1999-08-253914REPS899101999-08-25Mr SPEAKER(Mr Neil Andrew) took the chair at 9.30 a.m., and read prayers.Bills8991r8658991Debate resumed from 24 June, on motion by Mr Reith:That the bill be now read a second time.09:31:008991Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—Mr Speaker, on indulgence, with the agreement of my counterpart I table the supplementary explanatory memorandum which deals with the amendments which have been agreed between us. I understand the amendments have been circulated.09:32:008991Bevis, Arch, MPMr BEVISET4BrisbaneALP00—The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] was first before the House last year, was returned from the Senate, having been defeated in the Senate, and was reintroduced by the government on 24 June when the report of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission on junior rates was tabled. I want to pick up the debate from where it was in June and have a look at where we are today.In June, I made the observation that the AIRC report on junior rates included some important criteria as to how these matters should be progressed. Fundamentally, they were that this issue could not be sorted out as a blanket prescription; that it required consideration of the details of each case on its merits and that no one size would fit all. To quote from the report, it said:. . . in the design of replacement of junior rate classifications, no one size fits all. The fit of an alternative is a matter of attention to detail and the merits in particular circumstances.I made clear in response to that report that the Labor Party agreed absolutely with that view. I want to quote briefly from my contribution on that day, as recorded in Hansard . Having quoted the section of the report to which I have just referred, I said:That is the view with which we agree.I went on, in responding to a comment that was made by the government at the time about problems that they foresaw in dealing with this, and said:There is no need for the political impasse the minister referred to . . . because if the minister and this government are willing to accept the commission's view that this is a matter that requires consideration case by case, they will have our support on that.That was on the record in June this year. I went on in June this year, as Hansard records, as follows:We take the view that the onus of proof in that—that is, in seeking to change junior rates one way or the other—rests with the party seeking to alter the status quo. That is, for example, if a union were seeking to remove a junior rates clause and replace it, let us say, with a competency based clause, the onus of proof would rest with the union to demonstrate its case for that change. Equally, if this government or an employer were to argue for an extension of junior rates into areas that presently do not have them, we would say that the onus of proof would rest with them to justify that extension.Later, in that same speech, I said we took a different view to that of the government and the bill which they had reintroduced into the parliament. I said:The umpire should be allowed to deal with these matters on a case by case basis with the onus of proof resting on those who seek to change. The government wants to tie the AIRC's hands, and we will not support that.Mr Speaker, that was the view we placed clearly before the parliament in June when this report of the Industrial Relations Commission was tabled. It is a view we hold to absolutely, and it is a view we hold to today. It is a view that led us to prepare a series of amendments to the government's bill that would have ensured precisely those principles were adhered to.The government's bill that was rejected last year by the parliament and was reintroduced by this government on 24 June effectively sought to tie the Industrial Relations Commission's hands. Had it been passed, had it proceeded, it would have ensured that all junior rates provisions would have been enshrined with no opportunity for the commission to consider an application for their removal, or at least they could consider it but, in considering it, they would have been so tied up that the conclusion would have been determined for them in advance. But, worse than that, the bill, as it was presented and as it had been rejected by the parliament previously, effectively ensured that all awards and agreements that do not now have a junior rates clause in them would be forced to include a junior rates clause if they covered work for which someone under 21 years of age could be employed. Those positions were totally untenable and unacceptable to the Labor Party, and they remain unacceptable to the Labor Party.There could be no doubt about the Labor Party's position on that day. Members of this chamber will remember that on that afternoon in question time the government thought they had a clever tactic when they moved that so much of standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition from explaining the Labor Party's position. All members of this House will recall fondly, at least members on our side will, that we grabbed that and said, `Let's not just have the Leader of the Opposition, let's have a proper debate on this' and we did. During that debate the Leader of the Opposition, and many members on our side of the parliament, made plain Labor's clear stance on the issue. The Leader of the Opposition said:We agree that the issue of junior wages ought to be considered on a case-by-case basis. We agree that the presumption on changing junior rates should be a presumption that is exercised by those advocating the change. We think there should be no automaticity in that regard . . . We agree that there will need to be change in relation to the legislation, where there is an automatic end.He went on to make the observation, absolutely correctly as things stood on 24 June:In this chamber there is now only one party that disagrees with the IRC. That is the government . . . That is where this matter was left in June of this year. From the Labor Party's perspective those principles, which were set out by the Leader of the Opposition and me and many others, were well known in this place and outside of it. They took into account the evidence and the conclusions that had been arrived at by the industrial commission during its inquiry. I think that was the proper course to follow.Indeed, we had been critical of the government in the months prior to that for seeking to legislate during the period the Industrial Relations Commission was conducting the inquiry. We made the point quite strongly that we believed the industrial commission should be free to consider the matter without duress, without being bullied and without the parliament effectively overriding it. We held to that view then and we have consistently applied those principles in our response in June, which we adhere to today.I want to make some observations about the underlying issue of junior rates, and I made some of these points in June this year as well. Junior rates are by definition discriminatory—that is, people are paid according to their date of birth. It is not desirable for juniors, or for anyone else, to see discrimination applied in the workplace. We hold a general view, as a party, that we should be moving to remove discrimination from the workplace, to the extent that that is able to be done.In applying that to the issue at hand, as those earlier comments indicate, we believe the best way of doing that is to deal with each case on its merits, not for the parliament to unilaterally seek to entrench junior rates and extend them, as the government's earlier bill did, or to legislate their removal. We took the view, and take the view today, that the best way of progressing to eliminate discrimination is to allow the commission to hear argument fairly and properly and to decide each case—because, as they correctly point out, one size does not fit all. It is important that parties to an industrial agreement, to an award or a certified agreement be able to go before the commission and put their arguments freely, openly and forcefully, and for the commission, with some guidance as to principles, to be free to look at the facts of the case and make their decision.I think it is fair to say, from some of the media comments this morning, that there has been some reaction from my colleagues in the trade union movement that have not endorsed the position which I have advanced here today. Certainly, if there is a complaint and concern about consultation then I apologise. I understand their angst. However, the Labor Party's position on this matter has been steadfast, and was made clear in June, as I have enunciated today. There has not been one centimetre of movement on our part in any of those key issues that we set out in June of this year, and nor would there be because we hold them to be fundamentally important principles in dealing with this issue.I share with many of my critics this morning in the trade union movement an ambition and a goal to see junior rates replaced with competency based rates, with rates that acknowledge the skill and work value of the individual rather than simply looking at their birth certificate to determine how much they should be paid. I think that is a preferable system. However, if we are to move there constructively, we need to do it by allowing the commission to properly examine all of the facts of each case. I suspect on that point I have some critics but, nonetheless, it is the most appropriate course for us as a nation to take. It was clearly the view adopted by the industrial commission as a result of the inquiry.There were very few submissions—there were some—to that inquiry that advocated the immediate abolition of junior rates. In fact, no government, of any political persuasion, put that view. There was I think a very good submission from the Queensland state government that advocated the removal of junior rates of pay, but it advocated that that be done on an industry by industry basis and that the junior rates should continue to apply until the new formula was adopted. Effectively, that is the model we have advanced. It is the model that says that these matters should be dealt with on a case by case basis, which is precisely what we are doing, and that the onus of proof should rest with the parties seeking to make that change.I want to turn briefly to the specifics of the amendments that the government has circulated and make some comment in relation to those. There is an important extension of the aims that the commission must take into account. The government in their bill included youth employment as a criteria, and they found three different ways to say the same thing—they repeated three times that youth employment was the only issue that the commission should take into account. We acknowledge youth employment is an important consideration, as is all employment, but we do not think it is the only criterion that should be taken into account.I note that the government has agreed to insert other words that we were proposing to include youth skills and community standards. They are important additions to provide guidance to the commission on what it should take into account. Skills development is fundamental to our future and it is the transition from an age based system to a skills based system, and we support the transition to a skills based, competency based structure. Community standards are, as the phrase implies in common parlance, the standard accepted in the community across a range of issues.In the context of this debate, it seems to me totally appropriate that it should include, for example, the fact that 18-year-old Australians are regarded as adults to all intents and purposes across a range of legal obligations. They are able to vote, enter contractual arrangements, be dealt with by courts as adults, join the military and die for their country and do a whole range of other things. That is a community standard which obviously, I imagine, would be included in arguments before the commission by any party wanting to remove junior rates from an award.Similarly, there may well be community standards specific to a particular industry, and they would be the subject of consideration in that case by case assessment that the industrial commission would be free to look at. The skills based component is one which Labor holds dear not just because of the debate in the last couple of months but because of our policy in government. It was a Labor government that pioneered and championed the role of traineeships, and I think the traineeship system has much to commend it and is one of the things that I am sure we will see develop over the years ahead, hopefully with Labor in government.The other provisions here set out the principles that I alluded to earlier—that is, they require a case by case consideration rather than a blanket approval; they make it clear that the onus of proof rests on the party wishing to make a change; they make it clear that, in considering these matters, the commission may include a junior rate of pay in the award or vary a junior rate of pay in the award or remove a junior rate of pay in the award. That provides the flexibility to the commission which we thought at the outset it should have rather than be in the position of having its hands tied behind its back, as the original bill would have done.It is the case that, in circulating the government's amendments this morning, they have now adopted all of those points which we set in June as requirements for sensible progression of this issue. That has been as a result of some discussions that have been held between the government and the opposition. I understand the minister will subsequently be making some comments in relation to the amendments and his understanding of those discussions. At that time, which may be during the consideration in detail stage, I may seek to add to my comments.09:48:008994Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSONRW5BradfieldLP10—In speaking to the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2], which amends the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and the Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1996, and the amendments that we have heard about today, the first thing that ought to be said is that, if this is a triumph for anybody, it is a triumph for commonsense, in particular for young Australians whose place in the workplace has been most certainly threatened by the intransigence of some sections of the community and the political environment to maintain a youth wages structure in Australian society. It is important that we actually remind the House of some of the amendments. The first is—schedule 1, item 1, page 3—that the objects of the act for the Australian Industrial Relations Commission will be to promote `youth employment, youth skills and community standards' and, further, the commission would use `a case by case approach to protect the competitive position of young people in the labour market, to promote youth employment, youth skills and community standards and to assist in reducing youth unemployment'. When you consider those amendments in the context of what the findings were of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission's detailed six-month inquiry into the impact of abolishing youth wages, the amendments very much strengthen the bill. Whatever criticisms there may be of either the government or, indeed, the opposition, particularly the spokesman for workplace relations in the Australian Labor Party, we should not lose sight of the very people whose interest is served by these amendments and indeed this bill.One of the other amendments that is worth pointing out specifically to the House relates to section 143, award requirements, at schedule 1, item 5:. . . if it applies to work that is or may be performed by young people—protects the competitive position of young people in the labour market, promotes youth employment, youth skills and community standards and assists in reducing youth unemployment by including, if on a case-by-case basis, the Commission determines it appropriate, junior rates of pay . . .That is, junior rates of pay essentially will prevail and will be maintained in awards. Many of the submissions that were put to the AIRC review were put by unions. The shop employees union, for example, amongst others, recognised the detrimental impact on the tenuous position in the workplace that young people would face if youth wages were abolished.The bill and the amendments, which it would seem have been agreed to by the opposition, maintain what has been a feature of the Australian wages system for close to a century—that is, that a young person in need of experience who has the chance to train and work will be paid at a junior rate. Unless this bill and these amendments are passed, junior wages will disappear from 22 June next year and, shortly after, so will the jobs of thousands of young Australians.There are 400,000 young people under the age of 21 who are currently paid junior wages, and that is over half of all the young people in this country who have a job. It stands to reason that, if you take young, inexperienced people and price their labour at the level of a more experienced and trained worker, employers will be much less inclined to offer jobs to them—and in some cases they might employ no-one at all. Notwithstanding this, the government agreed in its 1996 workplace relations negotiations with the Australian Democrats to refer the issue to a full review by the AIRC.The full bench of the AIRC reported after six months of detailed inquiry that it could not find any feasible, non-discriminatory alternatives to age based junior rates of pay. The opposition, at that time at least, demanded an industrial relations review inquiry. We have had one, and it repudiated I think every one of the alternatives that were sponsored by the opposition, and certainly by the union movement, as being fundamentally flawed, discriminatory or both.The findings of the AIRC were fairly extensive, but there are some in particular that I think are worth highlighting. The first is that it recognised that there is indeed an indisputable relationship between junior rates of pay, their potential abolition and the employment prospects of young people. That confirms what most reasonable people would understand: if you are running a business and you are making decisions as to whether you will employ someone or not, whether you will put more money into capital or whether you will grow your business at all, it stands to reason that you will look at the wage and the issues surrounding that and contrast that with what a prospective employee has to offer.One of the more scholarly examinations of this was done by Anne Daly and published in the CEDA Bulletin in March this year, and I will quote from the results of her study. She said: The results in which we would place most confidence suggest that a 1% increase in youth wages would lead to a decrease in youth employment of between 2 and 5% in industries employing a relatively high proportion of youth.She then went on to add:. . . there are theoretical reasons for believing that these are conservative estimates of the long-term effects on employment of increasing the wages of young workers.Further to that, the Productivity Commission review of the relationship between the employment of young people and youth wages found that an increase in youth wages of one per cent would mean a two per cent reduction of employment of young people in the retail sector, a 2.5 per cent reduction of employment in the cultural and recreation industries and a five per cent reduction of employment in the accommodation sector.There is international research on this subject, but I suppose some people would wonder why it should even be necessary to look at research in this regard. As I said earlier, if you have a person who is relatively immature and who also has a low skills base and experience base, it stands to reason that if you had to pay them the same wage as someone who is well into their 30s with more experience and skills, you would not employ the young person. Hamermesh's labour market demand work from Princeton University is supported by an extensive body of international evidence suggesting a much greater substitution between unskilled labour and capital—that is, if you price young people out of the market, they are likely to be replaced by capital.The second key finding of the AIRC was that a discounted pay rate for entry level work continues to be necessary in areas in which employment under junior rate classifications is most concentrated. Well designed junior rate classifications might even create or protect employment opportunities, including in the building and construction industries.When you consider those first two key conclusions of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and you put them in the context of the amendments that are being moved today, it makes eminent sense. In other words, the Industrial Relations Commission will be looking at areas where youth wages are not currently entrenched on a case by case basis, looking at the protection and the interests of young people first and foremost and looking at community standards in determining whether there will be a youth wage included in awards for those particular sectors. Apart from commonsense, any examination of any experience and research here and overseas suggests very much that the AIRC is almost certainly—particularly when you consider the changed objects under these amendments—likely to maintain and support junior rates of pay.The third thematic conclusion was that junior rates are simple and easy to understand and administer. Certainly, any one employing any young Australian would be aware of that. Fourthly, the AIRC concluded that none of the alternatives are feasible because they are more complex, they overvalue the work of employees, they are discriminatory or they have considerable adverse cost effects.The fifth conclusion is that the removal of junior rates or the introduction of adult rates at 18 years of age would lead to large scale job losses. Whatever the philosophical differences between the coalition parties and the Labor movement—and for those who are searching for the reasons for plummeting levels of union membership, this is one of the things they need to look at—there is absolutely no point pursuing policies which are intended to protect if not improve the position of those who have work if it is actually at the expense of the employment market itself and the job prospects of those who carry no reasonable hope of having one.The sixth thematic conclusion was that, if the already precarious position of young people in the labour market is to be maintained, they more than ever need to be competitive in the labour market—again, one would think, a self-evident statement. It is interesting to note that the commission concluded that the abolition of youth wages would have significant disemploying effects for young people, and further noted that:This finding was not seriously challenged by the participants in the inquiry. That seems a little inconsistent with some of the more extreme and less temperate remarks that have been made by some people in the labour movement itself. It also concluded that the role and usefulness of junior rates is best demonstrated in the school to work transition period. As we know from the work that has been done by numerous social research bodies, the most vulnerable period for young people is trying to get from school into work. If you, at that critical point, are pricing them beyond the attraction of employers, you are actually doing a great disservice to the next generation. Professor Daniel Hamermesh, a world leading authority on labour demand to whose work I have referred earlier, and the Australian Retailers Association estimated that about 170,000 to 180,000 junior jobs would be lost from the retail industry alone if junior rates were abolished—170,000 to 180,000 jobs in the retail sector for young people.Recently, the United Kingdom Low Pay Commission, which was established by the Blair Labour government, and the Irish Minimum Wage Commission recommended a discount of minimum wages for young people to protect them in the labour market. Not only did the Blair government receive the recommendations, but it then of its own volition moved to further discount them. Not one state Labor government in Australia has ended the use of junior rates of pay despite having the power to do so. That demonstrates the importance and responsibility of incumbency. It is very easy in opposition to seek to appeal—perhaps as some of the younger Democrat senators might do from time to time—to certain sectional interests and to court populism amongst, in this case, young people, but serving the best long-term interests of any section of society does not necessarily always make you popular. The shadow workplace relations spokesman today has done young people in particular, himself and his party credit in starting to emerge from opposition for its own sake.I also take the opportunity to make a couple of remarks about the problems that the labour movement seems to be having at the moment. A lot of this argument about youth wages is not just about youth wages; it is also about the kind of future the labour movement is going to have and the relationship between it and the government of the day and perhaps what they would ideally like and what is more importantly in the interests of Australians. When you look back at what happened during the period of the ACTU government accords, and I think we got to Mark VIII, the accords reinforced the very settings that limit job creation. They implicitly supported weak macro-economic policy including an inefficient and inequitable taxation system, budget deficits and, as a consequence, excessive interest rates. The Labor government proceeded at a snail's pace on reform in some critical areas such as transport and communications. Any reductions in the registered unemployed were not due to addressing the fundamental problems as to why employers were so reluctant to take on more workers, but the cures were training, subsidised employment, putting widows and perhaps more mature people on to pensions and social security benefits of one form or another. Australians became quite disenchanted with this.When you look back over that decade of the accords from 1984 when Australia averaged 3½ per cent growth per annum and we had an average of 160,000 new jobs a year, it is interesting to note that the number of people who were unemployed increased from 687,000 to 850,000. If ever anyone needs evidence that centralised control of the price of, in this case, labour is in fact working against the interests of workers, I suggest that that has to be it. It is reflected in no small way in the way union membership has gone. I think this is something about which people ought to be concerned. My grandfather was a founding member of the Clerks Union of Australia. My father spent all his working life as an active member of his own union. Particularly in the early part of this century, the injustices and travesties committed against workers by employers very much demanded an effective and relevant union movement. But what has happened is that the union movement has very much lost its way.In 1982 some 57 per cent of the Australian work force was covered by a union. This year, it is just on 28 per cent. To give you an example of this, when I was President of the Australian Medical Association I wrote to the then President of the ACTU, the now member for Batman, to ask the ACTU to help us examine the health and human effects of unemployment and things that I felt we could do to change the culture in the workplace that would reduce discrimination against people, particularly the long-term unemployed. I received a letter in 1993 which said, `If you're concerned about the unemployed and their health, back Medicare and the accord.' But, as I just pointed out, the accord provided much of the foundation for creating unemployment. It was supporting a government that was unable or unwilling to take on necessary tax reform, reforms in transport, communications, regulation, energy and a whole range of areas which were so important to make this country, its employers and employees competitive with the rest of the world.One of the other failings—and I suppose it is easy to look back in retrospect—was that the ACTU-government accord and what became known as the social wage actually entrenched in middle Australia an expectation of what governments would provide in terms of all kinds of government benefits going right through an income spectrum certainly far beyond what my father's generation thought was reasonable for governments to provide. It meant that the government was required to keep spending more money than it was earning to maintain the accord and wages restraint under the agreement. As I said, I think unions are important but with their importance and their role also comes responsibility. That means that you cannot always get what you want. You always have to compromise if you are prepared to work in the interests of your members and prospective members.If the unions are seeking more members and all of those sorts of things, there needs to be a recognition that Australians understand the importance of more flexibility in the workplace; that Australians understand and respect that every person has a right to join a union and be represented by a union if that is their choice. But so too every Australian has the right not to be represented by a union and to negotiate their own working arrangements, if they so choose, or to have someone else do that on their behalf if that is what they want. I also think that the ACTU needs to start turning its mind to some of the great social issues that our country faces other than just purely industrial ones. There are a whole range of things which affect Australians right across the spectrum about which the union movement seems to have little interest. If it does, it is certainly not advocating it publicly.I congratulate the minister for his persistence in trying to see that youth wages are maintained as an important part of the industrial relations landscape. I think that this is a step in the right direction, with the support that we appear to be receiving from the opposition with regard to these amendments. The most important thing to young Australians is that if you have got a job or if you are looking for a job, you are more likely to have it or to get it because of what this government has done today.10:08:008998Ferguson, Martin, MPMr MARTIN FERGUSONLS4BatmanALP00—I rise to speak in what I regard as an important debate. It goes to how we as a community create a framework which is aimed at maximising not only the employment opportunities of our young people but, perhaps more importantly, our training and skilling opportunities. Before going to the context of that debate I want to raise a few issues in response to the member for Bradfield. In his comments today he raised the issue of the accord and made passing reference to the social wage. The member for Bradfield should understand that, contrary to what he said, the developments of the social wage under the accord were actually based on responsibility and accountability. When he talks about the Australian community understanding the issue of responsibility and accountability, I would refer, for example, to what occurred with respect to the social wage during the accord period: the most comprehensive review of the social security system in Australia was undertaken.When the Labor Party won government in March 1993, there was, to some extent, a lack of proper accountability with respect to the payment of some of those benefits. The member for Bradfield talks about people expecting that they have a right to just live on the public purse. In March 1983, family payments were paid to all Australian families irrespective of one's wealth. It is also interesting to note that in March 1983, the unemployment benefits system of payment in Australia had not been reviewed since it had been introduced in the post-war period of 1945.The truth of the matter is that the accord period, for the union movement, was about a lot of hard decisions. It was about accountability, it was about responsibility; it certainly was not about handouts. It was about the union movement working in a partnership not just with the Labor Party in government but also with the broader community and many in the business community. We had to embrace that approach to ensure that we repositioned Australia after many decades of neglect. Australia was largely living off the sheep's back. When the price of wool fell, we were adopting the view that the simple solution was to dig minerals out of the ground and protect manufacturing industry in Australia. So we embraced many hard decisions.In response to the member for Bradfield I raise the issue of the accord period in that context because I think it is that approach that reflects the Labor Party's position with respect to the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2], which is before the House this morning. It reflects the fact that the Labor Party has done what it believes is right for the Australian community—right for mums and dads and the expectations that they have for their young people, right for young people with regard to maximising their employability through training and skills opportunity, and right for employers.It is for that very reason that I welcome the proposed amendments. They truly reflect the Labor Party's policy position. If those who are listening to this debate have got any doubts about that, I would simply refer them to Hansard of 4 June this year, the day on which the Australian Industrial Relations Commission brought down its report on the junior rates inquiry. It was on that day that the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business challenged the Labor Party to a debate about the Industrial Relations Commission's report and the issue of junior rates.It is interesting to go back and read that debate in Hansard, because the problem for the minister on that day was that he did not think the Labor Party would take the debate. What he had failed to do was actually listen to what the Labor Party had said over many months in the lead-up to the report by the Industrial Relations Commission. The Labor Party had said that it would consider the Industrial Relations Commission's report on its merits. On the basis of that consideration, we detailed to the House of Representatives that afternoon the Labor Party's response to the Industrial Relations Commission report. People should understand that it is not a decision, it is a report of the Industrial Relations Commission which reflects its response to a range of attitudes and positions that were submitted to the commission for consideration. Having said that we would await the report, we then detailed our position, our response to the Industrial Relations Commission—that independent arbitrator, that independent reporter—for the purposes of taking the debate on junior rates forward.Our position today, as outlined in the amendments before the House this morning, reflects the position adopted by the four Labor Party spokespersons on the afternoon of 4 June in its entirety. I do not claim the amendments today as a victory for the Australian Labor Party; I claim them as a victory for the Industrial Relations Commission and a victory for commonsense. It is also a timely reminder of the value of an independent arbitrator, an independent umpire.When you look at the youth wages issue and its relationship with youth employment and fairness, we have been honest about the evidence that was thrown up before the Industrial Relations Commission. If there is a message for all of us today, which we have repeated in the two months since the commission's report, it is that we must all seriously challenge ourselves as to whether we are doing the best we can for our young people. That is why we are taking the politics out of the debate this morning. That is why I said that I am not here today claiming a major victory for the Australian Labor Party.Let the commentators write what they want. They can write, for example, that the Labor Party has compromised and that the government has compromised. More importantly, though, the Industrial Relations Commission has won. The Industrial Relations Commission, which this very government wants to decimate, has won. Its report has, in essence, been adopted in the amendments before the House today. That is a commonsense approach to taking the debate on junior rates into the future and ensuring that a framework exists for any changes to the basis for the employment of junior rates in Australia in the years to come to be considered on a case by case approach and on merit. I think that is what ordinary Australians want. The Industrial Relations Commission did recommend, appropriately, based on the material before the commission, the retention of junior rates where they presently exist. But that is not what they had to say from a start and finish point of view. They had more to say.It is for that very reason that Labor has consistently argued that there is in actual fact more to the labour market than wages. I therefore refer this morning to the importance of skills. They are critical to the labour market; they are critical to young people. We inserted words—and they are reflected in the amendments today—requiring the Industrial Relations Commission to consider the all-important issue of skills development. I have a view that young people are prepared to make sacrifices with respect to the acceptance of pay rates lower than those of adults, on the basis of an employer accepting his or her responsibility to also invest in that young person's skills development. Young people know that their future is going to be very much related to their employability, which in turn is related to their training and skills development.Any bill that is eventually passed by this parliament that considers the future of junior rates determination in Australia must reflect the importance of skills development—as stated by the commission—as a statement to young people, mums, dads and employers that they have an onus and a responsibility to embrace the issue of skills development so as to maximise the employability of our young people. That is why we demanded that any settlement with the government required the insertion of a requirement for the commission, in the context of fairness, to consider—and it is all about fairness when it comes to the rates of pay of young people—a proper focus on the issue of skills development and the issue of community standards.Above all, we must be prepared to challenge ourselves. We must have an open mind. We therefore inserted the capacity for the Industrial Relations Commission to go forward on what it concluded in its report—that is, that any fair consideration of the issues in a given industry can be considered only on the basis of the merit of an argument presented to the Industrial Relations Commission on a case by case approach. I believe these amendments do not rule out anything. If there is anyone in the Australian community who wants to argue that a young person employed in any industry in Australia is entitled to junior rates from day one of employment or at 18 years of age, it is for that applicant to apply to the Industrial Relations Commission to vary a given award, an enterprise agreement or whatever and then proceed to argue the merit of the case so that it can be determined on the basis of merit by the Industrial Relations Commission.That effectively means that there is a framework for people to proceed to consider these issues. More importantly, we now have a framework which is based on a sense of security and stability without the threat of political interference so that these matters can be determined for the immediate future. It is important that we put these issues to bed. It is important that the House understands that context. Anyone or any party has an opportunity to argue their case. That is the right of the parties and participants in the industrial relations arena. It is now clearly stated in a proper articulated way by the commission. Hopefully, with the support of the major political parties, the amendments will soon become the law of the land with respect to how we look after young people in employment in the years ahead.I remind the House that it was Labor that defined that context through the concessions we forced on the government. We have defined the context in which the Industrial Relations Commission can proceed to handle these complex issues. Through the amendments that we have reached agreement on with the minister, we have established a framework for how the future of wage arrangements for young people must progress, and that is very important for any party, any young person, any employer, any union or any government. It does not rule out a government also seeking to argue before the commission what it believes is an appropriate framework in a given industry. That framework makes it clear that we will not look at wages independent of skills. It acknowledges that there are many different views in the community. So there ought to be; that is the nature of society. It says to those people with a variety of views, `Put up or shut up. If you have a view, go out and argue it on merit on a case by case approach.'From the opposition's point of view, we are quite pleased with the amendments and the bill now before the House. They represent a fair outcome for all in the Australian community. The most important part of today's debate is that not only do we have a framework but also, as the minister has acknowledged, we have now provided certainty on the basis on which we can all proceed of ensuring that the best possible outcomes exist to maximise youth employment. In maximising youth employment, we ensure that young people—who might have to accept a lower rate of pay than adults for a given period—are given an opportunity to receive training. If they have any differences with respect to that framework, they now have an opportunity to demand that those who represent them go back and argue for an alternative position, and there is a framework on which that argument can proceed.Thankfully, the government has also given its word that it will not be introducing legislation to give effect to its preferred position in the life of this parliament. That is exceptionally important. I have worked in the trade union movement for a long period. I do not mind the differences that currently exist between us and some in the union movement, because that is about hard politics. That means you have to be prepared to do what you think is right from time to time, you have to be willing to make decisions and, on some occasions, you have differences with people whom you have respect for in other spheres of life. In the world I was brought up in, it also means that when you give your word you honour your word. That is the nature of industrial relations. It is the nature of being a decent human being.The minister has given his word that, in the life of this parliament, there will be no other legislation on the issue of junior rates. That is important for all in the community. It is important for the Industrial Relations Commission, it is important for employers, it is important for unions and it is important for workers. The framework has established where we go on the junior rates debate in the immediate future. We take the minister at his word, because it is about his honour and it is about whether we on this side can continue to deal with the minister in an honourable fashion based on the fact that, when you shake hands, your word is your bond.It is fair to say that the issue of youth wages is a complex one. It often involves trade-offs, fairness for employers, workers, educational institutions—TAFE and university—and skills development organisations and group training companies. But, in the end, it is about making sure that we have a multifaceted approach to a complex problem. The youth labour market in recent times has been subjected to a number of major changes. In the last two decades, those changes have been constant. It has been very difficult for us in the community, irrespective of where we sit in the debate, to keep up with some of those changes and to be able to manage them in the best interests of all Australians. The changes in the labour market include the shift from full-time employment to part-time and casual employment. In some instances, that has had the effect of employers being unwilling to invest in training and skills development.The debate today is not just about the framework but also about how we use the framework to try to overcome some of the problems that have hindered youth employment in the immediate past. This debate is about how we make some of those educational institutions more relevant to young people, how those institutions become more flexible with respect to the delivery of training and how we link more vocational education and training to the school system. It is also about how we develop part-time apprenticeships and traineeships. Part and parcel of that is a proper consideration and an acceptance of the fact that in some but not all industries there is a case, based on training opportunities, for a rate of pay lower than that which applies to adults in the same jobs in the same workplace in the same industry.I touch on these issues because they go to the heart of what young people want. They go to the heart of the debate before the House this morning. I recently had an opportunity to meet with Coles Myer, an employer of substantial size which employs a lot of young people. I would compliment Coles Myer for a program that they have initiated which is called Project 38. It is about reducing the casualisation of their work force from 60 per cent in 1994 to a goal of 20 per cent by the end of the year 2000. It is also based on the introduction of 4,000 retail and management traineeships and managing through future growth the effective planning and training of those people.The agreement between the government and the opposition today reflects what Coles Myer is seeking to do for young people—and also for older people—in the development of a greater commitment to more permanent part-time and full-time employment, which is about security and certainty in life. During that discussion, Coles Myer put the following points to me about our young people. What do our youth want? Firstly, they want a job for the future; secondly, an opportunity to improve; thirdly, training and development; fourthly, an opportunity to be involved in business; fifthly, a sympathetic employer; sixthly, fair pay and conditions; seventhly, recognition; and, finally, security and career paths. The amendments today deliver on the Coles Myer vision. The Coles Myer vision in Project 38 reflects what all of us, irrespective of our political positions, want from the debate and the bill before the House today. It is about security, training and career opportunities for our young people. (Time expired)22:28:009002Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH2K6LongmanLP10—I would like to address my comments today to the young people up in the gallery. We are surrounded by young children from various schools who have come to learn about the parliament. They are here on a very historic day. All of these young people will be looking to enter the work force in the not too distant future. It is only as a result of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] which we have put before the House today and which they are here to witness that we will ensure that they have a better chance of a job and a future. They are very fortunate that their visit has coincided with the reintroduction of this bill into the House and with the bipartisan support of this bill.Youth unemployment has been a major problem for this nation for a long time. Back in 1993, a bomb was set ticking among the youth of Australia by those who sat opposite when they were in government. It was a time of political correctness. We were told that in seven or eight short years that bomb would explode and the jobs of many young people would evaporate along with it because no longer could we enshrine in legislation the fact that young people should be positively discriminated towards to give them a start in life. Today that bomb has been defused because those opposite and the government have worked together to ensure that the best interests of Australia have been uppermost in the minds of the politicians that sit in this House. That is the way it should be at all times.It means that beyond 2000—in the new millennium—young people who are still at school today, and who will not even consider what is happening in the House today, will not have to fret that they may lose their jobs. This bill, for the first time in history, actually enshrines the words `unemployment and how we can assist unemployed people'. When I am lecturing to young people or talking to them about how they get into labour market, I tell them that the first and best thing they can do is to be in any job at all because, once you are on the inside, it is easier to expand your horizons. It seems like such a simple thing, but when you are on the outside trying to break in for the first time—or even if you are a mature aged unemployed person and you find yourself out of the workplace and you are trying to break back into it—it is a very difficult thing to overcome. It is a huge barrier.If we can remove that barrier by giving people a start in the first instance, then we give them their very first chance, and from there they can build. By enshrining in the legislation the needs of the unemployed, we bring them into the club which is the employment field. We do not exclude them. This is not just about protecting the 220,000 young people who currently work for Coles Myer, as the honourable member for Batman mentioned, but also about that large number of people who currently do not have a job, who are still at school or who have perhaps been through school and TAFE colleges or whatever and still cannot find a job. Fortunately, under this government, youth unemployment is at a 10-year low, and that is something that we should all be proud of. But we were about to take a decision because the Labor Party would not support this government and the task of getting into employment as a young person was going to be made that much more difficult.It is quite obvious from the member for Batman's comments that he took the time to speak to Coles Myer and he heard and understood from them the importance that youth employment has to their business and their reciprocal rights as employers to the youth of today. It is good to see that they have moved their position because in 1993 it was the Labor Party that decided in government that we should no longer support youth wages. It was only two to three short months ago, back in June, when the Leader of the Opposition and the spokesman on workplace relations were challenged to a debate in this House, as those opposite mentioned earlier, that they changed their rhetoric for the first time to the benefit of all Australians. They said that they would now enshrine in the legislation those jobs and industries which currently have youth wages. Hallelujah! There was step one.We had moved from this intransigent position that somehow it was wrong to give people a chance and get them into the workplace. Today we have seen that debate move on even further. I agree with the member for Batman when he talks about skills bases. We should recognise skills. We should also recognise that young people have enthusiasm and potential which needs to be realised. I want to read an extract from a letter—which I read in the parliament the other day—because it really goes to the heart of what youth wages are about. Those opposite and, I think, the member for Batman called the Work for the Dole program `mickey mouse'. I know that he has now changed his opinion. It is good to see that he is big enough to be able to do that and understand that this is a program that has worked for Australians. In her letter, Mrs Karen Grice of Morayfield says:My husband and I heard about the `Working for the Dole Program' from Mrs Helen Gibson in Caboolture. Clayton signed up, and within three days of confidence building and self esteem talks and deciding what he'd like to do, he was told to report to the Bribie Island Golf Club. He started there in June 1998 for the 6 months program. Straight away he liked everyone there and really enjoyed the work. They made him feel very welcome and it gave him a lot of confidence. They were so pleased with him that they promised him an apprenticeship when his time was up.If we were to destroy youth wages and move away from the position which, as the member for Bradfield said earlier on, has been entrenched in Australia's psyche for generations, the good work that the Work for the Dole program did for young Clayton by building his confidence and getting him back into the work force would have been undone because, perhaps, no-one could have taken on the extra responsibility of a full adult wage. They are the decisions that we as politicians have to be mindful of when we come in here and throw vitriol across the chamber. There are young people out there who need our help. There are young people who are very competent and capable, but we cannot put barriers in their way. Today we have made a decision for young people which will speak for generations to come and support them for generations to come.Last week, during the week off from parliament, I was doing some mock interviews at the Caboolture High School, along with many others for the business community. We gave of our time to go and interview young people to give them the prospect of what it is like to sit before an employer when they go for that first job. I want to tell you about one young man. He came and, at 17 years of age, presented a resume about one-inch thick. I happened to have the local manager of National Employment sitting with me and I said, `Well, go for your life, Peter. Ask him a few questions and I will go through his resume.' This young man said, `I want to have a job in customer service.' `Great; got any experience?' `Yes, for the last two years I worked for Milo and I understand that when you work you are required to keep the customers' focus uppermost in your mind and you have to be dedicated.' While I was looking through his resume I said, `I have a problem with you, young fella.' He stopped and said, `What is that?' I said, `You topped the school in Maths I, Maths II, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, represented Queensland in volleyball, you are the school dux, and you want to go and work for Coles after you leave school! Great, there are a lot of opportunities, but I am just surprised.'Here was a young man who in September this year is going to purchase a car from the money that he has saved over the last two years. This is the experience that he has gained from working. Might I add that he has been able to balance a full part-time job with being a first-class athlete and the dux of the school. We have incredible youth in this nation. I interviewed five young people that day and all but one had had part-time work. All of them have a great future in this nation, because they come from a very good school and they have the capabilities to progress.What would I as a politician have done if I had sat back and said, `It is all too hard. We're not going to allow them to get that chance by giving them the opportunity of having a lower wage to start with and building into it'? The young man that I speak of has the capability of getting high paid jobs right from the start, I would suggest. There will be no discrimination against that whatsoever. He will have that opportunity. It goes to the point that the member for Batman raised about skills. Certainly his skills will be taken into account, and so they should be.The other side of this coin relates to the employer as well. We talk in this place about unfair dismissal. There is a lot of argy-bargy over what is the real case with unfair dismissal and how much it really impacts on a business. The reality of the situation and the impression that one might get may be somewhat different. But, if you as an employer have heard second, third or fourth hand that someone lost $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000 as a result of an unfair dismissal case, you become reluctant to fall in that same trap yourself. If people think that in January or February next year youth wages were to go, some people are making decisions and have made decisions to this day not to put people on because they will not be able to keep them on.We have to work very actively as a parliament out in the community—not as a government but as a parliament—to ensure that the work force and the employers of this nation know that this barrier has now been removed. It is enshrined in law that we will be able to maintain youth wages in all of those industries that currently have them. There are provisions for the Industrial Relations Commission to look at each individual industry case by case and say, `Could we benefit unemployed people that could get into this? Can we give young people a start? Can we look at different parameters such as community standards and skills?' We can certainly take those things into account. `Can we actively assist the young people of Australia to get a start by changing the award in a particular industry?'That must be supported not just in this parliament today. It behoves every one of us, particularly the member for Batman, the opposition spokesman on industrial relations and the Leader of the Opposition, to forget the rhetoric of the unions today and to go out there and, as the member for Batman said a little earlier—I think I quote him correctly—do the honourable thing or the right thing. Hopefully we can do it more than just occasionally, hopefully we can do that every time, because the public expect us to do the best for Australia every time.Here is an occasion where we should be on top of this parliament and on the rooftop of every place we can get and telling the work force to get out there and employ young people. We need to continue to drive unemployment for the young people down. The fact that it is at a 10-year low is great, but that is such a small thing. We should be trying to achieve much more and, with the bipartisan support that this bill has received today, that can be achieved. But we all have to play our roles. It behoves those opposite to go back to their unions and say to them, `You are wrong. You are wrong to deny young people these opportunities. Support young people with their youth wages, get them into the work force and just maybe you can build your union membership as a result as well, because you are supporting their position.'What has been achieved today is a very historic occasion for this parliament. At the end of the millennium, we are securing the future for young people into the next. They are the sorts of visionary policies and decisions that the public expect of us. They get sick and tired of the vitriol that gets thrown across this parliament and the childish antics. Today we have not seen that because, for once, the two parties have got together, discussed this issue and decided on something which is good for Australians and our young nation. That is important.There is another important reason, too, because it helps to secure the future for the older part of our constituency. We all know that we are growing older and living longer and that there are fewer people actually in the work force. We need more of these young people so that more of them will pay taxes and so that we can look after the older people who have put their life in the work force, who have paid their taxes and who want to know that that tax base has been secured. That will happen by giving more young people a start.You might start at Bi-Lo or you might start at McDonald's, but that does not mean that is where your expectations finish. You may end up being the CEO of Myers on some exorbitant wage or you may end up as a general practitioner. Whatever you may do, give people a start. That is what this bill has promised them. This bill has given the young people who sit in this gallery today a chance of a future. It has given them an understanding that it has been through the combination of the fine work of the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business and of the change in position from 1993—with the political correctness which did so much to damage this nation—to where we are today. I commend this bill to the House.10:43:009005Plibersek, Tanya, MPMs PLIBERSEK83MSydneyALP00—I am very pleased to follow the member for Longman in the second reading debate on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] because I think he has identified the problem in the legislation as it was originally put. He mentioned a very impressive young man that he had had the pleasure to speak with last week. When that young man moves into the work force at the age of 17 or 18, he will automatically move to a pay rate that is probably much lower than the skills level that he possesses. In fact, this young man sounds as though he has a skills level that is in advance of some of the much older people in the work force who will in fact be earning more than he does. That was exactly the problem with the legislation as the government initially presented it. I am pleased to say that today we have some amendments which recognise that young people do want secure work and they do want skilled jobs. They do not want to be paid slave wages, but they may be prepared to make a trade-off and accept lower wages for a transitional period at the beginning of their employment to enter into the work force.Today's changes allow the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to continue to play a role in determining wages for young people in some industries. Maintaining that role of the Industrial Relations Commission is, I think, a very significant victory. These amendments also link wages to skills development and to community standards. This also is a dramatic change from the legislation that the government initially introduced. Of course, the legislation was first introduced in the same month as the Australian Industrial Relations Commission began its deliberations on the question of youth wages.This legislation was introduced, I might say, with indecent haste. It was part of the history of this government in undermining the role and the status of the commission. When this legislation was rejected by the Senate—as it should have been—the next attempt at introducing it was again done with indecent haste, on the very same day that the Industrial Relations Commission report was presented to the House of Representatives. The government was not interested at any stage in the findings of the report. Indeed, it was interested only in pursuing its ideological objectives in relation to lowering youth wages across the board. I think it is worth noting that the report admits that there is no single solution to the problem of youth unemployment, and it is worth quoting particularly the report's finding on youth wages. It says:We do not close off the possibility that there are feasible alternatives . . . We were already persuaded that in the design of replacement of junior rate classifications no one size fits all. The fit of an alternative is a matter of attention to detail and the merits in particular circumstances.I am pleased to say that today we are recognising that. The government's initial position of lowering youth wages across the board ignored the fact that, while youth wages had been falling for some time, youth unemployment had been rising. I think it is worth noting that during the period 1982 to 1994 youth unemployment increased, despite the fact that wages were falling and that wages for the general population were increasing. During that same period the casualisation of youth employment meant that, as wages dropped, the costs to employers of sick leave, holiday pay and overtime were also falling. So, while the cost of youth labour dropped dramatically, the rate of youth unemployment continued to increase. Even the Productivity Commission study on youth wages noted that there was little evidence to support the view that increases in youth wages will be met with a substitution of adult labour—which is the argument that the government continued to make.We need to understand that entry level and unskilled jobs are decreasing in the labour market and that the only solution that the government is proposing is the lowering of wages. Lowering youth wages is part of its ideological obsession, I believe, and certainly not about increasing youth employment. Labor has never accepted that a blanket imposition of lower wages would lead to increased youth employment. I think that today's changes in allowing the Industrial Relations Commission to make changes based on the merits of individual decisions in individual industries is very important. Also, the onus of proof resting with the party seeking to alter the status quo will offer a lot of protection to those industries where youth wages do not currently exist which would have been very much affected by the changes that the government initially proposed.Whilst maximising youth employment, we must now also consider community standards. I think that this is a very significant change, because there is a broad acceptance, I believe, that wages based solely on age are discriminatory. There will be some recognition, I believe, in the future that young people have very strong skills in particular areas. Recognising those skills and paying those workers on the basis of those skills will be very important. One of the industries, obviously, that I am thinking of is the computer industry where the average 20-year-old might have much higher skills than a much older person.Another industry where youth wages have been addressed appropriately is the finance sector, which by the end of this year will actually have phased out youth wages. They have moved to a competency based pay system and are using the slogan `The more you learn the more you earn'. This is the sort of model that I hope we will see in many other industries in the future where skills development and training are rewarded.I welcome the emphasis on training. The government record, of course, in this area is very poor. On first coming into government, this government cut 230,000 traineeships, and it has continued to ignore this lack of training as a factor in youth unemployment. I accept that some people are prepared to accept lower rates of pay when they see themselves as gaining training and gaining entry into the work force that they believe that they might otherwise not have got. They see themselves as making an investment in the future. But there is some onus then on employers and on the government to ensure that this is an investment in the future, that these young people will not be paid slave wages, used up for the duration of the time that they present cheap labour and then discarded when their usefulness ends. Young people should have an expectation of being able to stay with a business when their skills have been developed. They should expect to be able to stay with a business as long as their performance is good, as long as there is work for them. They should expect, once their training is completed, that they have a job there.The young people whom I have been speaking to are concerned about their opportunities to enter into the work force. They understand that the number of unskilled jobs is decreasing. They understand that casualisation is increasing dramatically, and they do feel threatened by that. I think it is very important to make sure that this opportunity that is being given to employers to pay those young people lower wages is not abused by employers but does lead to permanent, secure and skilled jobs in the future. I believe that in the future, as a community, we will—and we must—move to a competency based system of assessing workers' value rather than having a discriminatory age based system.10:52:009006Hardgrave, Gary, MPMr HARDGRAVECK6MoretonLP10—I rise to support the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2], as I have done consistently since my election to this place in 1996. It has been a matter of faith to me that young people in this country should be afforded the certainty which this legislation provides. It has been a matter of great concern to me that the Australian Labor Party has been hell-bent for ideological reasons since 1993 on destroying the job prospects of young Australians. There are so many young Australians in the gallery here today at Parliament House who have been listening in on this debate. I think it has been a historic day for them to know that they have been able to witness first-hand the parliament ensuring that they will continue to have the prospect of accessing the sorts of jobs that, no doubt, you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I accessed as we were growing older.I have said before on the record, and I will say it again, that I worked as a packer at Woolworths at Garden City when I was 15. I was a grillman at McDonald's. I think they call them `grillpersons' now, but nevertheless I cooked hamburgers at McDonald's and bought my first car when I was 17. I did not expect or believe that at 15, 16 and 17 I had the same skills as a 24- or 25-year-old person—the same life skills, outlook and abilities or, for that matter, even the same motivation or application to the job that someone, as they get older, certainly does have. I did not expect for a moment that I would be paid the same wage as somebody who was five, six, seven, eight, nine or 10 years older than me. So I find it extraordinary that the Australian Labor Party believes that, if you are 15, you should be paid as if you were 25.There is another thing that I can look back on, as far as my own life experiences are concerned. I am not very old but, from the life experiences that I have had, I can remember clearly that, as you turned 16 you got a wage rise, as you turned 17 you got a wage rise, and as you turned 18 you got a wage rise. And so it was that the age that you were did impact directly on the amount of money you received in your job. I have to tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that that in itself was an incentive to stick at the job, whether it was cracking open the discarded boxes or sweeping out the refuse in the fruit and veg section at Woolies at Garden City—and I ruined more than a few pairs of pants while doing that.I can tell you that there was nothing super-appealing in those tasks. But the fact that you knew that you were being paid for your time on the floor and that you were learning the social interaction skills and application and that there were reward for effort incentives that came with the job—not simply the pay, but the range of other benefits that come from work—meant that you wanted to keep at it. The fact that you actually gained a pay rise when you turned a bit older, as a reward for sticking with it, was in itself a beaut thing.Three generations of Australians have been through those sorts of circumstances as they worked their way through some of the menial tasks in our society, some of the junior jobs that each and every one of us in this place has experienced—or that I would hope we have experienced—as we were growing older. To turn your back on three generations of the downright Australian way of growing up and gaining experiences—as the Australian Labor Party has been proposing and in fact had enacted in legislation in 1993—is downright un-Australian. So I am delighted to be part of a government that is putting the Australian stamp back on youth wages.It has nothing to do with lower wages. The member for Sydney is hidden away on about the third floor of a building in her inner-city electorate office—her sign is out there—and so she probably does not come across too many real people, although if she checks around the ideologically correct left-wing branches in her electorate I suppose she probably picks up a few ideas. But I have to submit to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I do not think they are the right ideas. By comparison, apart from harping on the real experiences of life that I have had, from talking with a lot of people—not talking `at' them but listening to what they have to say—and from checking with contemporary youth through my Moreton Youth Advisory Group, I know that people do want a continuation of the job certainty for young people that the maintenance of youth wages brings.Yes, it is important to be able to look at things case by case. Yes, it is important to accept that not one size fits all. It is great to think that those opposite have actually real ised that it is a kind of bland oneness that all people—regardless of their age, ability, experiences and skills—should still be paid the same. It is remarkable to think that those opposite have actually added the line that `not one size should fit all' to the rhetoric and the speeches they have brought to this place today.It is this side of the chamber, the Liberal and National parties, which believes firmly in the role of the individual and in treating people as individuals, and understands that each individual has a range of skills and abilities which they sell—as is the basis of economic activity in this country and throughout most of the world—as a means of generating income for themselves. We sell our labour to gain access to capital, from which we do things to build our lives and to build a future for ourselves and our families. It is basic economics; it is basic society.This government recognises that each of us has different skills and experiences and that we should be able to be remunerated accordingly. The measures contained in the amendments confirm the government's continuous commitment to youth wages. First, when we were in opposition and the Labor Party put their proposals through, we opposed them. We have, since coming to office in 1996 and being reconfirmed by the Australian electorate in 1998, been taking to the people a simple policy of maintenance of youth wages, and the majority has said, `Yes, we agree.'So I would invite those opposite to get out of their cloistered existence and to talk to more people to find out exactly what people believe on these issues. We are about maintaining jobs and, I have to say, hand in hand with that, about creating jobs—because it is really is a statement of fact to know that Australia's high youth unemployment rate of 24 per cent, which is down from the rate of over 30 per cent when the Labor Party was in office, is still far too high. As the member for Longman, Mr Brough, said in his contribution—and quite rightly—we are all about trying to get people used to the concept of working for a living and about introducing them over time to the range of skills and experiences they need so that they can go on realising a reward for their effort and realising their aspirations as