firms in each department, agency, Common wealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility.3513Ruddock, Philip, MPMr Ruddock0J4BerowraLPImmigration and Multicultural Affairs10—The Minister for Social Security has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question.Due to the split between the Department of Social Security (DSS) and Centrelink, the following answers to the honourable member's question are supplied separately.The Department of Social Security's answers incorporate, where appropriate, answers on behalf of the Social Security Appeals Tribunal (SSAT).(1) CENTRELINKRecruitment of Permanent Staff(a) 1996—1997Full time staff153Part time staff37(b) between 1 July 1997 andFull time staff68128 February 1998Part time staffNilRecruitment of Contractors(a) 1996-1997 Department of Social Security—220(b) 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998 Centrelink—367DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY(a) Due to the split between the Department of Social Security (DSS) and Centrelink, it is more appropriate that Centrelink respond to the 1996 portion of this question for DSS, as the personnel and recruitment function was maintained by Centrelink.The preferred employment agency utilised by the Department during 1996-97 was Templine.(b) Excluding Templine, between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998 27 persons have worked in DSS under a contract for services entered into with a firm whose sole or predominant business is the hiring of labour to clients.Of the 27 persons, 23 were paid by the Department after an initial commission was paid to the labour-hire firm and four were paid directly through the labour-hire firm.THE SOCIAL SECURITY APPEALS TRIBUNAL (SSAT)18 persons were employed through labour hire agencies.(2) CENTRELINKRecruitment of permanent staffCentrelink Call Centres, Melbourne metropolitan offices, Information Technology areas within Centrelink.Recruitment of contractorsInformation Technology areas of Centrelink and Department of Social SecurityDEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYThe persons provided by labour hire firms were employed in the following areas of the Department of Social Security:Branch/AreaNo. of Persons(Paid directly by labour-hire firm)Disability & Carer1Special Payments1Ministerial Section1Corporate Unit1(Paid by Department)Labour Market2Housing6Families & Children2Information, Statistics & IT4Strategic Analysis & Evaluation2Retirements1 Legal Services1Executive Support1Ministerial Section2Corporate Unit2The SSAT employed 4 contract staff in its Brisbane office, 1 in its Canberra office and 13 in its Sydney office.(3) CENTRELINKRecruitment of Permanent Staff(a) 1996—1997Smalls & Associates Pty LtdDrake Personnel(b) between 1 July 1997 andAdecco "The Employment People"28 February 1998Quest PersonnelManpower Services (Australia Pty Ltd)Green & GreenRecruitment of Contractors- also answer to part (9)(a)1996-1997Labour-hire Company Name 1996-1997$ Paid$ OwedAndersens 579,6420Australian Computer Professionals 201,7700Amdahl 106,3040Candle58,9060Computer Consultants, Australia 60,8860Com Tech50,1600Compas71,8920Computer Power415,1860Computer People4,209,7140CPMC47,4090Eurolink 128,1650ISI 2,6000IMCG 112,5700MC Computing2,740,4620Morgan and Banks1,6900MSG Contracting Services16,2800Natural Systems61,9590OOSW1,005,1430Opticon95,4900Parity867,0440Patacat634,4250Paxus992,9820Price Waterhouse358,1140Quasar665,8400Ray Franzi143,7600Select5,7600SynerLogic Microsystems44,4220 Southern Cross20,5940Stratagem1,650,0560Wizard2,548,3390Totals$17,897,564$0(b) 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998Labour-hire Company Name 1997-1998$ Paid$ OwedAcument228,1350Anderses873,2870Australian Computer Professionals134,3160Amdahl71,6800Candle968,9253,784Computer Consultants, Australia 83,6690Communications Design & Management78,2200Cipher27,5170CJ Stuart23,0600Com Tech92,3800Compas93,2890Coolong Consulting48,0130Computer Power288,9216,794Computer People4,580,7892,838CPMC101,6470Dartnal Grant34,4777,290Deloitte85,0300Dominion514,7870Eastwood Harris30,2000ETC346,29216,442Eurolink235,64212,880HCS11,2000IBM35,0000ISI203,0080IMCG97,1500Kodiak197,7880MC Computing4,487,4370Morgan and Banks79,6709,820MSG Contracting Services61,740920Natural Systems126,6780NDS68,6880Network Computing68,9720Network Information Services109,1880OOSW856,4920Opticon97,6190Parity713,0040Patacat1,122,3500Patagonia131,2220Paxus1,474,9590Price Waterhouse332,3080Protocom72,0300 Quasar728,4550Qwyarigo38,3600Random58,4750Ray Franzi69,5520Select174,1990Sheridan13,3410SynerLogic Microsystems108,7400Southern Cross238,0840Stratagem1,321,0660Wizard2,795,5600Totals$24,604,476$60,768DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY(a) Excluding Templine, the SSAT utilised Select Appointments P/L, Kelly Services P/L and Drake Overload.(b) The names of the labour-hire firms which provided services between 1 July 1997 and 28 February for DSS and SSAT were: Adecco; Metier Personnel; Drake Overload; Alectus; Green & Green; All-Staff; My Secretary; Wizard; Professional Careers; Select Appointments; Kelly Services.(4) CENTRELINKRecruitment of Permanent StaffCentrelink Call Centres—Open RFI TenderSmalls & Associates Pty Ltd—Selection made by Manager Call Centre prior to implementation of formal recruitment contract. (tenders obtained for the recruitment of Customer Service officers in the Call Centre Network which has been in place since 1 July 1997).Melbourne metropolitan offices—Competitive restrictive tenders.Information Technology—Public Tender.Recruitment of ContractorsAll firms are APE68 compliant.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYThe labour-hire firms were selected based on the availability of a contractor with the required skills within their agency, and the fees charged.Several firms were contacted and asked to send resumes of prospective employees which may match the skills sought.A firm was then selected, based firstly on the level that the prospective employee meets the requirements of the Department and, secondly, on the fee that the labour-hire firm charges for the placement of the person.To assist with the selection of reputable companies to contact, the Recruitment Section maintains a register of Agencies and fre quently updates that list detailing indicative costs, previous usage, general comments and feedback on the level of satisfaction of previously used contractors from the Agency.These records are usually updated every 3-6 months, to account for new companies and updates costs.(5) CENTRELINKRecruitment of Permanent StaffTender documents are available.Recruitment of ContractorsNot applicable due to the use of PE 68 contracts.