individuals and their ambitions for their families and the community—all by making it possible for them to get the start which the concept of youth wages brings.Essentially, it is this: no youth wages, no youth jobs. It is as simple as that, because what will happen over time is that employers will start to look at the money that they pay out to those who are offering their labour for an exchange of capital. Employers will look at the quality of the employee that they have and, if a 16-year-old rolls on in with their range of abilities and experiences, they will probably look more closely at a 26-year-old or a 46-year-old or a 56-year- old, but certainly not at a 16-year-old. So, if we want to kill off the basis of our system, something that has worked well for three generations, if we want to kill off what is all about giving young people the kind of incentive and experience they need, then flick youth wages. It is extraordinary to think that the Australian Labor Party have had this ideological binge for six years, constantly opposed by the Liberal and National parties. It is extraordinary to think that a supposedly in-touch political group in our community could actually have this view.Youth wages are very simple to understand. There is an easy system to follow. It rewards maintenance of effort and people sticking with jobs. As they get older, they get a higher wage. Young people want it. I talked with members of my Moreton Youth Advisory Group about this matter when we introduced it in this place after the 1998 election. When the Senate rejected it and put in jeopardy the jobs of tens of thousands of young people, the Moreton Youth Advisory Group said to me they feared for their own prospects. Members of this group, which is made up of student delegates—often student leaders—from various high schools in my electorate, said they wanted youth wages because that meant youth jobs. Labor have to listen to young people in our community. Labor have to understand that young people need positive signals. And, if there is a declining faith in the suitability of some who pretend to offer a policy to run this country, if there is a declining faith in the institution of parliament and if there is a declining faith in the other key institutions, like the media, in this nation, it is certainly hard felt by the young people of this country.Young people in my electorate have said very clearly to me—and they have agreed with employers on this issue—that they cannot understand how out of touch the Australian Labor Party have been on the issue of youth wages. They are disappointed to believe that an alternate government would run around with this great oppositionist's approach to legislation presented by this government on a day in, day out policy vacuum style basis without having considered the impact of their ideology on the debate. It is extraordinary to think that, in a circumstance where suicide amongst our young is at a far too high level, the Australian Labor Party want to give them another kick in the shins.Young people in this country are under a lot of pressure. They feel that they are being told, `You can't make mistakes,' and that there are no second chances. Young people in my electorate have reported to me that they are told, `If you don't get your study right, if you don't get your school results right'—to use the vernacular—`if you stuff up between the ages of 15 and 16, you have wrecked your life.' What a dreadful thing to tell young people in those formative years; that, if they do not achieve all of the results they should achieve before they turn 17, their life is ruined and they have got nothing to look forward to. They are the sorts of reasons why young people in this country take their lives, and Labor's approach to youth wages is another kick in the shins.The way the Labor Party have been running this debate is another kick in the shins to young people in this country. Young people need to know that what their parents and their grandparents did—because youth wages have been around for three generations—is something that they could do. They want that stability. They want that certainty. They know they do not want to do as I did—sweep out the fruit and vegetable section at Woolies at the age of 15, getting mud and muck all over your pants—for the rest of their lives. They know they do not want to do that, but they do not mind doing it as a starting point because there is a certain dignity that comes with growing in stature as far as life experiences are concerned. It is that sort of dignity that a lot of young people are looking for. They are under pressure from the media and, as I said, even within their own schools in too many cases, to be ideal, to be perfect, to get A grades, to be the best sports star, to wear the best clothes and to have the best prospects and the best jobs in the future. Young people in this country need to know that they are allowed to grow into their lives, to gain experience. They need to know that along the way they will get a reward for the effort of putting time into gaining that experience.At the heart of the youth wages issue is the message we are sending young people in our country. They are not simply just a commodity that should be treated as another commodity—as I suspect those opposite would have. They need to be nurtured; they need to grow. Youth wages are all about nurturing young people and allowing them to grow. Youth wages have worked. Those opposite are out of touch if they believe that that is not the case.I welcome the amendments that have been brought to this place today. I think they finetune the right legislation that this government has introduced. They are consistent with the principles of the coalition since 1993, when those opposite legislated to destroy youth jobs by June the next year. They are in keeping with the undertaking we now have made at two election campaigns. This is a government which is about promising before an election and delivering on those promises afterwards. This legislation should be supported by all in this place. I look forward to it being passed because young people in my electorate need a return to the certainty they had before Labor got their hands on youth wages in 1993. I am very excited about this day, and I am pleased that so many young people have been in the gallery to listen to so much of this debate today. I commend the bill and the amendments to the House.11:07:009010Albanese, Anthony, MPMr ALBANESER36GrayndlerALP00—I am pleased to make a contribution to this debate today and support the amendments which have been put forward and which have led to an agreement between the government and the opposition on this issue. Firstly, I want to reiterate my position to make clear that I am not a supporter of junior rates of pay. As I made clear when speaking to the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] when it was first introduced—the unamended version, the un-reconstructed Peter Reith bill—I believe junior rates of pay discriminate against young workers. They effectively punish them for the inability of government and business to create real and sustainable employment opportunities for young people. In consultation with employers, the union movement has developed fair and equitable ways to ensure decent wage outcomes for young workers. It must be added that this has been achieved without damaging the viability of companies involved. For those people who come into the House and say that there should be junior rates of pay across the board, regardless of circumstances, I am yet to hear in this debate about a company that has gone bankrupt or about any real problems that have been created in areas where there are not junior rates of pay—that is, in areas where wages are determined by skills, training and the ability to perform work.The principle of equal value for equal work is an important one. The fairness and equity involved in that principle is one which has been opposed by narrow-minded conservatives forever—whether we are looking at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when young children worked for almost no pay, or whether we are looking at other parts of the world where children are exploited or whether we are looking, in more recent times, at the opposition to equal pay for women. We were told that equal pay for women was going to lead to massive unemployment, that it was going to make women unemployable, less attractive. In spite of that—and it has to be acknowledged that in real terms we still do not have equal wage justice for women in this country—the equal pay case did not lead to a massive increase in unemployment amongst women on a gender basis. Women have entered the work force in greater numbers since then, and that number continues to increase.Fairness and equity has been achieved in some industries by moving away from age based wage setting and implementing a competency based or skills acquired system of wage fixation. That is the system I support. When the AIRC released its report into junior rates of pay in June of this year, the government had the gall to stand up in parliament and say that the commission supported them because it said:The essence of our report is that none of the identified non-discriminatory alternatives most closely examined by us were feasible.What Peter Reith failed to do was include the context of the sentence quoted. The IRC actually stated:We do not close off the possibility that there are feasible alternatives. We explored the possibility of developing our own proposal but did not persevere. We are already persuaded that in the design and replacement of junior rate classifications no one size fits all . . . the industrial parties and other interested parties would need to be involved and that procedure fell outside the statutory limits of our inquiry.Let me repeat: `fell outside the statutory limits of our inquiry.' That about sums it up. The IRC inquiry was commissioned by the government, thanks to a deal they did with the Democrats, but it never had any real teeth to examine junior rates versus alternative competency based wage schemes. The government was not interested in finding those non-discriminatory conclusions. It wanted, it demanded, junior rates of pay. The minister was not interested in finding genuine solutions—he merely wanted to pursue his obsessive ideological agenda that workers of this country have come to know so well.It does not matter what the issue is that this minister confronts, he is certainly consistent. I have to give him that. He consistently knows what side he is on, and he has even stated in speeches that he knows he is on the side of capital, on the side of increasing profits and, if that means driving down wages and greater discrimination and greater exploit ation, that is just a bonus as far as this minister is concerned.In the light of the government's dogmatism, Labor's amendments have at least given young Australian workers some hope. On 24 June this year, Kim Beazley outlined to the House Labor's position. The Labor Party would never accept an automatic extension of junior rates to all areas where it is possible to employ a junior. The Labor Party, instead, concurred with the IRC. We argued that junior rates can only ever be introduced on a case by case basis, with evidence for any change to the award heard before the independent umpire—the IRC. The party initiating the change has the onus of proof. If an employer wants to employ a young person on junior rates of pay, the employer has to prove to the commission why such a step is necessary. If a union wants competency based wage rates introduced, it has to prove its case in the commission. What could be fairer than that? That is what the amendments that have been pursued by the Australian Labor Party, and reluctantly accepted by the government, do.We have had this debate now I think three times. The bill was introduced and rejected by the Senate, but we have had a determination on behalf of this ideologically driven minister that an agreement will be reached which will enshrine discrimination across the board. This comes not just as a matter of principle but also as a matter of practicality. If you simply believe that wages should be discriminatory regardless of the circumstance, you do nothing in the longer term to benefit young people or, indeed, the nation. Young people of this country do deserve real employment opportunities with real wage or salary levels, not low paid, low skill jobs with very little future. That is one of the ongoing themes that we have when we consider employment and industrial relations and the divide which continues to exist in this House.In terms of this debate and the attitude towards young people, the government's attitude to wages is consistent with its attitude in other areas. The CES has been replaced by a convoluted Job Network that clearly is not working. That has led to a great deal of confusion in circumstances whereby young people have had great difficulty gaining access to the labour market. We also see blatant discriminatory attacks in the Work for the Dole program where even the use of that pejorative term in the title signals what this government is about—that is, punishment and discrimination. We see them in the some $1 billion worth of cuts that have been made to tertiary education in this country. We see them in the farcical situation with the common youth allowance legislation, which effectively has meant that some 40,000 young people have been forced to go back to school. That might do something to falsely fix the youth unemployment figures, but it really is a callous approach to a major problem.The government's original bill was really attempting to extend the current junior rates across the board to some 375,000 extra people. That would have meant that, if you did not have a competency based component, if you did not have a case by case examination, the government would not have encouraged employers or the government sector to do anything about providing jobs training, about providing skills to young Australians. That contrasts with the approach of the Australian Labor Party when we were in government where we introduced schemes such as youth traineeships.Youth traineeships meant that there was a trade-off, effectively, in that young people were not paid as much as if they were not in those traineeships but they were gaining skills and were gaining an increased level of employability for the future because they came out of those traineeships with proper accredited training. They came out of them with confidence and with skills, whereas this government's ideological approach is to say, `No, the mantra is that you support junior rates of pay across the board because the only thing that matters is cost structures and driving down wages.' That does not lead to an appropriate response. The real response and the real opportunities needed for young people are proper training, proper labour market programs, proper industry policy and an ability and determination for governments to intervene, where appropriate.I might leave my comments there. I am pleased to see that the amendments have been accepted and that we can move forward without having a debate in which, once again, young people are pilloried and blamed for the fact that they are young, and are discriminated against simply on the basis of age. I am pleased that, with the IRC overseeing any case by case examination of this basis, whether it be from any application to applied junior rates of pay or to my much preferred option of competency based pay, that will occur as a result of this bill being amended.11:21:009012Bishop, Julie, MPMs JULIE BISHOP83PCurtinLP10—The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] is a bill which has long been awaited by young people in Australia, by existing and potential employers of young people and by this government. In fact, it was a priority of this government when I came to the House last November when the bill was introduced, and I am very pleased to be able to speak on it today.This bill is about supporting and enhancing the job prospects of young people and it does this by maintaining the existing system of junior rates and by making junior rates more widely available, and in doing so it also protects jobs for young people. Junior rates have been under threat while the existing provisions of the Workplace Relations Act could not guarantee the continuation of junior rates and awards after June 2000. It was essential that junior rates were addressed as a priority so that employers felt secure and confident about employing young people now and next year.In my electorate of Curtin, there are over 10,000 registered businesses. A number are large, many are small, but many employ young people. The majority of the businesses are in the retail and services sectors, traditionally amongst the biggest employers of young people. Imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker, if 10 per cent of these businesses were able to provide new jobs to young people on junior rates which they knew would now not be illegal after 22 June 2000. This would create in my electorate alone another 1,000 jobs paying junior rates which reflect the type of job the employer has on offer—a junior job which does not necessarily demand high levels of skills, high levels of experience or high levels of expertise but a junior job which gives a young person their first experience in the work force, whether they have just come from school or they have not been able to find another job.The opposition and of course the unions have held until recently that the system of junior rates is discriminatory. The Keating government in 1993 introduced a statutory scheme which declared that junior rates were discriminatory, not to be made and, where made, to be removed. In 1996 this government sought to extend an exemption to the anti-age discrimination for a further three years, and did so, to allow the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to review the feasibility of abolishing junior rates of pay. It was understood that this government also sought a mandate at the following election to retain junior rates of pay and we did so. We have obtained that mandate and now we want to implement the important reforms to the Workplace Relations Act to improve and enhance employment opportunities for young Australians. The legislation will ensure the permanent exemption of existing junior rates from age discrimination.You may well ask: how can junior rates be perceived to be discriminatory? Junior rates, defined as a proportion of the adult minimum wage, increase with age until the junior worker is considered an adult at age 21. It can be said that the employment situations of junior workers do not require high levels of productivity or skill and that in general desirable traits, such as maturity, are fairly even throughout the age group. As such, the job requirement and its wage are not discriminatory as they recognise a level of skill and productivity. Importantly, they recognise the age of the employee together with the contribution he or she makes. The junior rate does not overvalue the work done by these young people of similar skill and experience. It is in section 88B of the amendment of the Workplace Relations Act that this legislation recognises the fact that junior wage provisions are no longer to be treated as constituting discrimination by reason of age.Turning to the report by the full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, the government implemented measures which were to expire in June 2000 so as to allow the commission to report on the feasibility of junior wages. The report was prepared by the full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and their task was to inquire into the feasibility of replacing junior rates with non-discriminatory alternatives. It should be reiterated that the commission held an independent public inquiry. They took oral and written submissions from all major stakeholders. They made no orders, decisions or recommendations but worked to assist to resolve issues about this legislation affecting junior wages, which may then serve to inform debate and future industrial policy.This was a public inquiry and those who opposed junior rates had every opportunity to put their case. There were alternatives put to the inquiry. They came from the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Council of Social Services, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association and the CFMEU.There have been submissions right across the board—from those who support junior rates of pay and from those who oppose. The point is that the commission could not find any feasible, non-discriminatory alternative with which to replace the existing system. It considered them all and found that the system supported by this government—that is, junior rates—as an aid to attaining employment, to creating employment and to maintaining and protecting employment is the desirable system in the current employment and economic environment.I have said that many of the employment opportunities available to young people do not require high levels of skill, experience or expertise, but young people still have a very competitive market in which to find work and this legislation introduces measures to protect the competitive position of young people. The government has implemented measures that relate to skills. The legislation also ensures that certain types of trainee wage provisions are exempted from the operation of the anti-discrimination provisions of the act.There has been strong economic evidence in support of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission's findings that junior wages are the most effective mechanism for enhancing employment opportunities for Australian youth. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission's report on the feasibility of replacing junior rates with non-discriminatory alternatives found that there is an indisputable relationship between junior rates, their potential abolition and the employment prospects of young people; that a discounted pay rate for entry level work continues to be necessary in the areas in which employment under junior rate classifications is most concentrated; and that well designed junior rate classifications may even create or protect employment opportunities.These are propositions put forward consistently by the federal coalition government, the state governments of Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory. In fact, every state and territory government has the power to legislate to end the use of junior rates and none has done so.The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry supports the retention of the structure of junior rates as it currently exists as the basis for providing the most appropriate system for ensuring that young people are competitive in the labour market. The Centre for Labour Market Research in my state of Western Australia hold that adverse employment outcomes would impact disproportionately on the most disadvantaged in the youth labour market if the current structure of junior awards were changed. It would have, they say, a dramatic effect on youth employment and unemployment.World authorities on labour demand, such as Professor Daniel Hamermesh, have found that 170,000 to 180,000 junior employment places would be lost from the retail industry alone if junior rates were abolished. This is supported by the Australian Retailers Association. OECD countries that have minimum wages that provide significant protection for the low paid also typically have lower minimum wages for young people.The agreement on junior rates means that we have been able to reverse a six-year-old policy decision and now we as a nation are in a far better position than we were in 1993 in terms of offering security of employment to young Australians. This legislation will give young people a chance of a job and it secures the jobs that some of them hold today. Several hundred thousand jobs will be saved and future case by case applications to the Industrial Relations Commission will see further use of age based rates, meaning more jobs created through junior rates.As I said, the businesses in my electorate of Curtin are, in the main, service and retail businesses which are amongst the biggest employers of young people. This is in fact the case across Australia. The majority of young people tend to be employed in occupations that do not require extensive investment by the employer in terms of human capital. Some 38.4 per cent of young Australians are employed in basic clerical, sales and service industries; 19.6 per cent are employed as labourers and related workers; 12.9 per cent are tradespeople, apprentices and related workers; and 15 per cent are more intermediate clerical, sales and service workers. More than half of employed teenagers in Australia—over 53 per cent—work in the retail industry. Hospitality—accommodation, cafes and restaurants—employs nearly nine per cent of working young people, and manufacturing around 7.9 per cent.This legislation has been an important reform for the government in workplace relations reform and in increasing opportunities for young people by protecting the competitive position of young people in the labour market, promoting youth employment and assisting in reducing youth unemployment.11:31:009014Livermore, Kirsten, MPMs LIVERMORE83ACapricorniaALP00—We are not seeing too much cheering about the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] from the government side, but could it be that we finally have some fairness and commonsense coming into this debate on junior rates of pay? I certainly hope so. We now have agreement over amendments that incorporate an element of fairness and merit into the treatment of young people in the workplace. Thankfully, we have turned away from the wholesale slashing of young people's wages which was previously proposed by the government. These new amendments before us this morning protect the element of fairness and merit that the Industrial Relations Commission clearly placed as a centrepiece of its report to parliament earlier this year—the idea that any question of introducing junior rates of pay should be dealt with on a case by case basis by the Industrial Relations Commission.In fact, it was interesting at the time this was being hotly debated earlier this year that even some of the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business's statements in support of junior wages indicated the lack of logic in the blanket application of junior wages across the board in the work force. For example, in answer to a question on 28 June, Minister Peter Reith quoted a young woman who made a statement in the Courier-Mail in Brisbane. That young woman was saying that junior rates have their place. She said that, in her junior position, she had:. . . learnt basic skills that will take me into any job that I will do later on, like customer service, dealing with complaints, working with other people and sacrificing my time for work time.Exactly. If your employer puts you into a position where you have and apply the skills of other, mature aged workers around, there is every reason to put the case that you should not continue on junior wages and that in fact you should have the right to be paid for the work you are doing at an adult rate. Even in the minister's attempts to defend a wholesale application of junior wages, he was tripping up on his own logic.The fact that we have come now to this fairly commonsense adoption of the IRC's recommendation raises the question in my mind: why is it so hard for this minister to embrace fairness as a fundamental principle of the industrial relations system? Why is that so when we have an industrial relations system in this country that has stood the test of time over almost a century now—a system based on the notions of an independent umpire, the Industrial Relations Commission, that has the job of determining wages and conditions through a process of fairness and compromise, taking into consideration the interests of both employers and employees?Instead of approaching this issue of the appropriate wage structure for young people in a way that recognises their right to have their wages determined in the same way as any other worker—that is, by looking at their skills, their experience and the circumstances of the industry they are working in—the minister took this on as yet another political football to chant slogans about and score points over rather than looking at the realities of young people's working lives and seeking to deliver to them a fairer outcome.Once again, as we saw during the waterfront dispute last year, the minister could not be counted on to use his position to guarantee fairness to workers. Instead, the Industrial Relations Commission has had to take on that role and has provided us with a fair and reasonable model for dealing with the question of junior rates of pay. However, it was not left to do that job in an environment of objectivity and calm consideration and I guess we should not be surprised about that. Instead, every step of the way the minister persisted in defying the Industrial Relations Commission. Let us not forget that it was his legislation in 1996 that directed the Industrial Relations Commission to investigate the issue of junior rates of pay, but ever since he has tried first to bully the commission and then to ignore its recommendations.Thankfully, the minister has not got his way on this issue—his way that would have seen many thousands of young people who are currently receiving full adult wages under their awards and enterprise bargaining agreements drop their salaries to junior rates. Those young people are receiving those full adult wages under the awards and enterprise bargaining agreements on the basis that they have the skills, the competency and the experience to do the job they are currently undertaking and to be paid fairly for the job they are doing and the contribution they are making to their workplace.Under the previous scheme proposed, every person under 21 years of age in this country would have been paid at a junior level regardless of their classification, their experience or skills and what duties they were carrying out in the workplace. As I have observed this debate go on over the last few months, I recognised that it was a very convenient smokescreen for the minister. He could come into the parliament day in and day out, and out to the media, and have all the attention focused on this issue of junior rates as an industrial relations issue. Once again, it was Minister Reith versus the union movement—just the way he likes it. It was the young working people of Australia who were in danger of suffering at the expense of that ideological battle. Yes, we saw it day in and day out dressed up in the rhetoric of union bashing and the usual lines. But, when you looked behind that, it was really more about Minister Reith's responsibilities as the minister for employment, another part of his portfolio.It seems to me that from day one, when the minister introduced this bill into the House last year—well ahead of the deadline for the Industrial Relations Commission's objective report into this matter—we have seen the minister exposed for his lack of ideas to overcome the problem of youth unemployment. If the question of junior rates was really a workplace relations issue, why not let the Industrial Relations Commission do the job that it had been given in the midst of that deal struck with the Democrats in 1996? The Industrial Relations Commission had ample experience in these issues, and 60 or 70 stakeholders from all sides of the community—from all sides of the argument—provided very detailed submissions. If it truly was a workplace relations issue, then fine, the IRC should have been left to do the job that it had been given and had the experience to do.This was not about workplace relations though. It never was. This was always about the government's lack of commitment to education and training and to giving young people a real chance at building a future in the work force based on their skills. When we in the opposition say to government, `Tell us about your policies to reduce youth unemployment and give young people the skills they need to build careers and take on opportunities,' what do we get? The same old tired line, `The answer is to reduce wages.' The only answer that you ever get out of this government to the question of unemployment is to lower wages. That is despite the fact that such an approach has been shown up as a failure in many other countries. Lower wages are not the answer for young people looking for opportunities and they are not the answer for the future of our country if we are going to remain competitive in the areas that will secure our growth and prosperity.The government has been caught out using youth wages as an excuse for its failures on unemployment and training. The government cannot offer young people the skills they need to compete, so instead it will give them the only competitive advantage this government understands—low wages. Under such a policy, the government is effectively penalising those young people in employment for its failures on the question of unemployment. The government was basically proposing to say to young people in jobs: `Well, we've given up on programs to give your friends and mates skills so that they are in a position to take on jobs, so we'll drop wages instead. We've let the young unemployed down, but guess what? You're going to pay the price because your wages are going to drop, because we cannot think of any other way of giving young people a chance.' It is absolutely shameful.The government might have given up on young people, but the Labor Party has not. While the government talks about slashing wages, we talk about improving educational opportunities for young people and improving the retention rates of young people in schools and training programs. Despite what the coalition tries to bodgie up, there is no firm evidence of any relationship between cutting wages and higher employment, but there is a wealth of evidence that proves the strong link that exists between high school retention rates and future employment opportunities for young people.While the government proposed a system that left young people to compete for jobs solely on the basis of lower wages, we in the Labor Party want to see a commitment made to training young people, both at school and in the work force, so that they have the ability to compete on the basis of their skills and abilities, not simply because they cost less to employ. Young people deserve more than that. They deserve the opportunity to build a career based on skills, not a competitive advantage based purely on lower wages that will disappear once they reach a certain age.There is no question that the amended legislation is a great improvement on the government's initial legislation. It has much greater respect for the aspirations and abilities of young people in the work force who want to be recognised and deserve to be recognised and paid for the contribution they make to their workplace—not simply for their age. It also respects the role of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in balancing the interests of all those with a stake in the question of youth wages. There are a wide range of stakeholders to be considered; hence the inclusion of community standards in the amendments here today as a reference point for the Industrial Relations Commission in any decision on the future of junior wages in particular industries. When there are so many people potentially affected by a decision, it is quite correct that all their views are considered and not just the particular political interests of the minister that would have been served by the initial piece of legislation we had in this House.In conclusion, I know that Minister Reith, in his role as workplace relations minister, has a lot more fun creating division and insecurity but I think it is about time that he took his other responsibilities as employment minister seriously. Instead of trying to slash wages and conditions, let us have some initiatives that encourage young people to stay at school and take up training programs to guarantee a lifelong career based on skills, not a short-term job based on the lowest possible wages.11:43:009016Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLYFK6DawsonNP10—I rise to speak on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2]. In 1993 the Keating Labor government lit a fuse which, in the middle of next year—2000—would have gone off under the hopes and aspirations of young Australians. The coalition promised at the last election in October 1998 to legislate to keep the current system of youth wages, not to allow that system to expire. We introduced legislation straight after the election last year. That was regrettably voted down in the Senate on the basis of age discrimination.The Australian Industrial Relations Commission has conducted a six-month review of the issue for the benefit of the parliament. That report, together with a ministerial statement, was tabled in the parliament on 24 June 1999 by the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, Peter Reith. There is no doubt that the AIRC report shows that youth wages in the form of age based junior rates are necessary to maintain employment for young people. They allow young people under 21 to be paid a percentage of the full adult wage rate according to their age. There are more than 400,000 young Australians who depend on a youth wage in the present industrial climate.I would like to talk about our high youth unemployment rate, which is close to 24 per cent. It is of grave concern to everybody on both sides of the House, but abolishing youth wages would have forced tens of thousands of young people to become unemployed because employers would simply not have been able to afford to pay all young people adult wages. The Australian Retailers Association estimated that in that industry alone 170,000 young people were likely to lose their jobs. The findings of the Productivity Commission were that a one per cent increase in youth wages would lead to a decrease in youth employment of two per cent in the retail industry, 2.5 per cent in the recreational services industry and five per cent in the accommodation industry.If junior wages had been abolished, an 18-year-old working in a shop would receive a wage increase of 40 per cent, or $130.55 per week. While those who are able to receive that increase would have been very glad of it, the reality is that most businesses could ill afford to pay such an increase when they could perhaps have had more mature employees with life experience to fill that role. Abolishing junior wages would have added $1.6 billion to the national wages bill.The Australian Industrial Relations Commission report found that the effect of abolishing junior rates would have significant disemploying effects. Let me say that youth wages are fair. They have been in awards for decades, agreed to by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. They rightly reflect the difference between the mature employee who has work experience, life experience and skills and a young person looking for a position but very much lacking the depth of experience and the maturity required to be a successful employee. They give those young people with their first jobs an opportunity.I can remember that first job, as you probably can, Madam Deputy Speaker. Mine was in a newsagency in the school holidays. It was great to finally have a job and be paid—what was, admittedly, a modest amount—for it. In those few weeks over the holidays working in that newsagency, I learnt more than I had learnt in the previous five years at school. That first day in work is a tremendous shock for most people. There is a long path to go along before you are a worthwhile, skilled and knowledgeable employee. So many young people today—and we see them on Work for the Dole programs and in Green Corps—are desperately keen for that first day of a real job. They know they have a long way to go and they need experience and skills, but they want that opportunity to start. I have spoken to many young people and parents of young people who have graduated from Work for the Dole programs in my electorate and who have been very grateful for the opportunity. Many of them do go on to secure a position, casual, part time or full time, or perhaps they go to continue their studies but, without fail, all of them want that first opportunity.In industries where youth wages have been abolished, like banking and building, very few young people are employed. Economic modelling suggests that were we to continue the system of youth wages—and I am very pleased that the parliament is going to allow it to continue—there could be an additional 6,000 jobs created in the building industry alone. What a wonderful opportunity for young people so keen to get that first day at work.I would like to deal now with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission report and quote from some of the observations that they made. There is an argument that youth employment is not linked to age based wages, but the AIRC has a different view. I quote:. . . if young people are to secure entry level employment and progress to economic self-sufficiency through paid employment, they more than ever need to be competitive in the labour market.We have to note the term `more than ever'. It is a striking recognition by the AIRC that the employment market for many young people has become more and more competitive, demanding and difficult. If there were any lingering doubts about the view of the AIRC, the following quote should put them to rest. The report states:There is almost a consensus, and it is our assessment, that a discounted pay rate for entry level work continues to be necessary in the areas in which employment under junior rate classifications is most concentrated.The AIRC further made the point:A near consensus exists about the state of youth unemployment. It is the starting point for our assessment of the consequences of abolishing junior rates. Employment for youth is relatively scarce, increasingly casual and part-time, fragmented, and dependent upon retail and service industries . . . For the benefit of the member for Capricornia, I would like to quote again from the AIRC report. It continues:Changes that might have the effect of significantly increasing the relative cost of teenage labour beyond its real value to an employer may make teenage employment even more precarious.I think that spells it out to us quite clearly. It is plain that the AIRC saw the disemploying effects of not adopting junior wage rates. In the last sentence of its summary report, the AIRC states:Well designed junior rate classifications, framed to reduce capacity to exploit the use of them, may justifiably be used for creating or protecting employment opportunities for young employees.When tabling the report on 24 June, Minister Reith reported to the parliament:The report concludes that the commission could not find any feasible non-discriminatory alternatives to age based junior rates of pay. Such a finding is crucial to the central policy questions that now confront this parliament.I am very pleased with the comments made by the member for Batman. In his address, he said that the parliament supported this and that it was `politics out of the debate'. He mentioned the expectations of mums and dads, young people and employers. He described the amendments put before the parliament as a fair outcome for all in the Australian community to maximise youth employment, and fair that young people accept a lower rate of pay than adults.I am pleased to see that the member for Batman and others who have spoken so very sensibly in this debate realise the obligation that the parliament owes to young people in our community, and to their families, who have expectations that they will be able to enter the work force and gain the experience necessary.The member for Capricornia suggested that the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business has a lack of ideas. I often think the results show whether the substance is there. I would like to quote from my own electorate the results that we have achieved in the past month. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits in Dawson has dropped by an average of 10 per cent in the past month. There has been a major reduction in the latest labour market figures. Some areas in my electorate have, to my surprise, achieved outstanding results. This has to be taken in the context of difficulties in the sugar industry. Sugar has a very low world price. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits dropped 16.6 per cent in the Burdekin. In Bowen, it showed a decrease of 11.7 per cent. The Whitsundays recorded a drop of 6.9 per cent. Overall, as we know, we have achieved a national unemployment rate of seven per cent—the lowest since July 1990.The figures indicate whether there is substance or not. The Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business has achieved an outstanding result that I am sure every Australian of good intent would welcome. I support, and am very pleased to see that there is a bipartisan support for, the amendments to the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2]. I commend the bill to the House.11:54:009019Price, Roger, MPMr PRICEQI4ChifleyALP00—I am pleased to speak on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2]. It is interesting that we still have a mind-set of people going to school, finishing school and going to work. That has not been the case for some time. It is interesting to note that the galleries for school students are completely full today since we are talking about their future. It has been the case for some time that people in years 11 and 12 have often had part-time jobs. It raises the question: why are we now locked into thinking schools should operate from 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock?I was talking last night on the Vocational Education and Training Funding Amendment Bill. We are seeing a new phenomenon where students can complete years 11 and 12 over three years and, in doing so, undertake TAFE credential courses or even courses at TAFE that effectively complete at least theoretical entry level training before they enter the work force. That has nothing to do with youth wages, except that, over those three years, they are placed for significant periods of time with a single employer. The Labor Party, when in government, embraced a training wage. But a training wage is not going to fit in that environment. We will have to think about whether there should be any remuneration at all for students undertaking work experience over a three-year period with one employer. I do not think a training wage is quite appropriate there.We will have to have greater flexibility. Most members of the House have had little experience of receiving a youth wage, yet we are being asked to make these decisions on behalf of our youth. I fully support the propo sition that the best approach is to allow the AIRC to be the umpire. As far as skilling our youth is concerned, I do not think the future is the philosophy that Australia will have a competitive advantage by minimising its wages bill. I do not think there is much future for that at all. We are going to be distinctly uncompetitive in that approach in our region.I particularly welcome the fact that we will have a situation where youth wages are not entrenched across all awards as the government had proposed. In seeking a variation, either to abolish them or to impose them, the burden of proof now rests with the proponents—that is, they have to go before the AIRC and make out their case and, if they are convincing, they will get an appropriate outcome. The Labor Party does not believe that a one size fits all approach is an appropriate one in this very dynamic economy of ours. That is a matter of common sense. We on this side reject an approach which says that, if you can dumb down your labour and minimise your labour costs, you will always have a successful enterprise. There are some firms that operate very successfully in that belief, but if we embrace that belief as a nation we are heading for some degree of long-term misery.I do not think there would be a member of parliament who has really gone through the bitter experience of having left school and, having completed their tertiary or whatever studies—or not completed them, for that matter—been unable to find a job. Yet more and more of our young people are finding that to be the case. There was a certainty for some of us—and, indeed, that is why we may have been considered as the lucky country—that, no matter how well or how poorly you went at school, you were always guaranteed a job at the end of the day.Some people like to criticise our youth. I have a deep and abiding admiration for them, particularly considering the hurdles in their path. That is why the Labor Party is not just concerned about the remuneration aspect. It is the degree to which we are skilled as a nation that will determine our future. The more that we can invest in young people and their skills, the better off we will be. But, when we say that, it is not as though this is going to be a one-off investment—that is, you make the investment during school or in providing entry level training, and then you can forget and just reap the rewards and dividends through a lifetime of work. In fact, the experience is that people will be going through quite a number of career changes. The idea that young men and women these days can look forward to full-time employment with one employer has well and truly passed. You need to look at not only the mobility of the work force—that is, that there will be periods of full-time and part-time employment and opting out—but also the need to enhance skills or completely acquire a whole range of new skills.The degree to which we accept these challenges and are prepared to pay for them as an investment the better off we will be as a nation. I noticed that some of the government members, in the context of this debate, raised Work for the Dole schemes. I have always said that, because of the way we credential ourselves in society, the first question we ask someone who we have perhaps met for the first time is, `What do you do?' That is the first question we always ask. Of course, people do not like saying, `I am unemployed' or `I cannot get a job.' A great deal of self-esteem therefore comes with being involved in productive activity. People in Work for the Dole schemes are involved in productive activity; they are being credentialled positively in the community.From a Labor Party perspective, we say that all people, particularly people who are unemployed, are worthy of receiving support, assistance and skilling. It was the issue of skilling in Work for the Dole that was the problem, not the concept of mutual obligation. That was already there before the Howard government took over. They just happened to implement it in this way and in a very political way. The Labor Party now says, quite rightly, that there will always be a place for schemes like Work for the Dole, but from a Labor perspective we will be investing in a broader range of schemes that place skills acquisition higher on the agenda.The debate has been truncated somewhat, so I am limited in my opportunities for comment, but I did want to congratulate the shadow ministers, Arch Bevis and Martin Ferguson, for the way that they handled this matter. They have been quite consistent and, not unusually, the Labor Party is supporting the referee—the very referee that Peter Reith proposed to neuter by wanting to entrench, in a one size fits all approach, youth wages in every award. We ought to be prepared to accept the principle that, if you have the output, a similar range of skills and are making an equal contribution, you are worthy of receiving the same money. That should apply to people whether they are male, female, old, single, middle aged or whatever. I support these amendments.12:06:009020Barresi, Phil, MPMr BARRESIZJ6DeakinLP10—It gives me great pleasure to see that those on the other side of the House have finally seen the sense and importance of the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] . Finally, the other side has put policy before politics and we will get some surety. The media will no doubt cast their decisions for government or opposition as winners in this debate. That does not in fact matter; the real winners are our young people and Australian employers. On 26 June, the Daily Telegraph had this to say:Opposition is beholden to the trade union movement, which believes all workers, no matter experience or ability, should be paid the same.For once, the ALP has put its foot down and separated itself from its industrial wing. I am not sure of the genesis of its sudden conversion to reality, but it has happened. I look forward to hearing from members from the other side and the Leader of the Opposition on this debate. I would like to hear them arguing as vociferously for youth wages as they did against them just two months ago. This turnaround is good news for millions of Australians who are seeking to make our economy, our social fabric and our nation stronger. This bill is as much about maintaining and building this social fabric as it is about economics. The youth wage has been a vital part of our employment strategy for many years. The reason that it has been supported all these years by industry and by successive governments of every political stripe is that it has worked.The youth wage, of course, is an integral part of the whole employment strategy. Many of the young people who have embarked on jobs after leaving school have been amazed at the learning and training needed—not only to earn more money but also to conquer the aspects of the job. What is more, they have taken to this education in a manner that they never did at school, because they can sense a future for themselves.If the parliament had failed to pass this legislation, there would have been dire consequences for these young job seekers. It is estimated that up to 220,000 young people would have had their positions as part of the work force jeopardised by not having a junior rate of pay. The passage of this legislation will ensure that employers will be the beneficiary of affordable labour together with young Australians looking for a start in the work force. This is a win-win situation all round: a win for us here as a parliament and a win-win for the employers and the young school leavers out there looking for their first job.I can well remember, like perhaps many in this House, getting my first job. I recall as a 16- or 17-year-old doorknocking every business in Sydney Road, Brunswick, Coburg and Moreland and getting rejection after rejection until finally one person at the very end of the road—perhaps I should have started at the other end first—gave me a break and put me on at a junior rate. From that I learnt the ethic of work and all that goes with it—the responsibilities of earning a dollar and being part of a work force.There is no one thing more important in the lives of young Australians than opportunity. Governments, community groups and employers spend billions of dollars and hours every year to expand opportunities in education, in training and in jobs. By doing so, we enhance our social cohesiveness and our futures, both collective and individual. I am happy to say that, with growing service industries and broader scope in retail hours, there are today a great many choices for young job seekers.With a first job comes a realisation that it is rarely the best paid and that a lot of training, learning on the job and time will be needed to advance through the ranks. There is also the realisation that becoming the managing director before the age of 30 will be tougher than previously imagined. Despite this, you do not find too many youngsters quitting jobs primarily because their pay is not adequate. In my human resources experience, exit interviews have revealed that the likely reasons for departure are more inclined to be work environment, career prospects, management-employee relationship, but very rarely is it the level of remuneration if you dig beneath the surface.The unions are sending the message to young energetic people displaying initiative that they are being ripped off and that they should not work for the kind of money they are being paid. This ideological predisposition displays how out of touch and unrepresentative the union movement has become. One can only hope that, in the changing of the guard from Bill Kelty to Greg Combet, there is a reality check. But, in reading through the transcripts this morning and listening to the radio, I am not sure whether that reality check will be there, because this morning the assistant secretary, Greg Combet, told AM that the deal is a disgrace. The union movement may have performed a great service to working people in the early days of Australia's nationhood, but in the past 30 years the ridiculous wage demands, penalty rates and other ludicrous sundries have done more to destroy job growth than to help working men and women.Policies of this government have been directed at promoting jobs. Tax reform, industrial relations legislation and reforms to small business all mean more job opportunities for the Australian people. So, too, does this legislation. It is one more cog in the employment strategy wheel that this government has proposed. This bill seeks to preserve and enhance the job prospects of young people by protecting the existing system of junior rates and, in appropriate circumstances, extending junior rates to awards that do not currently contain them.Just under two months ago, the full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission handed down its findings on the feasibility of replacing junior rates with non-discriminatory alternatives. After six months of inquiry and after oral and written submissions from all major stakeholders, it could not find any feasible non-discriminatory alternatives to age based junior rates of pay. Abolishing youth wages in the hope of somebody finding a better alternative would be akin to burning the life raft for warmth in the hope there is a rescue ship approaching just beyond the horizon. I am happy that the ALP has seen the light and has given its support to this vital piece of legislation.Those to whom I have spoken in the electorate of Deakin have been astounded at the failure of some of our opponents to see the sense in youth wages. Melbourne's eastern suburbs is currently going through a period of employment growth. With forward looking employers, schools that provide a good education, a host of organisations such as the Jobs Pathways team, the EEIP team which runs the ASTF program, a very proactive area consultative committee in Jobs East, active Work for the Dole programs and many focused job providers, we are blessed with a range of possibilities in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The coalition's programs in education and training have really taken root and opened up a whole world of opportunity, including many who might previously have spent a long time on unemployment queues.According to the ABS, unemployment in Melbourne's inner east in June was 5.1 per cent, with the outer east doing even better at 4.7 per cent. I do not say this to crow about it, because a point that I always make whenever I go out and speak to groups about employment is that if there is one person who is looking for a job, who needs a job, then our job as members of parliament, as legislators, is not complete. But I present these figures as an indication that there is real progress going on out there and that there are opportunities for our young people and unemployed alike. In fact, one can say that we actually have skills shortages in some industry groups. So I can assure the House that no complacency has set in. The environment created by this government's policies reward effort and achievement. All who are associated with getting our unemployed into jobs are to be congratulated on their performance.Last year the Australian Retailers Association surveyed its members, who employ over 380,000 employees, about their likely response to the abolition of youth wages: 16.8 per cent said they would lay off some junior employees, 18.4 per cent said they would lay off most junior employees and 50.6 per cent said they would recruit only adult employees. If the job is needed, an employer faced with the prospect of paying adult wages to juniors would prefer to hire adults with maturity and experience. The shedding of junior positions would not necessarily mean adults replacing youth in the work force on a one to one basis. The loss of three junior positions may mean replacement by one paid adult position, meaning a net loss in employment.Most small businesses attempt to keep a tight rein on expenses. Many are run by their owners, who may choose to take on extra duties themselves in lieu of hiring someone else. This legislation is complemented by the findings of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training, of which I was a member. During the last parliament, the committee studied factors affecting employment of young people. I am pleased to see that I will be followed by the member for Greenway, who was a member of that committee in the previous parliament. We heard from young people and employers throughout Australia. They told us what those in my electorate were telling me: that the cost of employing someone is a definite factor and the availability of a youth wage is a boost to employment prospects.On the point of competency based rates so fiercely pushed by the unions, McDonald's also had a view. McDonald's is an organisation that employs over 40,000 young Australians, and it argued:Young employees can learn skills related to the tasks they perform quite quickly, usually within six to 12 months. Young people also develop other more general work skills in their employment which are valuable to employers, such as teamwork, organisation and planning, responsibility, punctuality, customer awareness, communication, initiative, self-confidence and a healthy work ethic. These skills are not easily measured objectives but, as young people are generally less proficient in them than older workers, age based rates represent a simple, rational and intelligible proxy for competency based rates.They were the words of one of Australia's largest youth employers. Before we dismiss anything that comes out of McDonald's—which tends to be the way of some people in this House—let us remember just how many young people have earned their first pay packet beneath the golden arches. In fact, thousands have, including both of my brothers, Jack and Laurie, who began their working lives learning how to make burgers and fries. I have to say that one of them has a very successful career in human resources and the other one is outstripping his brother in parliament in terms of his earning capacity as a builder—both of them getting their start in McDonald's, learning the various aspects of work and the work ethic that goes with it. These are two real examples that I am proud of, of people who started their careers in an organisation such as McDonald's and were able to benefit from that experience and, of course, with McDonald's being able to benefit from their employment. Two Australian retailing giants, Coles Myer and Woolworths, who employ 110,000 young people, also supported the retention of junior wage rates.This bill is not about cutting wages. It has been of great concern in the Deakin community that some have been out and about trying to persuade people that this is the case. The facts are simple: the current system works and we should stick with it until we see a better one. Even the Labor Party have turned their backs on the unions and are supporting commonsense.As the member for Batman said this morning, it is time we put these issues to bed. Young Australians aged 15 to 19 are usually still at school or in some form of study; those working full time are taking their first tentative steps in a job and, it is to be hoped, a career. Many will change direction, seeking better pay or more rewarding work. In today's world there are no fixed earning capacities outside the confines of union decreed awards. To get better evidence of this, all you need to do is look at some of our teenage computer whizzes. Try telling them that their future is dependent on collectivism, solidarity and the unionised brotherhood. For the rest of us, this legislation offers an opportunity to get a foot in a door that would otherwise be closed.I commend the bill to the House. It will benefit many young people in my electorate and around Australia. I commend the Labor Party for its rare support of government policy and its courage in saying no to the unions. For the benefit of our society, I would hope they do it more often.12:21:009023Mossfield, Frank, MPMr MOSSFIELDMK6GreenwayALP00—In speaking on the Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2], I firstly welcome to this parliament some students from St Patrick's, Blacktown—one of the senior high schools in my electorate. I think it is very appropriate that they are here on this particular day when we are debating this very important issue relating to junior wage rates—which will affect them, no doubt, in the near future.I take issue with the previous speaker, the member for Deakin. I certainly would not say that we have turned our backs on the trade union movement. Probably to his disappointment, the Labor Party and the trade union will be moving collectively to improve the position of the Australian work force. In considering the issue of junior wage rates, this parliament should recognise that there has been a dramatic change in the employment prospects of young Australians over the past 20 years. It has become harder and harder to get full-time jobs—and almost impossible for those young people who do not finish high school. At the same time, there has been a massive growth in part-time work, which many young people now combine with study.One important fact, and one acknowledged by the Productivity Commission, is that it is not changes in wage rates that have been driving these changes but rather changes in technology, changes in industry and changes in education. It is therefore unlikely that a sole focus on wages will be the solution to youth unemployment. The labour market has decisively shifted. It now rewards skills, work experience and training—the things that many young people have not had the time or the opportunity to acquire. Our approach to youth employment policy, including junior wage rates, needs to reflect this.It is a point recognised by many submissions to the Industrial Relations Commission—whether in the SDA's submission, which advocated maintaining junior wage rates for those under 18, or in the submission of the Queensland government, which advocated a system of wages based on skill levels. This would mean that young people without any work experience or skills would be paid less, in exactly the same way that adults with fewer qualifications and less work experience tend to be paid less than other adults. Such a scheme would do more than just maintain the status quo. It would actually improve things. Young people's compensation would be related to their work history, and so you would be rewarding work and there would be extra incentives for training.The issue of junior wage rates is very important because we have to ensure that young people are adequately rewarded for their contribution towards the profitability of the company that they work for while, at the same time, bringing some balance into it and ensuring that their wages are not so high that employers are unable to employ them. The purpose of this bill, when originally introduced into the parliament, was to amend the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and the Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1996, in order to promote the inclusion of junior wage rates in awards and workplace agreements and to exempt junior wage rates from the anti-discrimination provisions of the Workplace Relations Act. The bill does not directly legislate for a reduction in existing wage rates but may have the effect of encouraging the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to insert new junior rates of pay into awards where they are not presently in force.The government has moved in somewhat indecent haste, this being the second occasion that the parliament has debated this legislation. The first occasion the bill was introduced was clearly inappropriate, as the Industrial Commission was still considering its inquiry into junior wage rates. Even now, on the second occasion this bill has been introduced, the government wanted to start the debate on this issue only a few hours after the IRC report had been produced. Now that the report has been produced, we can say that we agree with the Industrial Relations Commission that junior wages ought to be considered on a case by case basis. We also agree with the commission's report that industrial parties and other interested parties would need to be involved in considering junior wage rates on an award by award basis.We also agree there is a need for change, but there is also time for meaningful discussions to overcome the problems that would not arise for some 12 months or more. Any change should be as a result of proper consultation and should be in the best interests of the quality of life of young people, not just for the improvement of profits for business. In line with the commission's recommendation, junior rates provisions would need to be reviewed on a case by case basis after the exemption for junior rates clauses in the anti-discrimination legislation expires in June next year. This important process should not be circumvented by overriding government legislation that does not look at the specifics of individual industries.The proposition of the government was that there was to be an automatic extension of junior wage rates to all areas where it was possible to employ a junior. This is not the case. While this may be appropriate—or could have been appropriate—in some cases, it may be appropriate in other cases to set up a traineeship or apprenticeship structure whereby young people, after completing a period of junior employment, come out with recognised, certified skills and qualifications.I have previously referred to the Australian traineeship system that was in place in Australia. This system proved a success with employers, as it gave them an employee to train at a lower rate of pay. The employee also spent two days at TAFE, receiving additional training to complement the three days of on-the-job training. At the end of a one-year process, we had a young person with real employment experience and an established work ethic. But, of course, the excitement of this project has now disappeared. It is no longer fashionable, and so we have dropped it out of sight. We need to re-establish such a scheme in the interests of our potential employers and of our young people who need work.If a young person is working in, say, a McDonald's or a Woolworths, they should be able to use that experience as part of a structured university or TAFE course; and the wages paid to juniors should have a competency based component. Since 1989, and even prior to that, many awards and training arrangements have moved to a competencies and skills based training system. This was done with the full cooperation of the employers and the unions involved in those particular industries. All industrial parties recognised that the old classification system and pay structures were not adequate to meet the needs of industry. I, like many others, was a party to the very hard decisions that were made to reduce the number of classifications and to make people multiskilled. The workers also were an important part of the process and, although progress was not as fast as some of the zealots wanted, we got there—and our industries were improved as a result.But does the government care or is it interested in having workers as part of this changing process? Not likely. It thinks that we should all be working on a lower rate of pay, have no union representation and simply shut up and behave ourselves. Charles Dickens' stories come to life in Canberra politics. Competency based rates of pay are not discriminatory, as the joint government submission to the Industrial Relations Commission junior wage rates inquiry stated. All governments, excluding Tasmania, Queensland and New South Wales, stated:As well as being non-discriminatory the main advantage of skill-based classification structures is that they create incentives for skill formation by ensuring that employees capture the benefits of acquiring higher skills through higher wages.And, to the extent that differences in the value of employees is correlated with the skill and competency criteria used to define progression through the wage scale, this addresses the employment substitution effect.Employers should be encouraged to educate and train as well as employ young people.The Leader of the Opposition, in his speech on 24 June, drew attention to the issue of junior wage rates, and I also draw attention to some of these issues. This government is the only government in the Western world under which expenditure on education and training is decreasing. This government is the only government in the Western world under which expenditure on R&D is decreasing. It is very much an economic rationalist government where the best educated, the wealthy and the people who have sufficient cash left over after they have paid their daily bills and bought shares in Telstra will do very well. But it is not a good government for the battler and for people and families down on their luck. How offensive it is for a group such as this coalition government to start using the word `battler' when referring to their alleged support groups.It certainly has not been a good government for young people. In a roundabout, sneaky sort of way it has said the only thing that can be done about unemployment is to reduce wages or force hard-pressed families to support unemployed people. The government have cut funding for education and training, with a total cut of some $800 million from tertiary education. They have restricted access to living allowances. They have introduced a new funding scheme for schools which will erode the public school system. As Jacob Varghese, writing in the Australian on 29 June, said:They, the government have introduced the modern Australian apprenticeship and training scheme, which discourages young people from taking up apprenticeships; under this scheme, a final year apprentice chef's weekly income has been slashed to almost half its previous level.I repeat: a final year apprentice chef's weekly income has been slashed to almost half its previous level. The same article also refers to the government's attack on organisations that represent the views of young people, such as the Australian Youth Policy and Action Coalition and Students Union. This organisation was recently wound up after the government removed its funding. Before being defunded, this organisation had been critical of the youth allowance and junior wage rates policy of this government. The government is following the same policy in the university sector by attacking the funding structure of student unions. George Orwell's famous book 1984 was recently sent to members in this House. It is worth reading this historical novel. One can see many places where the coalition have extracted and refined parts of this novel into real policy that ends up hurting the poor, but always in their best interests because `we know what is best for you'.12:33:009026Hull, Kay, MPMrs HULL83ORiverinaNP10—The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment) Bill 1998 [No. 2] is set to amend the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and the Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 1996 to remove uncertainty surrounding junior rates of pay by permanently exempting junior rates from the age discrimination provisions of that legislation.This bill is about supporting and enhancing the job prospects of our young people. It is about protecting jobs for our young people by protecting their junior rates. Because of the importance of junior rates in getting young people into jobs, this government's preferred position has always been that junior rates should be allowed to continue indefinitely. It is also the government's view that, in order to provide support for youth employment, junior rates should be more widely available. As a relatively large employer, I applaud the government's obvious support for our youth. The junior rates system is one that is currently working, and working well. With extension into other industries that presently do not allow for junior rates, many employment opportunities will be created. Despite being rejected in the Senate in March this year, and in light of the inquiry of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission into junior rates and the important role that junior rates play in getting young people into jobs, this bill has been reintroduced. I am elated that after six years there is a resolve to rectify this serious issue.The report from the Australian Industrial Relations Commission is absolutely clear and concise in its findings, namely, if junior rates are abolished many young people will lose their jobs—and that is a fact. On the other hand, if you have junior rates, jobs will be created. I now look forward to the job creation that will emanate throughout my electorate and all electorates from the safe passage of this bill. My electorate of Riverina—and I am sure this goes for all electorates—would suffer immeasurably if wage rates for juniors were suddenly increased by 50 per cent. A study by the Productivity Commission entitled `Youth Wages and Employment' found that a one per cent increase in youth wages would lead to a decrease in youth employment of two per cent in the retail industry, five per cent in the accommodation industry and 2.5 per cent in the cultural and recreational service industry. I repeat: a one per cent increase in youth wages would lead to those decreases. Just imagine what would happen if the rate were increased by 50 per cent. It would be catastrophic.These figures clearly demonstrate the importance of age based junior rates in maintaining youth employment. I am proud to be part of a government that shows a depth of concern for the future of our young people. If juniors are being paid the same wages as adults, businesses will employ adults. A sensible business owner will recognise the experience and the maturity of an adult worker at the expense of a junior worker. It is just commonsense.My family business wants to continue to train young people, as we have done over the past 24 years. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult. When you have a junior, or an apprentice, you do not have a tradesman and an apprentice. You in fact have half a tradesman because of the time that tradesman is involved in teaching the apprentice. Junior rates provide that much needed edge for our youth to get that first job, to start themselves off towards gaining the experience and skills required to further their working career.The Industrial Relations Commission raised many valid points in its inquiry into junior rates. The essence of its findings were that `none of the identified, non-discriminatory alternatives examined by the commission were feasible.' The commission found that age based junior rates of pay are the most appropriate system at present. Based on this finding alone, junior rates must stay and, where appropriate, be extended throughout the work force as per the coalition's youth employment bill.The commission found that no alternative exists. As such, Labor must surely take note of what the Australian people have been calling for and act in protecting jobs for young people in rural, regional and metropolitan areas. Our kids are entitled to a future in employment. The commission's independent report cannot be ignored. The report states:If young people are to secure entry level employment and progress to economic self sufficiency through paid employment, they now more than ever need to be competitive in the labour market.The Australian Industrial Relations Commission says that junior rates must stay, the federal coalition government states that junior rates must stay and the Australian public states that junior rates must stay. Surely Labor must recognise this overwhelming support and make the correct choices.The commission also found that the removal and non-replacement of the existing wage discounts embodied in junior rates would have significant disemploying effects for young people. The report notes that this finding was not seriously challenged by the participants in the inquiry. The inquiry used its finding about the disemploying effects of removing junior rates to assess the consequences for youth employment of alternatives that would apply adult rates at age 18. The inquiry found that for most 18-year-olds and above the application of full adult rates would cause an overvaluation of the work performed and would be expected to reduce the employment prospects of the 18- to 20-year-old age group. Australia is not the only country to have debated youth wages. Recently, both the United Kingdom Low Pay Commission and the Irish National Minimum Wage Commission recognised the need to discount minimum wages for young people to ensure that young people are not disadvantaged in the labour market. With teenage unemployment above 24 per cent, everything possible must be done to assist young people into work. The preservation and expansion of junior rates will not provide a miracle cure, but it will go a long way toward addressing the youth unemployment issue. It will also go a long way to redressing the current skilled and unskilled labour shortage in the Riverina.It was under a Labor rule that we in small businesses had our ability and incentive to train our young people severely diminished, and it is small business that carries the nation's full-time employment. We simply cannot further erode employer confidence. It gives me great confidence to hear in this parliament today that we have finally come to be reconciled on this important issue. The safe passage of this bill will ensure jobs for our kids. Unlike most of the members on the opposite side of the House, I have been an employer, and my family still is a relatively large employer. I know the difficulties associated with the employment of young people. I know the difficulties associated with the employment of any of our future work force. It is with this commitment that I stand here today to support this bill with much conviction. I applaud the government and the minister in being able to bring about a final resolution to this most critical issue after such a long period.12:42:009027Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—in reply—In summing up on the second reading debate on this bill, I thank all members for their contributions. This is a quite extraordinary outcome for the parliament. It is a very good outcome for the Australian people. Is an excellent outcome for young people—those who have a job today and those who hope to have a job in the future. I also want to thank some of the people who have worked very hard behind the scenes. John Stewart and Phil Drever in my department have worked very hard. When the government made its submission to the Industrial Relations Commission, we had an American labour market expert out here. He read the submission and remarked to me on the quality of the work that had been put in. I think those two people in particular, and others in the department who have worked on this, have represented the highest professional standards within the Australian Public Service, and I do thank them for what they have done.I also want to thank the industry groups, employers and others, and some of the unions too that have been prepared to discuss the issue with us. Whilst not agreeing with our position, at least some of the more moderate unions have been prepared to talk about the issues, and that is an important aspect of the conduct of any public policy debate. I also want to single out Peter Anderson in my office who has been involved in this for years. In fact, he worked for one of the retail employer associations and—I hope he will not mind me saying this—he was there when that legislation went through in 1993 and was one of the first people to recognise the consequences of the provision put through at that time in the Senate. He has worked on this for six years and like me and others in the government feels very passionate about the importance of securing these legislative changes to provide jobs for people in the future. I think we can confidently say that 200,000 jobs in the retail industry will be saved as a result of the parliament doing the right thing and passing this legislation.I also do pay tribute to my opposite number. This is a rare occasion in the parliament when these things are said, but it is a difficult issue within the Labor Party, and we understand that. They have overturned six years of their policy position. Furthermore, they have agreed to other provisions which give us a better policy outcome than we had in 1993, and that is a sensible, pragmatic approach to take, appreciating the political difficulties for them. But it is definitely the right thing to do, and I think that should always be recognised on the appropriate occasion.The objectives that we had for the legislation in this matter were to permanently exempt junior rates from anti age discrimination laws, to introduce for the first time new objects in the workplace relations system, dealing specifically with youth employment and youth unemployment, and to enable junior rates to be included by the commission in awards and industries where they do not currently apply, including during the award simplification process. The agreement that we have reached with the Labor Party is for amendments which ensure the permanent exemption applies not only to junior rates but also to traineeships and apprenticeships, as defined. In a sense, it is a bit of a technical matter, but it was a matter that came up during the Industrial Relations Commission review of the issues. So it is sensible to make those changes.All of the new objects sought by the government are included but with two additional objects which we have negotiated—youth skills and community standards. Also, where an award governs work that is or may be performed by young people, the commission can decide on a case by case basis, where appropriate, to include junior rates. Where applications for the insertion, variation or removal of junior rates are made to the commission, the onus is on the applicant to establish their case. That is a fair outcome. I would have to say that essentially reflects practices and procedures within the commission. We are quite happy, however, for it to be stated as it is being stated in this context. I might say more about the amendments at the appropriate time.The government has also made it clear—and this was part of the negotiations with the Labor Party—that it will treat the passage of this legislation subject to the intended operation of these legislative provisions. Given the current positive developments in the youth labour market, the government sees no reason why it would need to introduce further legislation in the life of this parliament on the junior rates issue.From the government's perspective, this outcome provides certainty and should put the issue behind us for this parliament. I think that is fair. I think it is terribly important that employers and employees have certainty about the provisions which affect their employment, and we certainly have no intention of revisiting this issue. We are pleased with the outcome. It gives a better policy position than what we had in 1993. It not only reverses the mistakes that were made in 1993 but gives a better policy position prior to 1993. So we are in fact advancing the cause of young people having the opportunity of their first job.Whilst the Leader of the Opposition was chuffed when those opposite rejected this bill only a few months ago, they have now been prepared to acknowledge that the right thing to do is to see this legislation go through. I approached the shadow minister after the statements were made by the Leader of the Opposition in the House after the commission report came down. Those comments by the Leader of the Opposition suggested that they were prepared to review their position. We had a sensible discussion on it, got some advice about the actual words and agreed on the amendments, and they will therefore go through today.I hope that we will also be able to facilitate the early passage of the legislation through the Senate, which would be consistent with the approach that we have been taking, and that will finally see the matter put to rest. We look forward to young people in the future having the chance of a job—keeping the job they have and having the chance for a new one in the future. I thank all members for their contribution and look forward to the speedy passage of the bill.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.9029Bill—by leave—taken as a whole.12:49:009029Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—by leave—I move government amendments Nos 1 to 9:(1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (line 8), after "promoting youth employment", insert ", youth skills and community standards". (2) Schedule 1, item 2, page 3 (lines 18 to 20), omit subparagraph (ii), substitute: (ii) uses a case-by-case approach to protect the competitive position of young people in the labour market, to promote youth employment, youth skills and community standards and to assist in reducing youth unemployment.(3) Schedule 1, item 3, page 3 (lines 23 to 26), omit paragraph (ba), substitute: (ba) the need, using a case-by-case approach, to protect the competitive position of young people in the labour market, to promote youth employment, youth skills and community standards and to assist in reducing youth unemployment, through appropriate wage provisions, including, where appropriate, junior wage provisions;(4) Schedule 1, item 4, page 3 (after line 30), after subsection (4), insert:(5) For the purposes of paragraph (3)(e), trainee wage arrangements are not to be treated as constituting discrimination by reason of age if: (a) they apply (whether directly or otherwise) the wage criteria set out in the award providing for the national training wage or wage criteria of that kind; or (b) they contain different rates of pay for adult and non-adult employees participating in an apprenticeship, cadetship, or other similar work-based training arrangement.(5) Schedule 1, page 3 (before line 31), before item 5, insert:4A After subsection 113(3)Insert:(3A) The Commission may, on application by an organisation or person bound by an award, vary the award by: (a) including a junior rate of pay in the award; or (b) varying a junior rate of pay in the award; or (c) removing a junior rate of pay from the award.(3B) In any application of the kind referred to in subsection (3) or (3A), the onus of demonstrating that the award should be varied as set out in the application rests with the applicant.(6) Schedule 1, item 5, page 4 (lines 1 to 3), omit paragraph (ea), substitute: (ea) if it applies to work that is or may be performed by young people—protects the competitive position of young people in the labour market, promotes youth employment, youth skills and community standards and assists in reducing youth unemployment by including, if, on a case-by-case basis, the Commission determines it appropriate, junior rates of pay; and(7) Schedule 1, page 4 (after line 3), after item 5, insert:5A After paragraph 143(1D)(a)Insert: (aa) it provides: (i) for a rate of pay worked out by applying (whether directly or otherwise) the wage criteria set out in the award providing for the national training wage or wage criteria of that kind; or (ii) for different rates of pay for adult and non-adult employees participating in an apprenticeship, cadetship or other similar work-based training arrangement; or(8) Schedule 1, page 4, (after line 5), after item 6, insert:6A After paragraph 170LU(6)(a)Insert: (aa) it provides: (i) for a rate of pay worked out by applying (whether directly or otherwise) the wage criteria set out in the award providing for the national training wage or wage criteria of that kind; or (ii) for different rates of pay for adult and non-adult employees participating in an apprenticeship, cadetship or other similar work-based training arrangement; or(9) Schedule 2, item 1, page 5 (lines 8 to 10), omit paragraph (ea), substitute: (ea) if it applies to work that is or may be performed by young people—protects the competitive position of young people in the labour market, promotes youth employment, youth skills and community standards and assists in reducing youth unemployment by including, if, on a case-by-case basis, the Commission determines it appropriate, junior rates of pay; andIt is perhaps not necessary for me to go into all of the detail. Members have, of course, the amendments as circulated and an explanatory memorandum has been prepared and also circulated. The principal changes which make up these amendments relate to traineeships and apprenticeships, the incorporation of some additional objects—namely, youth skills and community standards—and the incorporation of those two concepts of youth skills and community standards.We have accepted the inclusion of youth skills and community standards. We understand the reason the Labor Party was keen to see them included. We would make the point that `community standards' is reflected elsewhere, and I think it is in the provisions of the act that relate to the functions of the commission where they talk about living standards. That is a close parallel. Of course, `youth skills' is something that we would expect and the commission has in the past taken into account when making decisions on these issues. The important point from our point of view was to ensure the acceptance of the objects relating to employment and youth unemployment.Apart from those brief comments, it should also be said that there is a specific provision about the onus of proof in case by case applications. The commission, on an application, can vary the award by including a junior rate, varying a junior rate or removing a junior rate. In any application of that kind, the onus of demonstrating that the award should be varied rests with the applicant. That accords with the standard practice of the commission, and we are quite happy with that proposal. That has been sufficient for the purposes of reassuring the Labor Party about the manner in which these issues will be treated.12:52:009030Bevis, Arch, MPMr BEVISET4BrisbaneALP00—I might make a few comments about the statements made by the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. In relation to the commitment the minister has given that the government sees no reason why it would need to introduce legislation in the life of this parliament dealing with junior rates, I think it is important to record my understanding of those circumstances.We appreciate that in any situation of this kind it is not possible for any government to give a unilateral, total commitment that under no circumstance would it not legislate. But the clear understanding is that there would need to be a very significant, substantial and at this point totally unforeseen event to give rise to a need for further legislation in this area in the life of this parliament. That is an important undertaking that does provide a degree of certainty. It ensures that we will not find visited upon us next week a bill to do the things that were in the original bill and which are just about to be taken out of it by these amendments. That of course was necessary.I listened with some interest to a great deal of the debate today. I suppose a number of members did not have a lot of time to get across some of the issues, but it did seem to me that a number of government members had their speech prepared for the original bill and gave it, but I think it is important to record that the original bill and the amended bill are chalk and cheese. There are very significant differences between the two documents that are important to record.The original bill limited the scope of the commission in such a way as to ensure that those junior rates clauses that presently exist in awards and agreements would never be removed; it would be virtually impossible for a union to argue the removal under the provisions in the original bill. More than that, it extended junior rates into awards and agreements that do not currently have them, with a set of criteria that would have effectively ensured their inclusion in all awards as long as someone under 21 years of age worked in that area.All of those provisions are removed by virtue of these amendments. Importantly, a number of other criteria are inserted, and the minister has referred to these. The inclusion of youth skills and community standards is important, and I commented on that in the second reading debate so I will not repeat those comments. They are fundamentally, though, different and inject a set of values into the commission's considerations that are important in allowing discrimination to be removed.The next important point in distinguishing the bill in its original form from the bill in its amended form is the strengthening of the role of the Australian Industrial Relations Com mission. There is some irony in the fact that we have another piece of legislation on the books this week that seeks to strip from the commission a whole range of powers. That has been the approach adopted by this government since it came to office. We now find ourselves with a bill before us—unlike that bill—which will actually confer upon the commission a greater degree of independence and power in this area than has been provided by other bills the parliament has had before it over the last three years.That is important because we made it clear in June this year—and I might say we have made it clear for some years—that we support the independent role of the commission. We think that function is important, and we do not support the efforts of this government in a range of areas to undermine that. So we are pleased the government has accepted the proposals and amendments we were moving that gave to the commission that degree of authority and autonomy.It is also important to acknowledge that, unlike the original bill, the amendments ensure that the commission actually has the freedom to judge the case on its merits, and that is expressly stated. In doing so, the bill will now expressly say that you can put in a junior rates award or you can take one out. I want to make clear our view on that: our view is that junior rates clauses are discriminatory. We do not agree with the view that has been expressed by the government and held by them in relation to employment implications of this issue. This is for us a matter of basic rights of people to employment on the basis of their skill and competency, not on the basis of their birth certificate. (Extension of time granted) We think it is important that we move as a society to remove that discrimination, but in doing that we have to move as a society in a constructive and sensible way.On the Labor side, we had a close look at the evidence that was being presented before the Industrial Relations Commission review. We had a close look at the findings of the commission. The commission very clearly said that they had a look—superficially albeit, but nonetheless a look—at a range of models, and their assessment of the range of models was that they could not substitute any of them for the existing junior rates system. But they did say that they did not rule out that there were alternatives that would be suitable. The point they made very clearly was that we should consider the removal of junior rates further on a case by case basis looking at the merits of the individual case before the commission. We hold to that view. We made that plain in June, and we made it clear they were precisely the sorts of amendments we would be pursuing in the parliament.The government has accepted those positions and in fact picked up now all of those items that we set out in June as our requirements. Every one of the positions that we announced in June in response to the report have now been included in these amendments. That very dramatically alters the nature of the legislation that will be before the parliament. It does draw a very stark comparison between the position the government took when it moved these bills on 24 June and the position it now takes in moving these amendments. It is a better piece of law for that. It does provide a framework that the Labor side of the parliament endorses. Indeed, it is just about in toto the amendments that we proposed to proceed with ourselves. So given the government's willingness to see the light and adopt Labor's amendments, we are only too happy to be reasonable in seeing the bill's passage through here.Amendments agreed to.Bill, as amended, agreed to.9032Bill (on motion by Mr Reith)—by leave—read a third time.Bills9032r9059032Bill presented by Mr Entsch, and read a first time.903213:01:009032Entsch, Warren, MPMr ENTSCH7K6LeichhardtLP10—I move:That the bill be now read a second time.The objective of this bill is to enhance the protection available to the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and the Sydney Paralympic Organising Committee—the organising committees—against imported goods that seek to ambush their marketing activities. The bill will also enhance the protection available to owners of registered trademarks against imported goods that bear infringing trademarks.In 1996 the parliament enacted legislation, the Sydney 2000 Games (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 1996, to protect the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games against ambush marketing. Ambush marketing is the unauthorised association of businesses with the marketing of an event such as the Sydney Olympics, without paying for the marketing rights.The Olympic and Paralympic Games next year are events of great national and international significance. These events provide unique opportunities to demonstrate to the world this country's skills, talents, environment and achievements. One of the critical factors in making the games an outstanding success is the ability of the organising committees to raise the funds necessary to host the games. It is a massive task and also very expensive.The cost of staging the games is estimated to be over $2 billion. The costs are being shared between the organising committees, the government of New South Wales and, to a minor extent, the Commonwealth government. In its 1998 annual report, the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games estimated that it needs to raise in the vicinity of $800 million from official sponsorships and licensing fees to meet its budget for the games. The ability of the organising committees to attract sponsors depends to a large extent on the exclusivity of the licensed indicia and images.If the parliament had not enacted the Sydney 2000 Games Act to protect the organising committees against ambush marketing, the official sponsorship revenue for the games may have been at risk. The Sydney 2000 Games Act vests the rights in the indicia and images specified in the act with the organising committees. The act enables the organising committees to use and to license others to use the indicia and images identified in the act for commercial purposes.The Sydney 2000 Games Act does not place absolute restrictions on the use of protected games indicia and images. For example, the act does not affect the community's fundamental right to freedom of expression. This is particularly the case in relation to words that have passed into common language. It must therefore be emphasised that restrictions on the use of games indicia and images apply only to unlicensed commercial use of the protected indicia and images.The Sydney 2000 Games Act provides various remedies to the organising committees and licensed users to enforce their rights in relation to games indicia and images. Thus, where an unlicensed user uses games indicia or images in contravention of the act, an organising committee—or a relevant licensed user—may bring an action against the unlicensed user. The remedies available include injunctions, damages and corrective advertising. I have been informed that to date the organising committees have not yet needed to take action to enforce their rights under the Sydney 2000 Games Act through the courts.The Sydney 2000 Games Act also includes appropriate customs measures to limit the possibility of the importation of goods that seek to ambush games marketing. These border interception provisions enable the Australian Customs Service to seize imported goods that seek to ambush the games marketing. Once goods have been seized, Customs is required to advise the relevant organising committee or licensed user and the designated owner of the goods of the seizure. The organising committee or licensed user has then 10 days following seizure of the goods to commence infringement proceedings. If proceedings are not commenced within that time, the goods are returned to the owner. However, the designated owner of the goods may forfeit the goods to the Commonwealth at any time before proceedings commence.Customs has seized a significant number of consignments under the border interception provisions of the Sydney 2000 Games Act and it is likely to encounter an increasing number of these consignments during the lead-up to the games. In many cases, after Customs has seized goods, the designated owner of the seized goods has forfeited the goods to the Commonwealth, thus eliminating quickly and cheaply potential threats to the organising committees' revenue. In the majority of the other cases, the designated owner of the goods has complied with the organising committees' written demands.It is these border interception provisions in the Sydney 2000 Games Act that this bill is intended to modify. The amendment proposed by this bill to the Sydney 2000 Games Act addresses a discrepancy between the seizure powers of Customs and its obligation to notify the designated owner of the seized goods under the border interception provisions of that act. The seizure power of the Sydney 2000 Games Act is in broad terms; it applies to all infringing goods. However, as I have mentioned, Customs is also obliged to notify the designated owner that the goods have been seized.Presently, the Sydney 2000 Games Act defines the designated owner as the person identified as the owner of the goods on the entry made in relation to the goods under section 68 of the Customs Act 1901. However, section 68 of that act excludes several types of goods from the general requirement to be entered. For example, goods consigned by post worth less than $1,000 or goods worth less than $250 consigned by other means do not have to be entered. Therefore, goods that are not entered do not have a designated owner. As a result, Customs cannot seize goods that are not entered because there is no designated owner to notify. As considerable numbers of such consignments can occur, this discrepancy undermines the intent of the border interception provisions of the Sydney 2000 Games Act.The amendments proposed by this bill will improve the effectiveness of the Sydney 2000 Games Act by enabling Customs to seize all goods that seek to ambush the games mar keting, whether or not the goods require entry under the Customs Act. As the border interception provisions of the Sydney 2000 Games Act were largely based on the border interception provisions of the Trade Marks Act 1995, both acts share a common definition of designated owner. Therefore, this bill proposes also to make a similar amendment to the Trade Marks Act.The amendments made by this bill are not intended to apply to all goods imported into Australia and especially not to goods imported for personal use. As I mentioned previously, goods will only infringe the Sydney 2000 Games Act if the goods are used for commercial purposes, and that term has a particular meaning under that act. Similarly, goods will only infringe a registered trademark if the goods bear the trademark, or are used in connection with the trademark, in the course of trade. I commend this bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum to this bill.Debate (on motion by Mr McClelland) adjourned.Miscellaneous903413:09:009034Entsch, Warren, MPMr ENTSCH7K6LeichhardtLP10—I move:Tariff Proposal No. 3 (1999)Customs Tariff Proposal No. 3 (1999), which I have just tabled, contains an alteration to the Customs Tariff Act 1995. It formally places before parliament the creation of an additional note in chapter 57 of the customs tariff that was notified during the recent parliamentary recess in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette on 21 July 1999. The alteration has been operative since 22 July 1999.Textile rugs and mats have in the past been considered to be floor coverings and as such classified in chapter 57 of the customs tariff. A decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in November last year found that certain types of textile mats are not floor coverings and, therefore, not classified within chapter 57. The classification of any textile mat outside chapter 57 is inconsistent with the International Convention for Classifying Goods to which Australia is a signatory.The alteration contained in this proposal inserts an additional note in chapter 57 directing that textile rugs, mats and similar goods are to be classified to that chapter of the customs tariff. This will ensure Australia's compliance with the international harmonised system. A summary of the alteration has been prepared and is being circulated for the information of honourable members. I commend this proposal to the House.Debate (on motion by Mr McClelland) adjourned.Committees90349034903413:11:009034Moylan, Judi, MPMrs MOYLAN4V5PearceLP10—On behalf of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, I present the fifth report of the committee for 1999 relating to the proposed replacement nuclear research reactor, Lucas Heights, New South Wales.Ordered that the report be printed.4V5Moylan, Judi, MPMrs MOYLAN—by leave—The report which I have tabled deals with the proposed construction of a replacement nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights in New South Wales. The replacement research reactor is planned to replace the 41-year-old High Flux Australian Reactor, HIFAR, which is expected to reach the end of its operational life around the year 2005. When referred to the committee, the estimated cost of the facility was $286.4 million. The committee has recommended that the project should proceed, subject to a number of important conditions which I will address in a moment.The merit or otherwise of proceeding with the construction of a replacement research reactor has been the subject of a number of reports. Of note are the reports of the 1993 research reactor review and the Senate select committee's inquiry into Australia's nuclear waste in 1996. The proposed replacement research reactor has also been the subject of an extensive environmental impact assessment process. A draft environmental impact statement was made available for public comment between August and November last year. A supplementary environmental impact state ment, which addressed substantive concerns raised in submissions, was prepared and made available for public viewing.In March this year, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage released the department's environment assessment report on the proposed replacement reactor proposal. The EAR concludes that there are no environmental reasons, including on safety, health, hazard or risk grounds, to prevent the construction of the proposed nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. This conclusion is subject to the implementation of 29 environmental approval conditions. These are also referred to in the committee's report.In terms of the need for a replacement research reactor, the committee has concluded that:. HIFAR is obsolete and will need to be permanently decommissioned in 2005.. The estimated cost of refurbishing HIFAR to comply with safety requirements alone would be half of the cost of providing a new research reactor. This would not provide an enhancement of its research and operational capabilities which are considered by the scientific community to be limited. Such limitations have led to a reduction in national research and development opportunities.. A need exists to replace HIFAR with a modern research reactor. The new national research reactor must be operational some time before HIFAR is decommissioned.. The need for the replacement of HIFAR arises as a consequence of national interest considerations, research and development requirements and the need to sustain the local production of radiopharmaceuticals.. There has been substantial investment in infrastructure at Lucas Heights Science and Technology Centre.. Construction of a replacement research reactor at a greenfield site and decommissioning of HIFAR would require the provision of much of the infrastructure which already exists at Lucas Heights.. The comparative costs of locating the replacement research reactor at Lucas Heights or a greenfield site favour the former by a considerable margin.. On financial grounds there is merit in locating the replacement research reactor at Lucas Heights, subject to the suitability of the site on operational and public safety grounds.The proposed replacement research reactor will be located within the 70 hectare Lucas Heights Science and Technology Centre. Final approvals for the site, the design, the commissioning and the operation are the responsibility of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA.The replacement reactor will be a pool type reactor; the reactor assembly will be located near the bottom of a deep pool of demineralised water. A neutron guide hall will provide better separation of operating, research and production functions. This will allow for greater flexibility. ANSTO advised the committee that the pool type construction provides a high level of inherent safety and will facilitate ease of materials handling. The fuel material will be low enriched uranium, a material which is less than 20 per cent uranium 235.The committee has recommended that during the licensing, construction and commissioning phases ANSTO should provide the committee with six-monthly reports on progress. The report covers, at length, the production and management of radioactive emissions and solid waste. All previous reports, which span six years, were based on extensive public consultation processes. ANSTO has given public environmental commitments on emissions and radioactive wastes. These encompass complying with all relevant legislative and regulatory requirements. Furthermore, ANSTO will need to obtain licences from ARPANSA at various stages of the construction and commissioning of the replacement research reactor.The committee shares concerns expressed about the continued storage of a considerable inventory of radioactive waste at Lucas Heights, including spent fuel rods. There may be some substance in the proposition that waste management is regarded as the key obstacle to the growth and acceptance of nuclear research facilities. The question of radioactive waste generation, storage and disposal has been under consideration by various governments since 1992.A region in the central north of South Australia has been identified as a possible site for a national radioactive waste repository. It is expected that the preferred site will be announced in late 1999. Use of the site as a national radioactive repository will be subject to detailed environmental assessment and further public review. Land at the repository will be used for the below ground burial of all low and short-lived intermediate level radioactive waste. The committee's report mentions that the government would consider co-locating a store for Australia's long-lived intermediate level radioactive waste with the repository. If the site is considered suitable, similar environmental impact assessments and public review would apply.The committee's report mentions an area called Little Forest Burial Ground which is located within the buffer zone about one kilometre north of Lucas Heights. It contains low level radioactive waste generated by the former Atomic Energy Commission. The wastes are buried in various trenches and covered with at least one metre of soil. The committee's report notes that, whilst risks may be regarded as negligible, there is a public perception that the site poses risks. It is remote from Lucas Heights and close to major roads. The committee considers it imperative that a high priority be given to the exhumation and removal of the waste to the national repository.In relation to waste and public safety concerns, the report recommends that:. Provided all recommendations and commitments contained in the environment assessment report are implemented during construction and commissioning and for the expected life of the research reactor, the committee believes, based on the evidence, that all known risks have been identified and their impact on public safety will be as low as technically possible.. Removal of all radioactive waste from Lucas Heights for disposal or storage at a national repository must be a high priority and is dependent on the timely provision of the repository and store.. In its quarterly and annual reports to parliament, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency should report on the implementation of all recommendations in the environment assessment report falling within its direct responsibility.. In future, in its annual report to parliament, ANSTO should report on compliance and implementation of all recommendations in the environment assessment report.ANSTO must develop a specific program for ongoing community consultation and dissemination of information during the design, construction and commissioning phase of the reactor, to the satisfaction of the Minister for Environment and Heritage. The project will be undertaken on a lump sum, turnkey basis, with the prime contractor being responsible for the delivery of ANSTO's required performance outcomes. The estimated cost of the project is $A286.4 million in January 1997 terms.The capital cost of a replacement reactor was derived from a market survey of potential reactor vendors in 1992 and further refined. The methodology was verified and cost estimates were endorsed by the Department of Finance and Administration. ANSTO advised the committee that the cost estimate is comparable with the cost of construction of recent reactors and confirmed as appropriate in discussions with potential vendors during 1998. The report concludes that:. The estimated cost is based on international precedents and national construction with no scope for design variations during construction which could lead to cost increases.. A high level management structure will be established to oversight the project with representation from key departments, including the Department of Finance and Administration.The report further recommends that:. Provision of the reactor should not be at the expense of other government science funding. I would like to place on the record my thanks to the committee and the secretariat for this report which, as members can appreciate, has been a very demanding task. I commend the report to the House.13:22:009037Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO7T4ProspectALP00—by leave—In making a short statement on the report of the Joint Committee on Public Works that has just been tabled, there are a number of things I would like to comment on. In so doing, I inform the House that I believe—and I think many of the committee members would agree with me—that this was a difficult report. The difficulty was, in no short terms, due not only to the scientific language provided to us in the evidence but also to comprehending, understanding and deciphering the facts from the emotional arguments that came forward from a lot of the people who gave evidence to the committee. That is why I would particularly like to place on record my compliments to the committee secretariat—the secretary, Bjarne Nordin; the inquiry secretary, Michael Fetter; the administrative officers, Mrs Angela Nagy and Mrs June Murphy—for a job well done in the writing of this report.I am rather disturbed—and I think the honourable member for North Sydney is talking to a couple of my colleagues about this—about the limited time we have to speak to this report. I believe it is a very important report. If we are going to have limited time to speak to this report, then perhaps something as important as this that affects not only those people in New South Wales but also those people concerned about issue should at least go to the Main Committee so that further debate can take place.I notice that the member for Herbert, the member for Mallee, the member for Oxley and the member for Throsby, who were very active members on the committee, are not here. It is very difficult when you only have a limited time to speak to a report which, as the chairman has acknowledged, has taken a lot of our time. Certainly we have tried to work collectively as a committee not only in the taking of the evidence but also in sitting down and analysing what came before us and putting the report together.On the occasions we brought ANSTO forward I found them at times to be very reluctant to provide us with information. I do not say it was done on purpose, but I found when reading back through some of the Hansard reports of the committee hearings that I would ask a question of them and I would get just enough information to satisfy me. You would have to ask again and again to get more information. I found that very difficult. ANSTO continually tell us that they have community consultation. They will certainly be aware after reading this report that one of the 29 conditions that Minister Hill provided—I think it was condition 24—was that, if ANSTO are going to continue to be reluctant, they will have to set up a consultative area where they will have to consult and provide information to the community at large on a needs to know basis.Another issue which made it very difficult for us as a committee was the press release put out by the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Senator Minchin, on 3 May. We actually refer to that press release in our report. You have to realise that we had advertised a committee of inquiry, we had taken a lot of evidence already, we were about to appear in Sydney and listen to a number of witnesses when on 3 May the minister put out a press release. The committee report states:Whilst the media release mentioned the Public Works Committee's inquiry, actual media reports suggested the project had been given approval to proceed.That created a lot of unnecessary angst. A lot of people due to give evidence before the committee believed it was a fait accompli and wondered why they were wasting their time. I commend the chairman and the committee for putting that to bed and informing those people that that was not necessarily the case.The other area of concern to me—and this was mentioned by the chairman in tabling this report—is where we are going to go with the actual disposal of the waste. I know we have covered that here, and I know it has been an ongoing inquiry as to where a repository is going to be located, but I think that is one of the major bones of contention. If we are going to have a replacement reactor, one of the biggest concerns of people not only in the Sutherland shire and its surrounds but also in all of Australia is the actual disposal of waste.We now know that in South Australia evaluations are taking place and a possible site may come to the fore by the end of December 1999. I raise the issue—I believe it is covered in the report but it has to go on the public record—that one of the conditions that the minister put on ANSTO if we are to have a replacement reactor is that they have to have an adequate site already covered for the disposal of waste. That will have to be continually pursued.I read the June 1999 report National Radioactive Waste Repository Site Selection Study and I am well aware that the region they are looking at covers 67,000 square kilometres. The area required for a site is only 2.25 square kilometres. The point of the matter is that they have not yet decided on a site. That is something that the government must posthaste get up and running. That is the only way to alleviate some of the concerns people have expressed about the adequate disposal of not only the waste that will be generated from a replacement reactor but also the waste that is in storage around Australia. That is very important indeed.The other area of concern I have with this report, as the chairman and other members of the committee would know, is the contract our government has with Cogema in France for the reprocessing of our nuclear rods. We tried to get information on what that contract was all about. Does the contract have rise and fall? Would the contract be adequately covered in the event of a court case with Cogema and then our rods could not be sent over there to be processed? We were told continually that it was commercial-in-confidence and that the minister had already stated in the Senate that he was not going to release the contract and there was no way in the world we were going to see it. It makes it very difficult for a committee to come forward and evaluate the pros and cons of a particular contract which is in place when we have not been able to sight it.I found it appalling that one of our community groups could put before us a copy of a contract which had been signed with Germany which, we would assume, is in a similar vein to what has been signed by the Australian government and Cogema; that we were able to see this report and this contract but had not been able to sight anything or ask anything other than pointed questions which were responded to with seeming reluctance. I am not saying that ANSTO are to blame for that, because obviously the direction has come from the minister in that regard. But I do believe that it made it very difficult for the committee in evaluating our report and looking at the cost factors—such factors as whether this will be commercially viable, whether it will overrun costing and, more importantly, whether the people of Australia will be convinced that that contract with Cogema will work and work well. Mr Deputy Speaker, in using the words `commercial-in-confidence', I believe they are really saying, `Let's have faith, hope and trust.' I can assure you that I do not have the charity to have the faith, hope and trust, and I am very cynical about having a report put before us that we are not able to get hold of.I believe that the record also should show that I found a number of witnesses representing the different conservation movements to be very reliable. I am glad that we mention in the report some of the evidence they supplied us with—for reference, that is from pages 49 to 52—and they have continued to raise some very obvious questions. I believe that we must be mindful of the issues they have raised both as a government and as a nation, particularly when we look at the licensing, construction and commissioning of the particular replacement reactor.We also must be very mindful that, when the expediency motion to offer the work to proceed is moved by the minister, there is a guarantee given to the House that all the recommendations in the environment assessment report will be implemented. I know that is there on page 85 of the report, but I feel I must restate that, as well as the committee's conclusion that the storage of the radioactive waste of Lucas Heights is of major concern to the local community. We must acknowledge that; we must be aware of it. We also must acknowledge that, as a matter of urgency, the Minister for Health and Aged Care and ARPANSA should appoint members to positions on the committees identified in the act—because as yet that is not there.I will be very brief in my concluding remarks, and I hope that I will have another occasion to address this issue. I have been informed that ARPANSA—this is in the evidence—is a body that has been put together now with teeth, following recent legislation and the amalgamation of a number of groups. I say to ARPANSA: you too are being watched. Even though at this stage there is trial and error with what it does, it will be the body that will be called upon to make sure that everything is done according to the 29 recommendations that Minister Hill has put out. More importantly, the community at large certainly will be monitoring all of that.I feel sure that other colleagues of mine who sit on that committee would like to say a few words. I will give way to them.13:32:009039Hollis, Colin, MPMr HOLLISDH4ThrosbyALP00—by leave—Perhaps, if this reactor were being built today, it would not be put at Lucas Heights. But it is not being built today. I have a particular interest in this area. I have always been anti-nuclear. I have participated in events such as the Hiroshima Day march and Palm Sunday marches when they used to attract thousands and thousands of people. I have always marched in those.The committee made a very detailed examination of this proposal and it was complex. We are aware that for many it is a significant and, indeed, emotional issue. I support the recommendations of the committee. I retain some reservations about the disposal of waste, and I hope that the government comes up with an adequate repository.Some suggestions were made about a greenfield site. At one time, Lucas Heights was a greenfield site. I actually know this because, many years ago when I was doing national service at Holsworthy, we used to go out and either attack the reactor or defend it. One of my strongest memories from those years is digging holes in the sandstone that surrounds Lucas Heights. But it is not a greenfield site. The problem with greenfield sites is that they do not remain `greenfield' for very long.The hard cold reality is that the Lucas Heights reactor was there long before many of those very attractive houses were built there. The reactor was there. People knew, when they built their houses there, that a reactor was located there. I know that some people will be disappointed with the recommendations that the committee has made. But Lucas Heights today is a reality. We in Australia cannot isolate ourselves from the world. Nuclear medicine is an important element, and it is important to Australia. Even as I say Australia cannot be isolated, there is concern about the safe disposal of waste, and I support the comments that the chair has made about that.This is the final point I would make: people did have the opportunity to put their concerns before the committee. We took evidence over several days. Very many groups and organisations came before the committee and made recommendations. Also, the committee has asked to be kept informed by six-monthly reports. I support the recommendations made by committee.13:35:009039Lindsay, Peter, MPMr LINDSAYHK6HerbertLP10—by leave—I, too, support the recommendations of the Public Works Committee. This was a fascinating inquiry and one that all members who attended were most interested in.The evidence came down to two streams. On the one hand, we had the Australian Academy of Science and all the subset of that body giving the most reasoned, scientific, logical explanation as to why the Public Works Committee should approve this particular replacement of the Lucas Heights HIFAR reactor. On the other hand, we had the Friends of the Earth and all the subset of that organisation giving what amounted to, in my view, the most emotional arguments, without a fact among them, as to why we should not proceed with the replacement of the reactor.ANSTO certainly gave the committee a lot of technical and detailed evidence. It con vinced me that, in the interests of science in Australia and in the interests of Australia in the world, we should have a new nuclear reactor. I think there has been some movement in the last few days about concerns at Lucas Heights. On the evidence that has been available to me, I am satisfied that those concerns are not valid. I certainly support the recommendation that the chair has put to the parliament today.13:37:009040Ripoll, Bernie, MPMr RIPOLL83EOxleyALP00—by leave—Firstly, I would thank the chair of the Joint Committee on Public Works, Judi Moylan, and deputy chair, Janice Crosio, for their hard work in dealing with an issue that creates a lot of concern and opposition from many in the community. Also, I would thank the staff of the Public Works Committee who have done an excellent job in putting this report together. The report is a well balanced view of the deliberations of the committee—as will be demonstrated to anyone who reads it—on all levels of concern about issues surrounding the nuclear reactor. For example, the report goes into great detail regarding the treatment and disposal of waste, a matter that is central to approval by the government of this project.The matter of a replacement reactor in Australia will always produce a spirited debate, and the committee deliberations on this matter proved to be nothing less. It has been a difficult task for the committee to decipher so much information on a subject that is complex to understand in terms of science and medicine but yet so easy to understand in terms of broader environmental and community issues.The committee went to great lengths to ensure that the public hearings and consultations were a priority and that all those who wanted an opportunity to put their case in this matter had that chance. Also, I would thank all the community groups that made submissions and appeared before the committee as witnesses. They are an important part of the process, and their evidence helped immensely in the development of recommendations in this report.But, unfortunately, there are a number of concerns that I have with the process adopted both by the government and ANSTO, the Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation. These concerns were also shared by a large number of the community groups and other committee members. Those concerns range from the openness of ANSTO and its willingness to participate in the Public Works Committee process, be that perceived or otherwise, to the costing for the replacement reactor, the issue of nuclear waste disposal from the site and the approval of a national waste repository, to the government approach in terms of treating the decision to build a replacement reactor as a fait accompli, regardless of the work of the committee.The estimated cost of $286 million in 1997 dollars is not, I believe, a realistic figure of the final cost of the project. The committee was repeatedly informed by ANSTO that this was a turnkey costing and that the costs would not increase. The problem with that theory was that not many others agreed with ANSTO. The report clearly demonstrates this concern and the concerns around the whole issue of the costing. The cost of the replacement reactor is based on a design that to date we have no details for, that has not been finalised and that to date there is no tender contract for. The reality is that the real cost of the project may be much higher, and is likely to be much higher. In particular, that costing did not contain any details of other associated costs or what other costs would come later on.Another issue of great concern—and other members have spoken on this—is that of waste management. Clearly, that issue gave me the most concern. With Australia committing itself to having another nuclear option for the next 50 years, I think the waste disposal issue should have been better dealt with—and, to date, I am not confident that that has taken place.But of even more concern to me in this matter and in a number of other cases is the now tired excuse of commercial-in-confidence, an excuse that we are given with so many deliberations we are faced with. This gives rise to many questions about our ability to cope with the disposal and reprocessing of the waste and whether current contracts are suitable to our needs. Certainly, our not having an opportunity to review those contracts has made it difficult to make recommendations in that area.Finally, I would make quick mention of the 29 conditions made under paragraph 9.3.1 of the administrative procedures of the Environment Protection (Impact of Proposals) Act 1974. In particular, I would mention No. 29, compliance with commitments and recommendations. I do not believe that all these commitments have as yet been met, and I am concerned about those. But I do support the recommendations and the good work of the committee.Bills9041r8379041Debate resumed from 24 August, on motion by Mr Hockey:That the bill be now read a second time.13:42:009041Bishop, Julie, MPMs JULIE BISHOP83PCurtinLP10—The States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 amends the States Grants General Purposes Bill 1994 and gives effect to the agreement reached at the Premiers Conference this year concerning general revenue assistance in various forms. There are two aspects to the legislation. The first deals with specific general revenue assistance provisions, and the second with revenue replacement provisions.In itself, the bill is perhaps unremarkable, but behind it lies a somewhat remarkable history of the evolution of the Australian federal system. That history, in so far as it mirrors the changing financial arrangements, has not always been a happy one, particularly from the perspective of some states. But now, nearly 100 years on, we enter a new era—in the year 2000—with the implementation of the GST and the restructuring that will follow of the financial relationship between the Commonwealth and states.It is interesting to study the path this relationship has taken in the context of the legislation before the House. The history of federal-state financial relations underscores the complexities inherent in an evolving federal system. In 1900, and subject to very light imperial control from London, each of the Australian colonies was legally and constitutionally independent. In 1901 the colonies became states within the Australian Federation. When Australia's founding fathers were framing the Constitution to give effect to the Federation, it is unlikely that they could have foreseen the extent to which the Commonwealth would come to dominate the states in fiscal terms. By the federal compact, which their efforts had produced, the design was to preserve the powers of the states while reaping the benefits which would flow from Federation. A limited number of powers were handed to the new Commonwealth; some exclusive but most were shared with the states on a concurrent basis.The Constitution did not specify the states powers, as these were a given. The powers available to the Commonwealth were defined carefully. At the time of Federation, the Commonwealth and states had approximately equal taxing powers, with the Commonwealth having exclusive power over customs and excise. Notwithstanding the original division of powers in the Constitution, as early as 1902 Alfred Deakin was to exclaim:The rights of self government of the States has been fondly supposed to be safeguarded by the Constitution. It left them legally free, but financially bound to the "chariot wheels" of the Central Government. Their need will be its opportunity . . . the Commonwealth will have acquired general control over the States.Such prescience. For within the Constitution, in section 51(ii), lies the Commonwealth taxing power—certainly concurrent with the taxing power of the states, except in relation to the imposition of duties of customs and excise which, by virtue of section 90, is a power exclusive to the Commonwealth.Yet history shows that, over time, for complex, sometimes curious, reasons, the apparent scope that the Constitution granted to the states to impose tax on a variety of bases in reality dissipated, and the Commonwealth has relied on a series of High Court interpretations of powers—particularly sections 90 and 96—to effectively prevent the states from exploiting their taxation potential. There have been numerous High Court deci sions but perhaps the two most significant for these purposes include the decision in 1942 to uphold the validity of Commonwealth legislation by which it took control of all income tax and then undertook to reimburse the states under the terms of its section 96 granting powers. Secondly, there was the August 1997 decision in which the High Court ruled, by a 4-3 majority, that state business franchise fees on tobacco were unconstitutional, and I will return to that decision shortly.But, taken together, along with a captivating, if not intriguing, series of High Court decisions along the way, we have ended up with a situation of vertical fiscal imbalance to a sinisterly deep extent, clearly limiting the capacity of the states to raise more than a limited portion of the revenue needed to finance their own expenditures. This occurs to some extent in most federations, but in Australia it is much greater than in any comparable country—and that is a curious feature of our modern federation. It may be apparent that, as the nation developed, imbalances were bound to occur between the powers exercised by the various tiers of government and the available financial resources. The position today is that the states are very dependent upon Commonwealth assistance as a source of revenue. General revenue assistance to the states has fallen in the last 20 years. At present the bulk of the states' funds come from Commonwealth sources—almost half from general purpose grants.The general purpose grants, as with specific purpose payments, are contingent on the fulfilment by the states of a range of terms and conditions. This legislation deals with general purpose grants for the year 1999-2000. They are untied in the sense that the Commonwealth government does not prescribe how the money should be spent. Conditions do attach to the receipt of the money. It is worth noting that in 1998 the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit examined and reported on the conditions which may appropriately be attached to general and specific purpose payments for the states. That committee concluded, with regard to general purpose payments, that it is inappropriate to prescribe a definitive list of specific conditions which might appropriately be applied to hypothetical, future, conditional general purpose funding arrangements. It was concluded that conditions would need to be determined for each case.The general purpose grants to be provided by this bill total around $17.7 billion and are, first, payments to the states and territories from the pool of financial assistance grants, which is the largest category of general purpose grants. The pool of money from which financial assistance grants are allocated is determined according to a formula which maintains the grants in real per capita terms, making adjustments for inflation and national population growth. The distribution will be in accordance with the five-year per capita relativities—updated in line with Commonwealth Grants Commission recommendations.The basis upon which such funds should be distributed has not been reviewed for about five or six years, and I am compelled to say that the recommendations based on data for five years were in fact to the detriment of my state of Western Australia, with New South Wales, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory all receiving a greater share of funding. But, as we from Western Australia concede, that is one of the consequences of strong growth in the WA economy. We have moved happily from recipient to donor status, but the WA contribution must be recognised so that economic strength is not automatically penalised in reforming fiscal arrangements and when taking into account the cost of providing services and infrastructure across our vast geographical area. The changes recommended by the Commonwealth Grants Commission do, however, largely balance one another to the extent that the overall redistribution is less than 1.25 per cent of available funds.The second aspect of general revenue assistance relates to the per capita element which is conditional on the states meeting the terms of the agreement to implement the national competition policy. The Commonwealth government has given considerable emphasis to micro-economic reform in recent years, and, while the Commonwealth was able to implement certain reforms at Commonwealth level, considerable reforms were also required at state level requiring state government action. The main vehicle for identifying and monitoring the implementation of such reforms has been the Council of Australian Governments. The states expressed concern that they bore the cost of micro-economic reform within the states while the Commonwealth would benefit financially from additional tax generated by privatised authorities and from improvements in national productivity. The states therefore sought to share in the financial benefits.Australia is now in its fifth year of national competition policy, and this has proven to be an ambitious and comprehensive program of economic reform. The national competition policy consists of a number of intergovernmental agreements between the Commonwealth, state and territory governments which recognise the benefits of coordinated competition policy development under the aegis of the Council of Australian Governments. At a 1995 COAG meeting it was agreed that the states would receive national competition payments from the Commonwealth, and the implementation agreement set out the conditions for the provision of these payments by the Commonwealth to the states and territories. It also set out the role and functions of the National Competition Council in assessing state and territory progress on the competition reforms, as well as advising the Treasurer on eligibility for these national competition policy payments.The national competition policy reform program was split into three tranches, and the council assesses each government's progress in meeting their commitments at the end of each tranche—that is, on 1 July 1997, 1999 and 2001. The Commonwealth agreed to make payments to the states and territories provided they made satisfactory progress in implementing the agreed reforms. All up, the payments are worth around $16 billion. The council's first assessment was completed in July 1997, and it has completed a follow-up assessment in July of this year. The agreement provides for up to $439.1 million for 1999-2000. The second element of this bill relates to what has been termed the safety net arrangements. I mentioned earlier the significance to the states of a recent High Court case. On 5 August 1997, the High Court of Australia, in a combined decision in two cases, Ha and Hammond v. State of New South Wales, declared state tobacco franchise fees to be unconstitutional. In the year prior to that High Court decision these fees had raised $4.9 billion for the states, representing 16 per cent of state taxation revenue. By extension, this decision effectively struck down all state franchise fees which had been applied to petrol, diesel, alcoholic and tobacco products and, in certain states, gas. These fees had been imposed by the states for almost 20 years and were a significant source of revenue.It is fair to say that the constitutional basis for these fees has always been vulnerable as the states tried to find more creative ways over the years to escape the High Court's definition of an excise. So the states, in attempting to find ways to overcome the High Court's interpretation of section 90, introduced business franchise taxes, which were applied by requiring the vendor of a particular commodity to be licensed. The tax then took the form of a licence fee.There had always been concern that these imposts might be characterised as an excise for, as I have said, under section 90 of the Constitution, only the Commonwealth can levy an excise. Economists consider an excise a tax which is imposed upon goods produced domestically as against customs duties which are imposed on imported goods. In this respect, an excise is different from a sales tax, and the distinction is important in a federal system of government. In its early decisions on section 90, the High Court adopted a narrow definition of an excise, one closely aligned with the economic definition. Later, the court widened its definition of an excise to be any tax on goods supplied anywhere in the production and distribution of change. It is this broader definition of what constitutes an excise which has effectively prevented the states from applying any form of tax on the production or distribution of goods.The 1997 decision was heralded as another low in the battle for financial independence of Australian states. In most other federations, either direct access to or formula based sharing of the sales tax base is an important source of state revenue. This decision highlighted the imbalance in revenue raising capacities of the Commonwealth and the states, and also highlighted the narrowness of the indirect tax base in Australia. The High Court's decision would have had a major impact upon state revenues.As a result of the High Court's decision, the Commonwealth implemented a plan to provide a safety net for state revenue. The Commonwealth acted quickly, announcing the package of measures to provide the safety net on 6 August 1997, the day after the High Court decision was handed down. The measures involved the Commonwealth increasing its tax upon the affected products and providing the revenue so raised to the states after deducting the cost to the Commonwealth of the administrative scheme. There were, of course, significant differences between the levels of franchise fees levied by the various states on the products captured by the High Court decision. As the Commonwealth is permitted to levy taxes only on a uniform basis across the nation, there was somewhat of a complication in the safety net package and the Commonwealth had to levy a relatively high uniform rate of additional tax on petrol, tobacco and alcohol. Once collected and paid to the states, it is then up to the states to reimburse wholesalers for any Commonwealth tax paid by them in excess of the tax they were paying under the states' franchise tax regime.Obviously these new arrangements devised in response to the High Court's decision have significantly increased the degree of vertical fiscal imbalance in federal-state relations with the states becoming even more dependent on the Commonwealth. This High Court decision highlighted not only an intolerable level of vertical fiscal imbalance but also the narrowness of the indirect tax base. Government responded to redress this situation, and a taxation task force was established on 13 August 1997. It was given the task to prepare options for reform of the taxation system. As part of the process the Prime Minister directed the task force to address the issue of reforming Commonwealth-state financial arrangements. Twelve months later to the day, on 13 August 1998, the government announced its plans to reform the Australian taxation system, and a key element of the A New Tax System package was the reform to Commonwealth-state relations to improve the financial position of all state governments by providing access to a more robust tax base that can be expected to grow over time.Of particular and significant interest is the fact that, from 1 July 2000, the Commonwealth will appropriate all of the goods and services tax revenues to the states so that no state is worse off than under current arrangements, and after 2001-02 the GST revenues will be distributed to the states on a horizontal fiscal equalisation basis.Finally, the legislation maintains the protection provided by the Business Franchise Fees Windfall Tax Act from 1 July 2000. This provides for the imposition, collection and administration of 100 per cent windfall tax on refund claims. So the states and territories will be paid amounts received by the Commonwealth under the Franchise Fees Windfall Tax Act and this protects state budgets against refund claims in respect of past business franchise fee payments. This was also a necessary consequence of the 1997 High Court decision.Given variations in the rate and structure of franchise fee regimes formerly operating in each jurisdiction, some of the safety net rates levied by the Commonwealth would be higher than some of the franchise fees in some of the states and territories. The Treasurer undertook that all revenue collected by the Commonwealth under these arrangements would be returned to the states and territories after allowing for administrative costs so the Commonwealth would not be increasing its revenue.So this legislation comes at the end of nearly 100 years of complexity in the financial relations between the Commonwealth and state governments. The complexities are unlikely to disappear, but at least we can, with the federal government's commitment to tax reform, look forward to a new era of Commonwealth-state financial arrangements with the introduction of the GST. The appropriation of all the GST revenues to the states and territories is a great boost to the century-old battle for greater autonomy by the states to enable them to be responsive to regional and local needs and preferences. I commend this bill to the House.