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYDSS and SSAT did not select companies through a public tender process, instead they arranged for a shortlist of reputable companies and then contacted each company and requested a resume of suitably qualified contractors and a quote for obtaining the services of the appropriately skilled person from their list.(6) CENTRELINKRecruitment of Permanent StaffTerms of reference documents are available.Recruitment of ContractorsNot applicable due to the use of PE 68 contracts.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYNot applicable, selection based on above process.(7) CENTRELINKRecruitment of permanent staffCentrelink Call CentresSelection panel consisted of:. a team member of the Teleservice Branch. the Section Manager, Geelong TSC. the Personnel Manager, Area South VIC. a staff member of the Human Resource Management Team. Melbourne metropolitan officesSelection panel consisted of HR Managers.Information Technology StaffSelection panel consisted of:. Manager, IT Resource Planning and Scheduling. Assistant Manager, Finance. Assistant Manager, IT Human Resources Pool.Recruitment of contractorsNot applicable due to the use of PE 68 contracts.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYThere was not a requirement for a selection panel to determine the successful tender. A decision was made by the Recruitment Section Manager based on best value for money and the suitability of the persons offered by the firm in meeting the skills and requirements of the Department.(8) CENTRELINKRecruitment of permanent staffCentrelink Call CentreThe rates are available but are subject to commercial in confidence.Melbourne metropolitan officesThe contract price was based on a flat fee of $900 for each person recruited.Information Technology StaffCommission for Green & Green is based on a set of standard fees for services provided.The full recruitment process fees schedule is as follows:APS Grade or equivalentFee ($)ITO11,500ITO21,800SITO Grade C2,800SITO Grade B3,000ASO51,800ASO62,000Senior Officer Grade C2,800Other GradesBy negotiation but not exceeding 3,000Recruitment of ContractorsCommission amounts are subject to commercial in confidence.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYThe commission payable by the Department to each labour-hire firm for each person contracted for labour, where the Department put the person onto our pay system, was as follows:Firm Name$Green & Green350All-Staff350Alectus450Adecco450Wizard400Professional Careers450Otherwise, there was no commission payable, as the costs were linked in with the salary (hourly rate), on the companies invoice for services.(9) CENTRELINKRecruitment of permanent staffTotal sum: (a) owed—Green & Green—$83,896; (b) total sum paid to each labour hire firm.Smalls & Associates$102,750Drake Personnel$ 26,100 Adecco "The Employment People"$ 98,950Quest Personnel$ 10,400Manpower Services (Australia Pty Ltd$333,730Recruitment of contractorsPlease refer to part (3).DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY(a) The total sum paid to labour-hire firms in total in 1996-97 for SSAT contracts was $54,322.(b) The total sum paid to labour-hire firms between 1 June 1997 and 28 February 1998 for DSS was $30,273, and for SSAT was $32,166.(10) CENTRELINKRecruitment of permanent staffTotal sum paid: (a) in 1996-97- $128,850; (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998- $443,080.Recruitment of contractorsTotal sum paid: (a) in 1996-97—$17,897,564; (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998—$24,604,476.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY(a) The total sum paid to labour-hire firms in total in 1996-97 for SSAT contracts was $54,322.(b) The total sum paid to labour-hire firms between 1 June 1997 and 28 February 1998 for DSS was $30,273, and for SSAT was $32,166.(11) CENTRELINKRecruitment of permanent staffProjected labour requirement:(a) February to June 1998- It is anticipated that 50 to 100 staff could be recruited.(b) July 1998 to June 1999- The projection is difficult to make as it is dependant on yet to be announced, or decided Government policy initiatives.Recruitment of contractorsIt is uncertain at this stage as to what Centrelink's IT contractor requirements in the future will be.However, given the limited IT staff availability, it is expected that there will be an increasing the continuing need to use external contracting services.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY(a) The projected labour requirement to be met by labour-hire firms in the Department and SSAT from February to June 1998 is 14 persons employed on short-term (under three months) contracts. (b) The projected labour requirement to be met by labour-hire firms in the Departmentand SSAT from July 1998 to June 1999 is 38 persons employed on short-termcontracts and 10 persons employed on mid-term (3-9 Months) contracts.This isbased on previous usage patterns.(12) CENTRELINKRecruitment of permanent staffNil.Recruitment of contractorsNil.DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYNone of these contractors were taken on to replace staff.They are used for either leave relief, peak workload periods or specialist projects.3518(Question No. 2756)27563518McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan5I4CanberraALP00 asked the Minister for Finance and Administration, upon notice, on 11 March 1998:(1) How many persons have worked in each department, agency, Commonwealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility under a contract for services entered into with a firm whose sole or predominant business is the hiring of labour to clients (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(2) In what sections of the department, agency, authority or company were the persons referred to in part (1) employed.(3) What are the names of the labour-hire firms referred to in part (1) which provided services (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(4) How were the labour-hire firms selected.(5) Will the Minister provide a copy of the tender documents in each case where a labour-hire firm was selected by public tender.(6) Will the Minister provide a copy of the terms of reference for the selection of labour-hire firms.(7) Who comprised the selection panel for successful tenders.(8) What commission was payable by each department, agency, authority or company to each labour-hire firm for each person contracted for labour.(9) What total sum (a) is owed and (b) was paid to each labour-hire firm.(10) What total sum was paid to labour-hire firms in total (a) in 1996-97 and (b) between 1 July 1997 and 28 February 1998.(11) What projected labour requirement will be met by labour-hire firms in the departments, agencies, Commonwealth authorities or companies, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility from (a) February to June 1998 and (b) July 1998 to June 1999.