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Order! It being 2 p.m., the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 101A. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.Questions Without Notice904590459045Smith, Stephen, MPMr STEPHEN SMITH5V5PerthALP00—My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Is the minister aware that in June this year when the minister for communications announced the current Telstra pricing caps would `operate until 30 June 2001' he made this promise:There will be no change to arrangements for Telstra's directory assistance.In light of this promise, how can the minister justify the decision yesterday to allow Telstra to charge business customers for directory assistance calls? Given the expected record profit due to be announced by Telstra tomorrow, isn't this decision a serious betrayal of small business owners and operators in Australia? Will the government now rule out any application of a charge on directory assistance calls from residential customers?9045McGauran, Peter, MPMr McGAURANXH4GippslandNPArts and the Centenary of Federation10—I will try to work my way through those five or six questions. Picking up the last question relating to whether we will rule out further changes, it is fascinating that even the opposition's spokesman in today's Financial Review in a story by Paul Cleary is reported as follows:But the Opposition spokesman for communications, Mr Stephen Smith, said the move represented "the thin edge of the wedge", which Labor would not have countenanced "in this term of office". He said Labor had made a commitment at the last election not to apply 013 charges, but he declined to say if this commitment would be retained in future. Fancy asking us. As he well knows, no-one gives open-ended commitments, including the opposition spokesman himself.5V5SMITHMr Stephen Smith—You did; you did! It's precisely what you did.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Perth will exercise more restraint or I will deal with him.XH4Mr McGAURAN—For the information of the House or those who do not know, and I suspect they are more on the other side, this proposal does not impose a charge on residential users. Any proposal to do so would be a fundamentally different proposition and we would take a very different view. The big point is that business can and should contribute to the cost of a business service. Telstra should not have to bear the cost of businesses using the service as a business tool and making hundreds of calls a day. After all, 80 per cent of 013 calls are made by nine per cent of phones.The impact on low level users will be minimal. This is a new charge on mobile phones and on business phones. There are exemptions and appropriate safeguards, as you would rightly expect. Apart from those fixed line residential phones, no charges will apply to directory assistance for a charity, not-for-profit organisations or from payphones. Disabled users will continue to have free access to the directory assistance disability hotline. Telstra have made a number of commitments in return for this new cost. They will answer 70 per cent of calls within 10 seconds. They will provide an Internet starter kit to assist small business to go online and access directory assistance services. Telstra have also undertaken to remove the advertisements from the directory assistance service, a move welcomed by consumer representatives.The simple question is: why should businesses, and farmers for that matter, subsidise the chronic users of the free service? Six out of 10 small business lines made no calls to directory assistance over a two-month period. Of those who did use directory assistance, 64 per cent made less than three calls per month. Some 68 per cent of farmers are residential users with fixed lines and 60 per cent of farmers made no calls to directory assistance in May of this year. The majority of farming businesses who use directory assistance will pay around 80c per month. This is an eminently sensible and equitable measure with all of the proper safeguards built in.90469046Prosser, Geoff, MPMr PROSSERRI4ForrestLP10—My question is directed to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister inform the House what steps the government has taken to create and preserve the jobs of young Australians?9046Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I thank the member for Forrest for his question. No commitment that I made on behalf of the coalition in 1996 was more important than the commitment to spend every effort to reduce the level of youth unemployment in this country. I am delighted to record the fact that, according to the most recent figures, the number of young people unemployed in this country has declined by 5.8 percentage points since March 1996. That achievement is all of a piece of other progress the government has made to reduce the level of unemployment in Australia. We have generated now in the last 3¼ years almost 500,000 new jobs. We have the lowest level of unemployment for more than a decade. We have the lowest number of young people looking for full-time work since 1978. We have the lowest level of long-term unemployed since 1991. In addition to that, we have fought consistently and persistently to achieve the preservation of youth wages to underwrite the simple proposition that, if an employer is required to pay a young person with little experience a wage not consistent with his or her age or experience, that employer will be disinclined to do so.We have argued very strongly that that principle has to be respected. I am delighted that the House of Representatives has now passed legislation that will effectively preserve the jobs of several hundred thousand young Australians. I want to express my thanks and admiration for the work of the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business who has consistently taken up the cudgels and argued the cause of a fair go for young Australians in relation to job prospects.The most important thing about what happened today is not whether one or the other side of politics has shifted its ground; it is that young Australians are the winners. In the end, what matters is whether we in this place do good things for the job prospects of young Australians. In the end, the young of Australia will judge us by that. They will not judge us by our rhetoric or our debating points; they will judge us by results.We are now dealing with a generation of young Australians who react to outcomes. They are not hogtied by ideology, they are interested in outcomes. One of the outcomes they want for their generation is the opportunity to have a job. That is why we committed ourselves to reducing youth unemployment, it is why the minister consistently argued for it, and it is why I applaud the outcome that came from this place this morning. It is an intelligent contribution to the future of young Australians, and that ought to be a source of pride to all of us, whatever our political beliefs.90469046Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—My question is directed to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer confirm that the GST will not be imposed as a tax on a tax? Is it not the case that your tax law does impose the GST on existing taxes, such as stamp duties and state levies, unless these are specifically excluded by you through regulation? Can you confirm that no government taxes and charges have yet been quarantined from the GST?9046Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—Of course I can confirm that GST does not apply to taxes. GST applies—as has been made entirely clear throughout the whole of this process—to goods and services produced. Services which are produced for a fee will be subject to the tax, as is provided in the legislation. In relation to carve-outs, in relation to financial transactions and the like, I have recently put out a discussion paper. We have indicated those matters which will be carve-outs, and I would have thought that, even for the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, that would very clearly implement a very good policy, if I may say so—a policy which the Labor Party has failed to produce. You have never seen a flatter opposition in this place than this opposition over the last week.DT4CREANMr Crean—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I was interested in the early part of the answer, I think it was relevant. But clearly the question was: is it not true that as of this date there has been no quarantining, as is required by regulation? That is what the Treasurer should answer, otherwise he should sit down and admit nothing has been quarantined.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Treasurer was responding to the question. If he wishes to further elaborate on his response, he is at liberty to do so.CT4Mr COSTELLO—I do. Why is it that you have such a pathetic opposition in this place these days? It is because they stand for nothing, they have no policy. All they have been able to do is fight against sensible reform, and they are going nowhere.DT4CREANMr Crean—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The question is: can he confirm that no government taxes and charges have yet been quarantined?10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. The Treasurer had responded to that question.90479047Bishop, Julie, MPMs JULIE BISHOP83PCurtinLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Minister, junior wage rates have been a feature of the Australian work environment for decades. Could you inform the House what action the government has taken to ensure that this will continue to be the case?9047Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—I thank the member for Curtin for her question. I am delighted to advise the House that legislation now passed through the House of Representatives has permanently exempted junior wage rates from antidiscrimination laws. After fighting this fight now for six years, we have finally achieved our objective: we have finally overturned one of the great mistakes of the Labor administration and finally achieved job security for hundreds of thousands of young people, marking the culmination of a fantastic campaign which we have run in the interests of jobs for young people. Not only have we now reversed six years of Labor policy, but also for the first time in the history of workplace relations law we have introduced a requirement that the commission, in varying, changing or introducing awards, take into account the need for young people to have jobs and the consequences for young people of youth unemployment. For the first time in the industrial relations system in this country, we have taken the outsiders of the system and given them an official voice in the inside of the system. We have not only reversed six years of Labor policy back to 1993 but, with the introduction of these objects, we now have a better legislative system than that which Australia enjoyed in 1993.Further, we have also enabled the commission to introduce into awards, in industries where they do not currently apply, the system of age based junior rates. The job consequences of that are tremendous for young people, preserving their jobs but also improving their prospects for jobs in the future. This morning, in congratulating the government and enthusiastically endorsing this bill, the Australian Retailers Association said:Had this agreement between the government and the ALP not taken place, young jobs in Australia's largest industry—the retail industry—which employs 50 per cent of the Australian youth work force, would have been devastated.The association's research showed that up to 200,000 jobs would have been at risk had the prohibition on junior rates come into force in June next year. The ACCI, speaking on behalf of employers generally, said:The employment position of young people is already precarious and their employment prospects require strong protection. The agreement reached will provide this protection.This is a great achievement of the Howard government, really making practical reforms for the benefit of young people. Never let it be forgotten that when the Labor Party voted against a bill very similar to that which has gone through today—when they voted against the same provisions, when they voted against having objects in the act to protect young people—the Leader of the Opposition, on 9 March 1999, said:Now, we had a great victory in the Senate yesterday on one of those things and we're really rather chuffed about it.You might have been chuffed then, but the fact is—and I give credit where credit is due—ZD4HOWARDMr Howard—You have always been like that.WI4Mr REITH—I have always been like that. Thank you, Prime Minister. The opposition will take a heap from the trade union movement. Dougie Cameron is withdrawing $350,000 from you. You are going to cop a lot of flak for reversing your position. You at least had the guts to do what had to be done, but it was only ever done because this government put political pressure on you. Mr Speaker, they were steamrollered by the Industrial Relations Commission. It completely flattened them. This is a great victory for young people.90489048Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—My question is to the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Now that you have done a backflip on junior wages, accepted every single amendment raised by the Labor Party—which you rejected at the outset of this debate—and reversed your position on help for the Oakdale workers, will you drop your second wave laws and put some fairness and balance back into the industrial relations system?9048Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—I will put the facts on the table. A few weeks after the Leader of the Opposition had made his remarks when the Industrial Relations Commission report came down, I went to the shadow minister and said, `We would be prepared to discuss this with you,' to see whether what he said then was fair dinkum. In the last two or three weeks, the shadow minister came to me with certain amendments and we had a series of discussions about those amendments. Those amendments were changed, as you well know, to reflect the fact that some of them—Opposition member interjecting—WI4Mr REITH—I will answer your point. We had legal advice on those amendments. You had to accept—as you did accept, and it is stupid for you to say otherwise—that your proposed amendments were a backdoor reintroduction of the antidiscrimination provisions. Those are the facts. Furthermore, in the amendments that have been accepted today, we not only reached a sensible understanding but also went further than we originally proposed in respect of traineeships and apprenticeships. We appreciated that we needed to enhance the protection from our first bill, and we have gone further in the amendments.The other point I make is that the Labor Party are running a campaign around the country saying, `Just say no,' but yesterday they said yes to us. They said yes to us because the force of our position was demonstrated by the Industrial Relations Commission report, which also demonstrated that their position was completely untenable. There was no way known that any Australian political party could sit back and see young people lose their jobs as a consequence of legislation supported and introduced by the member for Kingsford-Smith. This is one of the great wins that we have had. It is one thing to do a deal with the member for Dickson, but it is another thing to do a deal with the whole frontbench. For young people, it was worth it.90489048May, Margaret, MPMs MAY83BMcPhersonLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. How will the young people of Australia benefit from the government's unyielding efforts to preserve junior wage rates?Opposition members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Order! If the persistent interjections from the opposition benches continue, I will be forced to issue a general warning. I am reluctant to do so. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will exercise more restraint. The Speaker did not hear the latter part of the member for McPherson's question because of the level of interjection. The member will repeat her question.83BMs MAY—How will the young people of Australia benefit from the government's unyielding efforts to preserve junior wage rates? What hurdles did the government have to overcome to preserve and enhance the opportunity of young people to find a job?Mr Martin interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Cunningham is warned.9049Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—Not only have we protected the jobs of hundreds of thousands of young people; we have also set up a legislative framework for the commission to examine the question of junior age based rates—ET4BEVISMr Bevis—Which you did not want to do.WI4Mr REITH—Which we did want to do and which was part of our original bill. A simple fact which seems to have escaped you is that you can only require the commission to deal with matters of this sort on a case by case basis. We also secured the agreement of the opposition to amend the provisions of the act that relate to award simplification. This is an important matter. We will now encourage employers to make applications to the commission to insert age based junior rates, and the commission will decide those issues on the basis of objects of the act which encourage youth employment and the reduction of youth unemployment.We also have a provision, which you have agreed to—No. 9—which says that in the award simplification process the commission will take into account particular criteria to protect the jobs of young people. This is spelt out in amendment No. 9. It means that we have a two-stream approach to junior award rates: firstly, by application and, secondly, through the award simplification process. That process is currently under way, and I will be seeking advice from my department on how the government can intervene in the award simplification process to ensure that, where we can quickly introduce junior age based rates into awards, we are able to do so.It is a tremendous outcome to now have a process by which we can proceed to spread age based junior rates where it is appropriate and within the discretion of the commission, as it always and must by law be, and providing an opportunity that was not available. It was not available in 1993. We have a better policy outcome than was the law in 1993. That is another aspect of what is a great outcome that is not only protecting jobs but also opening the door for more jobs in industries where these award provisions have not been available. If that is a win for the opposition, it is a great win.90499049Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—My question is to the Treasurer, and it refers to his earlier answer in which he promised that the GST will not apply to other taxes and charges. Treasurer, isn't it true that in the case of longer term contracts such as this farm and home policy in Warrnambool in Victoria the GST is being charged on taxes such as the Victorian fire services levy? Treasurer, is it your intention that Victorians be forced to pay the GST on fire service levies?9049Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—If the Deputy Leader of the Opposition had listened for once in his life, he would have heard me say in answer to the last question that those services which are rendered for a fee are taxable. A fire service which is rendered for a fee can be taxable. I would have thought it was obvious. It is as obvious as buying insurance. It is a service for which you pay a fee and is taxable in the same way that buying a good is taxable—that is, not taxable to the extent that the Australian Labor Party would like goods to be taxable, at their rates of 12, 22, 32 and 47 per cent and the other rates that the Australian Labor Party loves to tax people at, but taxable in a flat rate on a broad base as part of a modernisation of the Australian taxation system to introduce in this country the largest cuts in personal income tax on 1 July next year. We do not shy away from the fact that this is the low tax party, the coalition. It was the Australian Labor Party that fought every inch of the way for the outdated, outmoded, backward looking wholesale sales tax with an outdated, outmoded, backward looking Leader of the Opposition.PE4BEAZLEYMr Beazley—Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order which goes to relevance. This was a question of the imposition of tax on that fire service tax imposed on the constituents, not about a $30 billion—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. There is no point of order.90509050Jull, David, MPMr JULLMH4FaddenLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs. I refer the minister to the government's provision of transitional school to work programs for young Australians. What developments are under way to further enhance these opportunities?9050Kemp, Dr David, MPDr KEMPBT4GoldsteinLPEducation, Training and Youth Affairs; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—I thank the member for Fadden for his question, and I acknowledge his great interest in assisting young people to get the skills they need to get real jobs. One of the reasons why the number of teenagers in Australia looking for full-time work is the lowest since 1978 is that the government has put in place a comprehensive strategy to address the needs of young people who have found it very difficult to get employment. Amongst those policies is a comprehensive set of policies that give young people the skills they need to convince employers to take them on and give them a job. Amongst those is the establishment for the first time of national literacy standards—standards which were fought all the way by the Labor Party. The Labor Party has never committed itself to the national literacy standards. The government has put in place apprenticeship reforms for the 70 per cent of young people who are not going straight from school to university. The Labor Party is setting out to attack those reforms again and again.The Labor Party have a disgraceful record in relation to youth employment. We have seen today a major backflip on the part of the Labor Party in relation to junior wage rates which they have fought and fought again for six years. The major backflip we have seen is reminiscent of the backflip they finally came to on Work for the Dole. After saying they would amend it to billyo, there was finally a major backflip over there on the other side of the table. They did a triple somersault with pike and changed the Labor Party's position, and that is what we have again today. In the end it shows that, with the government's leadership, the Labor Party can finally come around to commonsense in the area of youth employment.We still need to see that commitment in relation to literacy standards. We still need to see that commitment in relation to the apprenticeship system. We still need to see that commitment in relation to Work for the Dole. We still need to see that commitment in relation to the Jobs Pathway program which this government has put in place to help school leavers get jobs. In the end, the leadership of this government can even have an impact on the policyless, directionless opposition. They know the basis of their policies is collapsing. They do not have anywhere to go, and perhaps in the end they will agree that we were right all the time.90509050Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Are you aware that the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts and Audit today considered whether to request the Auditor-General to give priority to an investigation into the Federation Fund grants program and that the committee has adjourned its deliberations until 5 o'clock today? Will you indicate to the parliament that it would be both appropriate and desirable for the Auditor-General to give high priority to such an investigation? Will you advise coalition members of the committee of your view before the committee reconvenes?9050Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I think the Leader of the Opposition is suggesting that I should heavy a committee. Let me make it perfectly clear that the question of the decisions that should be taken by the committee is entirely a matter for the committee. I have said all along that it is completely open to the Auditor-General to carry out his investigations. I can assure the parliament that I will not be encouraging the committee or any member of the committee not to indicate that the inquiry should take place.90509050Hawker, David, MPMr HAWKER8H4WannonLP10—My question is directed to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to reports of the falling rate of household savings and ask whether he can advise the House on how the average family's household balance is travelling at the moment.9051Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—I thank the member for Wannon for his question and in doing so acknowledge the work that he has done as the Chairman of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration. Mr Speaker, you will recall that, when this government came to office, we entered into a new agreement for the conduct of monetary policy in Australia between the government and the Reserve Bank. Part of that new agreement was that the governor would make two statements during the year on the conduct of monetary policy and appear twice a year before the House of Representatives standing committee. That was a major step forward in promoting transparency in monetary policy in Australia.Mr Latham interjecting—CT4Mr COSTELLO—The member for Werriwa interjects. I do not know if he still considers himself bound by Labor Party policy, but Labor Party policy was to sue the government for entering into the agreement. The great thinkers of the Labor front bench announced that they were going to take legal action to prevent that agreement from being entered into.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Treasurer will respond to the question.CT4Mr COSTELLO—The committee met recently under the chairmanship of the member for Wannon and, I think in a probably glowing assessment of the conduct of economic and monetary policy, drew the government's attention to private savings. This is something that the government has given consideration to, and I would make a couple of points in relation to it. First, until recently, Australian households carried relatively little debt compared with other countries. The leverage of Australian households, even now, although it has risen recently, is below that of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada. The leverage in the Australian household is now comparable to that of Germany, Sweden and Spain.The second point I would make is that, when you are looking at the leverage or the debt of Australian households, you do not look at it so much against income but against assets. There has been quite a substantial increase in the assets of Australian households over recent periods. From the end of the year to March 1999, household liquid financial assets, excluding super and life offices, stood at 115 per cent of household annual disposable income. With the inclusion of superannuation and life offices, the ratio is around 250 per cent. These ratios comfortably exceed the financial liabilities of 93 per cent. So when you look at the household balance sheet, you have to look at liabilities against assets. The assets of Australian households have been dramatically increasing: as Australian households buy shares, property values go up and the spread of superannuation increases, so you have seen some rise in leverage but a rise in leverage against increasing assets.Mr Latham interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The member for Werriwa is defying the chair and, if he continues to do so, I will deal with him.CT4Mr COSTELLO—The third point I would make—which is a point that the governor of the bank made—is that one of the reasons why Australians are borrowing is that interest rates are so low. Interest rates are now as low as they have been in Australia. The Fed in the United States raised official interest rates overnight to 5¼ per cent, which is 50 basis points above official rates here in Australia, which continue to be low. Low official rates with low inflation and low mortgage interest rates give Australians the opportunity to borrow. There is one way to stop people borrowing, and no doubt this would be described by the member for Werriwa as the third way.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Treasurer will not respond specifically to any individual member.CT4Mr COSTELLO—Labor very successfully stopped people borrowing in 1989 by putting the home mortgage rate at 17 per cent. That was a really successful policy. The Labor Party decided that they did not want people to borrow, so they whacked the mortgage interest rate to 17 per cent. And boy, they fixed that problem! They whacked the overdraft rate to 22 per cent. Boy, they really fixed the borrowing problem then! As the then Labor Treasurer said, it was designed to produce a recession. One of the few policies that Labor ever succeeded in was in producing a recession. They set out to produce it and, when it came, the Labor Treasurer, in those immortal words, said that it was the recession that Labor thought Australia had to have. It really fixed the borrowing problem. It fixed the economy. It drove unemployment to 11.2 per cent. The then Minister for Employment was? The then minister for employment with unemployment at 11.2 per cent is the now Leader of the Opposition. Rewarded for his performance on unemployment, they made him Minister for Finance and he presided over two budgets for a cumulative $23 billion deficit. The good news is that, after the last three years of coalition budgeting and debt repayment, we have repaid $24 billion. In other words, in relation to savings, because we have repaid $24 billion we are now getting back to a pre-Beazley situation. It has taken us three years to undo the damage of Beazley as finance minister, but we are now back to a pre-Beazley situation. Of course, the best contribution to savings that a government can make is by building government savings.I received a newsletter recently from the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers Association, AEEMA. It is a good magazine. It has an article on `Tax reform to boost e-commerce' and an introduction from the new Executive Director of AEEMA, Mr David Epstein, the former chief of staff to the Leader of the Opposition, who writes: `The secretariat of AEEMA is running well. As I write, the yearly accounts are being signed off with a sound surplus.' The only way a Beazley staffer ever gets to announce a surplus is in his post-Beazley employment. Mr David Epstein signing off on a sound surplus down at AEEMA, an opportunity he never had while he was serving the Leader of the Opposition.90529052Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. What discussions have you or your staff or any ministers and their staff had with any coalition members of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit regarding the committee's response to the Auditor-General with respect to giving priority to the proposed investigation into the Federation Fund grants? If you do not know, will you give an undertaking to check and report back to the House?9052Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I have lots of discussions with lots of people about lots of things. My position about the joint parliamentary committee was made very clearly known a moment ago. The committee comprises strong and independent men and women, led by a strong and independent chairman. I have no doubt that the decision they take will be in the best interests of the parliament. I have equally no doubt that the members of the government have nothing to fear from an investigation by the Auditor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia.90529052Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLYFK6DawsonNP10—My question without notice is to the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Can the minister advise the House of the significance of the junior rates in preserving jobs? What has been the reaction to the government's announcement on junior rates?9052Reith, Peter, MPMr REITHWI4FlindersLPWorkplace Relations and Small Business10—I thank the member for Dawson for her question and I also congratulate her on her contribution this morning in the debate. Employers around the country will be saying, as they have already started to ring my office, that this is a great decision for small business and it is a great decision for those employers who want to give young people a job. When you think that there has been a battle for six years to preserve the jobs of young people and to correct the mistakes put in place by the previous Labor government, then obviously from the employers' side they are very pleased with the outcome. Of course, the unions have a different view. It was only last year, for example, that we saw the headline in the Melbourne Age on 9 September: `We will scrap junior wage rates declares Beazley.' In fact, I remember that the Leader of the Opposition went to the shoppies union and declared his undying support for the shoppies union and its campaign.So it is no wonder that people like Joe de Bruyn have said what they have said on radio this morning. Joe de Bruyn is no left wing extremist. He is a respected right wing trade union leader who has a real interest in this subject. This is what Joe de Bruyn said this morning on AM:Well we are very disappointed because we feel we have been left high and dry by this deal that has been done.He went on to say something else, which goes to the heart of Labor's attitude dealing with its own constituency:I suppose it just goes to show that you cannot rely upon the Labor Party to represent your point of view in parliament because on this occasion clearly they knew they were going down a different path and they deliberately failed to consult us about it.Why did they deliberately fail to consult the trade unions? Because it was a huge backflip for you to abandon the position that you had. I would have to say that I was on tenterhooks all night. Do you know why? I knew the phone calls were coming in from the ACTU. The one thing I will give you is that at least last night you did not, as you usually do, respond and do the bidding of the ACTU. That I give you credit for.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Leader of the House! I understand the passion that sometimes runs in the House but there is an obligation under standing orders for comments to be directed through the chair and, in that context, the constant use of the word `you' is inappropriate.WI4Mr REITH—The shadow minister was right to apologise to the trade unions, as he did in the debate this morning. The reason he did so is that it is a very difficult decision for the Labor Party to abandon a policy they have had for six years and do the right thing. It is a very sensible outcome for young people. But this is where the unions will get into you: it is not just that you have abandoned the policy, it is not just that you have reversed the policy you have had for six years; it is the fact that you have agreed publicly to set up a better regime for the incorporation of junior rates into awards which currently do not have them. That is a sensible decision. It is the right decision. It means that we have not just corrected the mistakes of the past but we have put in a better policy decision. The reaction around the country clearly will be that this gives young people a chance of a job. That is the right reaction and that is why it is such a good result.90539053Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TANNER YU5MelbourneALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. Do you recall Senator Alston advising the Senate that at the secret meeting to decide on the allocation of Federation Fund grants, attended by only Senator Alston, Senator Hill and their ministerial staffers:Notes were taken generally by members of staff.If members of the government have nothing to fear from an Auditor-General's investigation, will you ensure that these notes are made available to the Auditor-General? If not, why not?9053Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—If the Auditor-General decides to conduct an inquiry, then that inquiry will be conducted in the normal way by the Auditor-General and the government will cooperate.90539053Wakelin, Barry, MPMr WAKELINHV5GreyLP10—My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Minister, you will recall that the government at the last election promised to ensure that all Australians had access to Internet services. Can you advise the House what progress the government has made in fulfilling this undertaking for people in remote, regional and rural Australia?9053Anderson, John, MPMr ANDERSON4K4GwydirNPDeputy Prime Minister10—I can answer the question and advise the House of where we have got to on this issue. I would certainly acknowledge that the member who asked the question has a real interest in it. He represents an area that would dwarf the size of many European countries. There are people out there, living and producing in some extraordinarily remote parts of the world, for whom distance can now be shrunk to a degree that we would not have dreamt of being possible just a few years ago.I do indeed—as members of the House will—remember our election promise to amend the universal service obligation to provide a digital data service to all Australians of at least 64 kilobits a second. We made that commitment less than a year ago, so less than a year after we made it we have launched today Telstra's Bigpond Advance—a new satellite technology that delivers on that promise and more besides. This is not just a basic service. This is not the sort of service that means that somebody in Arkaroola in the honourable member's electorate who may be studying a course from Charles Sturt University in the member for Riverina's electorate is in a situation where they have to seek information and then wander off and make a cup of tea, kick the dog, and wander around the house, waiting for half an hour to get a response. They will get a response very, very quickly indeed. This is world standard stuff. It is leading edge technology, delivering information at speeds of up to 400 kilobits a second, if the customer so wishes.The government is, furthermore, now finalising the delivery of another part of its election commitment: the arrangements to deliver on our promise to reimburse half the cost of the necessary satellite receiving equipment for the four per cent of people without landline access. So those people will have access at half the cost that they might have been looking at with the commercially prepared purchasing arrangements that will be available. I believe that people will be able to freely access these arrangements without any significant financial pain at all.This subsidy is part of the USO arrangement. As I have indicated, four per cent of Australians have never had access to Internet. Now, all Australians have access, and high-speed access at that. I think this is a very welcome development indeed. It is the first time that a broadband product has been made available Australia-wide, and for the same price for country people as city people. It is a great example of our commitment. It is a great example of the way we work as a government. It stands in stark contrast to the sorts of commitments we hear from the other side now—after they had 13 years to deliver on a whole range of things that simply never materialised but which are now regularly promised would have somehow or other appeared in the 14th or 15th year. We saw the problem; we have addressed it. I believe that that is the approach that regional Australia wants and needs, and I think that we can be very proud of the achievement we have racked up today with the launching of this commitment.90549054Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. It follows the one asked by the member for Melbourne. I ask him explicitly again: will you ensure that those `notes taken generally by members of staff' are made available to the Auditor-General?3K6CAMERONMr Ross Cameron—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. This is the 13th question in three days on this subject. This question is an exact repeat of the previous one. It has been asked and answered, and should be ruled out of order.5I4McMULLANMr McMullan—Mr Speaker, I wish to speak on that point of order. I assume the member for Parramatta is raising standing order 146 about the question having been asked and fully answered. The questions have been asked, but nobody could ever say they have been fully answered.10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—The Manager of Opposition Business does not have a point of order. I rule that the question will stand, and I invite the Prime Minister to respond to it.9054Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—If the Auditor-General elects to carry out an inquiry into this matter, all appropriate cooperation will be rendered by the government.90559055Lawler, Tony, MPMr LAWLER834ParkesNP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Trade. Can the minister advise the House of the outcomes he expects to achieve at the Cairns Group ministerial meeting this weekend in Argentina, and can he comment on the significance of this meeting to Australian exporters in rural and regional Australia? Is the minister aware of any alternative views on Australia's involvement in the Cairns Group and the important World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting to be held in Seattle at the end of this year?9055Vaile, Mark, MPMr VAILESU5LyneNPTrade10—I thank the honourable member for his question. It is a very important question, particularly to the constituents in the electorate of Parkes, who so heavily rely on Australia's exports, particularly exports of agricultural commodities and perishable produce out of that food bowl in the centre of New South Wales. Later on this week I will be travelling to Argentina to represent Australia at the Cairns Group ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires, where Australia will chair the Cairns Group. It will be the 19th meeting of the Cairns Group, which is a group of agricultural free trading nations.It is important that we continue our commitment to the process that has been started in the Cairns Group and use this meeting as a vital staging point as we move into our preparations for the WTO meeting and the launch of a new round in Seattle. It should be noted that agriculture is still the most distorted sector of international trade, and that is why the Cairns Group is so important—because the Cairns Group's core goals are to see the abolition of export subsidies and trade distorting domestic support and an improvement in market access. That can only go a long way towards benefiting Australian agricultural and exporting industries.It is important to note that Australia's exporting industries sustain about 1.7 million jobs in Australia, and it is important that we continue to build on that base—particularly in agriculture, when 60 per cent of the jobs in agriculture today rely on exports. The Cairns Group meeting is going to be a vital plank in moving towards our position in developing the argument for the launch of a new round of the WTO in Seattle, at the end of this year. It is interesting to note that, in the Uruguay Round, the Cairns Group was seen as one of the critical players, along with the US and the EU, in developing the outcomes of that round. I am certainly determined to see that the role that the Cairns Group plays is just as vital in this upcoming round, in launching a new and comprehensive round. It is interesting to note some of the comments that have been made by opposition members with regard to—DT4CREANMr Crean—What about the business group—SU5Mr VAILE—We will come to that in a minute—with regard to what should be achieved out of this round and what should be achieved out of the launch of the WTO round at the end of the year. It was interesting that at the Longreach NFF conference the opposition spokesman on agriculture, the member for Corio, stated that agricultural trade reform needs to be dealt with in isolation, not combined with other sectors like financial services in the next round. The farm sector immediately rebuffed that comment, and the farm lobby group said that agriculture is the most difficult area to reach agreement on and that a sector by sector approach could see agricultural trade reform left in the too-hard basket.Interestingly, that point of view from the farm groups got agreement in another fairly famous speech that the Leader of the Opposition gave at, I think, Monash University, where he said that a political strategy should be under way to ensure that those WTO negotiations are initiated and that they are broadly based. That is a difference of opinion between the Leader of the Opposition and their spokesman on agriculture. Of course we are going to enter into those negotiations to get the best possible deal for Australia's exporters, in the national interest of Australia, because Australia's exporters support those 1.7 million Australian jobs and we want to see those grow by seeing the development of freer and fairer trade, particularly in agricultural commodities.90569056Beazley, Kim, MPMr BEAZLEYPE4BrandALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister and it follows his previous answer. Does that full cooperation that you offered the Auditor-General include making those notes available?9056Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I repeat what I have said before: if there is an inquiry, the government will provide all appropriate cooperation.90569056Brough, Mal, MPMr BROUGH2K6LongmanLP10—My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Can the minister inform the House—Opposition members interjecting—10000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—Members on the opposition front bench will exercise more restraint.2K6Mr BROUGH—Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can the minister inform the House what the government is doing to facilitate private sector proposals for major rail infrastructure projects in Australia? In particular, what role will the federal government play in facilitating the Melbourne-Darwin rail link being proposed by Australian Transport and Energy Corridor?9056Anderson, John, MPMr ANDERSON4K4GwydirNPDeputy Prime Minister10—I thank the honourable member for his question. I was delighted recently to announce that the federal government would contribute $300,000 towards a pre-feasibility study of an inland rail link between Melbourne and Brisbane. The Melbourne-Brisbane leg will be the first stage of a proposal advanced and backed by the Australian Transport Energy Corridor Pty Ltd—or, as it is known, ATEC—for a railway from Melbourne to Darwin, a private sector proposal but one which we believe many people would very much like to see happen.The need for a study was identified in fact by a federal government committee established in March of this year. That committee involved Kay Hull, the member for Riverina; Tony Lawler, the member for Parkes; and Ian Macfarlane, the member for Groom. It was very capably chaired, in fact, by the honourable member who asked the question, the member for Longman, Mal Brough. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the committee for the outstanding work that they have done. They have worked through some very complex issues. They found, I think it is fair to say, huge support in the inland for this proposal—a real belief that, as was said in the Toowoomba Chronicle recently, the project has the capacity to change the face of Australia by bringing population and industry across the Great Dividing Range and regenerating the social and economic future of the inland.As I say, this is a private sector proposal. It is one that crosses state borders and jurisdictions, and is therefore one of national significance. So it is appropriate that, along with the stakeholders and the private sector, the Commonwealth plays a role in helping to coordinate the pre-feasibility stage. I can say, therefore, that we will be setting up a steering committee to work with those stakeholders and with the relevant governments.I would also like to make mention of the fact that the Brough committee very accurately identified that a stumbling block to this and other major projects, particularly in the area of rail, has been a lack of cooperation between the states, the territories and the federal government. This government is determined to overcome those problems. There is a challenge there for the states and the territories. We have been struggling to make progress in some areas of revitalising rail, because we have not had the full cooperation of some of the other governments. I do urge them to look to the national interest as well as to what they perceive to be their state interests in this regard, and to follow the Commonwealth's lead as we look at an estimated doubling of the national freight task—and that cannot all go on our roads—over the next 20 years, as we look to lead a recovery in the future of rail in this country.90569056Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TANNERYU5MelbourneALP00—My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Don't the caretaker conventions published by your own department state that decisions concerning significant initiatives should be `announced in advance of the caretaker period in order to avoid controversy'? Why did you announce Federation Fund projects designed to assist coalition candidates during the campaign in blatant breach of this convention? Didn't Tim Fischer give the game away on election night when he attributed coalition success to:Firstly, specific project announcements were always held back for announcement during the election campaign. That built momentum.Wasn't this just a coalition re-election fund?9057Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—No.90579057Lloyd, Jim, MPMr LLOYDIK6RobertsonLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Aged Care. Can the minister inform the House of the increased funding for carers of people with dementia in my electorate of Robertson and throughout Australia?9057Bishop, Bronwyn, MPMrs BRONWYN BISHOPSE4MackellarLPAged Care10—I do thank the member for Robertson for his question because I know of his concern for carers who are looking after people who are in need, particularly respite for the carer who puts in such a tremendous effort to make some quality of life available for the person for whom they care.In the budget we announced a further amount of $82.2 million to provide additional respite care for carers. There will be a $3.8 million allocation each year for four years under this strategy to extend respite care centres, which have proved so effective and so popular with carers to the extent that we have successfully met 50,000 applications for care through those centres. There will be a further allocation of around $14 million per year for each of four years to provide respite for carers who look after people with dementia and particularly challenging behaviours. This is going out to tender to various organisations so that we can see innovative services which will provide care in rural and regional Australia where there is no normal or permanent service. It will allow people to have a mobile service go in and give them care overnight or for a couple of days, which will allow them to go to family outings—the sorts of things that are currently denied them. The third allocation of $1.5 million over four years is to give additional training to volunteers so that the people who assist the carers in their homes are up to scratch with the latest care available to assist them in that ongoing responsibility that they bear for the people they love.I have to say that with our ageing population, with one in five people over the age of 80 having some form of dementia, this program which we have put in place is innovative, it will be effective and it is certainly much needed. It is part of that emphasis that this government is putting on social policy to improve the quality of life for all Australians.ZD4HOWARDMr Howard—Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper .Auditor-General's Reports905790579057Mr SPEAKERMr SPEAKER10000PON/A10—I present the Auditor-General's audit report No. 9 of 1999-2000 entitled Performance Audit—Managing pest and disease emergencies—Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry—Australia .Ordered that the report be printed.Documents90579057Reith, 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 .Motion (by Mr Reith) proposed:That the House take note of the following papers:Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report of the National Pregnancy and Work Inquiry Pregnant and Productive—It's a right not a privilege to work while pregnant.Debate (on motion by Mr McMullan) adjourned.Matters of Public Importance9057905710000SPEAKERMr SPEAKER—I have received a letter from the honourable member for Cunningham (Mr Martin) proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:The performance of the Minister for Defence in conducting his ministerial duties.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—15:06:009058Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—Can I say right at the outset how delighted we are that the Minister for Defence has decided to stay in the chamber and to take this matter of public importance when he has refused to do so recently. Hopefully, he might respond to some of the questions we have been trying to put to him over the last couple of weeks—questions, I might say, which this minister said were totally irrelevant, questions that went to a whole range of issues of concern to defence personnel and which we will touch on during the course of this MPI. I also have to say that, in proposing this MPI today, I was a little perplexed because I subsequently have heard that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition had actually received a gift from the minister today.The Deputy Leader of the Opposition had the opportunity to fly to Melbourne on Moore airlines—that is, the RAAF VIP fleet. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition said, `Maybe this minister isn't all that bad. Maybe he has got it right and he has got something working for a change.' Halfway through his speech in Melbourne, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition was given a note to say that the VIP aircraft had broken down. So we have the F111s sitting on the tarmac at Amberley, we have a VIP aircraft that is not in service to serve the needs of people around here and we have the minister refusing in this parliament to answer specific questions on issues that people are concerned about.EI4MOOREMr Moore—Bring them on.8I4Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN—I would be delighted to bring them on.EI4MOOREMr Moore—I am here every day.8I4Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN—You are here every day! It is funny he should say that he has been here every day. I have had the chance to go back and look through Hansard at some of the questions. I reckon he has tried to school a few of his colleagues over there because of some of the answers he has given in the past. Take this one to a question about, interestingly, youth wages in the Defence Force. He said:The government's policy on defence pay rates is well known.And then he sat down. That was the start. We asked him a very genuine question about low income families in the ADF and about the effect a fringe benefits tax would have, and he said:It is well known that we do not discuss in the House matters that are discussed in cabinet.Minister, that is not good enough. It is not good enough, as a minister of the Crown, as a cabinet minister, to come in here when we, in all seriousness, put questions to you that go to very important issues—issues which you say are irrelevant. Let me firstly address FBT, which I have mentioned already. Under the FBT regime, which you apparently have been prepared to oversee as the cabinet minister when this was debated, we are going to see the value of FBT entitlements to Australian serving men and women—with the exception of housing, which you have now had exempted—grossed up on group certificates. The effect of that on those serving men and women will be to deny them access to government payments, and it will also be reflected in increased payments that separated personnel will have to make through the Child Support Agency arrangement. Minister, were you asleep at the table when that went through? You are after all, at the end of the day, the bloke—10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—No, I am not. The minister is. The member for Cunningham knows better.8I4Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN—Obviously, the buck stops with the minister, Mr Deputy Speaker. Where were you when that issue was discussed in cabinet? You get your deputy to come in here and say, `Well, of course, Labor introduced the FBT.' We said, `Sure, we did.' We put our hand up. But never, for the Australian Defence Force, was that grossed up and that amount shown on group certificates so that it would affect the serving men and women of this country. It is appalling that that should happen. Where were you on this issue and what have you done about it? What have you done about the 40 other issues we raised in this place which are affected by FBT? We would like to hear your response to that today. We would like to hear your response—10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! The member for Cunningham knows full well the way he should conduct himself.8I4Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN—Mr Deputy Speaker, we would love to hear the minister's response to these issues.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—In that case, address your remarks through the chair.8I4Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN—We would love to hear the minister, Mr Deputy Speaker, come into this parliament and show some accountability as to why the grounding of the F111 strike bombers has more strategic impact. Down the track this is going to mean that we, as a nation, will have to make some strategic decisions about replacement aircraft, about the surface vessels we might need, about the direction of defence policy in this nation. We need to hear some response from the minister about this issue.We also want to hear about the $2 billion contract that the minister awarded to the Boeing company to supply Australia's new early warning and control aircraft. Did he know that the awarding of that contract was going to invoke a US congressional inquiry because of concerns that that body may have had about loss of intellectual property rights that pertain to the United States? The minister came in this place yesterday, when we put a question to him about that, and said he was sick on the day the announcement was made. But that does not excuse him from the fact that that inquiry is under way. What does that mean for us in terms of our ability to maintain a good and close working relationship with our allies? Minister, have you spoken to your US counterpart about that issue? What has been the response and what are they saying to us? Minister, did you raise these sorts of issues before awarding the contract?We have also raised in here the question of the critical shortage of specialist medical officers in the ADF. Next week or very shortly thereafter Crocodile 99 is going to take place, and the minister has twice come into this place and said, `I have been told there is not a shortage, that everything is okay, that medical staff will be on stand-by to look after those serving men and women who will participate in that exercise.' Yet we have had people in the Australian Defence Force, through leaked memos, say that that is not the case. We have had it confirmed that medical personnel from the United States will probably be on stand-by to look after Australia's serving men and women in those exercises—a fact that has also raised the interest of the Australian Medical Association, with a press release which clearly points out to the minister that he has misled this place in terms of his response.It is not good enough to come into this place and say, `I am reliably informed by such and such an officer at the Defence Force that this happens to be the case.' The minister is the person most responsible for the operation of the Australian Defence Force. If decisions are taken—whether it be on personnel matters, operational matters or managerial matters—the buck stops with the minister. As I said yesterday—and we have been debating this for some time in this place—we have tried to drag answers out of this minister about his administration of the Australian Defence Force. He has said that he wants more accountability and more management skills out of Russell. None of the criticism that we have raised with this minister goes to any of the personnel in the Australian Defence Force. They are committed people. I know this because I have travelled around and spoken to them in different parts of Australia.In defence of the Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, I know that he gets around and talks to those people as well. He knows they are committed and he knows of their commitment to Australia and to the Australian Defence Force. But he also knows, as I know and as other members of this place who have Defence Force personnel in their electorates know, that they are absolutely consumed by worry about the efficiency of this minister, the accountability of this minister and—to borrow a term from de fence—about the capability of this minister to deliver to them the sorts of outcomes they want. They want an outcome where they can be satisfied that they have somebody, as Minister for Defence in this country, who is in a position to ensure that they are satisfied in the job that they can do, that they can go about their job with the knowledge that they have someone at the top who at least cares about them and who knows what he is doing.It is high time that there was a full, frank and thorough debate on defence in this country. I say this to the minister because I know that he made a comment recently—and I will not divulge the source of that in the course of this debate—that he also has that concern. He has made mention of the fact that these sorts of issues go fundamentally to the heart of acquisition programs, to the question about personnel, to force structure, to the sort of platform we need to acquire for Australia into the next century and to all sorts of issues, not the least of which has been, I might say, concern about budgetary considerations.Mr Moore interjecting—8I4Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN—The minister says to me across the chamber that I must have been awake this morning. I was awake, and in fact I have been saying this for some time. But we in this chamber and people in the Australian Defence Force have not heard much from the minister and have not seen much leadership from the minister about the broader strategic environment facing Australia—what threats there are to this country into the future and what sort of new equipment we need to buy to defend ourselves into the future.There are concerns about the block obsolescence problem that is confronting us now, which you in fact remarked on this morning. There are concerns about the need to replace ageing F111 aircraft because we happen to be the only country that uses those now and it is difficult to find spare parts for them. There are concerns about finding replacements for the FA18s. There are concerns about finding replacements for our ageing patrol boats that go chasing illegal immigrants in northern Australia. There are concerns about new land capabilities that we might want to have. There are concerns about what we are going to do to upgrade the FFGs and what happens when they need replacing, and the list goes on and on.It is all well and good to say, `We're conducting a strategic review at the moment and we'll release a white paper next year,' but I would remind the House that, the last time this government released a strategic review, the Asian economic crisis hit this part of the world two weeks later and that strategic review did not even pick it or mention it. Yet this was a minister who was trying to oversight subsequently the effect that this would have on Australia's defence requirements in our region.I have said publicly, and I say it again in this chamber now: we want to see a full, frank and thorough debate on defence in this nation. We want to know, for example, what effect the sale of the Australian Defence Industries that this government is overseeing at the minute will have on defence industry and industry policy in this country. We want to know what effect the fire sale price, which the minister is looking to get from a French company and an Australian company in partnership, is going to have on our security arrangements.But, importantly, we want to know what is going to happen to electorates like Bendigo. What is going to happen in electorates around Australia where ADI presently operate and provide jobs to thousands of people because of this fire sale, because of the security concerns that some people have raised? What issue there do we need to consider so that we can feel much more comfortable and relaxed in our own perspective on the sale of ADI? These concerns that we have are the reason we have moved in the Senate that there be an inquiry into that sale.At the end of the day, as I keep saying, the buck stops with this minister. This is the minister who has lost the support of the senior personnel in the ADF. Why? Because he keeps sacking them. If he does not agree with them, he sacks them. If he cannot sack them the first time, he tries again and again, and it ends up costing the taxpayers of Australia. The minister may be able to tell us how much it is actually going to cost the taxpayers of Australia to get rid of the defence department head. Then the minister might be able to tell us who is going to replace him because it looks as though his first choice has disappeared.You have talked about acquisition programs and about going out to industry to find someone because they have to get it right. You should come in here, tell us all and convince us that you know what is going on in Defence, come in here and tell us by your answering of questions—Opposition member interjecting—8I4Martin, Stephen, MPMr MARTIN—No, not necessarily, but probably organising birthday bashes for the Prime Minister. That occupied his time. The birthday bash at the barracks in Sydney occupied a bit of his time. I thought there was a sense of irony in that because he has such a great relationship with the Prime Minister, or used to.We would love this minister to stand up here and tell us all about the strategic overview for Australia and what he wants to do and what he sees as outcomes in the white paper. He has all the questions that we put to him in the last couple of weeks. He should start with No. 1 and work his way through and give us some answers on those. He should not just simply flick pass it to the junior minister, whom I notice has moved closer to the dispatch box so he can get up here a lot sooner to answer questions on his behalf.The minister should tell us if he is the man in charge of an $11 billion department in this country and what he is doing to defend this nation. What is he doing to ensure that the morale of those serving men and women of Australia is in fact improved? What is he doing to spend that $11 billion so that we can all feel secure in the knowledge that the Australian Defence Force and the Department of Defence are in safe and capable hands? Because, I have to tell you, there is not much joy around at the minute. (Time expired)15:21:009061Moore, John, MPMr MOOREEI4RyanLPDefence10—What a hopeless opposition, a really hopeless opposition! Any general rule of an MPI is that the spokesman gets the opportunity to ask a question beforehand. That is the general rule. When we were in opposition for 13 years, if you had the MPI, you at least got one question. But this guy could not even get one up. He is a person of such little influence with the Leader of the Opposition that he could not even get a question up. He ran around looking for some audit report and he got railed. Steve, you are a nice guy, so I would not worry about it too much.8I4MARTINMr Martin—I'm gone.EI4Moore, John, MPMr MOORE—You will be back next week.