(12) How many government employees have been replaced through labour provided by labour-hire firms in each department, agency, Commonwealth authority and company, including government business enterprises, for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility.3519Fahey, John, MPMr FaheyHQ5MacarthurLPFinance and Administration10—The answer to the honourable Member's question is as follows:The detailed information referred to in the honourable Member's question is not readily available and much of the information requested is not able to be identified. To collect and assemble such information from across my portfolio, solely for the purpose of answering the honourable Member's question, would be a major task and I am not prepared to authorise the expenditure of resources and effort that would be involved.3519(Question No. 2766)27663519Hollis, Colin, MPMr HollisDH4ThrosbyALP00 asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, upon notice, on 11 March 1998:(1) What are the precise roles and responsibilities of employees of the Office of the Employment Advocate.(2) Does the role of an employee of the Office of the Employment Advocate include the video taping and other forms of surveillance of persons involved in picket lines and other associated industrial action; if so, why.(3) How many employees of the Office of the Employment Advocate are located in the Illawarra region, NSW.(4) Has his attention been drawn to an industrial dispute between NSW Grain Corporation's Pivot management and the Australian Workers Union at Port Kembla, NSW.3519Reith, Peter, MPMr ReithWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) Employees of the Office of the Employment Advocate (OEA) carry out functions outlined in 83BB of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (`the Act'). Those functions are principally in relation to advising and assisting employers and employees in relation to rights and obligations under the Act; filing and approval of AWAs; investigating breaches of AWAs and of certain penalty provisions regarding AWAs; and investigating contraventions of the freedom of association provisions of the Act.Staff carrying out compliance work are appointed as authorised officers under Section 83BG of the Act and as Inspectors under Section 84 of the Act. The role of authorised officers is to seek to ensure compliance with the Act, in particular the freedom of association and AWA provisions. The role of compliance officers appointed as inspectors is to ascertain whether certain provisions of the Act (namely provisions regarding coercion into Certified Agreements, payment of strike pay, and the provisions concerning right of entry) have been observed.(2) The actions of OEA employees who have been appointed as authorised officers and/or inspectors are undertaken in accordance with sections 83BH and 86 of the Act respectively. No OEA officer has been involved in the videotaping of any industrial activity. Observation of picket lines or other industrial activity would only be undertaken if such observation was required to ascertain whether there had been a breach of a provision of the Act for which the OEA is responsible (eg. the freedom of association provisions).(3) No officers are located in the Illawarra region. Officers based in Sydney are able to respond to complaints in the Illawarra region.(4) Yes.3519(Question No. 2767)27673519Bevis, Arch, MPMr BevisET4BrisbaneALP00 asked the Minister representing the Special Minister of State, upon notice, on 12 March 1998:(1) What cost has been incurred by the Commonwealth since 2 March 1996 in respect of each Senator and Member from Queensland as a result of moving to new office accommodation or the upgrading and refurbishing of existing office facilities.(2) What is the estimated cost to the Commonwealth in respect of each Senator or Member from Queensland known to be moving to new office accommodation. 3520Fahey, John, MPMr FaheyHQ5MacarthurLPFinance and Administration10—The Special Minister of State has provided the following answer to the honourable Member's question:Costs of refurbishing, relocating, extending or establishing Senators and Members Electorate Offices from 2 March 1996 to 12 March 1998RefurbishmentNameFit outFurnitureRent P.A.Fees(1)Relocation(2)$$$$$Mrs K Elson MP3,60010,34145,43100Ms P Hanson MP041,53627,0005,2792,925Senator C Kernot2,0404,06137,15200Mrs A West MP 17,11745641,6010270Sub Total22,75756,394151,1845,2793,195RelocationNameFit OutFurnitureRent P.A.Fees(1)Relocation(2)Restoration$$$$$$Mr J Bradford MP72,39025,27034,76015,2153,5201,750Mr M Brough MP *49,21245,82834,80013,7707600Mr W Entsch MP (Cairns)74,69115,64536,8007,1944,2050Mr W Entsch MP (T I)57,41839,88019,7607,22400Ms T Gambaro MP #69,22010,69128,00018,8097350Senator B Gibbs50,00026,99831,50018,6061,6180Senator J Hogg84,85822,67351,67517,8892,0890Mrs D Kelly MP73,48539,88029,3024,0735,0800Senator the Hon I Macdonald73,50034,05037,0007,9403,8640Mr P Marek MP69,30736,09729,10615,3871,3550The Hon B Scott MP87,19331,12323,00020,5681,7280Mr P Slipper MP80,86040,00056,2509,4503,3651,700Sub Total842,134368,135411,953156,12528,3193,450ExtensionNameFit OutFurnitureRent P.A.Fees(1)Relocation(2)Restoration Costs$$$$$$Senator the Hon M Reynolds016,82226,40010,19000Total864,891441,351589,537171,59431,5143,450Notes:(1) Fees charged by design and construction consultant (usually Interiors Australia)(2) Freight and handling costs in moving equipment and furniture where applicable* Outgoings of $1739 which comprises costs incurred by the building owner and passed on to the lessor as agreed in the lease are not included in these figures# Outgoings of $7188 which comprises costs incurred by the building owner and passed on to the lessor as agreed in the lease are not included in these figures.(2) The estimated cost for fitout and furniture and fittings for each Senator or Member known to be moving to new office accommodation is: Senator Andrew Bartlett—$110,000; Mr Graeme McDougall MP—$110,000; The Hon John Moore MP*—$50,000; The Hon Warren Truss MP—$118,000; Senator John Woodley—$110,000.