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—The minister will also address his remarks through the chair.EI4Moore, John, MPMr MOORE—Mr Deputy Speaker, I welcome the opportunity today through this MPI to say something about the administration of Defence. I have refrained from doing so at some personal cost over the last month, but no-one should take that silence as acknowledgment of any of the points made by the shadow minister. Needless to say, I totally reject the allegation he has peddled about Defence in recent weeks and welcome the opportunity of saying something about the real situation.Members should also appreciate that, with certain matters currently subject to court order, there are some specific issues which regrettably I cannot go into in detail at the present time. However, I do intend to outline to the House the key factors that are driving the government in its approach to Defence and to give the House a clear indication of the determination of the government to continue the job of improving the administration of Defence in this country.Let me begin by assuring the House that the administration of the Department of Defence continues uninterrupted and unaffected by recent events. All important matters have been dealt with in a timely and professional manner, and I am determined to ensure that this continues.In order to understand the determination of the government to improve the administration of Defence, the House needs to clearly under stand the simple but key objective which is driving the government's approach. We all know that Australia's strategic circumstances are becoming more uncertain. As a result, the demands on the men and women of our Defence Force are increasing. We need a defence force which is capable of providing the government of the day with a greater range of options with which to respond to an increasing range of possible contingencies. Accordingly, I make no apology whatsoever for setting the highest possible standards for the administration of Defence and requiring that they be met. I would not ask anything less of the senior officers and officials of Defence than I would of the men and women in uniform. They deserve nothing less and the government is determined to ensure they receive nothing less.The defence of Australia is one of the central priorities of the government. We are strongly committed to building a stronger and more secure Australia. We are also committed to obtaining the greatest value possible for each dollar spent. We are building a defence force which is sharper, more combat focused, better equipped, more mobile, more capable and more operationally ready. We are strongly committed to this approach because the government believes Australia's strategic environment is becoming much more uncertain and, as a result, even greater demands will be placed upon Defence than at present.The past 18 months have seen a number of events in our region which further complicate our strategic environment. Political instability caused by the Asian economic downturn, political change in Indonesia and East Timor, strained relations between United States and China, recent hostilities between India and Pakistan coupled with their recent nuclear missile tests, and the ballistic missile test by North Korea are some clear examples.As a result of these challenges, the government has made an increasing range of demands on the ADF. We require the ADF to be ready to undertake a variety of tasks, often at short notice. We see this as a vital contribution to shaping our strategic environment and not just reacting to changes in it. This situation raises significant challenges for the government.The government and the people of Australia must be satisfied that all current resources allocated to Defence are being used as effectively and efficiently as possible. The government is, therefore, strongly committed to improving the management and leadership of Defence and will continue to insist on the highest possible standards—and I emphasise that point.The strategic environment around Australia is changing at a quickening pace. Defence needs to keep up with this pace of change through the reform program. We have shifted the emphasis in Defence towards enhancing current capabilities to ensure the ADF can present a greater range of practical options for the government when faced with the need to respond. Nothing better demonstrates that we are achieving a significant improvement in this area than the fact that a second Army brigade size group has been brought to 28-days readiness.The government realises that we need a defence force which is capable of providing the government of the day with a greater range of options with which to respond to an increasing range of possible contingencies. This extra brigade provides the flexibility that this government needs in these changing times.Nothing more strongly rejects the allegations of the Labor Party than the facts. The fact is that the ADF is in better shape and at a higher state of readiness than since the Vietnam War. This is the shape that the ADF is now in. But when we came to office, we found that the ADF was rife with inefficiencies.The Defence Efficiency Review, which was completed in 1997, found that Defence was not working as well as it could. The Defence Reform Program is all about changing it, enhancing the ADF's combat capabilities and meeting the government's requirement for increased preparedness. These reforms seek nothing less than a fundamental alignment of the way in which Defence is managed and led. In particular, we seek to provide a De fence procurement system that is more flexible, responsive, innovative and efficient.Because events in our region are unfolding rapidly, we are regularly reviewing our strategic circumstances. As part of this process of the review, the government intends to produce a Defence white paper in the year 2000—probably around the middle of the year—that will help to establish the future direction of the Australian Defence Force in the 21st century. The new white paper will need to show how Australian defence policy will adapt to meet our challenging strategic environment and resulting force, structure, industry and personnel requirements. Finally, it will also need to tackle some of the hard questions about how we sustain high levels of current readiness as well as a demanding future investment program within tight budget requirements.Australia has one of the most professional and dedicated defence forces in the world. The government is rightly proud of the men and women who serve in that defence force, and I emphasise that very much as I go around the various bases in Australia, particularly with the forming of the 2nd Brigade and when witnessing the 1st Brigade in action. These men and women deserve the very best support from Defence headquarters in Canberra, and the government requires the highest standards of management and leadership from the Department of Defence now and in the future. The challenges that our nation faces demand no less.One of the most important areas of responsibility for Defence is the acquisition of new equipment and the management of major projects essential for the strong future of our forces. This is an area where the Labor Party particularly let the people of Australia down, and the men and women of the defence forces have not forgotten it. The government is determined to improve the management of major project acquisitions within Defence. We make no apology for taking a tough line on the management of projects. We believe it is in the national interest to do so and we will continue to reform this particular area of the department. There is no area of the administration of the department where Labor's record in government was worse than the area of management of major projects. The management of the Collins project was nothing short of a national disgrace. When Dr McIntosh's report was released a few months ago, I noticed that the shadow minister said that he welcomed the report and described our changes to Defence acquisition as positive.Mr Martin interjecting—EI4Moore, John, MPMr MOORE—Well, just look at what Dr McIntosh and Mr Prescott had to say in the report. One of the most important things they dealt with in that report was the combat system, on page 10. The report states:Combat systems . . . have a notorious history of disasters . . . . By including the combat system with the platform in the single prime contract . . . Defence left itself wide open to such technological problems.The report goes on to say that other countries:have recognised the problem and have taken the major step of cancelling that route and moving to a much more reliable route based on the commercial off-the-shelf technology . . . . Although known about earlier, the problem was first seriously highlighted in 1993, but the opportunity was not then taken to make fundamental changes in the configuration of the system or in the choice of subcontractor.It is expected that the combat system will take many hundreds of millions of dollars to fix, and this is just another costly legacy left to us by the previous administration. It is another example of where Labor's maladministration has cost the people of Australia dearly—and they dare to raise the issue of administration in the House today. Today's matter of public importance should not be about the performance of the Minister for Defence but certainly should be about the opposition spokesman for defence. The fact is that the government is taking the hard decisions necessary to improve the administration of the department and to provide the men and women of our armed services with the level of support they deserve and need.I now turn to the coalition's record. As I indicated before, the government is committed to ensuring that we have an Australian Defence Force that is capable of providing more options to the government at a time when strategic uncertainty makes this so very important. As I have already said, Australia now boasts the highest level of readiness since the Vietnam War. All of this is part of the coalition's vision for a defence force that is adaptable and ready for the uncertainties of our region. The government's commitment to Defence can be clearly seen in our attitude towards the funding of Defence. When we came to office we maintained defence spending in line with forward estimates of the 1995-96 budget. Again, in the 1999-2000 budget, the government has committed to maintaining defence force spending.I now turn to the strategic policy. As I have indicated before, the current strategic circumstances are more uncertain than ever before. The Howard government is well aware of this and has conducted a searching review of Australia's strategic position. We are not going to react in a knee-jerk fashion to special events. We are taking a professional approach to the development of strategic documents as this is a very serious matter. The coalition's record on strategic policy is one with a professional and systematic attention. In November 1997 the government endorsed Australia's Strategic Policy 1997. This statement is the key document to the government's plan to ensure Australia has a modern and relevant military.A new defence white paper is in preparation and will be released by the government next year. A central element of the government's vision for defence is a lean defence force—one that is not hampered by waste and inefficiency. Our Defence Reform Program is a very important means of achieving such a force. The Defence Reform Program seeks nothing less than the fundamental realignment of the way Defence is managed and led. In particular, these reforms seek to provide a Defence procurement system that is more flexible, responsible, innovative and efficient. The fact is that the DRP will generate savings of up to $1 billion every year by early next century. Savings will be reinvested in Defence facilities and projects. The DRP is all about removing inefficiencies and reinvesting the savings into a more combat capable defence force.As I indicated before, the government expects nothing less than the best from ADF personnel. In return, we have committed ourselves to Australian Defence Force personnel by introducing a number of initiatives. The Defence Personnel Executive was established to play an integral role in matters such as Defence Force capability considerations. The Defence Community Organisation has been established to provide effective and efficient support to Defence members and their families. Also, the ADF spouse employment initiative was established to provide ADF spouses with a range of measures to reduce employment difficulties caused by a mobile lifestyle.I also want to discuss Australian defence industry. The importance of a strong and viable defence industry in achieving the coalition's aims cannot be understated. Likewise, the coalition's efforts to assist defence industry are extensive. This government led the largest ever Australian defence industry mission to the UK as part of our commitment to—(Time expired)15:36:009064Edwards, Graham, MPMr EDWARDS83RCowanALP00—Having listened to that speech by the Minister for Defence, I have to ask whether or not he and the government know the difference between, in Defence terms, a white paper and a white flag. There is one crucial thing that has already emerged from this debate, and that is this: the member for Cunningham, the very capable shadow minister for defence, put a simple challenge to the Minister for Defence when he said, `Convince us that you know what is going on in your portfolio.' Anyone who has listened to the speech which the Minister for Defence has just read could not possibly be convinced or comforted by one degree that this minister knows what is going on in his portfolio.It was only a couple of weeks ago that the opposition, in trying to get some answers and some accountability from the Minister for Defence, was forced to submit a matter of public importance to the House to discuss the administration of the Defence portfolio by the minister. It is on the record that when that debate came on the minister scuttled from the House. In Army parlance, he went over the hill, he went AWOL—he quit his post. In short, he ran out on his mates and he left it to two of his backbenchers, the members for Wannon and Longman, to protect the government position.The member for Longman is a former officer who served in my old battalion, although not at the same time as I. He at least knows a bit about heritage, about tradition and about convention. He is a person who, in my view, would make a far better minister than the current incumbent. It must be galling for members like the member for Longman to have to come into this place and defend this incompetent minister. If we had any doubts about his incompetence or about his lack of knowledge of the portfolio for which he is responsible, then we saw that clarified well and truly today. It is one thing to come into this place and read a prepared speech. It is another thing to understand what your portfolio responsibilities really are.I want to say to this minister that he is personally responsible for the defence forces of this nation, he is personally responsible for the many fine men and women who serve this country and he is personally responsible for some $11 billion of taxpayers' money, for which he should be accountable in this place. In my view, it is time this minister stopped acting like an itinerant chook plucker and came to grips with the crucial responsibilities which his job holds and for which he is well paid. It is time this minister stopped treating his portfolio like some sort of a comedy routine in which he has a bit part to play. We see that demonstrated here day after day as he ducks and weaves and avoids answering questions or standing up and making the sort of commitment that a defence minister ought to make.If this minister fails to continue to address his responsibilities, in my view he ought to have the decency to resign and make room for someone who has got the capacity and the understanding and the commitment to pull this job on. Another view is this: it is time that the Prime Minister stopped entertaining fools and court jesters in his cabinet and it is time that he sacked this minister. Any perusal, any slight look at a document entitled A guide on key elements of ministerial responsibility, as drafted by the Prime Minister late last year, would show that this Minister for Defence is well and truly overdue for the chop. This document sets out in summary form the main principles, conventions and rules by which government at Commonwealth level is conducted. Under the heading `Ministerial conduct', it states:It is vital that ministers . . . do not by their conduct undermine public confidence in them or the government.. . . . . . . . .Ministers should perform their duties not influenced by fear or favour.On the first point, how could you induce any public confidence when you see a minister refuse to be accountable, refuse to answer questions and, indeed, as we saw a couple of weeks ago, refuse to stay in the House and answer some key questions on accountability? That was reinforced again today by the member for Cunningham, who asked some key questions which were once again avoided—Mr Hawker interjecting—10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—The member for Wannon is not in his place.83REdwards, Graham, MPMr EDWARDS—I am not surprised that he sits over there squawking, embarrassed as he ought to be. I want to go on to talk about these key elements. Under the heading `The ministry' this document states:. . . all ministers must give their support in public debate to decisions of the government.We have seen a big vacuum there in recent times. The member for Cunningham was forced to change the terms of his MPI to read that a matter of public importance be submitted to the House to discuss:The performance of the Minister for Defence in conducting his ministerial duties.It is only when we laid the attack directly on him that we were able to flush him out and get him to come into this House and at least read a speech. That is a start—but a pretty poor one. Further, the document on key elements of ministerial responsibility written by the Prime Minister states:. the portfolio minister is ultimately accountable for the overall operation of his/her portfolio.To me, that means more than just going along to an Army parade. It means more than just going into the officers' mess at happy hour. It means that you have to develop an overall knowledge of your portfolio and it means that you have to develop an overall accountability for your portfolio. This minister has failed to do that. He ought to be sacked. I turn to one of the key matters that we should be focusing on. Under the heading `Ministers' relations with departments', the document states:It is important that there be trust between ministers and public servants, and each must contribute to the establishment and maintenance of the trust.On that key element alone, this minister should be given his marching orders. I think the member for Cunningham put it concisely when he talked about the paralysis in Defence senior management and the paralysis in decision making as a result of the feud and non-communication between the minister and the Secretary to the Department of Defence. As I said, on that key element alone, this bloke should be given his marching orders.The last couple of key elements that I want to turn to are these: the process for making complex or sensitive decisions needs to allow plenty of time for due process, including proper consultation. Starting too late may lead to pressure for short cuts which involve legal risk. We have seen a bit of legal risk in the administration of this portfolio in recent times, and I hold this minister responsible for that.I could have a lot more to say about this matter, but I think the member for Cunningham, the shadow minister for defence, a man who prides himself on getting out and talking to the rank and file of our defence forces, has clearly shown that this minister is not up to his task. He has clearly shown that this minister ought to be moved on. Until the Prime Minister has the courage to do that, I suspect that our defence forces will continue to be embarrassed in a way that they never should be and will continue to be treated in a very shabby way. That is unfortunate for the men and women who do a great service for this country.15:46:009066Gash, Joanna, MPMrs GASHAK6GilmoreLP10—I rise today to speak on the matter of public importance:The performance of the Minister for Defence in conducting his ministerial duties.What a waste of time! What a waste of a matter of public importance! Is this the man they are trying to discredit? This minister really does understand what reality is all about, not like all of you who pretend to be left wing, right wing or maybe middle right wing, as the mood suits, and all union driven representatives. I hear you snigger across the table at the minister's words and his pronunciation. Is that really so important?Minister Moore was born in Rockhampton in Queensland. Initially, his primary schooling was via correspondence delivered weekly by postman on horseback. He later attended schools in two states. So he does know what disruption and uprooting lives is all about from the ground up. Minister Moore then went on to the University of Queensland where he obtained a commerce degree and later augmented that with further accountancy studies. So he can also count and count with the precision and judgment required of a professional. Prior to entering federal politics, the Minister for Defence was a successful stockbroker and businessman. So he also knows about commercial realities. How many opposite in the chamber can claim any real business experience?In 1975, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the Brisbane metropolitan seat of Ryan. He has served the constituency well enough to be re-elected time and time again. He knows about people and their aspirations. Not only that, this minister has served in shadow cabinets and was shadow minister for a number of portfolios. These included finance, communications, northern development and local government, transport and aviation, business privatisation and consumer affairs, public administration, and industry and commerce. In March 1996, he was appointed Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism. In October 1998, he was appointed Minister for Defence.The Hon. John Moore, Minister for Defence, is one of the most experienced and senior ministers in cabinet and is the most experienced senior Liberal politician in Queensland. Is this the man Labor is trying to discredit? I think that, really, you would love to have him. To us here on the government benches it is a backhanded compliment. We know that you attack only the ones you fear—the ones you respect in spite of yourselves.The Minister for Defence has been working to bring about change, and change sometimes brings pain to those who are too comfortable with the status quo. One instance of the positive steps he has taken is that while Defence and DVA are part of a wider portfolio he believed that they could work more closely together than they have in the past. To that end, a joint review by both departments was initiated to see whether there were better ways of delivering services to Australian Defence Force members, both during their service and after discharge. This government has always recognised the service and sacrifice made by Australia's servicemen and women in times of conflict and the contribution they have made to Australia and the world we live in today.Anything to do with Defence is big news, both in Gilmore and in Australia, as the member for Cunningham would know. Each time there is change, I note that the provisions promote efficiency, consistency, flexibility and transparent administrative procedures. This is the work of a minister who is making things happen and ensuring that people involved know about it. As the Defence Force holds the security of all Australians in its departmental hands, the minister is determined that a higher standard is required of the people with that kind of responsibility. Those standards are changing and moving upwards, reaching new levels of readiness, greater capabilities in the forces and a smarter use of technology.At each stage, personnel are reminded that if they would like a different kind of life they can leave the Defence Force. The movies made by Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme, depicting military forces made up of rugged individuals working alone, are flights of testosterone fancy. Unlike those movies, defence and security matters are about teamwork and leadership. Every team is as strong as its weakest link, synergy aside. The call might come at any time, and it is important that everyone is able to gear up in a short time frame. Remember, about 60 per cent of all Defence Force personnel are to be operation ready, trained, fit and able to be deployed at any time. In Nowra, we have already learnt of the tragedy that can follow inattention to detail, and under previous ministers as well. The federal government is determined, through its Minister for Defence, as is the Australian Defence Force under him, to ensure that there is no unnecessary risk to Defence Force personnel while the best interests of the nation are served with distinction.Australian taxpayers, too, want to know that they are getting value for money. Many of you may have read Joseph Heller's book Catch-22, in which ridiculous situations existed because of the lack of consistency between policy and what actually happened on the ground, or in the sky for that matter. Many laughed while reading that book because, at times, as in Yes, Minister, it came disturbingly close to the truth. We and the Hon. John Moore want better for our Defence Force. Australia's mums and dads want to be assured that when their children join the Defence Force they will be entering a career of distinction. Millions of dollars are spent on acquiring the latest technology, equipment and sophisticated weaponry. Our military personnel are our greatest asset, and the federal coalition is determined, as is this minister, to maintain that asset in top condition.This means looking after their physical, mental, social and psychological wellbeing. A force with high morale is a force indeed. This minister is not afraid to make the hard decisions, for he knows that good morale is engendered by providing career paths, an appropriate challenge at every level, consistency between policy and actions and a minister who performs. He may be a quiet achiever, but he is certainly not a grandstander like some opposite I could name. Another positive result of this minister's work is the ability of the Defence Force to make way for prompt succession to senior positions, providing certainty of career path availability. There was a time in the Defence Force when officers privately felt they had to wait on someone's death to obtain a promotional opportunity. This kind of belief affects morale and has no place in the Australian Defence Force.Australian Defence Force policy to date has been that members of a service are appointed to the inactive reserves list on retirement. Our recent new bill allows senior officers to be transferred to the active reserves list. Let me explain the reasons for the importance of that, and they are in no particular order. Under this government, HMAS Creswell will remain a training facility for naval personnel, employing or housing in some fashion approximately 200 people. This translates to about $8 million in salaries being spent mainly in the Gilmore region. HMAS Albatross, with some 1,300 people walking through the gate every day, translates into approximately $56 million a year just in salaries, all being spent in our region—which includes part of the member for Cunningham's region, the Illawarra. The upgraded facilities at HMAS Albatross will total approximately $170 million, with the first stage, worth $70 million, almost complete. There is $30-odd million in new Defence housing, with more to come. Kaman Aerospace International have projects worth $600 million, producing the Super Seasprite helicopter. Aviation Technology Park is a spin-off of the contract possibilities flowing from these projects, with tenants moving in now. Then there is the transfer of NALMS units to Gilmore with some 200 extra personnel.Anything the Australian Defence Force does has some kind of impact on Gilmore and on Australia. This minister has also maintained that our military personnel continue to provide excellent role models for our young people. As they move from the defence bases out into the community to work, train, socialise and establish families, they form part of the fabric of Gilmore and of Australian society. Particularly in their uniforms, they are readily discernible in the street, and we laypeople cannot help but notice them. Naturally, people are always quick to judge what costs them money, especially in the form of taxes. Our Defence Force people know this and behave accordingly. As usual, it is only a minority who ruin the good name of others. As chair of the government defence and veterans affairs committee, I for one am happy to back any effort to either change their behaviour or weed them out.I totally support this minister, who has quietly gone about his business while loudmouthed opposition members have been preening themselves and strutting the stage in the House. Let me go through some of the achievements of this working minister whom they seek to scorn. We have had key reforms. They include long-term planning, capability development, a focus on performance and the placement of authority, streamlining support organisations and structures within Defence and competing a range of a defence activities with industry to achieve higher quality and more cost-effective provision of services. The government has recently established a high level DRP strategic management and reporting team to enhance the profile and maintain the momentum of the Defence Reform Program.The member for Cunningham has asked what this government has done under this minister. It is a pity he does not listen and time does not permit me to go through it. There are a number of issues about why this minister has done as much as he has. I would like to assure him that the defence and veterans affairs committee is fully behind this minister. We want a minister who supplies action, because actions speak louder than words. Do we want a minister who struts the stage or one who gets the job done? (Time expired)10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—Order! This discussion has concluded.Bills9068r8489068Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy presented.Ordered that the bill be taken into consideration forthwith.Bill agreed to.9069Bill (on motion by Mr Fahey)—by leave—read a third time.Bills9069r8519069Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy presented.Ordered that the bill be taken into consideration forthwith.Bill agreed to.9069Bill (on motion by Mr Fahey)—by leave—read a third time.Bills9069r8379069Debate resumed from 24 August, on motion by Mr Hockey:That the bill be now read a second time.15:58:009069Emerson, Craig, MPMr EMERSON83VRankinALP00—The States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 reaffirms for the last year a system that I believe has served Australia pretty well. It is a system where the Commonwealth makes available to the states a large amount of money in the form of untied grants for the states to spend on basic social services. In the course of the last few years there has been a vigorous debate about concepts such as vertical fiscal imbalance and horizontal fiscal imbalance. Vertical fiscal imbalance refers to the fact that in Australia, as in a number of other countries, there is an imbalance between the raising of the revenue at one level of government and the spending of the revenue at another level of government. Horizontal fiscal imbalance seems to refer to the varying fiscal capacities of different states at the same level of government.We have had a debate about these: vertical fiscal imbalance, or VFI, and horizontal fiscal imbalance, or HFI. It seems to me that we have almost come to the time where we will be engaging in a debate about diagonal fiscal imbalance. I do not know what diagonal fiscal imbalance is, but it seems like a good concept, one that we could have a long and studious debate about. In fact, I am starting to wonder whether we may not be best portrayed as a caste of Brahmins, engaged in an ascetic debate on unworldly notions—notions of VFI, HFI and, potentially, diagonal fiscal imbalance. We really should be concentrating on the impact of the funding arrangements on Australian families.I confess to being a member of a group that over the years has engaged in these rarefied discussions about VFI, HFI and, potentially, DFI. I am here to offer my mea culpa because I think that this debate is one that should be consigned to the history books. From 1 July next year, the financial relations of the Federation of Australia will be fundamentally changed. As a parliament, we have to look at the impact of those changes on Australian families, rather than having this change trigger yet another ascetic debate about whether VFI has worsened or improved under the new financial arrangements or whether it all really depends upon accounting conventions. As we know, what is going to happen is that the Commonwealth will levy the GST, which will raise in the order of $30 billion of revenue, and the Commonwealth will allocate those funds to the states. So we do have a new radical agenda, but let us be clear about the purpose of the government's plan to introduce a new $30 billion indirect tax in the form of the GST.Conservative governments do not introduce new taxes equivalent to five per cent of the nation's gross domestic product because they support bigger government and increased social spending. We know, in fact, that they do not. It would be completely out of character for the Howard government, which has slashed billions of dollars from health, education and other social programs, to actually implement a new tax to fund new social programs—new benefits to struggling Australian families. This is not the agenda of the Howard government. Unfortunately, for a long time, ACOSS was convinced that that was the agenda, but it is not. I will clearly demonstrate that today.No, the GST is not designed to finance the social investments that will make Australia the land of equal opportunity in the next century. It is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to shift Australia's taxation base towards indirect tax. This is a long cherished aim of the present Prime Minister who has wanted to do that since right back to his days as Treasurer in the late seventies and early eighties. And why do they want to shift the tax system to one of indirect taxation? So as to allow higher income earners to pay less tax overall.The conservative dream is to reduce the role of federal government to a few national functions such as defence and foreign affairs. Along the way, election strategies can be based on offering cuts to the higher marginal rates of income tax. We do not need simply to look to the future to realise that this is so. Let us have a look at the fairly recent past. The current Prime Minister, when he was opposition leader, went to the 1987 election campaign promising big income tax cuts, but his disastrous double-counting error exposed the fact that he could not afford them. Then, in 1998, yet again he went to an election promising huge personal income tax cuts for high income earners, in this case up to $170 a week for Australia's top corporate executives. Do not believe the fallacy that the GST revenue, by going to states, is not funding income tax for high income earners, because that is what the government would have us believe. On the same day that the GST starts reaping its revenue, that is, 1 July next year, the untied grants to the states will be abolished—not pruned back, not reduced, but abolished in their entirety—saving the Commonwealth $18 billion a year.This, together with raiding the surplus, is how the government will be paying for its income tax cuts. We on the Labor side support income tax cuts—we always have—but we do not agree with the government that the bulk of those income tax cuts should go to the top 20 per cent of income earners. After all, Labor adjusted the income tax scales seven times in its 13 years in government, returning to taxpayers every cent of bracket creep and more. Yet the present government has failed to adjust the income tax scales even once. They came into office in 1996 and the first adjustment in the income tax scales will occur on 1 July 2000. The truth is this: the real Howard government agenda is to withdraw Commonwealth involvement in health, education and other social services, and that requires a GST. The full extent of this agenda will become clear following the so-called transition period with the states of around three or so years. From that time it is open to a conservative federal government to begin cutting the tied grants to the states—the so-called specific purpose payments. On 1 July next year, $18 billion of untied grants will be gone. After three or so years, if a conservative government happened to be in power, it is open to a conservative government to start cutting the tied grants or the so-called specific purpose payments.These tied grants are used to fund such basic services as education, including literacy and numeracy programs, universities, vocational education, public hospitals, anti-drug programs, disability services, support for homeless youth, public housing and suicide prevention programs—and a whole raft of other highly valuable social services that the tied grants are used to fund. These programs together cost the Commonwealth $17 billion a year. So we have $18 billion in the untied grants and $17 billion in the tied grants. The $18 billion disappears on 1 July next year; the $17 billion is in the gun after this so-called transition period.I say that because Commonwealth officials made it abundantly clear to their state counterparts at the recent Premiers Conference that, beyond the transition period, there are absolutely no guarantees about maintaining the tied grants. From that time onwards, the tied grants will be at the top of the Department of Finance and Administration hit list for spending cuts. I know a bit about this because I used to work for the Minister for Finance in 1984 and 1985. I have seen the hit lists of the Department of Finance and Administration. As the present Minister for Finance and Administration, who is at the table, would know, right up at the top of those hit lists are the tied grants to the states. They will be dusted off by the Department of Finance and Administration. With those old memos, get a bit of white-out, change the date, you do not need to change the text, change the minister and away you go. There we are with the tied grants to the states in the gun.Conservative governments would accept the advice of the department of finance. The argument in a coalition cabinet room would run something like this: `Look, the states have this big new GST growth tax'—Peter Costello said it is a growth tax—`so they can afford to provide all these essential services from now on. We never get the political credit for these programs anyway, because state politicians always make the announcements.' I can confirm that that is true because I have worked in a state bureaucracy and I have worked with state ministers. They are very good at making announcements of federal government funding from tied grants. They are very good and skilled at doing so. So that is what will happen in the cabinet room after three or so years if Australia happened to be unfortunate enough still to have a conservative government. But, of course, we on this side of the House are supremely confident that that will not be the case.Let us imagine hypothetically that it were the case. The coalition government would seek the savings from the tied grants providing essential services to fund—what? To fund further cuts in income tax at the top. Treasurer Costello said as much on 30 May this year when he said, `I would want that top rate'—of 47 cents in the dollar—`out to be multiples of average weekly earnings.' This is his dream. He boasted again just last Thursday, 20 August, when he said, `I am an income tax cut man,' and went on to say that the top marginal rate of 47c is too high. So he wants to cut it; he wants to get rid of it. In fact, senior coalition ministers are on the record as saying that a 30c rate provides a lot of incentive. That is true. That is really the agenda, isn't it? The conservative governments want to get that 47c rate down to 30c.How are they going to do that? By cutting the essential services. They are not interested in the Commonwealth providing affordable basic services such as education and health care that are so fundamental to equality of opportunity in this country. The conservative philosophy is to encourage people to go out and buy these services—to buy a private education and to buy private health care. This is the philosophy. That is why the government is committed to lowering the top rate of income tax: to entrench privilege in this country while telling the underprivileged that they must fend for themselves. They say to the underprivileged, `Go out and buy your private education, go out and buy your private health insurance with what meagre resources you might have.'Unless there is a change of government, in a few years the Commonwealth will start cutting the tied grants to fund further cuts in the top rates of income tax. Meanwhile, the states will already have fully allocated their GST revenue. They will not have money sloshing around just to fill the hole left by the Commonwealth cuts to these specific purpose payments, to the tied grants. Then the pressure will come on to increase the GST rate and to remove the partial exemption of food—that same partial exemption that the Treasurer has described as `a nightmare on Main Street'. That will be the deal: they will increase the GST rate or remove the partial exemption for food to fund these tax cuts and to seek to maintain some of these essential services.All that is required to do that is not the agreement of six states but just a very small change in the existing legislation. How can that be achieved? Simply by another Howard-Lees deal, by another conservative-Democrat deal to change the legislation in the Senate. And they would do it if they got half a chance. But this time there would not be extra compensation for lower income earners and pensioners as the GST rate goes up or as the partial exemption for food is removed.Under the coalition, Australia is rapidly becoming a much more unfair society. I refer to a report released just last week by Access Economics that looks at widening inequality in Australia. It covers the period of the mid-seventies to the mid-nineties, so it does not actually cover the subsequent period of the coalition government. But the story, we know, would be much worse if it did cover that period. The report says:Australia had relatively large income differentials. Income inequality increased over the period.. . . . . . . . .In aggregate there was little change in poverty, with Australia showing a fall concentrated—when?in the second decade when Labor was in power.It goes on to show:Australian inequality rises over the two decades using all three indices, although the changes are small or negative in the second decade when the Labor Party was in power.. . . . . . . . .Australia has easily the largest rise in market income inequality—of all of the countries considered—due overwhelmingly to increased employee earnings inequality.But, interestingly:Australia had the largest impact from transfers and direct taxes and almost offset the large increase in earnings inequality, so overall inequality rose only slightly.Labor put that safety net in place. Through the social wage we compensated people for the widening earnings differential and for the widening inequality in the marketplace. So, overall, in that period inequality barely rose. But this government will not provide that compensation. In fact, they are committed to removing it. They are committed to removing the compensation—the social safety net—by, firstly, the abolition of the untied grants from 1 July next year and, subsequently, cutting back the tied grants.Driving the widening inequality in Australia are the huge rewards from the information age to those who have the necessary skills to cash in on it and the huge penalties for those who do not. State schools in disadvantaged areas of suburban and regional Australia lack the resources to develop the literacy, numeracy and information technology skills needed by students to compete for jobs in the informa tion age. There is virtually no Commonwealth effort for parenting and early intervention programs to help struggling families provide a nurturing home environment in which their children can learn.The tragedy of the GST and of these new funding arrangements from 1 July of next year is that they will accelerate Australia's journey along the path of inequality. As conservative governments seek election and re-election on the basis of promised further cuts in the higher marginal rates of income tax, Commonwealth payments to the states for education and other vital services in disadvantaged areas will be pared back, and Australia will lose forever the sense of a fair go—that egalitarian streak that was in us for the first 200 years of European settlement. As the avid supporters of the GST in the corporate world line up for their big income tax cuts, they will not ask how the other half lives, because they had never known them. Their children will never sit next to theirs in school, and they will never compete with them for the very best jobs the nation can offer.16:18:009072Baird, Bruce, MPMr BAIRDMP6CookLP10—I rise today to support the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 and, in doing so, commend the Treasurer and also the Minister for Finance and Administration for bringing forward this bill, which represents a very significant change in federal-state relations. It is very interesting to follow the member for Rankin in the chamber and to listen to some of the points he made, because the reality is that he was not talking about the facts of the bill but, rather, took the normal conspiracy approach. He has been reading too much of Graham Richardson in Whatever it takes . This is a `mates' view of the world. We all know—because he admitted himself that he had worked in the office of the Minister for Finance—how the mates work: you say one thing and you do another.If you look at the track record of this government in terms of the last election, the facts that were put forward to the electorate, the promises that were made, were delivered on. This is not the l-a-w law approach where you promise tax cuts, you go to an election and then you do not deliver. This is based on reality. The track record of this government is that it delivers on its promises.I have great pleasure in supporting this bill, because it does represent the most significant reform of the relationship between the federal government and the state governments for many years. Of course, at the table we have the Minister for Finance and Administration and a former Premier of New South Wales, who knows the difficulty with the range of taxes that were available to the states was that they were all seen as regressive taxes. These include payroll taxes, stamp duties and bed taxes—and the member for Petrie would know about the problems with the imposition of a bed tax. This bill removes a number of these taxes. It removes the bed tax. It removes BAD. It removes FID. It is a total reform and, very significantly, it gives a growth tax to the states.It is very interesting for the member for Rankin to get up and say, `This is what might happen in the states. Beware of the deals that might be done.' If this was the reality, we would actually not have seen the Premier of New South Wales, the Premier of Tasmania and the Premier of Queensland—all Labor held states—rushing to sign the piece of paper so that they could have their agreements for a growth tax under this relationship.That means that they have confidence on two levels. One level is that they will have access to a growth tax both in the years following the GST's implementation and in the longer-term future as it continues to grow, and that they will be the recipients of this tax. The second is that they have got confidence, in terms of the legislation that has come before this House, that it can only be altered by agreement with the states. There are no sleazy backroom deals, as it has been suggested would go on. It has to be agreed by the states to have any change in the rate involved or any changes at all in what is set out in the legislation. This gives them certainty—despite the conspiracy theories of the member for Rankin—as to where they stand.It provides, firstly, for general revenue assistance grants, financial assistance grants and national competition payments. This is an important part of it. The financial assistance grants underpin the relationship whereby the states are able to grant for roads, hospitals, schools, transport and all the variety of services that state governments undertake. This was agreed and recommended as part of the Commonwealth Grants Commission work. It was discussed at the Premiers Conference on 9 April 1999 and it was agreed that the amount of funding they received, as per the Financial Assistance Grants Scheme, would be maintained at the same level as they have been on average over the past five years, and so they will not be disadvantaged.They will particularly decide the pool of the FAG taxes, and the unquarantined health care grants would be distributed using the per capita relativities. There are some advantages for some of the larger states because of that—particularly for states such as New South Wales and perhaps, somewhat away from that, Victoria—but it is done on a fair and equitable basis. That is the first part of what is provided. It provides a guarantee in the funding for the financial assistance grants, to make sure that they are not disadvantaged in terms of lower revenue when the GST is introduced.Secondly, it provides for continuing funding under the national competition payments. As we know, the national competition payments were introduced in 1997 and started with $200 million to be allocated in 1997 and went to $400 million in 1999; and, from 2001, there will be $600 million at 1994-95 prices. Of course, this is about the national competition policy and the importance and significance of that, as Deputy Speaker Jenkins would be aware, right across Australia: to make Australia more competitive, to introduce competition, to break up cartels and the overregulated sectors in our economy, to break up the monopolies and the oligopolies, and to allow the winds of competition to blow through the Australian marketplace. Of course, that is an important part of the national competition policy overall, and I believe that most members of this House would agree on its importance in strengthening the Australian economy.On a recent visit to Japan for an APEC conference, I was interested to listen to the speakers at that conference announcing the structural changes in Australia that they see as a model for the development of their own economies. The national competition policy is part of that example, and so it is very good to see that there will be a total of $439.1 million available in this financial year for the national competition policy, under the agreement that was made as part of the deal with the Premiers—and that will continue to be made according to the agreement of the various states—when they met together.But, of course, there are certain requirements of that funding. It is conditional upon the states meeting their obligations, and these obligations are in three tranches. The implementation guidelines must be met. They must fully implement all of the COAG agreements, and that involves electricity, gas, road transport reforms and water reforms—all important parts of daily living—and reform introducing competition which will result in lowering prices and better service for consumers and for the public right across Australia.The next part of what this involves, in this particular piece of legislation, is that it will provide revenue under the replacement payments arrangements. Of course, as we might remember from having followed the High Court case in 1997, a number of business franchise taxes—namely, on liquor, petroleum and tobacco, which were subject to state franchise taxes—had doubt cast by the High Court on their constitutional validity, and as such there had to be a requirement for the federal government to collect those revenues on behalf of the state governments.The total amount of revenue to be distributed will be determined by the Commissioner of Taxation and the Chief Executive Officer of Customs. This is the amount that has previously been agreed under the GST proposals. It will continue to be collected, according to the agreement that was previously established, on several bases; but there will be no change in the allocation of funding to the states.The third part is in the windfall tax reimbursements, whereby any state or territory would be paid any amounts received by the Commonwealth under the Franchise Fees Windfall Tax (Collection) Act 1997, which imposes a 100 per cent windfall gains tax to protect state and territory budgets against refund claims in respect of past business franchise fee payments. So, again, the windfall tax component will be protected under the legislative requirements and provisions of this bill.Finally, it goes to the very heart of the changes to Commonwealth-state financial relations. On 13 August 1998, the Commonwealth government announced its plan to reform the Australian taxation system. As part of that, at the 1999 Premiers Conference on 9 April, the heads of government—not one, not two, but all of the heads of government, all of the state Premiers—signed the agreement to go forward. They recognised that, if they wanted a growth tax and reform of the Australian taxation system, this was the way forward. I do not recall any long speeches by the Premiers around Australia, no matter which political party they belonged to, that this was an iniquitous tax and the end of civilisation as they knew it, or that this was a threat to the funding of their local school, their fire brigade or their hospital, or that their trains would cease running or their government funded buses would be no longer able to operate. Rather, they signed up because they recognised that the new tax system was a more equitable way of going forward.It provides a tax on services around Australia, it brings into the taxation net areas of economy that previously have been able to avoid taxation and it guarantees the long-term financial stability of the states with a growth tax. All those basic services that are provided by the states—whether they be health, education, transport, community services, emergency services or whether they be police services—will be maintained. There is tremendous pressure on each of the state governments. The charade that we have each year with each of the premiers either saying how they have won for their state or how badly they have done, or staging the walkouts that we have seen, will be taken away because they will be guaranteed revenue. The formula has been established, and the question of relative relativities will be agreed between the bureaucrats from the federal government and the state governments when they meet.We on this side of the House are pleased about the change. It requires on the part of the state governments that they take on certain responsibilities. With the receipt of the GST revenues they will be required to administer the First Home Owners Scheme, they will be required to undertake local government funding and they will be required to bear the costs of the administration of the GST. But this legislation will ensure that in the transitional years they will not be worse off. These guarantees are in legislation. They are not just word of mouth guarantees such as those we heard from the former Prime Minister with his l-a-w promises; the guarantees are in legislation. The member for Rankin can say that the conspiracy is upon us, but it is confirmed and expressed here in legislation.On 1 July 2000 the Ministerial Council will see the Commonwealth and state treasurers involved in the implementation and operation of the intergovernmental agreement to ensure compliance with its terms, and the Ministerial Council will provide a forum in which the per capita grants can be established. I am sure that amendments are required as a result of the changes that were negotiated with the Democrats in the Senate and which will mean a reduction of $4 billion of the amount coming from GST revenue. In order to compensate the states, indirect state taxes will need to be rescheduled and some taxes will need to be deferred indefinitely, but that is according to the agreements with the states. The response from the states on this overall agreement is that it is a very positive thing for the states in terms of assurance of a future revenue supply and a future growth source in order that they can undertake the myriad of services provided by state governments around Australia.The legislation makes it very clear that states will not be disadvantaged because of these transitional arrangements. Not only that; it will result in a total rebuilding of the financial relationship between the federal and the state governments which will serve Australia well as we go into the new millennium.16:33:009075Albanese, Anthony, MPMr ALBANESER36GrayndlerALP00—This bill, the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 , gives effect to the agreement reached on 9 April this year at the Premiers Conference to maintain the level of financial assistance grants in real per capita terms in 1999-2000. All I can say is that I am quite pleased, in speaking to this bill, that the government has finally stopped—at least temporarily—a concentrated campaign of cuts to funding for the states since the election of the Howard government in 1996. During their first year in office, the government cut $800 million in hospital funding for the states. They also abolished the Commonwealth Dental Program, a program which delivered money to the states to provide accessible dental services for needy Australians. Cuts occurred in other areas, such as education and other areas of health.Today I particularly want to talk about the area for which I have responsibility for the opposition—that is, housing—and how this government has effectively decimated Commonwealth funding for the states through the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. So that I may appropriately set the scene, it is important to state that low-cost housing in Australia has never been more difficult to obtain. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has reported that over 880,000 households in Australia are living in unaffordable housing. Some 235,000 people are on the waiting list for public housing. There are, of course, regional disparities. In particular in the City of Sydney, but to a lesser extent in the cities of Melbourne and Brisbane, housing costs are becoming increasingly unaffordable for those on average wages, let alone for those who rely upon government support to survive.Despite this chronic housing need, since coming into government the coalition have, when you add it all up, cut nearly a billion dollars from the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. Among these cuts are $8 million in the financial year 1998-99 and $92 million in the previous financial year for so-called efficiency dividends. This $100 million worth of cuts is just the tip of the iceberg. As I have said previously in this House, over this period a further $360 million in funds were never paid by the Commonwealth to the states as part of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. This is because since coming to power in 1996 the government and the Treasurer have been obsessed with slashing public spending and attaining a budget surplus at the expense of, as Kim Beazley put it, `hundreds of thousands of household deficits'.They decided that the states were going to help them in this aim. In 1996-97, the states were required to pay the Commonwealth $619 million. In 1997-98, the figure was $626.2 million and in 1998-99 the figure was $313.4 million. How could the states afford these sorts of cuts? They were given the choice of three mechanisms. They could pay the Commonwealth from consolidated revenue, they could have the amount deducted from financial assistance grants—such as those applicable in this bill—or they could have the amount owing offset against the payments that they were to receive as part of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement.This meant that states with conservative governments, which had little concern for those in public and community housing, decided they would forgo money which had been specifically earmarked for social housing in order to help their conservative friends in the Howard government. The Borbidge government in Queensland gave up over $285 million in housing funding. The Brown and Olsen governments in South Australia gave up $43 million and Kate Carnell in the ACT, her government, gave up $20 million. All of this money had been earmarked for public housing and to help the needy and the poorest in our society. This money was effectively sent back to the Treasury in Canberra, an act considered by this government to be of greater priority than housing Australia's homeless, at a time when homelessness among families and youth has exploded.At the same time the government was slashing $100 million directly from the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, and $360 million indirectly, through the back door, they were introducing a tax that would decimate affordable housing in Australia. That tax is of course the GST. The introduction of the GST will see an increase in homelessness and poverty. The ACOSS submission to the Senate inquiry into the GST stated that any increases in the cost of housing will inevitably impact more greatly on low income families, as low income families spent a much greater proportion of their income on accommodation expenses.The impact of the GST on the ability of state governments to purchase and maintain good quality public housing stock is immense. The New South Wales Federation of Housing during their evidence to the Senate committee pointed out that no social housing authority can possibly recoup the income lost on the increased costs of maintenance, management fees, office rent and office expenses incurred by the GST. In 1996-97, the New South Wales Department of Housing spent over $113 million on the maintenance of existing housing stock. The GST will add an extra $11.3 million to this bill alone. Each of the states has that maintenance of housing stock in common—that is, public housing stock tends to be old and it therefore needs an ever increasing amount of funds to maintain that stock in a livable condition.That is why on 16 May this year all state housing ministers, both conservative and Labor—every state and every territory minister—wrote to the federal Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator Newman, pointing out that the CSHA originally offered to the state governments would leave a shortfall of some $730 million. This figure consisted of $390 million for the costs and the effect of the GST, $100 million for the efficiency dividend demanded by the federal government, and an additional $240 million due to the failure of the government to provide indexation of the funding for the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. Negotiations ensued and the Commonwealth relented slightly and offered $269 million in compensation for the increased costs of the GST. That was better than nothing but it left, of course, a shortfall of some $461 million.Then of course we had the Democrat GST deal. The Democrats at their press conference made the quite extraordinary comment that they had saved public housing tenants from increased rents by reaching an agreement with the federal government that public housing rents would not rise due to the GST. As members would know, it is not the federal government that receives income from public housing rents, it is the state housing authorities. So we have had $100 million cut through direct cuts, $360 million through indirect cuts—by the states forgoing the amount to which they were eligible—and a $461 million cut on top of that. In addition, as a result of the Democrat-Howard sleazy deal over the GST, there will be another $70 million worth of cuts because the state housing authorities will miss out on that extra revenue.The compensation which is being paid from the Commonwealth to the states did not occur in terms of increased financial assistance. The compensation consists of the states being permitted to maintain some of the existing indirect taxes that they have. So you have a situation whereby, effectively, a further $70 million is taken out of public housing. What a deal for the Democrats and the government to crow about for those Australians who rely on quality affordable public housing!The position becomes even more farcical now that the indirect tax which is allowed to stay—stamp duty—will be retained by the states. It is up to individual states to ensure that this stamp duty does go to state housing authorities. New South Wales Treasury has agreed to this money going to housing authorities, but what about the conservative states? What guarantee is there that the retained stamp duty will go towards state housing authorities in those states? None. Given the response that we had to the indirect cuts of $360 million when states made, as the federal government put it, a contribution towards putting the federal government into surplus, it would be very surprising if that money does not simply go into consolidated revenue.The retention of stamp duty also, it has to be said, makes a lie of the government's great simplification of the tax system. For the housing sector, the hotchpotch deal with the Democrats has caused both the maintenance of unwieldy state taxes and cuts in funding to state housing authorities. Over a period of time under the new tax system, it is quite clear that there will be two sets of pressures as increasing revenue goes to the states. Firstly, the states increasingly will rely upon this funding from what is a Commonwealth collected tax—that is, they will have less and less ability to raise their own revenue and make their own decisions with regard to expenditure. That bodes badly for a national approach on issues such as education and health where it is needed.I also predict that a future conservative government will attempt to cut back the increasing revenue that goes from the Commonwealth to the states as a result of the GST. I would not be at all surprised if the pressure comes on to get rid of direct grants such as the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement and other funding which is directed for specific purposes. That will have an effect of undermining a national approach and undermining national standards on issues such as public housing.I now wish to raise another issue related to this bill: the implementation of the national competition policy. Under the COAG agreement, incentive payments are made to the states on the basis of their compliance with national competition policy. The concept of competition is, of course, a positive one. In theory, all of us would agree that, the greater the competition, the more efficient should be the outcome, but theory and reality are often different things. The legitimate concern that many people have, particularly in regional Australia, is that competition policy has not considered the externalities which may occur.I sat as a member of what is now the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration for the inquiry entitled `Cultivating Competition' where we looked at aspects of the national competition policy reform package. It reported to this parliament in June 1997. It is unfortunate that many of the concerns that came out of that inquiry are still to be addressed. The key recommendation was that there should be a much more stringent public interest test with regard to the benefits of competition policy. We recommended that `all CSOs be explicitly defined and their details made publicly available'. We also recommended, most importantly, as a general theme that the public interest test needed to be applied before competition policy was applied and also in making an assessment. Recommendation 13 states:The Committee recommends that the State, Territory and Commonwealth Governments put in place measurement and monitoring systems so that the outcomes of implementing national competition policy can be adequately assessed in the future.Unfortunately, I do not think the National Competition Council has gone anywhere near far enough to do that. Local government was one of the areas where we heard evidence about competition policy being applied, for example, to garbage services and road services provided by local government. We heard evidence of scenarios. They are opened up to competition. The in-house bid gets defeated by a lower bid by a big company. The council then gets rid of their infrastructure—their work force, machinery and equipment—because, the next time it comes around, the company which won the bid can up the price that they charge because there is not any real competition there.The decimating effect that that can have, particularly in respect of regional areas of Australia on local employment opportunities and local infrastructure, is very real and needs to be examined and assessed. It is simply not enough to say as a matter of ideological belief that it is good and we assume that the outcomes of all national competition policy are good. We need to have an analysis about whether the outcomes have in fact been more efficient and what the impacts are.It may well be that, whilst there are some winners, there are also losers as a result of this. The cost of, for example, displacing local government infrastructure might mean an increase in unemployment in the area, which leads to fewer people living in the area, which adds to the whole cycle: people moving out of the community and the cycle of downsizing that we have seen in many areas of regional Australia. I really believe that this impact has to be considered.I might leave my comments there. Suffice it to say that we have had this debate about aspects of federal-state relations but it is unfortunate that, on the issue that remains unanswered in this House in what appears to be every question time—that is, the Federation Fund, which of course will be made through payments to the states—we still have a Prime Minister who refuses to answer questions. With regard to financing, it is certainly the general principle that government accountability is paramount. When we have a situation where decisions about taxpayers' funds are made in the shonky way that they have been made over the Federation Fund, it brings no credit to this parliament and certainly no credit to the government.16:53:009078Gambaro, Teresa, MPMs GAMBARO9K6PetrieLP10—The bill before the House today, the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 , is a significant bill not only because it delivers $17.3 billion in untied financial assistance grants to the states and territories but because it does so for the very last time. The bill also gives effect to the last lot of financial assistance grants from the Commonwealth to the state and territory governments. They will cease as of 1 July next year after almost 15 years of operation thanks to the historic agreement on tax reform reached by the government and the Democrats.This agreement is a boon for Australia's state and territory governments. For the first time since World War II, the states and territories have a growing tax base and they have a very robust tax base with which they can fund their policy programs independent of Canberra's wishes. This is also very good news for a state like mine, Queensland, which is a very decentralised state. As a member of a political party that believes in the value of Australian federalism and the value of states rights, I certainly applaud this move.In terms of its importance in the tax debate, the fact that the states have secured all of the goods and services revenue for their own coffers has often been overlooked and was again overlooked by the previous speakers. To my mind, it should have ranked more highly in terms of debate. It is a very positive and responsible change that will ensure that average Australians have access to better health, better education, better police and better roads.When the member for Rankin was speaking earlier, one would have thought these particular programs were going to cease to exist. He did not mention that the income tax cuts for low and middle income families will certainly be a boost, and no mention was made of the fact that the states will have much more revenue than they have ever had before to pursue these programs.It is a measure of the inability of the members opposite to engage in meaningful and serious debate about tax reform that this issue was not discussed more extensively. Instead, all we heard from the Leader of the Opposition was the rather pathetic statement that the goods and services tax is bad and that we can have tax reform without such a tax, but he and his party have never articulated just how that is possible—as usual they have just postured about it. Average Australians know this. That is why my office gets calls from people in neighbouring Labor held electorates requesting the facts about tax reform.People know they cannot get anything but opinions on the alleged impact of the tax system from the Labor offices, and indeed some offices are even admitting as much. I was recently told a story which highlights this very fact. A volunteer at Liberal Party headquarters in Brisbane told my office that they had had a call from one of the member for Lilley's constituents who wanted to know about tax reform and small business—an issue, incidentally, which the member for Lilley has recently professed himself to be an expert in.The constituent rang the member for Lilley's office to ask for some information about tax reform and small business. Given some of the member for Lilley's posturing in the local press on the issue, the constituent thought the member for Lilley could help him and give him some advice on exactly how small business should prepare itself for the new tax system. Alas, the constituent was told that the office could not offer him any facts on the situation, only opinions. Quite correctly, the constituent did not see any value in opinions, especially when they came from people who have no experience of small business. If you add to that the fact that the member for Lilley is showing himself to be quite mathematically challenged when it comes to his view that 32 reporting systems is less paperwork than four, then it is easy to see that the member's constituent made the right decision.The constituent then called Liberal Party headquarters for more information and they kindly referred him to Senator Parer—a senator whom I might add is very knowledgeable in this particular area. As I said, it is a measure of the level of political debate offered by members opposite that significant issues such as the historic return to the states of a growing revenue base was all but nonexistent in the 1998 federal election campaign.I am sure that Labor profited politically from their silence on issues like this, but I am also sure that the Labor state government—just like any future Labor federal government—will look back and agree that the Howard government's tax reform package has equipped Australia with a tax system for the future that will benefit them. I am sure their base political objections to the goods and services tax will suddenly disappear when they eventually—and it will be in the very distant future as far as federal Labor is concerned—return to the Treasury benches.This bill puts in place arrangements that came out of the Premiers Conference in April this year. It does so in a number of ways, and I would like to address some of these ways individually. In the first instance, as I have outlined above, the bill gives effect to an agreement reached between federal, state and territory governments in April this year in relation to the level and the distribution of general revenue grants. This accounts for the bulk of assistance provided to state and territory governments. Over the 1999-2000 financial year, this amounts to approximately $17.3 billion and this accounts for roughly 11.3 per cent of the estimated Commonwealth outlays over the 1999-2000 year.There is a second aspect to this bill that is of interest to me personally as a Queenslander. The bill allows for the Commonwealth to make payments to the states and territories as part of the safety net agreement reached between the federal and state governments following the High Court decision of 1997 on business franchise fees. Queensland has always traditionally been a low tax state. It is the lowest taxed state in Australia. Importantly, in a decentralised state like Queensland, there is no state tax on fuel. This is not the case in other states and territories.When the High Court decided in 1997 that Bob Carr and Michael Egan were being a bit too greedy and that the level of their business franchise fees was more akin to a tax or an excise, Queensland's fuel tax-free status was thrown into utter jeopardy. Under the safety net agreements and arrangements reached following this decision, the state and territories' revenue streams were collected by the Commonwealth and then returned to the states and territories so that they would not lose much needed revenue. Part of the problem here was that the Commonwealth could not levy an excise on fuel in all states and territories bar Queensland. It was therefore thanks to the combined efforts and the good work of the Howard government, the then Borbidge-Sheldon government and the oil industry in Queensland that this situation was rectified via the development of a scheme that has kept Queensland fuel tax free.The bill will make provision for the payment of an estimated $6.8 billion to be paid over 1999-2000 to the states and territories in lieu of their lost business franchise fees. I am sure all state and territory governments will welcome that money. The bill also makes provision for the federal government to pay back to the states and territories any revenue that the Commonwealth may receive under the Franchise Fees Windfall Tax (Collection) Act 1997. This provision essentially protects the states and territories from claims for refunds of past business franchise fees that were ruled unconstitutional by the High Court.There is one final aspect of the bill that relates to Commonwealth payments to states and territories. Over 1999-2000 there is a total amount of some $439 million available to be divided amongst the states and territories on a per capita basis. Receipt of this funding is conditional on meeting the terms of the agreement to implement the National Compe tition Policy and related reforms as agreed in 1995 by the then Labor Keating federal government and the Queensland state Labor government.The member for Grayndler, a member of the Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration, raised some concerns about competition policy. One has to look at it in a general context in that it has to be good for all concerned. I do agree with him on one aspect of it—that is, the public benefit test and the public interest test. One needs to look at that also. In my own state of Queensland at the moment there is a review on the health industry and also on the transport industry. A recent review conducted on the hotel and liquor industry found that supermarkets were not permitted to sell alcohol and maintained the current sale and distribution of liquor through hotel and club outlets in Queensland.I do agree with him that we need to look at how the public will benefit from competition policy. That should be the foremost thing in our minds when considering competition policy. There should be overall winners rather than losers when we make the final assessments. But, nevertheless, I conclude my remarks today by reiterating my earlier statement on the significance of this bill. It marks a final chapter in the dependence of the states and territories on federal government revenue. It means that, for the first time ever, they will have much more revenue to pursue their public education programs and their health, police and transport programs.Earlier the member for Rankin spoke—as did the member for Grayndler—about what guarantees there are. For example, he spoke about stamp duty. What guarantees are there that money collected by the states will go to these particular programs? I think he also spoke about public housing. In relation to that, he seems to have a misconception that the states will not continue these programs. Anything has to be better than the current system where there are no guarantees at the moment. Funding does not go to the allocated areas. The classic example in Queensland is in the area of HAC payments and particularly in health. There is always a shortfall.Anything has to be better than the current system we have. The current system does provide some inequalities and inconsistencies as to the intention of the money that is provided for the states. As a Liberal who believes in the intrinsic value of Australian federalism, I commend the Howard government's efforts in breathing new life into the fiscally challenged second tier of government in Australia. I know that this bill will provide much greater revenue to the states. It will ensure a much greater future for all Australians. It is my very great pleasure to commend a bill to the House that makes provision for general purpose financial assistance grants for the last time. I commend the bill to the House.17:06:009081Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSONUK6WillsALP00—The States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 provides for some $17 billion in grants for the states. So, naturally, in this context, how the states are being administered is a matter of great importance to this House. My own state of Victoria is the most secretive state in Australia. This is a consequence of the government, firstly, keeping all contracts with companies confidential; secondly, making freedom of information inaccessible; and, thirdly, silencing its critics. Let me now demonstrate why this is so and why the New South Wales Auditor-General, Tony Harris, recently felt obliged to say that Victoria will soon face an embarrassing royal commission that will uncover serious issues.The Premier, Mr Kennett, says he has nothing to hide, but he will not release the documents sent from the Casino Control Authority to the cabinet subcommittee dealing with the casino bids. This is despite the fact that he attests that he did not see the bids or pass any information on to his friend and colleague Mr Ron Walker, who changed the Crown bid at the last moment to get the contract. The Kennett government is currently fighting through the courts to prevent the release of documents dealing with the tendering for the Melbourne casino licence back in 1993. Premier Kennett says that he has nothing to hide, but he will not release the documents sent from the Casino Control Authority to the cabinet subcommittee dealing with Crown Casino's request for more tables and gaming machines. Crown Casino enjoyed a massive windfall as a consequence of the government's decision on that application.The question Victorians are asking is: did the benefit that Crown received involve a bribe? The further question is: what is the character of the two principals of Crown Casino, Mr Ron Walker and Mr Lloyd Williams? It is already a matter of record that Mr Walker's company, Hudson Conway, was a contributor to the Bjelke-Petersen Foundation in Queensland and was named in the Fitzgerald inquiry as a company which did so for the purpose of obtaining a benefit from the government of the day. It is also on record that Mr Lloyd Williams was named in the Winneke royal commission into the BLF as an individual who personally paid Mr Norm Gallagher. Mr Gallagher was subsequently tried, convicted and sentenced for accepting bribes. Under the terms of the royal commission, the givers of the bribes—like Mr Williams—were immune from prosecution. The former Town Clerk of the City of Melbourne, the late Frank Rogan, who served more than 10 lord mayors, said of Mr Walker, `He would tell a lie when the truth would do.'It is also already on the record that a small commercial fit-out company employed at the temporary casino and subsequently at the permanent casino did work on Mr Ron Walker's house, Mr Kevan Gosper's house and Mr Andrew Peacock's house. We do not know who paid for the work. However, this issue was raised back in October 1995. None of the people named have refuted the allegations or claimed that they paid for the work that was done.LS4FERGUSONMr Martin Ferguson—You're kidding!UK6Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSON—No, that is the case.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Andrews)—Order! I am reluctant to interrupt the honourable member for Wills, but I believe his remarks now are getting away from the subject matter of the bill, even taking into account that this is for related purposes. I remind him of the subject matter of the bill before the House.UK6Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSON—Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would suggest to you that, if we are debating legislation which provides some $17 billion in grants for the states, then the matter of administration of the states and how they are being administered is a matter relevant to this bill. I also point out to you that within the legislation is a component for states meeting their obligations under the national competition policy and related reforms. I suggest to you that competition policy includes, firstly, the issue of competitive tendering and, secondly, the issue of commercial confidentiality, and does lead us quite directly to some of the issues that I am speaking about here.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—I say to the member for Wills that I appreciate that, and I allowed him to go a certain way. But when it came to what seemed to be commercial contracts between individuals, it seemed to me to be beyond the scope of this bill.UK6Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSON—Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for that ruling. We do know that, while the documents to which I have referred remain secret, we cannot be satisfied that Mr Walker and Mr Williams have stopped giving bribes and that they have not indeed arranged to pay for the sorts of renovations that I have just talked about.It does not stop there: the Premier says that he has nothing to hide, but he will not release the details of the contract with Mr Bernie Ecclestone that secured the grand prix at Albert Park. The Kennett government has indeed passed legislation that forbids the release of the exact licence fee paid to win the Formula One Grand Prix to Melbourne. Nor will he release all the details of how the money is being spent at the grand prix each year. The taxpayers are paying for the grand prix, but the man in charge of the till is Mr Ron Walker.I referred at the outset to FOI having been made inaccessible. All these documents have been sought pursuant to freedom of information legislation. What has the government's reaction to this been? It has been to pass legislation to restrict access to freedom of information and to oppose every application. Just what do they have to hide? The Kennett government has recently tightened up freedom of information laws so that the names of public servants making decisions can be withheld. I draw to the attention of the House a quote from Mr Mark Birrell, a Kennett government minister, which dates back to his days in opposition, where he says:Of special concern to secretive mandarins and thin-skinned Cabinet members are people who seek policy documents or files that shed light on the reasons for government actions.Mr Birrell went on to say:Of course it was just this sort of information FOI was designed to elicit, a point which is lost to opponents of open government who have recently described any politically embarrassing request as an abuse of the act, voluminous or simply too burdensome.The Kennett government is currently fighting through the courts to prevent the release of contracts for the operation of its private prisons, but Premier Kennett maintains that he has nothing to hide. The Kennett government has denied access to information about government business deals including Intergraph and the One Link ticketing system. But Premier Kennett still says that he has nothing to hide.Further, the Kennett government has done everything it possibly could to silence its critics. So we have seen Premier Kennett destroying the independence of the Auditor-General, who is the watchdog over $17 billion of public money, taking away from him his right to determine which issues he will investigate and which he will not investigate. Premier Kennett has attacked, silenced or sacked anyone who has criticised him. For example, he sacked the entire state industrial commission and all the Workcover judges, churches, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Equal Opportunity Commissioner and the Auditor-General. He has taken away compensation from victims of crime and has removed the right of injured workers to appeal to the Supreme Court. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court has been excluded from more than 150 acts passed by the Kennett government.This year the Kennett government has shut down the Victorian parliament in order to avoid scrutiny. The parliament has sat for a disgraceful 20 days and, with the parliament now having being dissolved for an election, we have the prospect of it not even sitting between now and Christmas. People ask, `Why do you raise these issues here?' The truth is they cannot be raised in the state parliament, which virtually never sits. Still Premier Kennett says that he has got nothing to hide.What can we expect in the future? We have seen the critics in the party room being silenced. Either they have lost preselection—as is the case with Mr David Perrin, member for Bulleen, who was done in by Mr Kennett's adviser Nick Kotsiros as a consequence of branch stacking—or they did not make it, as is the case in Brighton with Mr Costello's adviser, Mr Fifield. There has been plenty of branch stacking in Bulleen. In the future, we can expect that the water industry will be privatised, as has already commenced at Ballarat. We can expect that Victorian public hospitals will be privatised, as is already occurring at Traralgon and now at the Austin Hospital. I ask the House: how are you going to privatise a hospital if there is no guaranteed revenue stream? I also ask: what will happen to Medicare if our public hospitals are privatised? Medicare enjoys 80 per cent public support. The Prime Minister knows that dismantling Medibank cost the Fraser government office back in 1983. The Premier of Victoria wants to dismantle Medicare. The question is: are Victorians going to allow him to do that?While I am on the subject of health, I point out that there is no teaching hospital in the world run on a for-profit basis. They are all run either by states or by private charities and universities. In the United States, for-profit hospitals are far more expensive than not-for-profit hospitals, and the death rate for seriously ill patients is much higher in for-profit hospitals. Despite this, without any evidence to support his claim, the Minister for Health and Aged Care has argued that the government has embarked on a unique hospital privatisation at the Austin because the private sector can, according to him, do the job more cheaply. This is despite the fact that the cost of the building has blown out from $150 million to $350 million since 1997 and it is still not complete.Australia's public hospital system allows the sickest patients to access world-class doctors and the latest drugs in teaching hospitals without paying for them. At the Latrobe Valley Private Hospital, where there are public beds, psychiatric patients have to pay for drugs they previously received free of charge when it was a public hospital.Just what is the Kennett government's record when it comes to the health sector? The Kennett government has cut $300 million from hospital budgets. It has closed 1,300 hospital beds. It has cut 10,000 hospital staff, including 3,000 nurses. It has increased waiting lists by 20 per cent to more than 40,000. It has closed 12 country hospitals. It has closed, or is in the process of closing, seven metropolitan hospitals. It has blown out the Intergraph budget from $7 million to $38 million. The cutback to hospitals has meant that people can be waiting two days on a hospital trolley for a hospital bed.What would four more years of a Kennett government do to our public hospital system? The Kennett government already has private operators of public beds at Berwick, the Latrobe Valley and Mildura. When Knox and the Austin are privatised, 17 per cent of public hospital beds will be in the hands of private operators. It is one thing to have private operators at Mildura and Berwick, but no-one has attempted to hand over a public teaching hospital to a private operator. The proposal at the Austin involves taxpayers' funds to both build and operate the Austin. The Premier says that he has nothing to hide, yet confidentiality agreements have been introduced that stop senior medical staff from speaking out about the merits of the privatisation proposal. Indeed, if they do speak out, they could be the subject of a lawsuit by the state government.I also want to raise the issue of the Esso royal commission. I point out that the state parliament has not been given, and will not be given, the opportunity to debate the findings of the Dawson royal commission prior to the election, the parliament having been dissolved. The Esso royal commission has confirmed that the state government bears a substantial responsibility for the tragedy that occurred at Longford last September. If the state government had fulfilled its responsibilities, that tragedy may have been averted. Oil and gas platforms in Bass Strait are managed under Worksafe, which is based on the national standard for control of major hazardous materials. That standard in turn is based on the model which was introduced in Europe after disasters there.The Dawson royal commission reported that the model which requires the operators of facilities to identify and control hazards and report to a public authority on the steps that they have taken to control risk should have been implemented in Victoria. The issue is: why did Esso operate one system in Bass Strait and a different system adjacent to it at Longford? The answer is that in Bass Strait you had Commonwealth control whereas in Victoria the Kennett government failed to supervise the Longford plant. I point out that the Western Australian government, like the Commonwealth, has implemented Worksafe but Victoria has not. Indeed, while Esso is to blame for Longford—and the Dawson royal commission was quite correct to make those findings—it is not solely to blame. If Esso is sued in the Federal Court, they should join the Kennett government in any action. If the Kennett government had done its job properly, the disaster perhaps would not have occurred.Let me turn to a few other issues that are relevant to the administration of the state of Victoria. We are now to have an election in Victoria apparently without the imposition of tolls on Citylink. Essentially, Transurban is running on the strength of federal government infrastructure tax breaks and intends to put the tolls on after the election has occurred. This is clearly a massive fraud on voters, not only in the area that I represent but also in the south-eastern suburbs. There is no doubt, judging by the relatively small number of E-tag take-ups so far, that many vehicles will not be using Citylink once the tolls are in operation. Those tolls will be avoided with two consequences, one for the commercial viability of the project and the other for the issue of traffic congestion in Melbourne generally. The real risk here is that, far from Citylink addressing traffic congestion in Melbourne, it may indeed add to it.I also point out to the House that Premier Kennett has acted as an enthusiastic advocate for the GST. He has been referred to as the father—perhaps he should be referred to as the godfather—of the GST. He continues to advocate that the GST should apply to food. He continues to advocate that Medicare should be attacked. That is something that I think Victorians ought to be aware of.They should also be aware of the fact that, because the Victorian parliament has now been dissolved, we will not have legislation passed which applies the superannuation surcharge to those MPs and senior public servants who ought to be liable to pay it. In 1996 when Treasurer Costello introduced the superannuation surcharge he said, `This is an equity measure. This is something that higher income people will be required to pay.' Indeed, in the Commonwealth parliament and the other parliaments around Australia that is the case. Members of parliament, senior public servants and other high income earners are paying their superannuation surcharge.The one place where this is not occurring is in the state parliament of Victoria. We now see a situation where Kennett government ministers like Alan Stockdale, Phil Gude, Marie Tehan and Jan Wade can walk off into the sunset having their surcharge paid for them by Victorian taxpayers. As an equity measure, nothing could be further from the truth.Mr Martin Ferguson interjecting—UK6Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSON—It certainly is. I want to refer to the issue of planning. One of the distressing things about living in Victoria these days is the lack of control that people have over the shape and character of their own neighbourhoods. I have had some experience of local government. When I first arrived in local government I thought that perhaps it was a bit rough that we were making decisions about what people could and could not do on their own land and on their own properties. But, I must say, after having been there for a bit over seven years I realised that had we approved every application for development that had been lodged during that period the place would have looked something like Shanghai.There is a requirement that neighbourhoods are able to determine the character of their suburbs. It is regrettable that councils and communities have had the capacity to do this stripped away from them. We now have the ridiculous situation where councils do not have control over the issue of demolition permits, for example.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Andrews)—I think the honourable member for Wills is straying from the topic again.UK6Thomson, Kelvin, MPMr KELVIN THOMSON—Thank you for your guidance in relation to this, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am concerned that the $17 billion in grants for the states which we are now legislating for is spent properly and that the places where this money will get spent are properly administered. As I said at the outset, Victoria is the most secret state in Australia. There are serious issues of accountability at stake in the way the Kennett government has all its contracts registered or marked as commercially confidential. Victorians are not able to access the details of those contracts and, therefore, the public interest suffers dramatically as a result.17:26:009085Wakelin, Barry, MPMr WAKELINHV5GreyLP10—The States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 was introduced into the House on 10 June 1999. This legislation amends the States Grants (General Purposes) Act 1994 to put in place the arrangements related to the agreement reached at the Premiers Conference this year. That agreement concerned the distribution of general revenue assistance to the states and territories by the Commonwealth. Importantly, the bill also gives the Commonwealth the authority to pay to the states and territories the revenue resulting from the 1997 High Court decision on business franchise fees.The background is that the 1999 Premiers Conference considered the report on general revenue grant relativities prepared by the Commonwealth Grants Commission. That report contained a number of suggestions as to the reform of the grant distribution pro cess—a process that had not been reviewed since 1993. The conference agreed that the level of financial assistance grants made by the Commonwealth ought to be maintained in real per capita terms in 1999-2000. It was also decided that the pool of financial assistance grants, along with the unquarantined health care grants, would be distributed using the commission's per capita relativities based on a five-year assessment period and including an assessment for depreciation.These new measures are worth focusing on for a minute or two. The total pool for the financial assistance grants in 1999-2000 is $17.3 million, as has been mentioned. The total pool will be provided to the states and territories along the following relativities per capita—I will round them to the nearest one-hundredth: New South Wales, 0.89; Victoria, 0.86; Western Australia, 0.94; Queensland, 1.00; ACT, 1.10; South Australia, 1.20; Tasmania, 1.60; and Northern Territory, very significantly, 4.84. These figures are quite interesting and raise many questions. We ought not consider them as indicative of the subsidisation of certain regions. Such a bald assertion does not take into consideration the very important factors of history, economic and population development and the principle of horizontal equalisation.We should continue to revisit the relations between the various states and, if you like, the advantage or disadvantage factor apparent in these figures. Nevertheless, we should continue to revisit them to ensure that this system is serving the nation in the short and long term. After all, the minutiae of Commonwealth-state relations are not necessarily the subject of great public interest. Apart from the pantomime that is the Premiers Conference—that one time of the year where everyone preens themselves for the contest—ritual relations between the two levels of government do not feature on the front pages of newspapers or on evening news items.Yet Commonwealth-state relations are crucially important to the political and economic framework of this nation. After all, these issues were at the forefront of the very negotiations that brought the Commonwealth into existence at the turn of the century. Since the transfer of income tax responsibilities to the Commonwealth during the Second World War—it was in about 1942—the problem of vertical fiscal imbalance has plagued our public administration. By divorcing the responsibilities for spending from the responsibilities for revenue raising, this imbalance has led to state and territory governments in many ways backing away from some of their core responsibilities and the exercise of greater and more broad ranging powers by the federal government. That is the essence of our system known as federalism.For this reason, I was pleased by the passage of the reforms to the Commonwealth-state relations under the new tax system. With all the GST revenue going to the states and territories, many of the problems associated with their insecure funding base have been removed, while taxation has been effectively constrained by the negotiation and agreement required to alter the GST regime—that is, that it can be altered not only, as we know, through our Commonwealth system, our federal system through the Senate, but also with the agreement of the states.I was disappointed that the full reforms were not passed. I believe to this day that the proposed changes to local government funding would have been of benefit to all concerned parties, especially ratepayers and those members of local government willing to approach the provision of their services in a more innovated and service oriented manner. Let us always remember with this issue that the GST is a growth tax and that the old wholesale sales tax system, so beloved by our Labor opponents, was very much on a shrinking base. Here, with this new tax system, our GST—every last cent of it going to the states, a growth tax collected by the Commonwealth and with those arrangements that local government had with the states—we had the opportunity of allowing both systems of government, that is, local and state, to have access to that growth tax.Be that as it may, in the long term, we as a nation and as a parliament should consider the new path of federal relations in the new century. The constitutional and historical basis of the Federation demands that we retain the horizontal equalisation principle and ensure that all Australians are entitled to broadly similar service levels from their governments. As such, the new tax system and the new arrangements outlined in this bill provide a good basis to chart the course for a more seaworthy federation in the 21st century.Perhaps it is just worth reminding ourselves of the original policy—that is, the policy negotiated between the federal government and the states prior to the agreement that was reached by the Democrats. Here I will dwell on the nine state taxes which were to be abolished—and I would quickly add that now that will not happen. There will be the abolition of only four of those nine, and at least two of them will be over a longer period. Let us go to those nine taxes. The FID, stamp duty on shares and the bed tax are the only three which will retain the original intent—that is, in the revised version, two of those three taxes will be abolished in July 2001 and the bed tax will be abolished in July 2000. Of the nine, we have three that are going. The debits tax—which I think many of us would recall seeing on our bank statement every month—originally was to be abolished in 2001. That has been revised back to July 2005. The business conveyance duty on real property and other has been totally abandoned. Stamp duty on hiring, abandoned; stamp duty on leases, abandoned; stamp duty on mortgages, abandoned; and stamp duty on cheques, abandoned—that is, they remain as part of the state taxing system.That is ancient history now but, nevertheless, I thought it useful to just remind ourselves of what the original intent of the new tax system was. I think it is very important that in the next couple of minutes—I will wind up using just 10 minutes of my allocated time—I state that, in terms of Commonwealth-state financial relations, as we have moved, it would appear, further and further to a reliance on the federal collection system, and with the states spending more and more of that money which they do not raise, we have a real issue of principle. As previous prime ministers and particularly premiers who have long departed this earth used to remind us of constantly—particularly those premiers of South Australia—we love the pleasure, if you like, of spending the money the Commonwealth gives to us through the grants system while not having the odium of collecting it.I cannot see how over the generations that will be a particularly sensible methodology to encourage the best and most responsible approach to spending money. I am a great believer in: if you collect the money then you have to bear the political consequences of it, and if you spend the money and are accountable or more directly accountable to the people from whom you are collecting it you will end up with a more responsible form of government. That is not the way we have gone in this country. Since 1942, since the states lost the power to tax income, we have been heading away from that.Every last cent of the GST goes to the states. Even with the changes, it will still be a growth tax and a broad based tax. I hope local government will consider, rather than show the blind ideological opposition they have shown in the past, that the opportunity is there to access, in partnership with the states, a stronger source of revenue for those things that are their responsibility. With those few words, I am pleased to commend this bill to the House.17:37:009087Griffin, Alan, MPMr GRIFFINVU5BruceALP00—We are here today to debate the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 , which it is the position of the opposition to support. The purpose of this bill is to give effect to the agreement reached at the 9 April 1999 Premiers Conference on financial arrangements with the states and territories in 1999-2000. The bill also provides the payments to each state in 1999-2000 under the safety net arrangements which were put in place by the Commonwealth at the request of the states and territories to protect their revenues following the 5 August 1997 High Court decision relating to business franchise fees.One of the issues covered by aspects of this legislation relates to the question of excise on cigarettes. As I am in the process of giving up smoking for the second or third time this year—I am some five days into a period of going cold turkey and am still having some difficulties with the respiratory system as a result—I feel for this bill. But I am not sorry that, if it works on this occasion, I will be providing less revenue than would be proposed under this bill to the state of Victoria in this case. But it will explain partly the stunted delivery of this speech.Part of the debate around this bill has been to regard it as a bill which encapsulates a range of issues around the taxation system. As I understand it from previous speakers, that has allowed issues to be canvassed of a more general nature. I will take the opportunity to do that, to a degree, and hope that meets with the support of the chamber. The previous speaker, the member for Grey, was discussing in some detail aspects of the new tax system and how he believes it will work in the context of the future. When we look at the whole question of state and federal revenue, it raises a range of concerns as to what will be the future situation of state revenues versus federal revenues and the various carve-ups thereof. The previous speaker mentioned that a number of state based taxes were going to go, although we know as part of the end result of the Democrats-government deal that some of those taxes will be around for a bit longer than was first proposed. As part of the debate around the GST and the operation of the new system, we are also finding that there is still a lot more to be learnt about what will be the case.It is true that, when an issue such as this is debated around election time, different points of view are put. In the tumult and shouting of a campaign, that can lead to a situation where, for the very best of reasons and intentions, both sides put forward positions which, once we get to the implementation stage, may not turn out to be quite what they were thought to be. For example, in the months leading up to the introduction of the GST, we are finding areas where, following further investigation and research, the impact will probably be a bit more harsh than was first thought. That is coming through quite clearly. We are also seeing a situation where some of the concerns that have been raised regarding the operation of the GST—whether the price cuts will be fully implemented and passed on to consumers—may not eventuate. There is quite a large issue there for the relevant authorities to police into the future. One thing is for sure: there are going to be problems with that aspect of the operation of the new system.As I said, going from two packs a day down to nothing takes its toll on the voice, at least initially, but I am hoping that I will be a bit better in a couple of days. I lasted 18 weeks last time.SJ4TUCKEYMr Tuckey—No sympathy from this side.VU5Griffin, Alan, MPMr GRIFFIN—I have been across the chamber from the Minister for Forestry and Conservation for some six years now, and `sympathy' is a word that I have never associated with his contributions. I think he would see it in the same way. Nonetheless, you always know that you are in a debate with the minister, that is for sure.General revenue assistance to be provided by this bill in 1999-2000 will comprise financial assistance grants and competition payments. FAGs account for around 97 per cent of general revenue assistance. The Commonwealth has undertaken to maintain the level of FAGs to the states in real per capita terms in 1999-2000. Receipt of the per capita component of the growth in the pool of FAGs is conditional on a state meeting its obligations under the agreement to implement the national competition policy and related reforms. FAGs will be distributed on the basis of the 1999 relativities recommended by the Commonwealth Grants Commission. Competition payments will be available to the states in 1999-2000 in accordance with the terms of the agreement to implement the national competition policy and related reforms. Those states which are satisfactorily meeting the objectives of the agreement will receive an equal per capita share of the total amount of $439.1 million in 1999-2000.The bill also covers to some degree the issue of national competition policy, which is under quite a bit of debate within the chamber, within the various parties in the chamber and in the broader community. There are a range of concerns as to the operation of competition policy in different sectors. That debate has been going on for some time now, with quite a bit of work still to be done on where it all ends up. The amount of general revenue assistance finally payable to the states will be determined in accordance with an index factor and a population factor. The index factor will be the sum of the CPI for the four quarters to March 2000 divided by the sum of the CPI for the four quarters to March 1999. This calculation will be based on the index numbers published in the March quarter 2000 CPI release by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The population index factor is defined as the quotient of the estimated population of the states as at 31 December 1999 and the estimated population of the states as at 31 December 1998.The arrangements to be established by this bill provide for the payment to the states in 1999-2000 of general revenue assistance estimated at around $17.7 billion and revenue replacement payments of around $6.8 billion. The amount of any windfall tax reimbursement payment is difficult to predict, although no such payments have been required since the introduction of the safety net arrangements in 1997. The safety net arrangements will have a neutral impact on the Commonwealth's finances overall, as revenue replacement payments and any windfall tax reimbursement payments will return to the states, as will amounts raised by the Commonwealth on their behalf after allowing for Commonwealth administrative costs.As I said earlier, a range of different issues have been debated in this chamber in the context of this bill. When we look at the question of what is happening around the implementation of the new tax system and some of the issues associated with that, we see that there are a range of things still to be developed. Another issue, still under consideration, relating to that is the Ralph report on business taxation. The report, which still has some way to go before implementation, highlights the very difficult issues faced in the taxation area right across the board. Governments require revenue to provide services on behalf of the community that they serve and the circumstances are that that revenue has to come from a range of different sources. At the end of the day, the real debate tends to be about the mix—that is, how much of it comes from direct taxation, how much from indirect taxation and how much from user-pay charges, what the circumstances are concerning the degree of service provided and in what circumstances you have a position where you can create the tax system that serves your country best.Historically in Australia, the circumstances of the federal-state nature of government and the position where the federal government has become the major source of taxation revenue have led to a situation where we have the federal government collecting the overall majority of taxes and passing back to the states, for the provision of services provided by the states, elements of that revenue. At the moment we are seeing a variation on that theme. Although revenue has come through a range of different sources in the past, we are now seeing a move into much greater levels of indirect taxation through a GST, where that provides the bulk of revenue passed back to the states for the provision of services. It raises issues about how that will operate when we look at the question of what will be the future of states grants from Commonwealth government.There have been claims made and positions put by the government that there will be guaranteed sources of revenue, but there are issues about specific grants back to the states and what will happen with them over time once a GST is put in place. The fact is that the cost of government tends to increase over time as the complexity of things like health and education becomes greater and the needs of the community become stronger. In those circumstances, there are issues as to how that will actually operate into the future. When we look at questions of what will happen in the future, the mix of taxation provided and the circumstances of the provision of funds to the states to provide services, there are still a range of issues that I think need to be looked at.Certainly, when we look at Victoria, which is at the moment facing an election—and I know that both the member for McMillan and Mr Deputy Speaker Andrews, who is in the chair at the moment, share my concerns about the situation in Victoria in some respects, although Mr Andrews from perhaps a different perspective—we face issues about the operation of government on the taxation level. There are also issues around the question of the provision of private sector funding for things like road systems and tollways and what that means in relation to the provision of infrastructure in a society and what should occur in those circumstances. There are the issues of the grants to states, the matter of funding provided for health and education, the proper utilisation of that money within a state for the services intended and the question of budget mixing from one area to another. I will leave it at that for today and urge the bill a quick passage, and it will be quicker if I sit down now.17:49:009089Hardgrave, Gary, MPMr HARDGRAVECK6MoretonLP10—I am sure that everyone in the chamber and anyone listening to this debate would have felt the pain of the member for Bruce. I think it is a dreadfully sad irony—without wanting to labour the point too much—that he should be forced to come in here and spend so much of his contribution today talking about FAGs, given that he has given up two packs a day and is down to zero. I wish him well in his endeavour to clear his lungs and regain the health that I am sure he has been enjoying.I think the member for Bruce has introduced a number of interesting matters into the debate on the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 that we have before us. After all, with the advent of the new tax system and the displacement of the 1930s style tax system, which those opposite fought so desperately—right down to the last gasp, listening to the member for Bruce—to try to keep, this is essentially the last time that we will be debating this kind of proposition in these sorts of forms.It is an exciting fact that, in the latter days of the 1990s—as we head to not only a new century but a new millennium—we have a new system based on equity, fairness and ensuring that the base of tax, from which we as governments in this nation draw the finance that we need to provide for the expecta tions of our constituents, is broad. I think that in itself means that the people of Australia will have greater confidence in that the tax system empowers them. It is a simpler system; it is a system where you can simply understand that there is a whole range of hidden taxes now coming off goods, that the rate of tax you pay is reasonable and fair, and that the processes involved with it are far simpler and easier to follow. That is an empowerment of the people ahead of the bureaucracy—those who hold the source of real information about how the far more complex system that we are now trashing actually works.Those personal income tax cuts are important to people because it will provide a greater deal of money in their pockets with an essential premise that we trust the people to make decisions about their spending for themselves. The current taxation system, which Labor has defended so heavily for so long, does not trust the people. It says, `Give us a big chunk of your income tax and we will spend it for you.' That has changed now as a result of the Howard government's initiatives in tax reform. It is the end of the wholesale sales tax, the bank account debits tax and all those financial institution duties which the various state governments levy right across this country. The wholesale sales tax regime with its various different rates is already beginning to change and, as a result, we are seeing good economic activity in my electorate.It is the end of provisional tax which means for small business the end of an impost where they have to pay, based on an assumed increase in income from the previous year, an increased amount of income tax as a result. That has punished a lot of small businesses to the point where great dread has been felt by the proprietors, with a lack of confidence leading to a decline in further investment or perhaps even the dismissal of a staff member or two—either way provisional tax has hit people, and that goes. I think that is very important.That is the background to the focus of what this bill is all about, and that is a guaranteed source of revenue for the states. The state governments will have something that they will not have to fight for each year at premiers conferences. So those rather arcane fights will be a thing of the past. This country has had a really crazy system—and still has, I guess, even at the federal level—as far as planning of expenditure is concerned, and that is a very short time frame. The planning of expenditure is maybe a year ahead and you may get a second-year projection, but you rarely get three, four, five, six, seven or more years of solid planning of projected expenditure in this nation.I suspect that the Pacific Highway upgrade is the big radical proposal, a 10-year funding proposal and a commitment to upgrade the highway that was agreed to by both sides of politics. That is just so out of the norm. As a result, we have had state governments unable to properly plan and unable to predict exactly what their lively carve out of the Premiers Conference may be—no longer will that be the case. This is especially good news. It is the end of lack of certainty. It is also the end of the various excuses that state governments make far too often about why they cannot do certain things. They cannot hide behind the `federal funds being available' argument any more.In my own state of Queensland, where we have a Labor government that is already showing the hallmarks of big failure, where their major preoccupation is to get on top of prostitution and legalise it and to open up the Internet to more gambling at a time when the federal government—rightly—under the Treasurer's own proposal has found there is a great proliferation of gambling already available in our community, we have a Queensland government that has already lost sight of some of the basic things that we want.Roads is a classic example of this: Mr Bredhauer, who is the Minister for Transport and Main Roads in Queensland, recently wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper accusing me of being part of a government that had spent less on roads. But it is a statement of fact that this government has brought in items, such as black spot funding, which Labor trashed years ago. The upgrades to the Long Street West and Honour Avenue inter section in Graceville, the Marshall Road and Logan Road intersection in Holland Park, Ipswich Road in Annerley and at a number of other locations around my electorate, and the greater safety that is now afforded to my constituents, would not have occurred if it had not been for the reinvigoration of the proposal Labor dumped during their years in office, namely, the black spot funding.The new tax system will also guarantee that roads in my area and throughout the state of Queensland will have a funding base guaranteed. The challenge will be over to the Queensland state government to properly plan, involve the local community, gather the information, make the plans and execute them. There will be no opportunity for the Queensland government to continue to make excuses about whether or not they are going to get the right level of financial assistance grants and so forth from the Commonwealth. The Queensland government will actually have to do their job.I will look with a great deal of interest at how well the state government in Queensland takes up the challenge of fixing up Kessels Road and the various roads that lead to and from it in my electorate—the so-called Griffith arterial transport corridor. I will look with a great deal of interest to see whether or not the Queensland government can rise to the challenge of fulfilling the obligation that it made when it was in office in 1991-92 to the people of Eight Mile Plains, Kuraby and Runcorn about the southern Brisbane bypass and the fact that that particular road was supposed to take away the rat runs, especially of trucks, in my electorate. The fact that the Labor government slapped a toll on that particular road has completely perverted the intended outcome as stated to my constituents. I will look with a great deal of interest at how the Queensland government rises to those particular challenges.In the area of police—one of the other great social issues that state governments are supposed to meet as a result of proceeds from the moneys that they get from the Commonwealth and now they will able to meet with greater certainty because they get the entire amount of money from the goods and services tax that is collected—I am also looking at the state government performing and not just simply relying on their rhetoric and excuses that Canberra did not give enough money. The Queensland state government has failed to put more police on the beat in my electorate. It was a failure of the Goss government years, and now Mr Beattie and his government are also failing on the basic test. Police officers in my electorate are flat out keeping up with the crime rate. They are doing a very good job, and I admire the dedication of police officers. But it is a statement of fact that what people want they are not getting. People in my electorate would like to see more regular police patrols. The fact there are only a few cars on the entire south side of Brisbane on any weeknight is extraordinary. Most of the activity involving police tends to happen at night, one would think, but we are still seeing too much of the nine to five or eight to four police approach in Queensland.We are starting to see some police shopfronts—the police beat operations at the Sunnybank K-Mart and, more recently, at the Garden City Shopping Centre are welcome, because they are putting police into shopping centres—but a lot of those were projected from the days of the coalition government when the Borbidge-Sheldon government were in power for only 2½ years in Queensland. We need more new police in Queensland, and the new tax system, displacing this whole states grants approach that we have had for so long, will mean that the Queensland government can get on with that job and can plan and execute what should be their duty more effectively and with greater certainty.Recently, one of the state members in my area said that six more police—three at Upper Mount Gravatt, which is a Brisbane south district police headquarters, and three at the Holland Park station—have been put in place. Six more police are welcome—don't get me wrong on that—but they came as a result of initiatives that were taken by Police Minister Cooper in the Borbidge-Sheldon coalition government days, because obviously a lead time is needed to train police and to get more police numbers available. I find it extraordinary—but I guess it is the nature of politics— that the Labor incumbent in the seat of Mansfield should claim credit for police that were `created', if you like, by a coalition government. It is the first instalment of some of the things that were put in place during the coalition years, and we need more.I am particularly concerned about the plight of the community liaison officers within the police service. Neighbourhood Watch operates extremely well in my electorate. We have about 54 Neighbourhood Watches—there is an hiccup with one or two—and we have just been through a whole round of the annual general meetings of these Neighbourhood Watch organisations. I think that in every state in Australia there are different incarnations of Neighbourhood Watch and they differ in how well they work. But I am very happy to report that it is because of not just the dedicated efforts of volunteers, of citizens, who take up the challenge of providing some of the eyes and ears and manpower—`person power', if you like—for safety and security in our suburbs but also the efforts of the community liaison officers within the police service, who are all too few in number, that Neighbourhood Watch is so successful.But I find it sad in the extreme that, because someone took annual leave and someone was off filling in somewhere else, we basically had the jobs of three community liaison officers being done by one in the Brisbane south district over the last couple of months, which has added to the pressure on that poor chap. I think he did a great job in trying to meet the very many expectations of people, but it is very sad that the police service was not able to provide additional support to the community liaison team at the time. As I have been getting around talking to people, a lot of Neighbourhood Watch groups have said to me that they were disappointed that they could not get hold of the community liaison officer as easily as they would have liked, simply because one person cannot be in 55 places at once. So I would certainly encourage the Queensland government to use the moneys contained within both the bill before us today and also the new taxation system when it is in place to get on and do the job that they say they want to do, particularly in the area of providing police backup to the community effort to fight crime in my area.One other area I want to deal with is health. During the coalition state government years in Queensland a great deal of repairing to the parlous state of the health system was undertaken. Great capital works were done at the QEII hospital at Nathan in my electorate and at the PA hospital at Annerley/Buranda at the northern end of the electorate—two great public hospitals that are relied upon, particularly by the battlers and the elderly in my area; two great public hospitals that have been greatly enhanced as a result of a definite action by the coalition government in Queensland. The work continues happily. The commitment to that work cannot be stopped. Fortunately, QEII hospital is basically now back doing what it was designed to do 20-odd years ago, and that is being a good community general hospital.I would like to share with the House that in 1995 when the now Minister for Health and Aged Care, the Hon. Michael Wooldridge, visited QEII hospital he found a manikin in the operating theatre. That is how underutilised it had become after six years of a state Labor government in Queensland. I think there would be a lot of members in this place who would lament to think that the infrastructure provided by taxpayers in the late seventies was by 1995, as a result of a deliberate policy of the Goss Labor government in Queensland, essentially being mothballed. A lot of the facilities that were generated were enhanced by the hard work of the QEII hospital auxiliary. The whole place was essentially being mothballed. Things were taken away and put into the Logan Hospital, which was the hospital in the electorate of the then Premier, Mr Goss.When now Minister Wooldridge visited that place in 1995, he found a manikin in an operating theatre. Mike Horan, who was the Queensland Minister for Health during the Borbidge-Sheldon years, turned the situation around. He fulfilled his obligation, he fulfilled the commitment he made to the people in my electorate and delivered a result that is well appreciated in the QEII hospital. I was very disturbed to read in the Courier-Mail on Monday that the Courier-Mail's investigations had unveiled:Secret plans to wind back the free hospital system and privatise large chunks of it in Queensland.. . . . . . . . .The plans went before the cabinet—in Queensland—on June 28 . . . They include recommendations such as:. Finding ways to scale back the construction of hospitals and to defer the commissioning of any further capital works.. Changing the public's expectations, particularly those of the elderly and the Baby Boomer generation, of access to a world-class public health system for minimal cost.. Massive industrial change to the public health care industry, with restructuring for services such as catering, laundry and other non-clinical areas.. Increased pay packages for senior bureaucrats . . . and the creation of "management fiefdoms".. Free outpatient services of the public hospitals to be provided by local doctors instead.What we have now is another Labor government in the state of Queensland doing a continuation of what the Goss government did over a period of six years in Queensland. I am worried that they are out to undo the QEII hospital. They are out to mothball it again, and I am ready to fight that matter again. I worked with the late Clem O'Keeffe and with Marj O'Keeffe. Clem was the president of the hospital auxiliary who died just after the 1996 federal election and was a great man. Marj, his widow, has continued his work of working with others in the community to provide funds and additional services at that hospital. I am not going to allow the legacy of Clem O'Keeffe or the efforts of Marj O'Keeffe or of anybody else involved in the QEII hospital auxiliary to be undone by this sort of plan to so-called `reform' the public hospital system in Queensland.I am very concerned that that is what is on the agenda now. The Courier-Mail has uncovered it, and they are running for cover in Queensland, as far as their cabinet is concerned. Under the proposed plans, it was said that the `full tool kit of corporatisation, in outsourcing and contestability should be avail able to Queensland Health and its managers', and essentially cabinet has now noted this. It is up to the Queensland cabinet to assure me and the people in my electorate that the money that they get currently under the system from the federal government into areas such as health is not going to be rerouted off into little management fiefdoms, as the Courier-Mail said on Monday, but instead will continue to provide the basic services that the community general hospitals, such as QEII, provide. I am very concerned if the Queensland cabinet cannot give that undertaking.What we have now is a great new tax system which is going to provide certainty to state governments right around Australia. They are going to be able to access a pool of funds from the proceeds of the goods and services tax, and the focus is going to be on the performance of state governments to deliver on the sorts of services they are meant to undertake. That means that in my area in roads, police and health they have to actually perform. I will continue, at any opportunity I have, to remind them of the need to perform and to actually listen to what the people want and to deliver.18:09:009093Zahra, Christian, MPMr ZAHRA84HMcMillanALP00—I look forward to making my contribution tonight in the debate on the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 . Perhaps one of the most important elements of the relationship between the Commonwealth and the states, when it comes to funding, is the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. I think there is a lot you can do when you have creative and innovative governments at a federal and state level. In particular, what I would like to talk about tonight is how you can use some of these types of agreements to actually create meaningful work projects in constituencies such as mine which have considerably high levels of unemployment.There has been a lot of talk in this place about unemployment and, unfortunately, as I mentioned the other day, a lot of it tends to be shrill talk and lip-service. What I would like to do in making my contribution is unveil one of the projects which I have developed over the past 12 months or so and which will make a contribution to lowering unemployment in the Latrobe Valley in my electorate. The project is titled `Rebuilding the Latrobe Valley'. What it is about is the rebuilding of aged public housing in the Latrobe Valley and, importantly, it is about real jobs, real training and better public housing.There is an urgent need for the majority of public housing in the Latrobe Valley to be replaced. This provides an opportunity for an innovative federal government to invest in a substantial public works program that will deliver significant benefit to the Latrobe Valley community, a community that has suffered enormously at the hands of restructuring and privatisation over the past decade. This type of innovative agreement can lead to a substantial public housing project in the Latrobe Valley—which would, I am sure, capture the enthusiastic support of the people of the Latrobe Valley district.This is a project which would improve streetscapes, completely redesign public housing areas and, by creating an opportunity for unemployed men and women to participate in a worthwhile project of lasting importance to the people of the Latrobe Valley, increase the level of optimism in the region. Importantly, the inclusion in the project of a number of building and construction apprenticeships—which could be provided via a local group training provider like Gippsland Group Training—would ensure that young people in the region, who have been particularly disadvantaged by rising unemployment rates, would obtain valuable work experience and accredited training.The project that I am going to describe could be an unambiguous example of our region's stated `Clever Green Vision' by focusing on the use of environmentally sound building materials and new energy technologies and by maximising opportunities for recycling and waste minimisation. The focus of the project in this regard is similar to the stringent environmental tendering requirements placed on the construction of Olympic facilities by the New South Wales state government. The Better Public Housing Project can redefine the Latrobe Valley's image and set a positive direction for the region as we head towards the new millennium.The project is enormously symbolic: the replacement of old, outdated and inappropriate public housing with housing that better serves and reflects the contemporary Latrobe Valley community. The project can demonstrate nationally that we have a federal government which is committed to areas like the Latrobe Valley and to rejuvenating these regions, which have carried the burden of restructure and have suffered enormously because of it.No community in Australia has suffered more at the hands of national competition policy than the Latrobe Valley. Electricity costs to big business have fallen by about 35 per cent as a result of the restructure which took place in the SECV. But the impact on the local community has been devastating. Indeed, a recent report by the Productivity Commission into the impact of national competition policy in the regions of Australia indicated that, of the 48 regions which it modelled, only one region, according to its modelling, had actually suffered a negative impact as a result of NCP. That region was the Gippsland statistical region, which contains within it the Latrobe Valley.With more than 8,000 jobs having been cut from the SECV alone, in a region with a population of just 75,000 people, housing values have understandably plummeted, assisted by massive housing commission asset sales. The Latrobe Valley now, sadly, supports an unemployment rate of around 15 per cent, with unemployment in Moe and Morwell at 18 per cent. Youth unemployment is amongst the highest in the country at 46 per cent. There is a very real sense of abandonment and a widely held belief that the government just does not care.A creative and innovative federal government has an opportunity, through the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, to demonstrate to the people of the Latrobe Valley that it is committed to the region by advancing this project, which could be enormously positive and pioneering. It is a project that delivers real and tangible outcomes such as employment, improved streetscapes and a public housing mix which better meets the needs of the contemporary Latrobe Valley community. To abandon the Latrobe Valley community would be to deny a generation of working-class families the opportunity to participate meaningfully in our community. This project, whilst not the answer to the unemployment woes of the Latrobe Valley, provides an important injection of infrastructure into the region and signals to investors that the region will not be allowed to decline into an industrial rust belt.Public housing in the Latrobe Valley was primarily constructed to house the work force involved in the operations of the former State Electricity Commission as it expanded throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The SECV expanded housing provision in the townships of Newborough and Yallourn North, whilst the Housing Commission of Victoria built houses mainly in Moe and Morwell. The Housing Commission of Victoria constructed large-scale housing estates at Moe, Morwell and Traralgon, and departmental records indicate that, by June 1949, 340 timber houses of the targeted 464 had been constructed in Moe, and 82 of the targeted 140 in Morwell. This represented an enormous investment in the valley which at the time supported a population of only around 10,000.There was an urgency in the construction of the housing in the Latrobe Valley as a rapidly expanding SECV work force needed to be accommodated if construction targets were to be met. Difficulty was experienced in obtaining suitable building materials and so other, less sound, ways of housing the work force were pursued by the Housing Commission of Victoria. Prefabricated housing was imported from France, Austria and Poland in an attempt to increase the rate of housing construction. Unfortunately, these kit houses did not assemble easily as they were plagued by delays in delivery and poor quality materials. The Housing Commission of Victoria also let contracts to Victorian companies for the construction of prefabricated timber housing. This proved more successful than the imported houses as they were built in two halves, narrow enough to pass along main roads, transported to the site, placed on stumps and joined together. A large proportion of the timber clad housing stock in the Latrobe Valley is prefabricated and much of it is still tenanted today.I advise the House that my father was one of the workers who, in the 1950s, threw up some of this housing. Industrial development associated with the Yallourn and Loy Yang power stations in the 1970s and 1980s saw a further increase in the construction of public housing dwellings and, by 1980, there were an estimated 31,500 dwellings in the Latrobe Valley, of which some 7,000—that is, 22 per cent—had been constructed by the Housing Commission of Victoria. I should point out that that level of involvement by the public housing sector is unmatched in any other region of southern Australia.As the majority of housing stock in the Latrobe Valley was constructed between 1946 and 1960 and was built using poor construction techniques and inferior building materials, it is perhaps not surprising that much of the housing is now not serving its intended purpose. Departmental documents state plainly that the `majority of public housing in Morwell and Moe are in relatively poor condition because of their age'. The economic life of a building within the department's stock management strategy is considered to be 50 years and, with a substantial quantity of the housing stocks in the Latrobe Valley having been constructed in the 1940s and the 1950s, these houses are clearly at the end of their economic life cycle and are in need of replacement. The maintenance levels alone required to preserve these properties in a habitable condition are a compounding financial drain on the department and an unfair burden on tenants due to breakdowns and emergency repairs. It is generally accepted that a weatherboard property constructed before 1960 is three times as costly to maintain as a brick-veneer property. Apart from the obvious reasons for the rebuilding of public housing, perhaps the strongest argument for the project is the fact that the Latrobe Valley community has changed profoundly over the 40 to 50 years since the housing was constructed. Simply put, the existing public housing stock does not have the required diversity to meet the existing and projected housing needs of today's Latrobe Valley population, namely, youth, the elderly and singles. The Office of Housing has identified the following problems in the mix of public housing in the Latrobe Valley: an oversupply of low demand housing, an undersupply of appropriate stock to cater for growth in demand of older persons, some existing stock is maintenance intensive and a large proportion of the existing stock is reaching the end of its economic life. The Office of Housing also identified in 1995 that the real estate market will not support a large-scale transfer of ownership from public to private ownership. Knowing the likely results of their actions, however, the department has proceeded with large-scale asset sales over the past six years and has sold many hundreds of houses in the Latrobe Valley.This is what the project is all about. The project is a bold new public housing project using new green technologies and advanced recycling. The project creates an opportunity to create, quite possibly, around 100 new building and construction apprenticeships. The project can be an unambiguous demonstration of a government's commitment to the environment and to the rejuvenation of our region. The project also offers opportunities for emerging local high technology, environmentally advanced companies to be involved in this type of development, which really is the future of innovative housing in this nation.This can be a large-scale employment project of real and lasting community benefit. The need for the majority of public housing within the Latrobe Valley to be replaced provides an opportunity to invest in a substantial public works program which will deliver significant community benefits to Latrobe Valley residents. As I have mentioned, our community has been devastated over the past eight years by the restructure of the electricity industry and cutbacks across a range of sectors. With the majority of public housing no longer serving its intended function, and with enormous changes having occurred in the Latrobe Valley's demographics over the decades since the majority of public housing was built, an opportunity genuinely exists for a new and innovative public housing project in the Latrobe Valley.A project which focuses the attention of the entire Latrobe Valley community, by improving streetscapes, completely redesigning public housing areas and creating an opportunity for unemployed men and women in the community to participate in a worthwhile project of lasting importance to the valley, has great potential to bring us together. Importantly, the project will provide an opportunity for many unemployed—McMillan has one of the highest youth unemployment figures in the nation, a point which I am forever making to the Prime Minister—to gain accredited training, largely in the building and construction industry. Whilst I do not want to be limiting on what size this project could end up taking, it would not need to be too substantial a project for easily 100-odd building and construction apprenticeships to be created.The Better Public Housing Project has the potential to be a very clear example of what La Trobe Shire Council has called its `Clever Green Vision'. It is a project which could redefine the Latrobe Valley's image and set a positive direction for the region as we head into the new millennium. There are substantial opportunities for building on existing green links in the Latrobe Valley. A business and technology centre has been established at Monash University's Gippsland Campus in Churchill, which was funded by the previous Labor government. The stated goal of the centre, which is known as Green Inc., is to facilitate the development of new green enterprises in the Latrobe Valley. Already a number of innovative projects have been established at the centre. There are opportunities for new businesses to emerge from Green Inc. to meet the Better Public Housing Project's needs, and from this project to perhaps expand and create jobs locally as more and more housing projects similar to this are started right across Australia.The use of new energy technologies in the project could be jointly investigated with Energy Education Australia Ltd, which is based in Morwell. Energy Education Australia is headed by Professor Barry Dunstan and is a recognised industry leader in this field. Similarly, La Trobe shire has established a recycling contract with Dasma Pty Ltd which has been described as one of the most innovative and far-reaching in Australia. Dasma is a locally owned and based company which employs around 50 people. Opportunities exist for the Better Public Housing Project to link in with the La Trobe shire and Dasma to ensure that, as houses are demolished, every effort is made to minimise the amount of waste going to landfill and to maximise revenue through the sale of old fittings.This project could quite easily increase Dasma's—or any other contractor's, for that matter—employment of local people and would also provide an opportunity for the company to build expertise in an area in which there may be further opportunities for job creation. The Better Public Housing Project is enormously symbolic. The housing originally built for the SEC work force—a work force which has now largely been restructured away—is being replaced via this project with something that better serves and better reflects the contemporary Latrobe Valley community.In much the same way that companies invited to tender for the construction of the Olympic Village were assessed against a set of criteria aimed at producing housing which was environmentally friendly, and which maximised the use of energy efficient technologies, the Better Public Housing Project could focus on similar objectives—including the use of environmentally friendly building materials, innovative designs and use of space. The environment tendering requirements for the Olympic Games project and the Homebush Bay development, which were prepared by the Olympic Coordination Authority, could be used as a model for future tender specifications for this type of project.It is proposed that this type of project would consult with the local Aboriginal community to see whether the Aboriginal Cooperative, which is based in Morwell, as well as the Aboriginal Housing Board would be interested in including their houses in a redevelopment of this type. This is one component of the Latrobe Valley's Better Public Housing Project which has the poten tial to be a substantial urban renewal project in the Latrobe Valley.Aboriginal unemployment provides a great opportunity for us to meaningfully engage with the local Koori community to create opportunities for them out of those 100 or so building and construction apprenticeships which would hopefully be created in this process. As I have mentioned in previous speeches in this place, the problems of Aboriginal unemployment are significant but, by taking steps