* extension of office.3521(Question No. 2768)27683521Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TannerYU5MelbourneALP00 asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Development, upon notice, on 12 March 1998:Is Airservices Australia proposing to privatise air traffic control, firefighting or other services at airports; if so, (a) which services at which airports and (b) what authorisation or approval has (i) he, (ii) the Board of Airservices or (iii) the Chief Executive Officer of Airservices provided.3521Vaile, Mark, MPMr VaileSU5LyneNPTransport and Regional Development10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:Airservices Australia is a statutory authority that provides air traffic control, rescue and firefighting and other services at airports as prescribed in the Air Services Act 1995. The Airports Act, which was passed by the Parliament in 1996, provides for rescue and fire fighting services to be provided by a party other than Airservices, with the agreement of the Minister, and for the provision of air traffic control and navigation services and facilities by a third party under arrangement with Airservices.I am not aware of any substantive discussions between airport lessee companies and Airservices on this issue.3521(Question No. 2769)27693521McClelland, Robert, MPMr McClellandJK6BartonALP00 asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Development, upon notice, on 12 March 1998:Did an incident occur at Sydney (Kingsford-Smith) Airport during the weekend of 28 February and 1 March 1998 in which an aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing as a result of engine failure; if so, (a) what were the circumstances of the incident, including the (i) type of aircraft involved, (ii) nature of the emergency, (iii) likely cause of the emergency and (iv) number of people in the aircraft, (b) was the aircraft (i) making a steep ascent, (ii) making a turn or (iii) over a residential area when the emergency occurred and (c) what steps have been taken to address the safety issues revealed by the incident.3521Vaile, Mark, MPMr VaileSU5LyneNPTransport and Regional Development10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(a) and (b) The Bureau of Air Safety Investigation (BASI) is investigating an incident which occurred on 28 February 1998 at approximately 12:47 Eastern Summer Time at Sydney (Kingsford-Smith) Airport. The aircraft involved was a Boeing 767 operating a domestic scheduled passenger service from Sydney to Cairns.Shortly after take off from Sydney runway 16R, the aircraft's right engine malfunctioned. The crew requested a return to Sydney. Because of local showers, the aircraft was radar vectored for an ILS approach to runway 16R where it landed without further incident. The aircraft stopped on the taxiway and the right engine was shut down and inspected by fire tenders. There was no evidence of fire and the aircraft taxied back to the gate where the passengers disembarked normally. The investigation will examine all of the relevant contributing factors and safety issues associated with this incident and a copy of the investigation report will be provided to the honourable member as soon as it becomes publicly available.3521(Question No. 2772)27723521Jones, Barry, MPMr Barry JonesKH4LalorALP00 asked the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, upon notice, on 12 March 1998:(1) Which Australian Universities (a) have or (b) do not have a faculty or department of history.(2) How many faculties or departments of history have been (a) closed or (b) amalgamated with larger departments such as social studies since March 1993 and at which university in each case.3521Kemp, Dr David, MPDr KempBT4GoldsteinLPEmployment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs;Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) In 1997 (1997 being the last year of comprehensive data), 19 Australian universities had a faculty or department of history, 17 universities did not have a faculty or department of history.(2) From March 1993 to 1997 (1997 being the last year of comprehensive data), the number of universities with a faculty or department of history has increased from 17 to 19. Accordingly the number of equivalent full time students studying history in Australian universities has increased from 8,301 in 1994 to 9,309 in 1997.To fully answer this question in regard to closures and amalgamations at individual universities would require large amounts of resources. I do not consider such an extensive reply would be an appropriate diversion of resources otherwise available to developing and providing services to the public. I am not prepared to authorise the use of these resources to provide the detailed information you have requested on this occasion.3522(Question No. 2777)27773522McClelland, Robert, MPMr McClellandJK6BartonALP00 asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, upon notice, on 23 March 1998:Will he bring up to date the answer to question No. 1871 (Hansard , 23 September 1997, page 8257) concerning representations to the International Labour Organisation.3522Reith, Peter, MPMr ReithWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:Since the answer to question No. 1871 was given, there have been no formal complaints made by industrial associations to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) concerning Australian industrial law and practice.Other representationsThe ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) has made an observation regarding the informal representations by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) concerning the federal Workplace Relations Act 1996 and Australia's application of the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949, (No 98).The CEACR has expressed views on some issues relating to collective bargaining and has asked for clarification or noted developments on others.The Government will be formally responding to the CEACR's observation in 1999 as part of the usual reporting process on ILO Conventions.In a letter dated 16 February 1998, the ILO advised the Department of Workplace Relations and Small Business that the National Union of Workers had submitted representations on the application by Australia of the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No 87). These representations relate to the New South Wales Industrial Relations Act 1996.Australia will respond to these representations in its usual report to the ILO later this year.3522(Question No. 2788)27883522Melham, Daryl, MPMr Melham4T4BanksALP00 asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, upon notice, on 24 March 1998:(1) On what dates and in what forms have the States and the Australian Capital Territory responded to the draft Commonwealth law and practice report provided to them in December 1995 concerning ILO Convention No. 169—Indigenous and Tribal People, 1989.