locally, we can make considerable advances by providing opportunities—in this case, a small number of apprenticeships, say, 10 or 15—to the local Koori community.It is interesting that in 1999 public housing in the Latrobe Valley—after having been such a massively important part of the Latrobe Valley's development in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s—could present us with the opportunity to once again create job opportunities and training. It is interesting to reflect on this great link that we have had with public housing in the Latrobe Valley. Public housing has always been very much at the centre of our community. We in the Latrobe Valley have benefited from it, and our public housing tenants have respected and taken good care of those community resources on our behalf.We have this wonderful opportunity to create a new vision, a new opportunity for the Latrobe Valley whilst at the same time investing substantially in our public housing and in our community resources. Whilst many people stand up in this place and give lip-service to the ideas of what can be done for unemployment in their region, I think I have painted a fairly clear picture of one project, at least, which could provide real jobs, real training opportunities and better public housing to the people of Latrobe Valley in my electorate.18:29:009097Latham, Mark, MPMr LATHAMK26WerriwaALP00—The States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 appropriates Commonwealth finances to the states and territories and, as such, offers a debate about federal-state relations in Australia. In my contribution, I would like to address the most important issue affecting my electorate where federal-state relations have broken down—that is, the lack of cooperation for the construction of Sydney's second international airport at Badgerys Creek.The lack of federal-state cooperation has produced a shameful state of planning gridlock in Western Sydney. There has been no progress in our region for the past 10 years on major infrastructure projects because of the confusion and delays in proceeding with Badgerys Creek. The orbital road, for instance, is not moving forward because politicians have a ready-made alibi. They do not know what is happening with Badgerys Creek, so no government will commit funding for the great orbital road, stretching from my electorate in the south to Hornsby in the north—a road which would take all of the heavy industrial traffic off our suburban streets and put it where it belongs on a bypass.Politicians also have an alibi concerning new rail links. No government, federal or state, will commit funding for new and much needed rail links in Western Sydney, again using the alibi of Badgerys Creek airport. Just as much, no government will move forward with economic development plans because of the unjustified delay in proceeding with the second airport. So federal-state relations and cooperation have broken down totally on this issue, and Western Sydney is suffering accordingly.A decision urgently needs to be made in the public interest. The key theme relating to a decision of this nature is the public interest. Governments need to rationally assess the public interest and put those interests well ahead of the noisy, unrepresentative lobbyists who are complaining about the second airport proposal. Those complaints and their campaign have no advantage for our region other than the day a university student wanting to undertake a PhD finds that the whole Badgerys Creek fiasco is a great chance to study shameful political opportunism. A future student will have many instances, indeed.The need to put the public interest first is paramount. I look at this issue reflecting on two types of politician. One type of politician sees a public misunderstanding and source of misinformation and tries to correct it—that is, they try to explain and persuade how progress might be achieved. The second type of politician sees a source of public misunderstanding and misinformation and tries to exploit it—that is, they engage in scare campaigns trying to put fear into people without regard for a rational assessment of the facts, a rational assessment of the issue at hand.In my contribution, looking at the breakdown in federal-state cooperation on this important piece of infrastructure in Western Sydney, I would like to rebut some of the myths that are associated with Badgerys Creek airport, and many myths there are. There have been many outrageous and deceitful claims for the purpose of trying to scare people for low political motives. Some of these, of course, come from self-appointed publicists who had tiny so-called community committees, and some of them also write in newspapers. These people lack credibility when you examine some of their claims.I refer the parliament to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 23 July this year written by Annemarie Willis from the Sydney based Ecodesign Foundation. The article, I think, gives a good guide to the credibility of the anti-Badgerys campaign. The article was headed `How Badgerys will destroy the Barrier Reef'. How can anyone possibly take this seriously? It reminds me of chaos theory where, if a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, there will be an earthquake in Western Australia. Nobody can take seriously the proposition that the development of a second airport in Sydney is going to destroy the Barrier Reef along the Queensland coast.I mentioned some of these self-appointed publicists who head some of these tiny committees. One of them is Leon Warren, the so-called coordinator of the Campbelltown Anti-Airport Group. He showed his lack of credibility on this issue when his letter to the editor was printed in the Financial Review two days ago. In talking about the development of the airport, he said:. . . once this has happened, the cost of fresh food would rise by about 50 per cent to all people in Sydney.This is just urban myth. This is nonsense. This is stuff people are making up on the run. How can the development of a second airport increase food prices in a big international city like Sydney by 50 per cent? This goes down with other urban myths. This is of the quality that daylight saving fades your curtains. This is just absolute nonsense, and it rips apart the credibility of these self-appointed publicists. They have no credibility at all.Let me address the five main myths concerning Badgerys Creek airport. The first of those has been massive urban encroachment in recent times. Anyone looking at the planning map in Western Sydney would know that the only urban growth is that which was approved under the Wran government in the mid-1980s when the airport was first mooted—that is, all the planning instruments devised by the state government in the mid- to late-1980s for Western Sydney have been adhered to.There was explicitly a buffer zone to be kept around Badgerys Creek, and today that nonresidential buffer zone is still 13 kilometres, as was planned in the 1980s by the state Labor government. There has been no encroachment, other than the growth that was authorised in that particular plan. I would urge anyone interested in this project to open their Gregorys Street Directory and have a look at the siting of Badgerys Creek. It is by far the most isolated site in the Sydney basin—the only available site with a nonresidential buffer of some 13 kilometres.The good thing that you can also do in Sydney is compare the location of suburbs to Badgerys Creek relative to suburbs and their distance from Mascot. We have an existing international airport in Sydney located at Mascot and, if you plot the correlation between its surrounding suburbs and those in Western Sydney, you see that there is no problem by comparison.For instance, I had a constituent living at Eschol Park in Campbelltown say, `I'm a bit concerned about this Badgerys Creek.' I urged him to open his Gregorys Street Directory and said, `Why don't you compare your relationship to Badgerys Creek to a comparable suburb's relationship to Mascot?' The constituent went away and did that, then contacted me and said, `There is no problem, is there. My suburb in relation to Badgerys Creek is the same as the suburb of Padstow in relation to Mascot.'The member for Banks of course will testify that there is no noise pollution problem at Padstow in his electorate arising from Mascot. Therefore, there is not likely to be any noise problem arising in suburbs which are the same distance and position from Badgerys Creek—the suburb of Campbelltown in my electorate. This is the way in which people can deal in facts, rather than myth—to compare where they live in relation to Badgerys Creek with other suburbs in relation to Mascot.The second myth concerns the proposition that Badgerys Creek airport might be an environmental disaster. What has a project got to do to receive environmental passage, other than to pass not one but two environmental impact statements? A statement in the eighties under a Labor government and a statement in the late nineties under a Liberal government both gave the green light on environmental grounds for this project. What has a big infrastructure project got to do to gain approval other than to pass not one but two environmental impact statements? Not only has it got the green light twice but it has been done on a site where $300 million of public money has been spent in acquisition. You could not do this more thoroughly. I know the delays for some are frustrating but at least they prove the point that, for every single hoop this project has been required to jump through, it has done so with flying colours.The recent EIS was very instructive for those interested in facts as opposed to myth. It pointed out that the predicted air quality impacts do not exceed National Environmental Protection Council goals, other than on the airport boundary. It predicted ozone impacts will not affect Campbelltown or Liverpool in my electorate. The new airport may even have beneficial impacts on the Badgerys Creek, South Creek and Hawkesbury-Nepean River system. So on water quality, the treated run-off from an airport is going to be a lot better than the polluted stuff that currently goes into the river and creek systems.On the issue of noise, the impacts are very clear. The noise contours do not cover any residential area. It is as plain as the nose on one's face. They do not cover and cross any suburban area. My electorate is a considerable distance from the minimum measured noise impacts for both options A and B—Labor's option of course is A. Ingleburn is 10 kilometres from the minimum noise contour measured for dBA, ANEC plus the night temperature inversions, while Campbelltown CBD, at the heart of my electorate, is 15 kilometres from those minimum noise contours. Ingleburn, Campbelltown and Liverpool, in the north of the electorate, are much further away from the maximum noise contours set out in the EIS document.The third myth surrounding Badgerys Creek is that we will have only minimal employment benefits. I have heard reference made to this document Airport Economics produced by Leon Warren, and I mentioned him earlier. He states in the introduction of the document that he used the unusual economic modelling technique of replicating the sorts of investigations he would have conducted when he was a police officer—that is, he has used police investigative methods to judge the employment impacts of Badgerys Creek. Reading this document, all I can say is no wonder there are record crime levels and record levels of corruption in the New South Wales police force, because the research and work here is shoddy indeed.For instance, the conclusion reached in this document is that Badgerys Creek will produce no more than 500 jobs. How does he reach that conclusion? He takes the airport operating costs foreshadowed in the EIS, a figure of $35.1 million for salaries; he divides that figure by $70,000, what he thinks will be the average cost of employing someone on the site; and he ends up with 500 jobs. You do not need to be John Maynard Keynes or Adam Smith to work out that more people work at an airport than those involved in the direct operation. There are many more people employed—in fact, thousands more jobs are created at an airport other than in keeping it open. To conclude that an airport has no more employment capacity than for those involved in its operation is a ludicrous proposition— again, destroying completely the credibility of this document.Leon Warren does not take any account of the retail jobs. Has the man visited an airport in recent times and seen the massive retail operations and employment? He does not take account of the employment of Customs staff, airline staff and transport workers or the huge off-site catalyst effects of an airport—that is, advanced manufacturing, tourism and hospitality industries or the export of fresh agricultural produce.Just a few weeks ago, I spoke to the Ingleburn chamber of commerce in my electorate on this issue. Those industrialists were outlining their employment expansion plans if the airport goes ahead. They will be filling the Ingleburn and Minto industrial estates and expanding their businesses, because at long last they will have a clean, efficient way of transporting their goods to an airport for export purposes. You need to have some commonsense and regard for the facts. People just cannot go around making these things up on the back of an envelope. Every top economic forecaster who has looked at this project has foreshadowed tens of thousands of jobs arising out of the Badgerys Creek airport. There are no exact numbers and economic forecasting is not an exact science, but there is such a consistency in the forecasts, in the EIS and in National Economics, the top forecasting consultancy group, to prove there are tens of thousands of jobs.That should be the source of our support for this development because, as long as I have been involved in politics through the Labor Party in Western Sydney, there has only ever been one issue. Every single motion moved at branches and every single debate in draughty halls can be summarised in one proposition: we need to move the jobs and services in Sydney to where the people have moved. That has been the issue in greater Western Sydney for going on 30 or 40 years. One issue: how do we move the jobs and services to where the great number of people have moved?This imbalance in Sydney is so crippling. East Sydney has 1,200 jobs for every 1,000 labour force participants. The number in Western Sydney, the other half of Sydney, is just 600 jobs for every 1,000 labour force participants. That is the great economic imbalance in the Sydney region: the fact that to get a job, invariably, people in our region have to travel 80 or 90 minutes a day in their cars polluting the air and as well there are commuting costs, social costs and, for many people, employment costs when they cannot access that sort of work.I never thought I would live to see the day when some members of parliament in Western Sydney would argue against a federal government injection of billions of dollars of infrastructure and employment money for our region. I honestly thought I would never live to see the day. Quite frankly, I have to pinch myself to believe that it is happening. How can members in the region, knowing that there has only ever been one issue—that is, move the jobs and services to where the people have moved—say to a federal government, `Oh, no, don't invest billions of public dollars in our region to address the crippling social crisis of unemployment?' All this when we have a project that has passed not one but two environmental impact statements. As I say, I have to pinch myself to believe that it is really happening. It is incomprehensible after attending all those meetings over 20 or 30 years and listening to the one great theme that some people are now saying that we should turn our back on public investment and publicly generated jobs through an international airport in our region.The fourth myth concerns the proposition that better sites are available. If there was any easy way of siting an airport, it would have been done years ago. We all know that. But, again, you have to have regard for the facts rather than the myth. If the problem in the eyes of the anti-Badgerys Creek lobby is that it is too close to suburban areas, how can anyone support an airport next to the Newcastle CBD? If Badgerys Creek is too close to suburbs with a 13-kilometre buffer, why build an airport cheek by jowl with the Newcastle CBD? The foolish member for Macarthur says that Badgerys Creek is too close to suburbs and then comes up with the silver bullet of expanding operations massive ly at Bankstown. This is just an act of madness. If the 13-kilometre buffer at Badgerys Creek is inadequate, what can you say about Bankstown which has a 13-metre buffer from residential areas? If 13 kilometres is not long enough, then 13 metres at Bankstown where the suburbs and houses come right up to the airport boundary is absolutely appalling.What have this government got against the member for Hughes? They tried to give her the Holsworthy nightmare, which was way too close to suburban areas. In relation to the expansion plans at Bankstown, where do they point their runways? Right across the Georges River into the suburbs of Chipping Norton and Moorebank—right at the western extremity of the electorate of Hughes. She must have killed a black cat and walked under a ladder for this Liberal government to constantly set her up as the bunny for these ridiculous airport propositions.In relation to other ideas, we all know the fast train has never stacked up. Members on this side of the parliament saw some of those numbers in government and have said that it is not economically viable. As for propositions at Goulburn and Lithgow, well, why not Timbuktu? Let us have some realism about siting an airport. It must have some correlation with the city it is designed to serve. I am afraid that Goulburn and Lithgow are well beyond the Sydney metropolitan area. There is no better site than the buffer established around Badgerys Creek airport. Those arguments to the contrary should be dismissed.The final myth concerns the proposition that this is a grossly unpopular idea in Western Sydney. A good way to judge popularity is through the ballot box. I have not seen an anti-airport candidate who has substantially prospered electorally. For instance, the hysterical and unlovely Kay Vella ran at the 1996 Lindsay by-election and got a very, very small proportion of the vote. Then there was an anti-Badgerys Creek party that ran for the New South Wales upper house earlier this year. They got 0.1 per cent of the vote. They did not even beat Mario Fenech's What's Doing Party or Godfrey Bigot's party. They did not really hit the deck. If you look at some of the figures in the opinion survey produced by the Western Sydney Alliance in July 1998, they are most revealing.On the list of issues determining votes for the last federal election, Badgerys Creek was much closer to the bottom of the list than the top. It was certainly a long way behind tax and other national issues in the eyes of Western Sydney voters. Then on the question of whether the airport would make a difference to voting intention, four out of every five Liberal voters said it would make absolutely no difference to their voting intention and four out of five Labor voters said it would make no difference to their voting intention.I reject the proposition that this is unpopular. It is mixed opinion in Western Sydney, just as we have seen mixed opinion on the government side. The member for Lindsay is against it and the member for Parramatta is in favour of it. We have some of those differences on this side of the parliament. I can assure the House that that mixed public opinion and reaction to Badgerys Creek is shared throughout the electorate in Western Sydney. It just confirms the point that there is no easy, simple, ready-made way through this issue. It takes a bit of regard for the public interest and a bit of regard for employment.18:49:009102Cox, David, MPMr COX83UKingstonALP00—Because this is the last time the parliament will legislate to implement the outcome of a Premiers Conference under the old regime of financial assistance grants, the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 underlines the great uncertainty that now exists in relation to the future of state-federal financial relations. There are three areas I want to focus on. The first is the real per capita guarantee for financial assistance grants. The second is the Prime Minister's unilateral changes to the intergovernmental agreement he had made with the states in relation to the abolition of some indirect state taxes as part of his GST tax package. The third is the arrangements which will follow the demise of the old state franchise fee component of the wholesale sales tax.The original decision to provide the states with a per capita real terms guarantee rather than the previous real terms guarantee was taken in 1994 by Labor federal Treasurer, Ralph Willis. He recognised that the states faced growing cost pressures as service providers with increasing populations. Willis decided that the financial assistance grants pull should be increased by the rate of inflation and the rate of national population growth. It meant real increases in funding for the states for the first time in many years. What is more, the guarantee would be applied each year on a rolling three-year basis to give the states a three-year forward planning horizon.Because it was implemented at a time when fiscal policy was being tightened, the states had to trade off the abolition of general purpose capital funds. At the time, these amounted to a total of $330 million and were far less equitably allocated than the financial assistance grants. To the extent that the state premiers and treasurers can ever be satisfied by anything the Commonwealth provides, they were pleased with the outcome. On that basis, the real terms per capita guarantee was honoured by Labor in both 1994 and 1995. But that was not the case after the coalition took office in 1996. The Howard government pretended to provide the real per capita guarantee but required the states to make a fiscal contribution to the Commonwealth. That fiscal contribution amounted to $1½ billion over the first three years of the Howard government. The precise amounts were $619 million in 1996-97, $627 million in 1997-98 and $313 million in 1998-99.Worse, the liability for meeting these contributions was allocated amongst the states on an equal per capita basis. That meant that the smaller states like South Australia carried a disproportionate burden, given their relatively higher cost structures and smaller capacity to raise revenue. The Howard government also made other cuts to the states that had effect over the whole of that period and the current financial year as well. The most significant of these was the $312.5 million cut made to Commonwealth funding for public hospitals in the 1996 budget. This measure was described in the budget papers as `reductions in hospital funding grants to the states to offset cost shifting of public hospital related services'. It reduced Commonwealth funding to the states by $73.5 million in 1996-97, $76.8 million in 1997-98, $79.8 million in 1998-99 and $82.6 million in 1999-2000. The combination of the so-called `fiscal contribution' and the cut to hospital funding had a significant effect on the smaller states like South Australia.So the per capita real guarantee that we are returning to with this bill is not new, it is overdue. However, this return to the per capita real funding guarantee will not last long because, starting from next year, the financial assistance grants will be replaced by the revenue from the GST from 1 July 2000. Initially the GST revenues will not be enough to fund the states' current expenditure and the new responsibilities that they will be asked to assume. While there will be a transitional period during which the Commonwealth has guaranteed that the states will not be worse off under the new arrangements, this is far from a long-term guarantee of maintenance of all their funding. Clause 5(v) of the Intergovernmental Agreement on Commonwealth-State Financial Relations says:The Commonwealth will continue to provide specific purpose payments (SPPs) to the States and Territories and has no intention of cutting aggregate SPPs as part of the reform process set out in this agreement, consistent with the objective of State and Territory Governments being financially better off under the new arrangements.The words `no intention' are very far from a guarantee that SPPs will not be cut. Even if they are maintained in aggregate, they may be cut in real terms or not given growth funding commensurate with growth in demand for the services they are supposed to cover. This is how the Howard government will claw back the growth in state revenues which the GST is expected to provide.Whenever it is necessary to cut Commonwealth expenditures, it will always be easier for a coalition government to cut specific purpose payments to the states for health and education than it will be to cut the federal government's own programs. It will not be a coincidence that those cuts will be consistent with their disposition to vacate a large part of the present role of federal government and leave those functions to the states. Unfortunately, it is an open question whether the states, particularly the smaller states, will have a large enough revenue base under the new state-federal financial arrangements to support those functions. Certainly there is a risk that there may be less scope to allocate funding from the federal government on a needs basis.The states are highly dependent on SPPs. South Australia will receive a total of $1.9 billion from the Commonwealth in 1999-2000. That amounts to more than $1,250 per person. Total SPPs paid to the states and territories range between $769 and $1,578 per head of population, depending on need. The environment that will follow the expiration of this bill will be a very uncertain one, particularly for the smaller states like South Australia.Following the expiration of the system of financial assistance grants on 1 July 2000, there will be new arrangements and therefore new outcomes which will be administered by a new ministerial council comprising Commonwealth and state treasurers. It will be set up to implement the new intergovernmental agreement and to provide a forum for discussion of relativities to apply to distribution of GST revenues among the states and territories and so remove the need for the annual Premiers Conference.As a representative from one of the smaller states, I am concerned about any foreshadowed but unspecified changes to the process of determining the relativities on which revenue raised by the Commonwealth will be allocated to the states. In 1999-2000, South Australia will receive financial assistance grants of almost $1.6 billion, or $1,065 per head of population. Under the present arrangements for horizontal fiscal equalisation, the variations between the states and territories range from $748 to $3,386 per head of population. South Australia would be extremely vulnerable to any adverse change.To get his GST through the parliament, the Prime Minister made a number of unilateral changes to state-federal financial relations—that is, unilateral with respect to the states—following his agreement with the Democrats. These changes cost the states $4 billion of their projected revenue from the GST. The loss of the $4 billion in states' revenues has been dealt with by revising or abandoning the implementation dates for the removal of nine state taxes which were an integral part of the Howard government's tax package proposal.Abolition of financial institutions duty, which would have raised $1.36 billion in 2002 has been deferred from January 2001 to July 2001. Abolition of the bank account debits tax, which would have raised $1.12 billion in 2002-03 has been deferred from January 2001 to July 2005. The abolition of the business conveyance duty, which was estimated to raise $1.87 billion in 2002-03, has been abandoned. Abolition of the stamp duty on hiring, which was estimated to raise $210 million in 2002-03 has been also been abandoned. Abolition of the stamp duty on leases, which was estimated to raise $130 million in 2002-03 has been abandoned. Abolition of the stamp duty on mortgages, which was estimated to raise $530 million in 2002-03 has been abandoned. Abolition of stamp duty on cheques, which was estimated to raise $15 million in 2002-03 has been abandoned. Only the abolition of bed taxes, which will raise $90 million, and the abolition of stamp duties on share transactions, which is estimated to raise $750 million in 2002-03, will still take place in July 2000 and July 2001 respectively.Given that these changes are the result of a deal in the proverbial smoke filled room, their consequences for the long-term revenue position of the states and their relative fairness to individuals in different income groups got little consideration before they were imposed. The other component of this bill is that it sets out the arrangements for the last time for the distribution of that component of the wholesale sales tax which is collected by the Commonwealth in place of the old state liquor, tobacco and petrol franchise fees, which were struck down by the High Court as an excise. After 1 July 2000, the taxes which are being imposed in addition to the GST to stop the price of these products falling—in most cases, they will increase—will be collected and retained by the Commonwealth.In the case of one of those taxes, the wine equalisation tax, there is particular uncertainty because of differences of view about what was worked out between the Leader of the Australian Democrats, Senator Lees, and the Prime Minister in their proverbial smoke filled room. So far, the difference of view about what was agreed has not been between Senator Lees and the Prime Minister but between Senator Lees and the Treasurer. The difference of view relates to the arrangements for an exemption from the wine equalisation tax for cellar door and mail-order sales.Senator Lees's view—and she was the one who signed off on the deal with the Prime Minister—is that it is an exemption for the full 29 per cent value of the WET for the first $300,000 of cellar door and mail-order sales. The Treasurer's view is that it is only a 15 per cent rebate on the first $300,000 of cellar door and mail-order sales and that, despite the fact that the WET is a federal tax and that all of the proceeds will be retained by the federal government, the states should bear all of the cost of the rebate. The states do not want to fund a rebate on a federal tax when the federal government is getting the revenue.The Winemakers Federation of Australia compiled a set of letters from state premiers and treasurers which indicated their disposition on funding the rebate. It is instructive to look at several of them. The Treasurer of New South Wales, Michael Egan, wrote to his state's wine industry association on 16 January this year, saying:I am writing to confirm the New South Wales Government will retain the 15% rebate on cellar door sales by wineries in the event of the Federal Coalition Government's proposed new tax system being implemented. This decision naturally depends on the Federal Government keeping its commitment that the New South Wales budget will not be any worse off as a result of Federal tax changes.I think he is a long way from getting that kind of guarantee. On 15 December last year, the Tasmanian Premier, Jim Bacon, wrote to the Vineyards Association of Tasmania. He said:While my Government does not support the introduction of a goods and services tax (GST), the States and Territories may have little direct control over its introduction. At this stage there have not been any detailed discussions with the Commonwealth about the effect a GST would have on wine. My Government is therefore not in a position to make a specific commitment in relation to the future of the cellar door subsidy.The Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, wrote to the managing director of a Victorian based wine company regarding the WET on 26 May this year. He said:I understand your concern, but this is an issue that is within the Federal Government's responsibility.I think we all know what that means. More recently, the South Australian Premier, John Olsen, expressed a very clear view to 5DN's Jeremy Cordeaux. He said:I notice there was a report from the Federal Treasurer this week that there would be a cellar door exemption. There hasn't been any discussions with South Australia yet on who is paying that and I just want to say to your caller I think the Federal Government ought to be paying it needless to say. Our Treasury officials have been told to discuss the matter with Canberra with a view to them resolving it and them paying it.It is a rare occasion indeed when I come into this place and say that I endorse one of John Olsen's views.The cellar door exemption for the wine equalisation tax is just another example of the increasing burdens the Howard government intends to put on the states after the financial arrangements set out in this bill expire. For the smaller states like South Australia, those increasing financial burdens will quite rapidly consume much, if not all, of the government's claimed growth in state revenues from the GST. Under the Howard government, the real per capita funding guarantee to the states has become an unrealised promise on the path to uncertainty.19:05:009105Hatton, Michael, MPMr HATTONLN6BlaxlandALP00—The States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1999 provides for payments to the states in 1999-2000 of general revenue assistance estimated at $17.7 billion and revenue replacement payments of around $6.8 billion. The bill also provides for national competition payments to the states and territories. This financial year, the Commonwealth will continue to make payments to the states and territories under the categories of specific purpose payments or general purpose grants. Although general purpose grants are untied, they are hedged around by, and contingent upon, the fulfilment of a wide range of terms and conditions. This conditional nature of the financial assistance grants allows the Commonwealth to exercise a considerable amount of control over some state government expenditures. This is especially so with the national competition payments. At a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments on 11 April 1995, a program was agreed on for the implementation of the national competition policy and related financial arrangements.Today I wish to speak about some particular matters relating to the relationship between the Commonwealth government and the New South Wales government. These matters go to the very core of questions of the national interest, the proper expenditure of both Commonwealth and New South Wales state governments on major infrastructure projects. These matters go directly to the question of national competition policy in the current climate. They also go directly to the relationship between government decision making and the role of certain concerted vested interests in the private and semigovernment sectors.These matters also go to the very core of questions relating to the proper expenditure of Commonwealth government funds on an environmental impact statement and the due consideration that the federal cabinet should be giving to a $12 million coalition government initiated process of consultation and investigation of the merits of various sites for a second Sydney airport. These questions go directly to the heart of a bill such as this because they deal with the centrally important relationship between the Commonwealth and New South Wales governments and their respective, proper roles in outlaying significant sums of taxpayer funds on major infrastructure projects.In this particular case, the Commonwealth is charged with the primary responsibility for assessing and deciding upon the question of a second international airport for the city of Sydney. The Commonwealth is also primarily responsible for funds required to build a second Sydney airport. These funds will come directly out of Commonwealth raised taxpayer funds. The New South Wales government's role in the infrastructure demands of a second Sydney airport are also great and demand significant state government expenditure of funds delivered to the New South Wales government by the Commonwealth through the Grants Commission—the very types of matters under discussion in this bill.It is a scandal and an outrage of the first order that this coalition government, led by John Howard as Prime Minister, seems to have surrendered to an unholy cabal composed of the Minister for Finance and Administration, John Fahey, the Treasurer, Peter Costello, and a plethora of vested interest groups concerned primarily with the chief goal of nobbling Badgerys Creek and entrenching Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport as an expanded and international only airport for Sydney. The Sydney Airport Corporation, the Tourism Task Force and the multifarious related vested interests that are the underlying urges for the abandonment of Badgerys Creek and the removal of regional air services to Bankstown airport are acting against the best interests of the people of Sydney and, indeed, against the Australian national interest.This federal cabinet should get on with the business of making a decision about Sydney's second airport. This federal cabinet has no excuses for further delay. It neither needs nor requires further information on the other options regarding Sydney's second airport. All the information the federal government requires to make a final decision on whether Badgerys Creek should get the go-ahead as Sydney's second airport is already available to the government. This coalition government spent $12 million on an environmental impact statement on this second Sydney airport proposal. I have the summary, volumes 1 and 2, and the supplement, volume 3, with me today. There are in all 21 volumes of that document. There is ample information both as to the argument and the factual basis on which this government could make its decisions. This environmental impact statement conducted by PPK Environment and Infrastructure contains virtually all of the necessary factual basis and all the argument and opinion needed for federal cabinet to make a determinative and final decision on this matter.For John Howard's federal cabinet to be as divided and dilatory as it is about coming to a decision demonstrates that this cabinet, which brought forward the extraordinary proposal that Holsworthy should be the second airport site, has a series of political and financial agendas directly in conflict with a clean, clear and transparent outcome. I first encountered this in May 1996 during the by-election in the seat of Blaxland—a by-election which I won. I therefore became the member for Blaxland and I not only represent that area but have incorporated in my seat Bankstown airport. It was painfully obvious to us that, on a whim, the former Minister for Transport and Regional Development, John Sharp, had included the Holsworthy option because it seemed like a good idea at the time to a number of people in the aviation industry and to a number of people around the lunch table.That took us months and months of further investigation into a proposal that was knocked on the head in 1985, that was ninth out of the 10 on the list but that was interesting to this federal government before the 1996 election. Why? Apart from the dinner table conversation and the talks with their mates, what were they seeking in relation to Holsworthy? They were seeking to spend as little government money as possible on a second airport for Sydney. It would cost less in infrastructure costs and particularly in road and rail connections to go ahead with Holsworthy rather than Badgerys Creek. The bottom line dollar amount for any development in relation to any airport in Sydney, if any, coming out of this federal cabinet is to cut the cost to an absolute minimum. That was one of the driving factors behind Holsworthy. The EIS came out directly and plainly saying that Holsworthy was not an option but then continued with Badgerys Creek.Since then we have had ample time—with the supplement coming out and also with the auditor's report of the EIS process—for this cabinet to make a decision. The federal Minister for Transport and Regional Services, John Anderson, and his colleagues have delayed a decision. This delay has given the field over to a number of vested interests pushing a series of alternatives that are inimical to a proper solution of the question of Sydney's second airport. This is a question of national importance and national significance, not—as we have heard some people say—a question that is purely Sydneycentric. It has been argued in the media that Peter Costello, the Treasurer, and other members of cabinet from Victoria and South Australia have said, `This is a Sydneycentric solution. Let's delay and look at another solution which will be for the whole of Australia.'Sydney needs and requires a second airport. That is where the population is, that is where the gateway is and that is where the demand for the infrastructure is. No set of Dodgy Brothers alternatives that are put up either in the private or semigovernment sectors or by people doing their honours theses and taken up by this federal cabinet for serious consideration have the mass and the weight of the environmental impact statement brought down by PPK. The conclusions of that environmental impact statement are clear and compelling. Sydney needs a second airport. The decision to build Sydney's second airport needs to be made now. The decision to build that airport is commented upon at page 26-17 of the environmental impact statement supplement, volume 3. In regard to the need for a second Sydney airport, it states conclusively:Sydney Airport will reach capacity in the latter part of the next decade unless there are significant changes to noise management and other policy settings and to airline operating practices. While some initiatives, such as the use of Bankstown Airport for regional services, would reduce the demand for Sydney airport, they offer only short-term solutions. In the medium term, new airport facilities for domestic and international services will be required if the expected demand for air travel to and from Sydney is to be met. Failure to meet demand for air travel to and from Sydney would have a major economic impact on Australia in general and New South Wales in particular.A review of potential alternative sites confirmed that Badgerys Creek remains the most viable site for a second major airport.The EIS could not make recommendations, but it could and did reach conclusions. The message was simple and clear to the federal cabinet: build Badgerys Creek now.The impact of the delay by this cabinet—their dithering and shillyshallying and drastic attempt to look for alternative solutions—is having an impact on my electorate and Bankstown airport. In their fervid attempt to come up with something else that might be done, they have been joined by the Tourism Task Force, which has hit the airwaves in Sydney demanding that something else be done. In turn, the Tourism Task Force decided to pick up an honours thesis by a student at the University of Western Sydney at Macarthur broadly titled `Making a mountain out of a molehill'. The argument put forward in this honours thesis by Gerard O'Dea is, `You did not really have to go and build a second airport for Sydney at Badgerys Creek. You could find other ways to solve the problem.' His solution was to move all regional services to Bankstown airport and take general aviation out of Bankstown airport—where it currently provides 3,500 jobs—to Badgerys Creek. All you would have at Badgerys Creek is a general aviation airport. All the regional services would be moved into Bankstown, with trains put in to connect to the East Hills line and roadworks to be done around the airport and to connect to the M5.Mr O'Dea was conservative: he argued that it would cost $220 million to push this process forward. The Tourism Task Force now says $500 million. This is being used on the airwaves of Sydney as if the federal government had already allocated the money. Have they got a wink and a nod from John Fahey, the member for Macarthur and the Minister for Finance and Administration, who more than six months ago introduced this kind of approach, afraid of the impact on his electorate from a second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek? He sought to load up the people of Bankstown—despite the fact that he had been a Canterbury-Bankstown football player; maybe because of that—with regional services out at Kingsford Smith. The intent of Mr O'Dea, the Sydney Airport Corporation and the Tourism Task Force is to look for this. Mr O'Dea says:. . . the option proposed in this thesis gives the Government a minimum of 15-20 years to plan and build an airport outside the Sydney basin.If this government stayed in power for another 10, 15 or 20 years—which they will not—and the decision was up to them, they would never build a second Sydney airport because they do not believe in expending government infrastructure funds where they should be put. Mr O'Dea gives them an out by giving them his honours thesis. What does he propose? He says:Regional airlines will have the opportunity to hub their operations at Bankstown and keep their own interlining passengers for proposed flights to Melbourne, Brisbane and Coolangatta . . . General aviation activity at Bankstown is moved to a new airport at Badgerys Creek which caters for small aircraft of the size currently at Camden and Hoxton Park airports. The total cost of this infrastructure is $AUD 220m.Further, he says:This proposal provides a medium-term solution to the need for a second international airport for the Sydney Basin until at least the year 2015. This affords the Federal Government the opportunity to consider building the new international airport outside the Sydney Basin at sites such as Goulburn, Newnes or Newcastle—or any other of the 101 places that have been put up. This is a proposal—and you can hear it mirrored throughout the Tourism Task Force and in the murmurings coming out of federal cabinet—to dud the people of Bankstown and the 3,500 people who run a general aviation business there, and those people from regional services in the bush, areas like Coffs Harbour, Mr Deputy Speaker Nehl, in your very own seat, and to tell them that they should be entirely displaced.We currently have Kingsford Smith airport, which adequately caters for regional aircraft flying into Sydney. Under the long-term operating plan, this government promised—it guaranteed—access for regional aircraft to Kingsford Smith airport. How long would that long-term operating plan last if Bankstown airport took the regionals? The answer is that it would be immediately negated. The reason for this is quite simple: if you move the regionals to Bankstown, the management of airspace in Sydney would have to be changed prior to that happening. It is not a simple or small difference or change. Mr O'Dea thinks that up to 38 per cent of regional services could be put into Bankstown. Well, I have news for him: his thesis would not get a class I honours from me.About 25 per cent of regional and GA could be moved out of Kingsford Smith. That relates directly to airspace management issues. You could not take it much more than that. You would have extra slots for a few years and they would be taken by jets—737s, 767s and jumbos. Those extra flights coming in, the 25 per cent, would run all over the top of Sydney and over every electorate that is now affected by aircraft noise. We would have 25 per cent more bombardment not only over the rest of Sydney but also over Bankstown because we cop it with a double whammy—not only from our general aviation airport but also from most of the flights that come in and out of Kingsford Smith. The proposal put up and being actively considered by this outrageous cabinet, this outrageous Minister for Finance and Administration and this outrageous Treasurer, linked in with all of their allies, to seek some other alternative and to step away from the real decision that needs to be made now to build Badgerys Creek—that proposal is an attempt to get an out. It is an attempt to walk away in a cowardly fashion from a true federal government responsibility to build infrastructure where it is needed and to get on with the job.The impact of that has been added to by talk about the very high speed train. One could almost imagine that the very high speed train could link us to London! It cannot do that. If they linked the very high speed train to Canberra, what does the EIS say would be the impact of that? They say it is very simple: for two years or so you might supplant some of the traffic at Kingsford Smith but, after that, it is the end of the section. What if the very high speed train were built and the airport were located at Goulburn, 210 kilometres away? Other members have pushed this process. What would happen is that, if you had 12 million people accessing that airport each year, you would need one double-decker train operating from that airport through to here. Ninety per cent of the people would have to use that. They would not be able to take cars or trains; there would be one double-decker train on one line, because that is all that is proposed.You would need 67 trains a day and in the peak time, one every 12 minutes. But when it got to capacity at 30 million passengers a year, you would need one very high speed train every three minutes. Tell me that Australian railways, private or public, could put a very high speed train on the tracks in three minutes, do all the luggage, do all the sorting out and have those rolling back and forward. It would need not one line but two lines; it would need double-decker carriages. This has never been done anywhere else in the world. Why? Because it is plain crazy.It is ludicrous to think that you could supplant the demand at Kingsford Smith airport and the demand that will be there in Western Sydney for a new airport at Badgerys Creek with a very high speed train. That can run on and do its own part. The people who are pushing that notion argue that they can do it privately and they can get it running. Good luck to them—let them go at it. It will not solve any of these questions.It is part of the lunacy of arguing that you can put a second Sydney airport outside the Sydney Basin. You need to put the infrastructure where it is needed—near the people. You need to spread the impact of the airports not only through eastern Sydney but also through western Sydney by having Badgerys Creek go ahead now. This federal cabinet should get off its backside and stop shillyshallying and delaying; they should get away from the influence of the cabal of Peter Costello and John Fahey and make a decision in the national interest now. (Time expired)Debate (on motion by Ms Worth) adjourned.Adjournment9109Motion (by Ms Worth) proposed:That the House do now adjourn.910919:25:009109Hall, Jill, MPMs HALL83NShortlandALP00—Tonight I would like to demonstrate to the House how the Howard government's policies are hurting families and, in doing so, I will be referring to the plight of a family that lives in the Shortland electorate. We are always talking about families in this parliament. The government prides itself on its commitment to Australian families and boasts of its successes. Tonight I will show how one real family—a good, hardworking family—has been all but destroyed by this government's policies.I received one of those letters that we all receive as members of parliament from a woman who was really hurting. She is somebody who has worked hard all her life, cared for her family and is now in a devastating situation. It is one of those letters that I read and really found heart-rending. She has battled all her life to make ends meet, and the family has survived. They have kept together. She has two daughters, aged 18 and 20, who were living away from home and who were receiving youth allowance, studying and looking for work. She also had a son that was in year 10. She talks about how difficult her son found it when he was on work experience and how hard it was for the family even to get the money together for fares for him to travel backwards and forwards to work experience.The mother was saying that the two girls had $45 a week to live on. They have been forced to give up their flat and come back home because they have had the youth allowance taken away from them. The father earns $450 a week, which would be take-home pay I am sure otherwise they would still be eligible for the youth allowance. He travels two hours a day to work and he has had the job for five years. Before that, he was unemployed for five years. They live in a department of housing home. So they are really battlers. They are a family that has had to scrape all the way through. But they are proud of the fact that they can work and that they have been able to get by without having to take any assistance from anyone.This lady writes that the government says that parents have to be responsible for their children. She goes on to say that the government tells them at 18 years of age that they are old enough to vote, old enough to go into a club, old enough to have a licence but that still their parents are responsible for them until they are 25. This lady says, `I would like to know where the sense is in that. Yes, parents are responsible for their children, but are they responsible for young adults?'This lady goes through her financial situation and says that at the end of the week, after she has paid everything she has to pay, she has $45 a week to survive on. She goes on to say, `We cannot even go to a doctor because you have to pay up front.' We did have a Medicare office at Belmont, which is not very far from Swansea where this lady lives, where she could go along and get a refund. But that has been closed. She says there are no doctors that bulk bill and there is nowhere she can go in close proximity to her house—remembering she has to rely on public transport because the husband takes the one car to work—to get a refund. It is actually impacting on her health and on her family.When her husband does not get overtime, his income drops to $390 a week, which places an even greater strain on the family. She says that the government is now saying that it is bad luck, that they get money and so they have to pay for their children. She also goes on to say that they do not ask for help from other services and that trying to feed and keep the family and to pay the bills is getting harder. They are surviving. She says that it is no wonder people take the lives of their loved ones, because those in government today do not give a damn about the little man. They do not give a damn about families. She goes on to say that she is very concerned about her family. I implore the government to rethink some of its harsh policies, because—despite what those of you on the other side of the House say—there are families in the community that are truly hurting. (Time expired)911019:30:009110Washer, Mal, MPDr WASHER84FMooreLP10—I would like to bring to the attention of the House the formation last week of a group in my electorate known as the Sunset Coast Ship Wreck Society. This group is made up of various stakeholders in the electorate of Moore, all of whom have the common goal of securing a decommissioned naval vessel to be sunk and used as a dive site off the popular Perth landmark known as Hillarys Boat Harbour. I believe this would be a valuable drawcard to my electorate, with the potential of creating hundreds, possibly thousands, of jobs—local jobs—for constituents of all ages through the tourism industry.In forming the Sunset Coast Ship Wreck Society we, as a community, hope to emulate the success of the sinking of HMAS Swan in the south-west town of Dunsborough several years ago. This has resulted in a boom in diving operations in that region, providing a huge increase in diving related spending on accommodation, food, retail and other forms of recreation. In fact, in its first full year of operation the HMAS Swan attracted 12,000 dives.A dive wreck is considered to be a prime diving excursion for millions of divers around the world, and would attract not only local divers who do not wish to make the half-day drive to Dunsborough but also international divers who are known to travel to particular locations around the globe purely on the strength of their dive sites.The northern suburbs of my electorate collectively represent the ideal site for a dive wreck in metropolitan Perth. Most of Perth's dive training operations are located in this area and, from a technical point of view, the waters off Hillarys Boat Harbour would make a perfect location to sink a dive wreck, as the 30-metre contour—considered to be the standard depth needed for a dive wreck—is only five miles offshore, representing a 20-minute boat ride for the divers, which would help to keep the overall cost of a dive down. The proximity to many hotels and restaurants as well as other tourist attractions, such as Underwater World, adds to the site's attractiveness.The society is considering two potential dive wrecks, the first being the HMAS Perth, which is on its final voyage around Australia. The Perth is currently berthed at its namesake city and may be gifted to the Western Australian state government. However, there is a question mark over its suitability for the Hillarys site, because of its extremely large size. Our other option—which is looking like our preferred option—is Oberon class submarine HMAS Orion, which is currently being used for parts at the Stirling Naval Base in WA.As the federal member for this area, I will do anything in my power to create job opportunities for my constituents. The northern part of my electorate is the second fastest growing region in Australia and is expected to double within the next 25 years. I am keenly aware that you cannot have this kind of expansion without a concerted effort to create the job infrastructure needed to ensure the northern suburbs of Perth do not turn into ghost towns during the day while everybody makes the trek to the CBD for employment opportunities. The tyranny of distance is especially harmful to our youth and, unfortunately, this is reflected in the higher than average youth unemployment figures in the outlying regions of my electorate. Local and lasting jobs is the only answer for these young people.I call on the Minister for Defence to gift the HMAS Orion to the Western Australian government, as may be done with the Perth. In turn, I ask the state government to favourably consider our Sunset Coast as the number one location in Perth for a dive wreck—for jobs, for tourism and for a unique dive site that will truly put us on the international map.911119:34:009111Ferguson, Laurie, MPMr LAURIE FERGUSON8T4ReidALP00—The electorate of Reid is the centre of Sydney's Turkish population, including those who are Turkish-speaking or of Turkish extraction. I rise this evening to express my condolences to those affected by the recent earthquake. The municipality of Auburn, which is the centre of the Turkish community in Sydney, has approximately 3,000 people who speak Turkish at home, and the population there who were born in Turkey has been ever increasing over last decade.I personally have visited both Istanbul and Bolu, which were affected by the earthquake. I met officials from the town of Izmet. The devastation we are seeing in north-west Turkey has in every moment worsened from the first predictions. There was a report in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning that the Turkish government had requested around 40,000 bags. So they are predicting a great upsurge in the number of deaths.I do not want to treat this in any partisan fashion. I commend the Australian government for both contributing $1.5 million and, more importantly, sending an AusAID official there to monitor the possibility for future Australian help that might be rendered.I want to talk about not only the historic ties that connect our two countries—the fact that a former President of Turkey has received Australia's highest decoration; the historic things that we all talk about on Anzac Day, those connections from Gallipoli onwards—but also the situation of Turkey in world affairs and about the concerns that we must have that, unless the West is prepared to provide significant help, an already developing political situation there could worsen. At the last elections there the fascist National Action Party made significant electoral gains because of concern about the failure of national institutions.The Sydney Morning Herald this morning also reported comments by a minister in the government, Mr Osman Durmus, from that same National Action Party, where he deplored and attacked some Western aid to the country, adopting a nationalistic tone of, `We can help ourselves and we do not need Italian doctors to help us. We do not want help from Armenia because of former hostilities between the countries and because of the constant campaign by Armenians externally about the events after the First World War.' This is the danger: unless the world actually is very responsive, we can force both the extreme Islamic elements in Turkey and, on the other flank, the very extreme nationalistic crypto-fascist groups to become ascendant in the country.I feel that also because of the humanitarian concerns for the people of the region. We get graphic television daily and, of course, we have families in this country who are deeply affected. I was actually at a house on Sunday where the sister of a Turkish-Cypriot family had gone on a mainland Turkey tour, and they were still, a week later, unaware of her circumstances. Many families in Australia are affected and, because of communications problems and the uncertainty of removing bodies, et cetera, they are still unsure as to where it is going. The Turkish Public Works Minister, Koray Aydin, commented that it might be November before they have the emergency housing rectified. They have obviously had to throw in large numbers of a nationally conscripted army of some 50,000 people currently helping.I say that we have to make sure that Australia is supportive. All of that rhetoric about Anzac Day and all of that backslapping around the place, and all these tours by Turkish officials and Australian officials, really will look very pale if Australia's response is not, by international standards, very strong. In its editorial today, the Australian actually emphasised this. It said that a variety of circumstances demands:. . . that the West, particularly Europe, makes great efforts to help out. Anything less would be churlish. Australia, also, should recognise Turkey's recent past as well as the ties of friendship forged out of the shared experience of Gallipoli.So, both because of those humanitarian aspects and because of the very real political dangers in Turkey and the need to consolidate democratic processes in that country, there is an urgent need that this country and the West are supportive.911219:39:009112Pyne, Chris, MPMr PYNE9V5SturtLP10—Before I speak briefly tonight on the Reserve Bank report which the Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration handed down on Monday but which I was unable to speak on because of time constraints, I would like to support the comments of the member for Reid with regard to the terrible tragedy in Turkey. I am pleased that the Australian government is making a contribution to the relief efforts there and that it has offered to make a greater contribution, which I think will come into play when the full level of destruction is realised and the Turkish government sees what other countries can do to be of assistance. I have no doubt that Australia, being the generous international donor and supporter in so many ways that it is, will come to the aid of Turkey in an even greater way than it has. I am glad that the member for Reid has taken time in the House tonight to remind us of our responsibilities to other countries in the world that have suffered such devastating situations.Tonight I would like to comment very briefly on the review of the Reserve Bank of Australia Annual Report 1997-98, which is one of the best functions of the economics and finance committee of this House, when we meet twice a year with the Reserve Bank Chairman, Mr Macfarlane. Because the report is particularly comprehensive, I would like to deal only with the aspect of it that deals with the impact of tax reform and the GST. Mr Macfarlane made some particularly sound comments with regard to the government's policies in respect of tax reform, particularly in relation to the goods and services tax, and I think that deserves to be highlighted in commenting on that report. For example, he was asked about what he thought the effect would be of tax reform on the Australian economy. I am not quoting directly from him but from the report:His response was that . . . the long term effects of tax reform would be good. The tax base was too narrow, and tax reform to reduce the distortion would be beneficial.So the Reserve Bank chairman has worked out that in fact tax reform is all about improving the economy of Australia and getting our tax system right. It is only disappointing that the Labor Party, which in their heart of hearts knew that the GST was right for Australia, continued to campaign against it at the last election and voted against it in the recent votes of this House.He also was asked about the question of the Australian economy in July 2000 and whether we would have the capacity to deal with the fiscal stimulus that the $12 billion of income tax cuts would give to our economy. Of course, the Labor Party, the naysayers of the economy, have been saying that next year in July 2000 the fiscal stimulus that will be created because of the $12 billion being injected into the economy will create condi tions that might lead to increases of interest rates in order to slow down an overheating economy. But in fact the governor did not make those comments; the Governor of the Reserve Bank in fact said that the Australian economy would be `in a very good position to handle' the fiscal expansion created by the `very generous compensation package' attached to the introduction of the GST. He actually said that the compensation package of the government would cover all aspects of increases in prices that might be expected as a consequence of the introduction of the new tax system.It is worth while remembering that this government is looking after all people in the new tax system. I was speaking to a constituent in my electorate today, a pensioner in a Housing Trust home who was asking me about the compensation measures that we had introduced. I was delighted to be able to let him know that, because of the changes to the tax system, because food has been removed from the goods and services tax net and pension increases are staying the same, in fact he would be even better off than he was going to have been at last year's federal election when the whole gamut of goods and services were introduced into the new tax system. He was delighted to know that we would be increasing pensions and delivering these income tax cuts which will provide the necessary compensation to ensure that every Australian will be able to cope with the very small price rises that would be resulting from the new tax system coming in in July 2000 Indeed, the governor also commented on the once-and-for-all price effects of the goods and services tax, and I was pleased that he was able to confirm to the committee that the Treasury estimates of 1.9 per cent were in fact soundly based. He believed that the price effects of the GST would not have the effect on wages that the Labor Party has been claiming, because in fact the compensation package would take that well into account. So I commend the committee for its good report on the review of the Reserve Bank annual report. I thank the secretariat for the good work that they did in assisting us, and I look forward to the next occasion. (Time expired)911319:44:009113Morris, Allan, MPMr ALLAN MORRISFI4NewcastleALP00—Four weeks tomorrow will see the cessation of steel making in Newcastle after some 85 years. That will be a tragic day for this country because, amongst other things, our balance of payments will be worsened by about $1 billion a year. We currently export more than $1 billion worth of steel a year; we will virtually export no steel after that closure. In understanding that, it is important to recognise that the decision to close the steelworks and the factors involved in the closure had nothing to with the people who work there and nothing to do with steel making or steel technology but everything to do with very poor decision making and very poor processes of management and administration by BHP, particularly in the development of their plant at Port Hedland to make hot briquetted iron.The great irony now is that, some two years later, we see that the raw material that Newcastle would have used in arc furnaces—the hot briquetted iron from Port Hedland—is essentially selling at the price that was predicted back in 1995; in other words, at a price at which one could make steel in Australia at a profit. Instead of that, they will go overseas and make steel in Asia at a profit to somebody else. They will not employ Australian workers and they will not help our balance of payments. It is an absolute tragedy for this country, but it is also a tragedy for a number of individuals who work at the steelworks. In addition to the lack of exports, we will see increased dumping of steel into Australia and more and more steel being imported. My feeling is that within 10 years BHP will not be in steel making and our steel industry will perhaps be in very poor shape. We will probably end up having to import a foreign company to invest in the industry to give it some energy.This is all symptomatic of what has been happening in the last few years. It was quite heartbreaking when, back in 1997, the government was so uncaring and so unresponsive to the issues that were at stake and so lackadaisical about the national interest in terms of the balance of payments. I find it difficult to believe that a government facing a loss of exports of $1 billion a year barely took a second glance at the situation. A bipartisan parliamentary committee asked for a parliamentary inquiry, and the minister refused to allow it. That is unheard of. Instead, we had a half-hearted, mickey mouse committee of parliamentarians with no capacity and no resources trying to understand what was happening.It is important to recognise that another one of the Howard government's innovations is coming to bear in four weeks time, that is, the removal of income support from people who are retrenched until they use up all their leave entitlements. The men and women who now work at BHP have gone without long service leave and holidays. They are about to be retrenched, but they are being told, `You have to use up your long service entitlements; the ones you didn't have, the ones you didn't take before. Because you haven't taken them you can't get income support. You use that period to find jobs under your own steam.' Many of these people have paid taxes for 30 or 40 years, willingly and happily. They contributed to the national wealth and the national economy. Now that they need some support and understanding the government is saying, `You work out all your entitlements.' That is a nice new change. Whatever we hear about a budget surplus, just remember who is paying for it because a fair slug of it is being paid for by the BHP workers who are about to be retrenched. The fact is that this situation affects not just the people who work directly for BHP but also the people working for contractors at BHP and the people who work outside the plant on BHP servicing and support.ET4BEVISMr Bevis—Small business people.FI4Morris, Allan, MPMr ALLAN MORRIS—Most of them are small business people. BHP have put in place a program called Pathway, on which I compliment them. It is an excellent program. It is lucky they did because the government has done nothing.The original program, Labour Adjustment Training Arrangements, LATA, was put in place back in 1982 by the Fraser government and Mr Howard, the then Treasurer. They have done nothing this time. In fact, an employee cannot access Job Network unless their employer pays for them to do that. We see here an example of the government's approach to industry and social policy. I want to make a comment to the people who are being retrenched in four weeks: we understand your problem. (Time expired)911419:50:009114Katter, Bob, Jnr, MPMr KATTERHX4KennedyNP10—I listened to the last speaker, the member for Newcastle, whose industry, the steel industry, was rescued by John Button and the brilliant initiatives he carried out. He was the economic rationalist of the Keating government, and he was sacked. The industry went from 80 tonnes per worker per year under an interventionist policy to some 720 tonnes per worker per year. But I do not wish to speak about that tonight.I was at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in my electorate when a young lady who looked like a very competent young lady—and, as it turned out, even though she was fairly youthful, she was the manager of the bank at Ravenshoe—got me aside. She and her husband are in the pig industry: they are pig producers. She gave me two letters, one which she wrote to the minister and one which she wrote to me. I would like to read out what she put down in both these letters, with a few contributions of my own. She wrote:Dear Mr KatterMy husband and I are pork producers and we are on the brink of bankruptcy.I have attached a copy of a letter that was given to—I will just refer to this person as `the minister'—when he was last on the Tablelands (21/4/99). We received a reply that was a waste of the paper it was written on. It was the standard reply letter showing compassion for our situation but offering no solution, assistance or any alternative.Imports in March were an increase of 400% on the same period last year. 2537 tonnes was imported from Denmark and Canada.Mr Katter our industry is dying. Why won't something be done? The Danish Government pays their pork producers between $0.75 to $1.76/kg in export `refunds' (subsidies).The minister wants us to export. Who will take our 30 pigs a week? We can't expand because we have no money and we don't qualify for the government assistance to expand. You must have a throughput of 250,000 pigs per year to qualify. Our 1500 pigs doesn't even come close.Why is the current Government killing the rural industry? All we want to do is work. The minister and his cronies don't care. Do we send our bills to him to pay? Should we tell the bank to discuss our debt with him?We have busted our guts to make our piggery produce the best product in Far North Queensland and still