(2) What legislative features applying to the Northern Territory, outside the authority of the Northern Territory Government, are prima facie inconsistent with the convention.3522Reith, Peter, MPMr ReithWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) The Commonwealth prepared a draft law and practice report in November 1995. This was provided to the States and Territories in December 1995. Only the Northern Territory has commented on the report.I wrote to State and Territory Labour Ministers on 26 March 1997 seeking their views on recommendations concerning ILO instruments which arose out of the 1996 Commonwealth-State consultative meeting on ILO matters. One of the recommendations which required decision concerned the continuation of assessment of compliance with Convention 169. State and Territory Labour Ministers were asked whether further work on assessment should continue given the complexity and sensitivity of the associated issues and the considerable resources that would be required.Tasmania has not responded to date. All other jurisdictions responded and agreed to suspend further work on Convention 169 for the time being.(2) The Northern Territory Government advised in March 1996 that it considered provisions of the Commonwealth Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 to be inconsistent with Articles 2, 3, 4, 7 and 14 of the Convention.The Commonwealth does not have a concluded view on that opinion. 3523(Question No. 2793)27933523Jones, Barry, MPMr Barry JonesKH4LalorALP00 asked the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts, upon notice, on 25 March 1998:(1) When did the `It's your ABC' logo promotion campaign begin.(2) How many times have promotions in the campaign been shown from its beginning to 24 March 1998.(3) What was the ABC's share of Australia's television audience (a) at the beginning of the campaign and (b) on 24 March 1998.(4) What impact has the logo campaign had on audiences.(5) What has the campaign cost.3523Smith, Warwick, MPMr Warwick SmithGJ4BassLPMinister for Family Services10—The Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:(1) 26 January 1996.(2) ABC Network Television Presentation Management advises the promotions have been used in their various forms approximately 23,700 times (around 30 times a day). This is standard scheduling for TV network station identification. The promotions are not spread evenly and are shown at a slightly higher rate in the morning, prime time, and midnight to dawn, and are limited during children's time. Scheduling also varies according to the length of the program ie half an hour, one hour or a movie.(3) (a) The five capital city share of the rating (6.00 a.m. to midnight) in January 1996 was 13.9.(b) The current five capital city share of the rating (6.00 a.m. to midnight) is 15.3.(4) The promotions do not appear as discrete elements in the audience rating information provided by A C Nielsen. Peoplemeters record audience patterns in 15 minute intervals. It is not possible, therefore, to associate audience growth or decline with the appearance of the station identifications, which appear for 30 or 60 seconds between programs. However, independent research (from Jigsaw Strategic Research) has shown them to be popular with focus groups.(5) The overall cost of the campaign has been $477,964.00. 3523(Question No. 2798)27983523Bevis, Arch, MPMr BevisET4BrisbaneALP00 asked the Minister representing the Special Minister of State, upon notice, on 25 March 1998:(1) Further to the answer to part (3) of question No. 2586 (Hansard , 24 March 1998, page 1036) concerning the criteria used to determine the retrenchment or retention of Comcar drivers, will the Minister provide the complete details of the standard selection criteria and duty statements for GSO 5 drivers.(2) What questions were asked of drivers as part of the interview process.(3) Were all drivers asked the same questions.(4) Were drivers with the highest level of skill and training, including anti-terrorist training, dismissed in favour of other drivers with lesser driver training qualifications; if so, why.(5) Do the selection criteria provide a better indication of a driver's ability than the actual qualifications they have obtained through Comcar; if so, how.3523Fahey, John, MPMr FaheyHQ5MacarthurLPFinance and Administration10—The Special Minister of State has provided the following answer to the honourable Member's question:(1) The standard selection criteria and duty statement for GSO Level 5 drivers is provided herewith.(2) COMCAR drivers were asked a range of questions relating to passenger safety and comfort, COMCAR operational procedures, flexibility and adaptability in a changing work environment, COMCAR in-car systems, interpersonal skills, capability to work unsupervised, vehicle and personal presentation, EEO and OH&S principles and practices.(3) Yes.(4) COMCAR retained those drivers who rated highest against the selection criteria.(5) The selection criteria reflect the requirements of COMCAR. The qualifications drivers obtained through their employment with COMCAR were recognised in the overall selection process.SELECTION CRITERIAGSO LEVEL 5 DRIVER—VIP TRANSPORT (COMCAR)Important1. Demonstrated willingness and ability to provide service to COMCAR customers through passenger comfort and defensive driving skills.2. Demonstrated understanding of COMCAR operational procedure. 3. Proven capacity to be flexible, adaptable and work in a changing environment.4. Ability to work shifts, be reliable and responsive and be able to operate COMCAR in-vehicle systems.5. Proven interpersonal skills and the capacity of working unsupervised in a team environment.6. Demonstrated a high level of personal and vehicle presentation.7. Commitment to DAS EEO and OH&S principles and practices.Duty StatementClassification: GSO 5 (Salary 38 hr wk)Program: Ministerial and Parliamentary ServicesBranch: VIP Transport (COMCAR)—CanberraSection: OperationsLocal Title: VIP Motorcade Ministerial DriverSecurity Assessment: CONFIDENTIALPosition Hours: 38 hours 00 minutesTake charge of a vehicle providing VIP Motorcade and Ministerial transport and provide support to passengers with the control of their baggage and similar personal effects.Undertake the preliminary procedure to ensure that the COMCAR vehicle is free of dangerous substances or devices.Operate COMCAR in-car systems and maintain clear documentation required to record the day to day usage of the vehicle and it's performance.Provide information to customers on COMCAR's services and maintain confidentiality and discretion at all times.Under general direction, supervise a small group of COMCAR drivers if required.Other duties appropriate to the level.Duties representing highest function: 1Immediate Supervisors: Administrative Service Officer Class 6Position Numbers 222163524(Question No. 2801)28013524Mossfield, Frank, MPMr MossfieldMK6GreenwayALP00 asked the Minister representing the Assistant Treasurer, upon notice, on 25 March 1998:(1) Did the Penrith office of the Child Support Agency issue a section 72A notice relating to the collection of child support debts to a bank on 5 February 1997 in respect of an account held by the ex-husband of Ms Lisa Greco.(2) Is the Child Support Agency required to confirm the receipt of a section 72A notice by the relevant bank before the parent paying child support is advised that it has been issued.(3) Did the Penrith office of the Child Support Agency send Ms Greco's ex-husband a copy of the notice referred to in part (1) on 7 February 1997.(4) Did the bank referred to in part (1) advise the Penrith office of the Child Support Agency on 18 February 1997 that the notice could not be actioned because the account had been closed on 13 February 1997.(5) Did the Penrith office of the Child Support Agency advise Ms Greco in a letter dated 10 April 1997 that (a) it was the Agency's policy to confirm receipt of a notice before the paying parent was advised it had been issued, (b) the policy had not been adhered to in the case of the notice issued on behalf of Ms Greco and (c) the failure to follow that policy and the absence of a bank officer on leave had resulted in the paying parent being made aware of the attempts to secure funds from his bank account before action to secure the funds could be completed.(6) Did Ms Greco subsequently seek compensation from the Child Support Agency.(7) Did the Assistant Treasurer advise Ms Greco in a letter dated 19 March 1998 that (a) the advice the Child Support Agency had provided her on 10 April 1997 was not correct and (b) there had not been any defective administration by the Agency.(8) Is Ms Greco entitled to compensation; if not, why not.3524Costello, Peter, MPMr CostelloCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—The Assistant Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:(1), (4), (6), (7), and (8) In accordance with the secrecy provisions of section 16 of the Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 1988, as well as the Information Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988, I am unable to answer this aspect of the Honourable Member's question.(2) No.(3) In accordance with the secrecy provisions of section 16 of the Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 1988, as well as the Information Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988, I am unable to specifically answer this aspect of the Honourable Member's question. However, subsection 72A(5) of the Registration and Collection Act requires the Agency to serve a copy of the notice on the child support debtor.(5) In accordance with the secrecy provisions of section 16 of the Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 1988, as well as the Information Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988, I am unable to specifically answer this aspect of the Honourable Member's question. However, the Child Support Registrar advises me that the Agency does not have a policy of confirming receipt of a 72A notice with a bank before advising the paying parent of its issue.3525(Question No. 2808)28083525Latham, Mark, MPMr LathamK26WerriwaALP00 asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, upon notice, on 26 March 1998:(1) Will he bring up to date the information in the answer to question No. 1383 (Hansard , 20 October 1994, page 2608) concerning ILO Convention No. 155—Occupational Safety and Health, 1981.(2) What steps still have to be taken before Australia ratifies the Convention.3525Reith, Peter, MPMr ReithWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) Convention No. 155 was identified as an appropriate target for ratification by the Conference of Commonwealth and State Labour Ministers in 1984.New South Wales gave in-principle agreement to ratification on 6 February 1996; Victoria agreed to ratification on 8 July 1992; Queensland agreed to ratification on 26 April 1991; Western Australia agreed to ratification on 28 August 1989 and it has since been confirmed that new legislation is in compliance; South Australia agreed to ratification on 25 February 1991; Tasmania agreed to ratification on 22 May 1997; The Northern Territory agreed to ratification on 2 May 1995; The Australian Capital Territory agreed to ratification on 8 September 1992.(2) The normal practice in relation to ratification of ILO conventions by Australia is that two pre-conditions be satisfied. These are that law and practice in all relevant jurisdictions (Commonwealth and/or State and Territory) comply with provisions of the convention and that all State and Territory governments that have an interest in the convention have formally agreed to ratification.The Commonwealth complies with the provisions of Convention 155 and all States and Territories have formally agreed to ratification except New South Wales which has provided in-principle agreement. The Commonwealth Government cannot proceed to consideration of ratification until all jurisdictions have given formal unconditional agreement.Agreements obtained from some jurisdictions are now relatively old. These States and Territories would have to be given the opportunity to confirm their agreement prior to any consideration by the Commonwealth Government of ratification.3525(Question No. 2813)28133525Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TannerYU5MelbourneALP00 asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Development, upon notice, on 26 March 1998:(1) Have static displays of the master plan for Perth Airport been placed for public inspection: if so, (a) where have they been placed, (b) where were they placed and (c) when will they be removed.(2) Have displays been placed in (a) Queens Park or (b) Cannington: if not, where are the nearest displays and are they accessible from Queens Park or Cannington by public transport.(3) How has access by all residents affected by the master plan, especially the elderly and disabled, been ensured.(4) Are Queens Park and Cannington subject to overflying aircraft: if so, how are the suburbs affected.(5) How will Queens Park and Cannington be affected by airport operations under the new master plan.3525Vaile, Mark, MPMr VaileSU5LyneNPTransport and Regional Development10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) Westralia Airports Corporation has advised that a static display of the draft Master Plan for Perth International Airport is being placed at the following locations at the following times: Perth International Airport Terminal—1 March-8 April; Belmont Town Library—9 March-15 March; Midland Library—16 March-22 March; Kalamunda Railway Museum Library—23 March-29 March; Riverton Public Library, Canning—30 March-5 April; Bassendean Library—6 April-13 April; Bayswater Town Library—14 April-20 April.Copies of the draft Master Plan and the draft Environmental Strategy documents have been provided to, and are on public display between 1 March and 1 June, at the following venues: the Cities of Belmont and Bayswater Council Offices, the Belmont and Bayswater Libraries, the City of Canning Council Offices, the Town of Bassendean Council Office and Bassendean Library, the Shire of Kalamunda and Kalamunda Library, the Shire of Swan, the Midland, Riverton, and Alexander Libraries, and at the Westralia Airports Corporation.(2) The Corporation has advised that residents in Queens Park and Cannington may view the display at the Riverton Public Library or inspect the full documents at City of Canning Council Offices. They advise that both venues are accessible by public transport.(3) The Corporation has advised that access to information about the Master Plan has been ensured in five ways: (a) copies of the Master Plan are available at the locations listed above, (b) there is a Freecall information line, (c) free information leaflets are available through the Freecall line or from Council Offices and display venues, (d) copies of the Master Plan can be purchased, and (e) there is the Perth International Airport Internet Webpage. The Corporation has also advised that all display venues are publicly accessible sites with disabled persons access.(4) The Corporation has advised that areas of Queens Park and Cannington currently lie within the 20 Australian Noise Exposure Index contour as indicated in the Master Plan document. The Master Plan explains that the Index calculates actual noise exposure.(5) The Corporation has advised that the Master Plan indicates that areas of Queens Park will lie within the 20 and 25 Australian Noise Exposure Concept (ANEC) and areas of Canning will lie within the 20 ANEC. The Master Plan explains that the Concept is a planning tool that is used to test changes to noise exposure resulting from some proposed changes to airport operations.3526(Question No. 2823)28233526Campbell, Graeme, MPMr CampbellCF4KalgoorlieIND00 asked the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, upon notice, on 30 March 1998:What quantities of (a) onions and (b) lamb meat have been imported into Australia between 1 January 1998 and the date of answering this question and what was the country of origin in each case.3526Anderson, John, MPMr Anderson4K4GwydirNPPrimary Industries and Energy10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:The information is obtained from commercial invoice data which comes to the AQIS's Import Management System (AIMS) system via the Australian Customs Service's COMPILE system.Interceptions for onions and lamb from 1 January 1998 to 31 March 1998 are as follows:ProductCountry of OriginAmount importedOnionsUSA255.65 TonneOnionsNetherlands11.25 TonneOnionsNew Zealand18.30 TonneLambNew Zealand473.88 Kg3526(Question No. 2827)28273526McClelland, Robert, MPMr McClellandJK6BartonALP00 asked the Treasurer, upon notice, on 31 March, 1998:(1) What average sum in income tax is paid by residential strata owners corporations.(2) Has his Department estimated the effective cost of processing a residential strata owners corporation's tax return; if so, what is the estimated average cost.3526Costello, Peter, MPMr CostelloCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—The Assistant Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:(1) Statistics compiled for the 1995-96 income year reveal that there were 20,183 returns received from residential strata owners corporations and that the total tax collected from those corporations was $5,056,050. This means that the average tax paid by residential strata owners corporations in the 1995-96 income year was $251. (2) There is no information available on the estimated cost of processing a tax return from a residential strata owners corporation.3526(Question No. 2828)28283526McClelland, Robert, MPMr McClellandJK6BartonALP00 asked the Treasurer, upon notice, on 31 March, 1998:Has the Commissioner for Taxation withdrawn from negotiations with the Hurstville City Council on the establishment of a joint venture childcare centre; if so, (a) why and (b) will the Commissioner reconsider the decision in the light of the longstanding need for the facility.3526Costello, Peter, MPMr CostelloCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—The Assistant Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:(a) The Commissioner of Taxation advised that negotiations with the Council were eventually terminated because the ATO was unable to agree to the condition that ongoing funding for the centre be provided for the next 21 years. The Commis sioner said that he did write to the Council offering to match the level of subsidy provided by the NSW Government for a period of ten years with two options for periods of five years each. This offer was rejected.(b) The Commissioner said that he will not reconsider his decision to withdraw from the construction of the centre. He also said the Council had always made it clear that if the ATO did not proceed with its in principle decision to construct an additional 20 places in the centre for priority use by children of ATO employees, the Council would proceed with the development of a 40 place child care facility without the involvement of the ATO.3527(Question No. 2830)28303527McClelland, Robert, MPMr McClellandJK6BartonALP00 asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, upon notice, on 31 March 1998:(1) Which International Labour Organisation conventions does the International Labour Office list as basic human rights conventions.(2) Which of the conventions have not been ratified by Australia.(3) What steps still have to be taken before Australia ratifies the conventions which it has not ratified.3527Reith, Peter, MPMr ReithWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) The following conventions are listed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as basic human rights conventions: 11—Right of Association (Agriculture), 1921; 29—Forced Labour, 1930; 87—Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, 1948; 98—Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining, 1949; 100—Equal Remuneration, 1951; 105—Abolition of Forced Labour, 1957; 111—Discrimination (Employment and Occupation), 1958; 135—Workers' Representatives, 1971; 141—Rural Workers' Organisations, 1975; 151—Labour Relations (Public Service), 1978; 156—Workers with Family Responsibilities, 1981.(2) Of the above list, conventions 141 and 151 have not been ratified by Australia.(3) The normal Australian practice in relation to ILO conventions is that two pre-conditions be satisfied before ratification is considered. These are that law and practice in all relevant jurisdictions (Commonwealth and/or State and Territory) comply with the provisions of the convention and that all State and Territory governments that have an interest in the convention have formally agreed to ratification. The Commonwealth considers that all jurisdictions comply with the provisions of convention 141. All States and Territories, except Tasmania, have formally agreed to ratification.With respect to convention 151, it is not clear whether all jurisdictions are in full compliance with the convention. However, only New South Wales has not formally agreed to ratification.Agreements obtained from some jurisdictions are now relatively old. In these cases, the relevant State/Territory would have to be given the opportunity to confirm their agreement prior to any consideration by the Commonwealth Government of ratification.3527(Question No. 2839)28393527Ferguson, Martin, MPMr Martin FergusonLS4BatmanALP00 asked the Minister for Transport and Regional Development, upon notice, on 2 April 1998:Has Mr P. Houlihan or any company or organisation associated with him been engaged by him or his Department since 2 March 1996; if so, (a) what remuneration was paid and (b) will he provide details of (i) individual sums paid, (ii) the purposes for which they were paid and (iii) the uses to which they were put.3527Vaile, Mark, MPMr VaileSU5LyneNPTransport and Regional Development10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:Mr Houlihan was one of the specified personnel for a 1996 contract entered into between the Department and ACIL Economics and Policy Pty Ltd.(a) I am advised that payments to ACIL Economics and Policy Pty Ltd under that contract totalled $118,761.(b) (i) The Department is not privy to the amount paid to Mr Houlihan by ACIL Economics and Policy Pty Ltd. (ii) Development of an industrial relations strategy for waterfront reform. (iii) A report was prepared and provided to the Department as required under the consultancy.3527(Question No. 2840)28403527Dargavel, Steven, MPMr DargavelKP6FraserALP00 asked the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, upon notice, on 2 April 1998:Has Mr Joseph Gersten, a citizen of the USA, been granted a bridging visa pending his substantive application for residency in Australia; if so, (a) what is the exact nature of Mr Gersten's application, (b) has his attention been drawn to the fact that the Supreme Court of Florida, in case No. 87 248, indefinitely suspended Mr Gersten from the practice of law arising from contempt proceedings in Florida, (c) is he able to say whether Mr Gersten is wanted by US authorities and (d) will Mr Gersten's application for permanent residence be granted.3528Ruddock, Philip, MPMr Ruddock0J4BerowraLPImmigration and Multicultural Affairs10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:In relation to the first part of the question and to part (a) I am unable to respond specifically as there are privacy and confidentiality considerations applicable to these matters. The honourable member may contact my office directly should he wish to seek further information.(b) I am aware of the suspension action taken, with regard to Mr Gersten, by the Supreme Court of Florida, (c) I am unable to comment on whether Mr Gersten is wanted by US authorities and (d) Mr Gersten's application for residence in Australia will be assessed, like every other application, on its merits and according to the relevant legislation.3528(Question No. 2862)28623528Evans, Martyn, MPMr Martyn EvansN36BonythonALP00 asked the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism, upon notice, on 6 April 1998:(1) Further to the answer to question No. 2574 (Hansard , 4 March 1998, page 368), does the expenditure on the Exelgram/Pixelgram project referred to in part (1) of the answer include all capital equipment purchases and the salaries of all relevant CSIRO staff from July 1998 to the date of answering the question; if not, what is the total expenditure.(2) Does the CSIRO have any contractual obligation to expend further funds on the Exelgram/Pixelgram project; if so, what is the (a) nature, (b) value and (c) time frame of the contractual obligation.(3) Has the CSIRO approached Charter Pacific to resolve the existing litigation; if so, (a) when and (b) in what terms.(4) Further to the answer to part (11) of question No. 2574, (a) when did the CSIRO instruct its solicitors to carry out a due diligence study of Charter Pacific, (b) who carried out the study, (c) what was the cost and (d) why did CSIRO not receive a report arising out of the study given that it commissioned the study.(5) Further to the answer to part (12) of question No. 2574, have there been other circumstances in which officers of the CSIRO have made tape recordings of meetings without informing other meeting participants in relation to the Charter Pacific matter or in relation to the dispute with the Cassagrain group; if so, what were the circumstances of each incident.3528Moore, John, MPMr MooreEI4RyanLPIndustry, Science and Technology10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(1) The expenditure figure does include all capital equipment purchases and the salaries of all staff involved in research and development activities in connection with CSIRO's Pixelgram and Exelgram technologies.(2) Yes.(a) Under the terms of existing licence agreements, CSIRO has certain obligations to produce Pixelgram and Exelgram master plates upon request from its licensees and this implies that CSIRO should continue to maintain an appropriate electron beam lithography mastering facility;.(b) CSIRO is not contractually obliged to meet all or any portion of the costs associated with maintaining the facility from its own resources; it is contractually entitled to charge licensees the full costs of all originations requested including a component in each charge to cover the costs of maintaining the facility.(c) The licence agreements are due to expire in December 1998.(3) No; on several occasions during 1997 CSIRO has participated in preliminary discussions primarily through its solicitors with a view to resolving the litigation; these discussions have been inconclusive but it appears to have been accepted by the solicitors acting for the respective parties that any viable resolution would have to involve a full and permanent severance of relations between the parties. The position of CSIRO on this issue remains unchanged from that provided in part 9 of question No 2574 (Hansard , 4 March 1998, page 368).(4) (a) CSIRO instructed its solicitors to carry out a study on Charter Pacific in June 1997; (b) the study was carried out by Mr and Mrs Kemp; (c) the cost was approximately $3,000; (d) CSIRO was advised by its solicitors that the expense of continuing the study was not justified; in the light of discussions referred to in the answer to part 3 of this question, it appeared unlikely that Charter Pacific would become involved directly with CSIRO in the relevant business.(5) No.