we're going to become bankrupt.There is no light at the end of the tunnel for us. We need help and we need it now.If there is anything at all you can do to assist our situation please do it now.Yours faithfullyVicki SchmidtPER ROSS & VICKI SCHMIDT,NORMANVALE FARMINGM.S. 1883RAVENSHOE QLD 4872The letter to the minister states:Mr MinisterMy name is Vicki Schmidt. My husband and I operate a 100 sow piggery and we along with every other pork producer in Australia are suffering. Our product is of excellent quality, our buyer has butchers who will only take our brand due to the high quality of our pork and still we cannot survive. And that is due to you and your government refusing to take action against the record levels of imports coming into our shores.In FNQ our pigs are on farm one day and in the Butcher shops the next, you can't get any fresher than that. The quality is excellent but still our industry is dying. Two pork producers shot themselves last year in South Australia, they could not take anymore. Can't you see you are killing a once very profitable industry. In the 70s there were 40,000 pig farmers in Australia, today there are only about 3,000.A productivity report was tabled in Parliament in November '98 that concluded that safeguard measures such as a temporary tariff are justified and that serious injury had been caused to our industry as a direct result of imports. Canada and Denmark have free access to Australia for pork exports but Australian exporters pay tariffs up to $3,000 per ton to ship pork to Denmark. The Canadian government has admitted to a subsidy of 15% on pork production. Where is the level playing field there.At sugar industry meetings, which the honourable member for Dawson and I attended, I quoted a figure of 200 per cent subsidy on European sugar, and I was corrected because it is 22c in Europe and it is 4c on the world market. So we get 4½c and the European farmers get 22c. The letter goes on:You and your government allocated $8m to provide grants to specialist pigmeat processors, these same processors are importing pork therefore you are actually helping them to become more efficient in their importing. To qualify for these grants you must have a minimum throughput of 250,000 pigs per year. Again it's only the big boys who qualify. Now you've come up with $45,000 in grants for farmers when they've left the pork industry. We don't want to leave. Australia has the best pork in the world, our safety measures are second to none. Canada and Denmark do not have the same high standards we have. If disease is found in imported product it's not going to be `imported pork' to the consumer, it's just going to be pork and that will totally destroy our industry completely.You say we have to learn to export but who is going to take our 30 pigs a week. We could expand but there is no bank who will provide finance for such a venture. There is no bank that will give us one more cent.Minister, would you work 14—16 hours a day, seven days a week if your profit was non-existent—(Time expired)911519:55:009115Latham, Mark, MPMr LATHAMK26WerriwaALP00—Someone accidentally pressed the fast-forward button on the member for Kennedy, and I have to say it did not make any better sense.This government crows a lot about reductions in unemployment in the national figures. Two things need to be said about this claim. The first is that the unemployment rate has come down because this government has shoved 60,000 Australians onto the disability support pension, basically giving up on their prospects in the labour market. The second thing which needs to be said is that these national reductions in the official rate are not being shared across the country. I want to give the House some of the recent unemployment statistics in south-west Sydney.If one compares the March 1998 to the March 1999 figures, it shows that each of the six local government areas in south-west Sydney has experienced an increase in unemployment. If the rates are going up in south-west Sydney, when the national economy is growing, imagine how badly we are going to be disadvantaged when the national economy turns down. These figures are an absolute catastrophe for south-west Sydney. There is an unemployment crisis in the region. For instance, Bankstown has experienced an unemployment increase from 7.9 per cent to 9.4 per cent. Camden has gone from 4.5 per cent to 4.8 per cent, Campbelltown from 8.8 per cent to 9.5 per cent and Fairfield from 14 per cent to 14.4 per cent over the past 12 months. In Liverpool there has been an increase in unemployment from 9.3 per cent to 9.8 per cent and in Wollondilly it has gone from 5.1 to 5.6 per cent.There is an unemployment crisis in south-west Sydney, and it indicates the further need for infrastructure and employment gains in the region—more so the shame of those politicians and activists who oppose the development of the second international airport at Badgerys Creek. The employment boost is more critical and more urgent than ever. South-west Sydney desperately needs jobs to offset the poor policies of the Howard government. This task will not be achieved by political hypocrisy and opportunism.Let me just give to the House some of the shameful instances of hypocrisy on the second international airport. In March 1995, the then New South Wales Premier, John Fahey—now the member for Macarthur—supported the fast-tracking of Badgerys Creek. He supported it because he was worried about losing the Liberal seat of Gladesville, on the lower North Shore, after the opening of the third runway. He said, `Don't build one, don't build two, build three international runways at Badgerys Creek and build them tomorrow.' That is what he said in March 1995. At other times he has supported sites at Holsworthy, Goulburn and Bankstown depending on how the political wind of the day was blowing. The truth is that the member for Macarthur's hypocrisy is costing jobs in south-west Sydney, and it is adding to the unemployment crisis under this government.Charlie Lynn MLC, the state shadow minister for western Sydney, was a long-time supporter of Badgerys Creek. At the 1994 Werriwa by-election he ran on a platform of fast-tracking Badgerys Creek for positive employment outcomes. I remember because he was taunting me at the time—he said, `Build Badgerys tomorrow for its positive employment outcomes in south-west Sydney.' Up until the mid-1990s, every council, every local government area in western and south-western Sydney supported Badgerys Creek. The hypocrisy goes on.In 1996, Leon Warren, the head of Campbelltown's Anti-Airport Committee, said that he had no objection to an airport at Badgerys Creek. These people could not lie straight in bed for their attitude and consistency on this issue. Jo Inwood Mollin, another Campbelltown activist, used to prepare reports for the Greater Western Sydney Economic Development Board recommending the construction of Badgerys Creek. None of these people has any credibility in opposing the development. These facts give the lie to the argument that Badgerys Creek has been unpopular.There was a time in the early 1990s when it was universally popular in the region and the only things that have changed are the standards and the hypocrisy of these activists and politicians. The project has not changed. Under this government, the employment prospects have got much worse in south-west Sydney. This government has shamefully delayed and ignored the opportunity for infrastructure and employment development in the region. They should not be crowing about a national reduction in unemployment; they should do something about Badgerys Creek.House adjourned at 8 p.m.Notices9116The following notices were given:Mr Reith to move:That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the introduction and passage through all stages this sitting without delay of a Bill for an Act to amend legislation relating to coal mining, and for related purposes.Mr Slipper to present a bill for an act to appropriate the Consolidated Revenue Fund for certain purposes, and for other purposes.Mr Slipper to present a bill for an act to appropriate the Consolidated Revenue Fund for certain purposes relating to the environment, and for other purposes.Mr Slipper to move:That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, it is expedient to carry out the following proposed work which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and on which the committee has duly reported to Parliament: Construction of replacement nuclear research reactor, Lucas Heights. NSW.Mr Beazley to move:That:(1) recalling the Australian people's overwhelming decision in the 1967 Referendum to confer upon the Commonwealth Parliament responsibility for enhancement of the rights and well being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people;(2) reaffirming the abhorrence of racism shared by the Australian people and their Federal and State Governments;(3) reaffirming Australia's recognition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the International Convention on the Prevention of All Forms of Racial Discrimination;(4) recalling the Parliament's commitment in October 1996 to the principles of racial tolerance; and;(5) recognising the profound economic and social disadvantage suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—this House: (a) affirms that the tabling of "Bringing them Home", the Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, presents the nation with an unprecedented historical opportunity to render justice and restitution to Indigenous Australians, for the good of all Australians;(b) acknowledges the immense trauma inflicted upon the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia as a result of the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families under past government policies in place from before the time of Federation until the early 1900s;(c) affirms that these racially discriminatory policies and their continuing consequences are a matter of national shame;(d) affirms that current and future Federal and State governments are responsible for assisting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to rectify the ongoing effects of those policies;(e) affirms its commitment to a just and proper settlement of the grievances of people adversely affected by those policies; andon behalf of the nation—(f) unreservedly apologises to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians for the separation policies;(g) calls upon Federal and State Governments to establish, in consultation with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, appropriate processes to provide compensation and restitution, including assistance for the reunification of families and counselling services;(h) calls on the Federal and State Governments to establish appropriate education programs to enhance community awareness of the history and continuing consequences of past practices and policies of racial discrimination; and(i) calls upon the Federal Government to declare a National Day in recognition and remembrance of the great suffering which flowed from the separation policies, and to affirm our nation's commitment to justice for Indigenous Australians, today and for the future.Mr Bevis to present a bill for an act to amend the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Act 1992 to allow funds to be used to pay entitlements for certain employees.1999-08-25Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Nehl) took the chair at 9.40 a.m.Statements by Members911891189118Sercombe, Bob,MPMr SERCOMBEQK6MaribyrnongALP00—All Australians have been appalled by the devastating loss of life and destruction of property and the consequent homelessness caused by the earthquake in Turkey last week. Australians of Turkish background, of which there are many thousands in Australia, particularly feel these matters and need support.Many Australian organisations and individuals have given generously to make provision for the relief effort. The Australian government has provided some assistance, but even that august institution, the Australian, in today's editorial, makes some very critical remarks about the level of support that the Australian government has provided for this catastrophe. I hope the government reviews the level of assistance which it is providing.There are other matters that the government can consider in terms of providing support, particularly support that is relevant to Turkish Australians. The government does operate a humanitarian component of its immigration program. Twelve thousand places have been provided this year. The government ought, as a matter of urgency, to consider ways in which Australians of Turkish background have a capacity under that program to bring to Australia relatives who have been made homeless and who are suffering other trauma as a consequence of the earthquake.Even within the existing program, there is capacity for the government to take initiatives. I note in the recent statement on the program by the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs that there are still 800 places unallocated in that program. The special assistance category in the program has got 900 places, which is significantly lower than in previous years. That component of the program is specifically designed for people with relatives in Australia who have been displaced or who are experiencing significant hardship. So even within the existing program, there is capacity for the government to take the initiative in this respect.The government should immediately make a significant number of places available for victims of the Turkish earthquakes, with particular priority given to people who are vulnerable, particularly the aged, children and single women who have relatives in Australia, to come to this country and receive the support that they need.The government should also consider a proposal that it has received, I understand, from a number of Turkish community leaders in which they request that the government give attention to creating a visa category for Turkish Australians to bring defined relatives to this country for short periods to enable them to access proper medical attention, regain their health and overcome some of the trauma that they have been through.Australia has a rich and very significant history in its relationship with Turkey. Turkey is a country that is very important in the Australian national psyche because of the Gallipoli campaign. A significant contribution has been made to our country by Turkish Australians. We really ought to be requiring the government to be more generous in its response. (Time expired)91199119Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLYFK6DawsonNP10—I rise today, as Chairman of the Australia-Philippines Parliamentary Group, to speak about that great neighbouring country of ours. In fact, it was only last evening that the parliamentary group, including the deputy chair, the member for Chifley, Mr Price, and the secretary, the member for Greenway, Mr Mossfield, and other very hardworking members of that group, had the pleasure of attending a dinner with Her Excellency Mrs Delia Domingo Albert, the Philippines Ambassador.I would like to dwell on the important relationship that Australia enjoys with the Philippines. The Philippines is now an important market for our dairy industry. It is the second largest market behind Japan. In 1998, the Philippines bought $245 million worth of dairy products—about 12 per cent of our dairy exports. Our relationship extends beyond that to include one of the pleasures in Australia—racing. The Philippines' San Miguel beer company has become the sponsor of the Australian Jockey Club, a package worth $32.5 million over five years. Can I say, having tasted San Miguel beer, that Australians will greatly enjoy this wonderful brew from the Philippines.The relationship, of course, goes beyond that. Her Excellency does an outstanding job on behalf of her people. She is not part of the club of ambassadors here in Canberra; she truly works hard for her country and represents it very well in Australia.I might say that she also reminds us—as she says, not that she is complaining—that there is a great imbalance in our trade arrangements with the Philippines. While we export a billion dollars worth of goods to the Philippines, we import only about $400 million worth of goods. I have no doubt that, with the mutually beneficial relationship and the close links that are being forged, we will develop a more equitable trading arrangement with the Philippines.The Philippines is Asia's largest Christian country with a literacy level of nearly 95 per cent, which is greatly to its credit. There have been over 100 years of independence and the Philippines is a highly educated, forward looking nation with an ever improving economic outlook. Even the International Monetary Fund is full of praise for the Philippines for the turnaround in its economy, according to IMF first director Stanley Fischer. But I would have to mention Her Excellency herself. She travels Australia widely, visiting places such as Mount Isa—10000Kelly, De-Anne, MPMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—She cooks a great Bookoo pie too.FK6KELLYMrs DE-ANNE KELLY—I am very glad Mr Deputy Speaker interrupted me. Her Excellency has introduced to Australia a great delicacy from the Philippines—Bookoo pie—coconut pie—which can be bought through the Woolworths chain, and it is absolutely outstanding. Mr Deputy Speaker, I have not got to the rest of my speech because of your wonderful interruption. (Time expired)91199119Danby, Michael, MPMr DANBYWF6Melbourne PortsALP00—As the issue of China's future gathers momentum on the world stage and on the eve of the visit to Australia of the Chinese President, Mr Jiang Zemin, it would seem to be an ideal moment to examine the issues facing China as it confronts the momentous challenges ahead—particularly the challenges of democracy. I am pleased to advise members that Mr Wei Jinsheng—an advocate for human rights in China since 1978 and the person best known for the Democracy Wall—is in Australia. Mr Wei Jinsheng is the author of the essay `The fifth modernisation' which, when published in 1978, maintained that China could never truly modernise without democracy. It caused a sensation, not simply because it openly challenged the government's long-held claim that democracy and human rights were little more than `Western' and hence `imperialist' slogans, but because the author dared to sign the essay with his name and address. This happened during the Democracy Wall period when Mr Wei was involved in publishing an underground magazine called Exploration .In 1979 Mr Wei was convicted of counter-revolution and sentenced to 14 years gaol. At his trial he spoke in his own defence, and a copy of his statement was smuggled out of China and published around the world. In all, Mr Wei has spent 18 years in prison during which time he was on death row for eight months and in solitary confinement for five years. He has also spent time in various forced labour or Laogai camps. In 1997 Mr Wei was taken from his cell and put on a plane bound for the United States. He maintains he was not freed but that his forced exile is further imprisonment away from his homeland. He is currently living in New York City where he is the Visiting Scholar at Columbia University's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. His book, The Courage to Stand Alone—Penguin 1998—was described by Richard Bernstein in the New York Times as:. . . the most impressive dissenting document to emerge from China since 1949 . . . [which] promises to take its place among the classics of 20th century literature of dissent.In the book, Wei deals with such issues as economic and social reform, foreign relations and investments, Tibet and Taiwan. Mr Wei Jinsheng is the recipient of the Olaf Palme Award, the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Mr Wei will be in parliament next week and I hope honourable members will have the opportunity to meet him and to share his views. I also hope that other people will have an opportunity to read his book, The Courage to Stand Alone , which is available in most Australian bookshops. (Time expired)91209120Hardgrave, Gary, MPMr HARDGRAVECK6MoretonLP10—Last Wednesday afternoon, the latest meeting of the Moreton Youth Advisory Group took place. This is a meeting where students from various high schools around my electorate get together with me every couple of months to discuss issues of importance to them. I find it a very important process to discuss issues with these senior students, who are often leaders of these schools. I met with students from Sunnybank, Mt Gravatt and Holland Park state high schools; the Clairvaux MacKillop College; and the Southside Education Centre for about an hour and we talked about the very important issue of youth suicide. They raised this issue with me against the background, they reported, of 12 students committing suicide in the last few months in Queensland.It is a problem that people in their late teens are very well aware of. They recognise that there are problems in some students' homes, that there is not necessarily the right support. As parents, we were never given a manual on how to raise our children and parents can make mistakes. But these students, I thought, had the perspicacity to offer at least some observations about what is happening in their real world.The students said that the variety of support they get from their school in the form of guidance counsellors is somewhat mixed. Some teachers are very good at their job and help to develop people and to develop students' skills. Some schools have guidance counsellors who do not give second chance strategies or who do not have the concept that if, as a teenager, you fail then that is not a huge problem in itself because making mistakes is part of growing up. But finding a way to get around that failure and get on with your life, to try and develop new possibilities for yourself is, of course, part of developing the skills we all need as we grow older.Members of the Moreton Youth Advisory Group also said that the media manipulate people's ideology and glorify suicide. I suspect that is true, given some of the recent reports on the program Media Watch about how media organisations in this country have ignored the directions of the Minister for Health and Aged Care on the correct treatment of media reports on suicide. To actually show details of how people have committed suicide and regard that as news is an outrageous and irresponsible action and the media in this country have a lot to answer for in that regard.It is interesting to note a comment from one of the girls from the Southside Education Centre, an organisation established essentially to give students who have been rejected by mainstream schools that second chance, that bit of extra care and attention to get them back onto the road of growing older and developing as people. The student said that the media really do have to respond to the pressures of change and have to be a lot more responsible with regard to matters such as suicide. I find the process of the Moreton Youth Advisory Group a very helpful one. It brings back into focus for me the issues that are important to our young people. (Time expired)91219121O'Byrne, MichelleMs O'BYRNE84SBassALP00—I rise to discuss the standard of training offered to seafarers in Australia and, in particular, at the Australian Maritime College in my electorate. By any standards, this college is the centre of excellence and one that Tasmanians and indeed all Australians should be proud of. Situated as we are in this new economic centre of the world, the Australian Maritime College has a natural advantage in providing maritime education to the rising nations throughout the area.The importance of proper training and the role of the AMC was highlighted in a recent issue of Lloyds list. The paper reported on a study of crew competence, released at a symposium held at the Seafarers International Research Centre in Cardiff. The study was based on an evaluation by pilots, world wide, of the crews on 3,700 vessels of various types. The pilots were asked to score crews out of 100. Australasian crews averaged 88 while Liberia scored 78, Cyprus 74, China 68 and the Black Sea countries 68. The mean score for all crews was 77. That score is a significant achievement and it is to the credit of the Australian Maritime College that Australian seafarers enjoy such a high international reputation. It is also to the credit of the Australian shipowners who employ them.The report from Cardiff is timely, as it highlights the importance of not only maritime education but also maritime policy. They are intimately intertwined in this institution in a manner unique amongst institutions of higher learning in Australia. We must we ensure not only that our crews are trained to the highest standard but also that the people who employ them are committed to the maintenance of the highest standards. The tragic legacy of poor training and safety short cuts are there for all to see in the Ships of Shame report.Government has a key role to play in this. It determines funding levels for education priorities and it determines the policy and fiscal framework in which industries like the Australian shipping industry operate. The Australian Maritime College is doubly dependent on government delivering both the right maritime policy and the right education policy: the right maritime policy framework to ensure that the shipping industry prospers and the right education policy to enable this college to provide future crews with the skills they need to ensure that not only the Australian shipping fleet but also international shipping are both safe and efficient.Depending on whose estimates you take, around 50,000 people are currently employed in industries ancillary to shipping and, currently, most of them are trained in Australia. With an appropriate policy framework, shipping will grow, as will the opportunities for more Australians to learn these skills.There are enormous opportunities in this industry, not only for today's seafarers but also for future generations of seafarers. But these opportunities can only be grasped if both government and industry work cooperatively to increase our international competitiveness. If this industry were given the opportunity to increase its share of trade, there would be a direct and significant economic benefit, increased employment opportunities and, importantly for Bass, increased demand for the services of the Australian Maritime College. What is required is that this government establish a fiscal regime that will allow Australia to compete with foreign shipping.91229122Nairn, Gary, MPMr NAIRNOK6Eden-MonaroLP10—Over the last couple of decades, rural and regional Australia, as you would well know, Mr Deputy Speaker, has seen the loss of quite a number of services—interestingly, predominantly in the private sector more so than elsewhere. Over the last couple of years there seems to have been a push by certain quarters to try and rewrite history and to put the argument that a lot of services have been taken out of rural and regional Australia by the federal government. In fact, in my electorate it is impossible to find one single service that has been taken away by the federal government. The previous Labor government took away things like tax offices in some of the regional towns. But we have seen no loss at all and, in fact, an increase in services as part of the policy that this federal government is putting forward to increase services in rural and regional Australia. The rural transaction centres initiative is part of that. It is a great initiative by the government which will bring back to many of the smaller towns a number of services that were taken away or increase services that were previously never there.In Eden-Monaro we have seen a great increase in services, particularly with Medicare Easyclaim. Over the last year or so we have put Medicare Easyclaims into many towns, such as Bermagui, Tathra and Cobargo, to give a partial example. Just about every small town throughout the electorate now has a Medicare Easyclaim. Shortly we will be putting one into Bombala. The rural transaction centres are an expansion of that type of increased service. I will be putting in a bit of a drive forward to make sure that all of the towns around my electorate have an opportunity to apply for rural transaction centres. This will bring back things like banking, phone fax and Medicare Easyclaim into places like local councils, pharmacies and some of the licensed post offices, depending on the community groups that are there and the sorts of services that they want.A number of the towns that I have identified already that would benefit from Medicare Easyclaims and other RTC type activities are Adaminaby, Berridale, Bemboka, Bodalla, Bredbo, Broulee and Nimmitabel, and also down to Tathra, Wolumla and Wyndham. That indicates the types of rural communities that I have. Many of them are well below that 3,000 threshold and could benefit from the rural transaction centres. Candelo is another one which I think will probably be used.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—Order! In accordance with standing order 275A, the time for members' statements has concluded.Bills9123r8489123Debate resumed from 30 June, on motion by Mr Slipper:That the bill be now read a second time.09:58:009123Kerr, Duncan, MPMr KERRRH4DenisonALP00—I indicate the opposition is supporting the Crimes Amendment (Fine Enforcement) Bill 1999 . The legislation is designed to help ease the arrangements for fines enforcement. Currently, the law operates such that only a magistrate can exercise the powers under the Crimes Act for Commonwealth fines enforcement. That now is out of line with fine enforcement arrangements in a number of jurisdictions where essentially these matters are dealt with administratively at a lesser level, at the registrar or equivalent level, at the jurisdictional point. To ensure that there is compliance with the constitutional requirements that the judicial power of the Commonwealth be exercised in an appropriate way, there must be the capacity for the determination of that administrative officer to be subject to judicial review. That is provided for in this legislation.It will mean that states and territories that assist in the enforcement of Commonwealth legal obligations do not have the complexities of having to develop two systems: one for the enforcement of Commonwealth fines and one for the enforcement of local penalties. So it makes some sense. The opposition is happy to support these proposals. We will, of course, ask the government to keep an eye on these matters and ensure that some of the difficulties that have occasioned from time to time in relation to the enforcement of fines—both in terms of the consequences for those who are subject to the fines and for the effectiveness of the system—are watched out for. This is a sensible and practical measure, and I do not think it is one of any controversy at all.10:00:009123Bishop, Julie, MPMs JULIE BISHOP83PCurtinLP10—When I first read this legislation, the Crimes Amendment (Fine Enforcement) Bill 1999 , for the purpose of speaking on it, I saw that it raised an issue of federal constitutional law. Federal jurisdiction exists within the nine Australian Commonwealth, state and territory jurisdictions and that in itself serves notice of the constitutional complexity that is associated with the relationships of these jurisdictions—their scope and means of operation. The vagaries of federal jurisdiction are indeed complex.In preparing to speak today, I was reminded of the introduction to both editions of the text on federal jurisdiction—the Cowen and Zines classic—where the authors muse that the best outcome for any critical analysis of federal jurisdiction `would be its own relegation to the shelves of legal history'. Be that as it may, this legislation is part of an overall effort by the Commonwealth government to improve efficiencies in the enforcement of fines imposed upon those who are defaulters of Commonwealth fines. This is also about cost reduction.Mr Kerr interjecting—10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—The member for Denison! You have had your go. Now be quiet.83PBishop, Julie, MPMs JULIE BISHOP—The Commonwealth provides funds for all courts that exercise federal jurisdiction: directly in the case of all federal and state courts that exercise federal family law jurisdiction, and indirectly—as part of general revenue grants to each state—in all other respects in which state courts exercise federal jurisdiction. Federal jurisdiction is not exclusively associated with federal law nor state jurisdiction with state law. Overlap and sharing of jurisdictional competence have been endemic to the Australian legal system.The particular amendment that we are considering is an amendment to section 15A of the Crimes Act 1914. At the moment, people who default on federal fines can be pursued through state and territory courts. The Commonwealth, in effect, uses the state and territory courts for the purpose of enforcement of its fines or fines imposed under Commonwealth laws. Under the Judiciary Act 1903, only a magistrate can exercise federal judicial jurisdiction of a court of summary jurisdiction. Under the Acts Interpretation Act 1901, it is provided that a reference to a court of summary jurisdiction means any justice or justices of the peace or other magistrate sitting as a court.Under section 15A of the Crimes Act, only a magistrate of a state or territory sitting as a court may impose a range of penalties specified in section 15A(1AB) on federal fine defaulters. This is perfectly explicable under our current constitutional arrangements and by reference to the provisions of both acts: the Judiciary Act and the Acts Interpretation Act. However, what this means is that the relevant power is imposed on the magistrate as an individual. The proposed amendment confers the relevant power on the court rather than on the magistrate. The power relates to a wide range of penalties, including garnishment of a debt, wage or salary; a charge or caveat on property; seizure of property; forfeiture of property; community service by a person who failed to pay a fine; and detention or imprisonment of a person who failed to pay a fine.In reality, the state and territory courts have become more cost efficient in their enforcement of fines. In many instances they have devolved their enforcement powers to enforcement units within their court system or, in some cases, to administrative agencies. Many courts rely heavily on court officers in their management of the fine enforcement workload. An administrative difficulty arises if these effective, efficient methods cannot be employed by those courts when they have to deal with the enforcement of a Commonwealth fine. Currently it must be done by a magistrate and this, of course, in most instances is not an efficient use of a magistrate's time. Magistrates, like other court officers and judges, have very busy workloads and time management is now an essential tool in the administration of justice. The fine enforcement burden imposed on many magistrates can be lessened in this way.Under the new arrangements, the federal judicial jurisdiction to enforce fines will be available to any officer of a summary court with equivalent jurisdiction under state or territory law. This will provide a bonus for the administration of justice in rural and regional areas, where there is often only a court officer in permanent residence, with a magistrate visiting only on circuit on a period basis. Under this amendment, the court officer will—if the court has the appropriate jurisdiction—be able to exercise federal judicial jurisdiction to enforce federal fines. This will lead to timely, more efficient fine enforcement in these areas.In these times of increasing pressure on the courts to deal with the complex and interrelated issues of the cost, timeliness, efficiency and accessibility of the justice system, including the federal justice system, we must recognise that the federal government has a central role to play in securing the necessary reforms. As a law-maker, as architect of the federal justice system, as paymaster and as a significant litigant and frequent party to proceedings, the government must seek to assist the courts in their endeavours to achieve necessary change to our system.This legislation is a small, yet significant, step on the part of the Commonwealth to assist in this regard by ensuring that federal fines can be enforced at the least possible cost to the taxpayer. The public cost of providing federal courts can be estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so any reform that leads to a simpler, cheaper, more efficient legal system must be supported, as the opposition has done in this case.As a matter of federal constitutional law it may be that states and territories will need to amend their relevant legislation to allow some scope for appeal or review if they want officers of their courts of summary jurisdiction to be able to impose penalties on federal fine defaulters. That will be encouraged, obviously. It is already going to be a bonus for states like Victoria but I am sure that other states, where the appeal process is not yet in the legislation, will wish to avail themselves of the far more flexible arrangements that this amendment will allow.10:07:009125Stone, Sharman, MPDr STONEEM6MurrayLP10—I would like to thank members for their contribution to the debate on the Crimes Amendment (Fine Enforcement) Bill 1999 . In particular, I acknowledge that the member for Denison and shadow spokesman for justice, customs and the arts has agreed that this is a very sensible amendment to the bill. It is, as the member for Curtin has just said, a small amendment but one that advances very much the cause of efficiency and effectiveness in our federal system, in particular as it relates to the states-Commonwealth interface.The bill removes existing barriers in Commonwealth law to court officers exercising federal judicial power in fine enforcement. It does this by exempting fine enforcement from the general rule that only a magistrate can exercise federal judicial jurisdiction. Whether, and which, court officers can enforce federal fines will depend on the terms of the legislation in the state or territory in which the offender is convicted. The bill will assist those jurisdictions which involve both court officers and magistrates in the enforcement of their own fines, as it will allow those jurisdictions to enforce federal fines in essentially the same way as they enforce their own fines. It will also assist other jurisdictions which may wish to amend their own legislation in the way necessary to allow them to utilise court officers in the enforcement of federal fines.In those jurisdictions which choose to utilise the fine enforcement possibilities created by the bill, the bill will reduce the enforcement burden on magistrates, enhance the scope for enforcement in regional areas and allow greater consistency between enforcement procedures in Commonwealth cases and those in state and territory cases. The bill is a small but significant step in the Commonwealth's ongoing efforts to ensure that federal fines can be enforced at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer. The Commonwealth certainly will ensure that all states and territories are aware of this bill and the advantages that it will very soon deliver. I commend the bill to the House.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.Ordered that the Bill be reported to the House without amendment.Bills9125r8519125Debate resumed from 24 June, on motion by Mr Williams:That the bill be now read a second time. 10:10:009126Kerr, Duncan, MPMr KERRRH4DenisonALP00—Mr Deputy Speaker, before the member for Curtin leaves I ask your indulgence for a moment to congratulate her on her remarks in relation to the previous legislation. It is the first occasion I have had to follow her in debate. I have known of her reputation. She probably does not need my praise but it is useful, I think, to acknowledge a substantial contribution even on a minor piece of legislation of this nature.WF6DANBYMr Danby—You are just a sweet talker.RH4Kerr, Duncan, MPMr KERR—I am. I am a sweet talker.10000DEPUTY SPEAKERMr DEPUTY SPEAKER—This is very generous but please get back to the legislation.RH4Kerr, Duncan, MPMr KERR—I will get back to the legislation, Mr Deputy Speaker. The second piece of legislation we are addressing today—the Customs Tariff Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1999 —is again a matter of agreement between the government and the opposition. It effects a range of amendments, the more significant of which were tabled in the House of Representatives in 1998, in the customs tariff proposals. The schedules make a number of changes, some of almost a trivial nature changing spelling, and others affecting rates of customs duties on particular items. In the discussions between the government and the opposition in relation to these matters there has been, I think, a great deal of goodwill.In that context, might I say I do not intend to address this legislation at any length but I am aware that there have been representations to me late in the day from a local manufacturer—I think of tape measures—who has claimed that this bill will adversely affect his business. We received these representations well after we gave undertakings to the minister that we would be supporting this legislation. We have no intention of resiling from our undertakings of doing so but, on the face of it, the case put by that local manufacturer certainly merits consideration. I have passed that view on to the minister, through the minister's staff, and I doubt the minister would ignore the claims of that particular manufacturer who, I understand, has made similar representations to the government. I think the matter is under consideration at the moment.I simply raise this matter in the House and ask that the minister undertakes to examine the matter which I am sure she has notice of—I do not want to raise it by more greater specifics in this debate—give it proper consideration, and come back to the House to make the minor changes which I understand would be required to facilitate addressing that particular manufacturer whose circumstances were not addressed when discussions between the government and opposition took place.With those remarks, might I say that I am pleased with the way in which the minister's staff and my office have worked through these issues. I think it will certainly make better relations if we are able to address this specific matter but the rest of the proposals are ones which the opposition understands the reasons for and supports the passage of.10:13:009126Baird, Bruce, MPMr BAIRDMP6CookLP10—I rise to support the Customs Tariff Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1999 and I do not plan to speak very long on this. It obviously is a technical amendment to provide the changes that were foreshadowed before in terms of the legislation. I understand the comments by the shadow minister. There is some merit in what he has put forward here today but really we have the problem of the removal of the customs duty on aviation gasoline and the problem of issue identification in terms of this whole area. It is a routine technical aspect housekeeping area and it is clear in terms of the provisions of the bill what is intended. I rise to support the bill and have no further comment.10:14:009127Stone, Sharman, MPDr STONEEM6MurrayLP10—I want to thank the member for Denison and the member for Cook for their remarks in supporting the Customs Tariff Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1999 . In particular, the member for Denison referred to representations that he had had from some manufacturers about some items. Let me confirm that representations have been made to the government by some manufacturers regarding the potential adverse impact of removing the duty on some goods as a result of the government's decision on the Industry Commission's report on the medical and scientific equipment industries. These duty reductions are covered, in fact, in schedule 4 of the bill and took effect on the 1 September 1998.These matters that have been raised by manufacturers are being considered by the government. The issues are being reviewed and a decision will be made shortly on those other items that have been referred to us. In the meantime, of course, it is appropriate for the amendments to be incorporated in the legislation. The major components of this bill will lower costs to industry by reducing the customs rates on duties on inputs to the manufacture of information industries equipment, medical and scientific equipment, and parts for machine tools and robots. This will encourage manufacturers to invest in the growth of new and emerging industries. Of course, it is what we all want to see, so it is with pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.Question resolved in the affirmative.Bill read a second time.Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.Committees912791279127Debate resumed from 11 August, on motion by Mr Charles:That the House take note of the report.10:16:009127Sawford, Rod, MPMr SAWFORD3J4Port AdelaideALP00—Over the next 16 months, a trilogy of events will occur in Australia that is simply a watershed. The campaign for the 6 November referendum is gradually warming up; we have the year 2000—whether we want to celebrate the new millennium next year or the year after; and, of course, there is the centenary of Federation in 2001. It is, perhaps, a signal to a maturing of this country that in the future we may develop a truly national spirit. I hope that the referendum is passed successfully and, if so, it will be the beginning of the birth of a national spirit that our founders had in mind a hundred years ago. This national spirit means that we see Australia as Australian—not as Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra; that we actually take cognisance of the needs of people in the Northern Territory, in western New South Wales, in central and northern Queensland, in north-western Victoria, in the state of South Australia, and in all of Western Australia.For too long in this country, we have had an attitude developed here in Canberra that reflects a geographical area which is essentially east of the Great Dividing Range. That is a great pity because this country is a great country and can be a greater one. But it needs to be inclusive; it needs to include all the people in this country. Of course, in that little introduction I have even forgotten our colleagues in Tasmania. I must also allow some time for my colleague the member for Shortland, who will take over in the debate in a short while.I look forward to the campaign on the referendum. I know that my community in Port Adelaide has responded very positively to various polls and I look forward to their support at that referendum. If it passes successfully, for me it will be the beginning of an opportunity for all Australian politicians—state, federal and in local government—to take an Australian perspective, rather than the parochial one which has dominated our history in the past. Perhaps, then, we can look at national projects like the Alice Springs-Darwin railway. Perhaps we can look at other national projects which have been white-anted, in my view sometimes deliberately, because they do not meet the needs of the more powerful states, or they are seen as competition to those needs.I always remember—and perhaps I will finish up on this—that over 100 years ago, in the little town of Morgan on the River Murray, trade started to emanate and grow down into Port Adelaide. Of course, it was taken down there on old bullock wagons and goodness knows what else. A state government built a railway from Port Adelaide to Morgan and very soon it took on perhaps a dozen to 20 trains a day. This was in response to the lack of effort by the Victorian government of the day which refused to build a rail line to Echuca, and by the refusal of the New South Wales government to build a rail line to western New South Wales. The trade opportunities that opened up because of that small railway, which no longer exists, certainly brought the edge to the New South Wales and Victorian governments.I hope in the future that this referendum begins a time in this country when we do not think of just New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, et cetera, and that we actually think of Australia.10:21:009128Danby, Michael, MPMr DANBYWF6Melbourne PortsALP00—After hearing hundreds of witnesses from all around Australia, and after concessions by pro-republicans to achieve a unanimous report, the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum completed its inquiry. It was a great honour to serve on that committee.The committee's recommendation for the long title was unanimous. It is my view, and the view of many people, that the committee's report revived a flagging republican cause. The Prime Minister wanted to include one element of the process in its long title for choosing the President that he and the member for Flinders think is unpopular. So be it. I hope the Australian people will, despite all the negative spoiling, decide that it is time for Australia to have one of its own citizens as head of state.I regret that some members of the committee, who had not attended the final report writing session, questioned its achievements. I do not want to belabour the point, but it was disappointing that the authors of the minority reports were not there for the final report writing. One minority report, speaking on behalf of ordinary voters and decrying the usual `elites' who support the republic, claimed the committee's report was `too otiose'. `Otiose' means `at leisure; lazy; unoccupied; sterile; futile; serving no purpose.' `Otiose' is a word better applied not to the committee's report but to the opponents of the essence of our report—to those who oppose the republic.One of the principal arguments of the monarchists opposed to an Australian President and a republic is to claim that under the new system the Prime Minister would have extraordinary powers to dismiss a President. Yet, on the contrary, the weight of public testimony by constitutional experts giving evidence was that the proposed system replicated the current system.The former Liberal Prime Minister, the Right Hon. Malcolm Fraser, undermined the arguments of opponents of the referendum, such as the member for Flinders, in public testimony to the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum when it met in Melbourne. Mr Fraser, responding to fears about the Prime Minister being easily able to dismiss the President, told the committee:What you described in your question, Mr Chairman, is the current situation, because a Prime Minister could dismiss a Governor-General and, from the moment that it is reported to the palace, the dismissal would effectively be in place. Her Majesty could say, `But I need this in writing, I need reasons—I need this, I need that,' but all that would do would buy a little time until something was put to her in writing, which she would be entitled to ask for. But she could not delay it beyond that. Effectively, from the moment of the request going to the palace by a conversation, the request would be effective.Mr Fraser said that in testimony on 6 July at our hearing in Melbourne. He continued:The problem with our constitution is that, having regard to the powers that the Governor-General technically has, in reading the constitution, the only thing that civilises those powers and makes them acceptable in a democracy is the capacity to be instantly dismissed, and that reality is the convention. That is the thing that brings the Governor-General's powers back to the democratic situation and which makes sure that he cannot exercise the powers which appear to be attributed to him in the constitution, unless it is so recommended by the government and the Prime Minister.That was a former conservative Prime Minister of this country saying that the same kind of situation would apply under the proposed republic and the various bills attendant to that referendum.It is good to see passion in this place. Passion is a good thing; commitment to a cause is noble. However, I have recently begun to wonder whether the passion expressed by opponents of Australia becoming a republic is based on an unreasoning hatred of those they consider to be the protagonists of this republic, particularly former Prime Minister Keating.The member for Fisher's contribution in this debate, in my view, neatly encapsulated this mind-set which marks the contribution to this debate of the constitutional monarchists, whom I shall refer to from this point as the `Queen Team'. As has been pointed out by my colleague the member for Gellibrand, the Queen Team oddly do not want to associate their cause with Her Majesty. Indeed, they have spent an inordinate amount of time talking about `the current system' and how it has single-handedly been responsible for making Australia the wonderful country that it is, as if the 19 million citizens of Australia had no role.The second line of attack of the Queen Team argues that we jeopardise all this wonderfulness by messing around with the head of state and particularly with the perceived dangers of the proposed model, which is the Keating-Turnbull model, as the members for Fisher, Mackellar and Warringah insist on calling it. The word `model' seems to occupy as much space in the vernacular of the average monarchist as the Queen. There is the most insidious and cynical aspect of the monarchist campaign—the jumping on the direct election bandwagon. I will come later to the cynicism of monarchists reducing the parliamentary model of appointment and hypocritically praising, or at least focusing on, direct elections as popular.Let us be clear about this. The situation we have is the Queen Team forcefully arguing that, if we become a republic, it can only be with a directly elected President. Why? There is no issue of principle. The republic haters say, `Well, that is what the people want or so say the opinion polls.' This begs the question: when was the last time an opinion poll showed Australians supporting the continuation of the monarchy? If opinion polls are so important to the Queen Team, you would think that they all would have ridden off into the sunset by now.`It is a politician's republic,' they then hiss. The always amusing Kerry Jones said on the front page of the Australian that the Prime Minister's latest long title was acceptable to her because, `It still focuses on the republican model with a president being chosen by the politicians.' Of course, Ms Jones does not want the people to be aware that currently the Governor-General is selected not by parliamentarians but by a single politician, the Prime Minister. Nor does she want too much attention drawn to the fact that she has dedicated her life to defending a hereditary institution, the Crown, which is elected by no-one at all. For all the nasty things our friends in the media say about parliamentarians, someone actually votes us in. I am not occupying my seat because I am the eldest son of Fred and Margaret Danby.The final point in this argument is a shopping list of apparent difficulties with the proposed model, going to show how calamity will befall our unsuspecting republic. These alleged calamities have all been addressed by the Attorney-General, the Treasurer, former Prime Minister Fraser and the former Governor-General, Sir Zelman Cowen. They say these will be minimal if we do replace Her Majesty with an Australian President. No matter how tendentious or facile the apparent failings of the republic, we who support the republic are left with the task of knocking down these various straw men.The latest straw man is the allegation that we will change the flag if we vote for an Australian republic. There is no such plan to change the flag in the bills. I was there through all the report writing and I can attest to that. Changing the flag, as most parliamentarians know, would entail entirely separate legislation. One wonders if the Queen Team is aware of other places which have managed to replace a monarch as a head of state without civil war, major constitutional crises or the sky falling in on their heads.To achieve their spoiler ends, the Reith-Murray-Cleary axis exaggerates the powers of the Prime Minister to dismiss the President and points to this as one of the fatal flaws of the proposition. But the primacy of parliament, over even a shadow head of state, is the fulcrum of responsible government. The English fought a civil war to establish that principle. Charles I was sent to the block to establish that right of citizens. It is clear that, under the Westminster system of responsible parliamentary government, a Prime Minister had to have the ability to remove the head of state.In the old system, it is the Governor-General and, under the new system, it is the President who can be removed. This is deliberate; it is designed in the unlikely event of conflict between the Prime Minister and the President to resolve a constitutional impasse. There is no hatred of Britain implied in this change to this new model. Britain established the Westminster parliamentary system and that system is the reason why so many people find the Australian democratic system so attractive.Moreover, under the new republic, the Prime Minister will be constrained by having to bring dismissal back to the parliament within 30 days and having to convince the House of Representatives of the wisdom of his actions. Of course, no such restraint exists on a Prime Minister now. Only those who, in bad faith, advance the monarchist cause deliberately understate the gravity of the Prime Minister dismissing a President. Can you imagine any cabinet blithely agreeing to dismiss a Governor-General or a President, or any party meekly agreeing to approve the removal of a President? Only people with no memory of Australian history or with an absurd lack of knowledge of the constraints of political reality would accept this.I remind Senator Murray and some others in this place that, if a prime minister were forced to sack the President, it would be vital for a government to decisively resolve the issue by being able, with a clear majority in the House of Representatives, to determine the matter. It may annoy the Australian Democrats, who cannot get people elected in the House of Representatives, that that is where government is formed. That is our democratic system and Senator Murray ought to be open with the Australian people if he wants to make fundamental changes to our system. I believe that what they really want is a radical change to the Australian system of democracy. I do not believe Australians would support that. I do believe that, if they have a correct understanding of what is proposed with the minimalist change, they will support the republic and the change to an Australian President.In our system of government, we want to avoid a constitutional impasse. We want to provide the stability that underpins this country's peace and prosperity. Our democratic system is the reason millions of people have come to this country. We do not want, least of all during a test of powers, two commanders of the armed forces, two heads of the judiciary and two heads of the civil service. The dual mandate—the split of authority, the chaos—is the formula that direct election advocates like the member for Flinders stand for. I can understand why the Liberal republican conclave in the coalition camp a couple of weeks ago felt that the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business is losing all credibility over this issue.I want to expand on a little noticed point raised in testimony that explains the necessity for not adopting a joint House dismissal similar to the proposed appointment process. This was raised by a number of witnesses, and it particularly relates to the fact that the Senate might be the primary cause of political tension that gives rise to conflict between the President and the Prime Minister. It was felt that, if the Senate, the opposition and a minor party were taken into consideration by the President in his calculations about actions he might take, he might calculate that he had the numbers in the Senate, even given a House of Representatives majority, to take a different course of political action from the Prime Minister. Again, involving both houses in the dismissal might lead to a constitutional impasse.In my view, it is vital for the future stability of our political system that only the House of Representatives has the power to dismiss. It is vital, as it will prevent conflict between the President and the Prime Minister. Anyone relying on the actual practice of Australian politics knows that only via the parliamentary appointment model will we get people of the quality of Sir William Deane, Sir Ninian Stephen and Sir Zelman Cowen.In his ploy to the direct electionists, the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business claimed that, if he were successful in wrecking the referendum, another constitutional convention would consider the issue of direct elections of a President. It would magically materialise, of course. The parliament would slap its thighs and say, `Oh, we've just spent $120 million on this year-long process. Let's just fund another Reith-Cleary-Murray proposal.' Simply spelling this out highlights this proposition's preposterous absurdity.I want to conclude on the issue of direct election of a President. I have already dealt with the cynicism of the Queen Team's enthusiasm for this model, but any person who wishes to be taken seriously in this debate needs to examine the issue from the point of view of principle, not—as the monarchists do—simply because it is popular.Let me read the contribution that Sir Zelman Cowen made to our committee which deals with why Australia ought not to go down the direct elections road. He told the committee:What would be the case with direct popular election? Presumably, we would have competing candidates campaigning around the country to be elected as president. The most likely scenario is that the political parties would endorse candidates for election. They would very likely be a Liberal or Coalition candidate, a Labor candidate, a Democrat and so on. Where would the candidates secure the resources to run their nation-wide campaigns—to organise their speaking tours and their media conferences, to fund their media campaigns and to distribute campaign leaflets and how-to-vote cards? The most likely answer appears to be from the political parties. What surer way could there be of guaranteeing that a politician—a partisan figure—would be elected as president? Yet the election of a partisan Head of State is the antithesis of our system of constitutional parliamentary democracy which requires a non-partisan Head of State.On what issues would the competing candidates campaign? What would be the issues on which they would debate to gain advantage, one over the other? Presumably, they would, like ordinary politicians appeal to certain sections of the community by advancing policies to favour this group or that, to emphasise this priority or that. Again, this seems to me to be the antithesis of our sort of parliamentary democracy in which the Head of State stands for all the people, and policy issues are debated and decided in Parliament and in elections for Members of Parliament. Under direct election, it is highly likely that we will end up with a president elected with, say, 51% of the vote, after distribution of preferences, to a runner-up's 49 %.(Time expired)10:36:009132Hollis, Colin, MPMr HOLLISDH4ThrosbyALP00—I am pleased to make some comments on this report of the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum on the Constitution Alteration (Establishment of Republic) Bill 1999 and the Presidential Nominations Committee Bill 1999. They say that to appreciate your own country you have to have lived for some time in another country. I have lived for some time in three different countries. I lived for two years in New Zealand many years ago, I lived for 12 years in Great Britain and I lived for a year in Malta. As I have lived and worked outside Australia, I think I do appreciate and understand somewhat the feelings of Australians. Even before I lived overseas I was always a longstanding supporter of Australia becoming a republic with its own Australian head of state, and I will be advocating a yes vote in my electorate and in the Illawarra region generally.The point I want to make is that there is no way that I could be accused of being anti-British. As I said, I lived there for 12 years, my partner of many years standing is British, I went to university in the United Kingdom and, as some of my parliamentary colleagues would tell you, I am a regular visitor there. In fact, I was in Britain as recently as two weeks ago. I am not anti-British. I would be one of the most pro-British people in this parliament. If the people of the United Kingdom want the House of Windsor as their head, that is fine for them, but I believe that in Australia we want our own head of state.In listening to the debate on the republic in the other chamber, I thought one of the most telling points was made by the member for Cook, who said that, when the Australian team was advocating for the Olympic Games, the daughter of the British monarch, Her Royal Highness Princess Anne, was in the other room advocating for the British case.Indeed, as you would appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker, recently when Australia was having difficulties with its exports to the United Kingdom, Her Majesty the Queen did not jump on a jet and go over to Washington to put Australia's case for lamb to Bill Clinton. None of the royal family went over there to put Australia's case for lamb. But, had that been a British case—and they have been having trouble with mad cow disease recently—I would expect Prince Charles, Prince Andrew or one of the other members of the royal family to put the case for British meat exports because, really, that is their role. As much as anything else, today the British royal family is part of trade promotion for the British government.Recently, the Queen visited Tokyo, along with about 100 British business people, to promote British trade with Japan. And good on her; I support that wholeheartedly. But when Australia is promoting trade overseas, we cannot call on the so-called Queen of Australia or the other members of the royal family. It is up to the Australians to do that. If it was really correct that the British monarch was also the head of Australia—and she is the constitutional head of Australia at the moment—we should be able to use that position, in the same way that we would be able to use the position of an Australian head of state—along with all the legal and constitutional aspects—to help Australia to promote its image abroad, whether it be in respect of trade, sport or any other area.The republic would bring its most senior public office position into the hands of an Australian national. If this is not a matter of great importance to all self-respecting Australians, I really do not know what is. How can people who do not see this point of view argue with this when, at the moment, under Australia's current constitutional arrangements, someone of another nationality holds the most important position as Australia's head of state? The Governor-General is the representative of Her Majesty, Queen of the Commonwealth of Australia. A British citizen has the custodianship of our most senior public office position.I listened to some of the contributions to the debate in the other chamber last week. I happened to listen to the speech by the member for Riverina; I was present in the chamber at the time. She made a comment in the adjournment debate about the memories of 1975 and the sacking of the Whitlam government. Of course, we in the Labor Party will never forget this unforgivable mugging of a democratically elected government, which was overthrown by a Governor-General. But are we proposing to abolish the infamous reserve powers of the Governor-General? We are not. They will remain unchallenged. In fact, the power of the President will be the power that the Governor-General holds at the moment.The question which those supporting a constitutional monarchy must ask themselves is: why are they so opposed to one of our own assuming the highest public office in this country? Where is the feeling of pride in being an Australian? The member for Riverina said that there is no alternative better than what we have currently. That is absolute rubbish, as is this argument which I have heard people put: `If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' If we had taken this argument, Australia would still be six colonies today. There would have been no progress made at all. Sometimes you have got to take that next step forward.When you look at it, it is not all that dramatic. What we are doing basically is replacing the office of Governor-General with the office of President of the Commonwealth of Australia. The alternative we should have is an Australian citizen assuming the office of President of the Commonwealth of Australia.In a country where your use-by date is sometimes the age of 30, it is not bad to be over 30, because you can remember some things that have happened in the past. I remember the great debate in Australia when Sir William McKell was appointed as an Australian born Governor-General. We had had one Australian born Governor-General a long time before that. But there were screams from those on the conservative side about how this was such a change. I can remember, with respect to any small move in Australian political life, the great screams from those on the conservative side. We had had a long line of Governors-General. From memory, the debate might not have been about Sir William McKell; it might have involved the next Australian born Governor-General. That was the start of the whole train of Australian born Governors-General.It would be unthinkable today not to have an Australian born Governor-General. There was a huge outcry in the community when the first non-British Australian Governor-General was going to be appointed. It is the same with many of these things. I remember in the parliament a couple of years back when the now government, the then opposition, took it upon themselves to fly Australian flags on their desks as a great show of patriotic fervour. On the Labor side, we were supposed to be unpatriotic because we did not have little Australian flags on our desks. If they are so patriotic, why are they not patriotic about having an Australian born head of state?I have never been a narrow nationalist or a flag-waving Australian. I do not necessarily think everything about Australia is wonderful. There are many things that are wrong in Australia that we should all be trying to fix. But I am immensely proud, in my own quiet way, of being an Australian. There is no other country in the world that I would want to live in. I have lived in three other countries. Every time I come back to this country, I feel an immense sense of pride and I feel an immense sense of pride when I am overseas. If I am representing Australia, I feel immensely proud about that. I never parade my pride or my nationalism. I am not a flag-waving national. I always think people who do this are somewhat suspect.I do support those who firmly hold views that are contrary to mine. The people who really annoy me, who I have no time for and who I am very angry about, are those people who want Australia to become a republic but they are going to vote no because they do not like the method of selecting the President. This is not the most important argument for me. The most important argument is for Australia to become a republic with our own head of state. I can see merits on both sides. I can see merit in direct elections. You can point to examples such as Mary Robinson in Ireland. I can see merit in that but I can also see merit in election by the parliament. Those people who want Australia to become a republic but who will vote no, and who are campaigning no because they dislike the method of selecting a President, are very wrong and they are people who I am very angry with.The member for Melbourne Ports made a point that I often make. If you really want a non-political person as the head of state, it has got to be through the recommended method of election. Everyone touts out the names of Sir Ninian Stephen, Sir Zelman Cowen and Sir William Deane, each of them excellent Governor-Generals. But would they put themselves through the hurly-burly that each of us has to go through every couple of years? Would they tout themselves around the community to promote their own election to President?As the member for Melbourne Ports and others have said, you would get a nomination from two major political parties: you would get a nomination from the ALP, from the Liberal Party and maybe the Australian Democrats, in their usual spoiling mode, would throw in a nomination as well. Those candidates would conduct an intensely political campaign. Because of the cost of an election today, no individual would risk the amount of money to stand. We do not have the great public funding that they have in the United States. So both major candidates would be funded by political parties waging intensely political campaigns. If you want these people who are respected, such as senior High Court judges, you are only going to get them by having a nomination from an individual or community group, with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition making a recommendation to the parliament and parliament voting on it by a two-thirds majority. That is the way you are going to ensure a non-political appointment.I must say, though, that the Governor-Generals we have had on both sides of politics who have come from a political background have exercised that office of Governor-General without political interference. But it seems to me that the people out there in the community think it would be a dreadful thing to have a politician. They want to be consulted. It is very interesting to note that they are not consulted at the moment when the Prime Minister makes a recommendation for Governor-General. But somehow everyone wants to be consulted, everyone wants to have their say. Well, that is fine, that is democracy. Let them have their say. But let them be assured that if it is a directly elected President you are going to get a political appointment, you are going to get an ex-politician, or even a serving politician who would become an ex-politician, or someone who is promoted and supported by a political party. It is only by taking it away from direct election—and people can still nominate people to become the President—that you are going to get a person of the calibre of Sir Ninian Stephen, Sir Zelman Cowen or Sir William Deane; that is the only way you are going to get that sort of person.I really do not know why there is so much debate about this. Australia, we just heard the other day, has 19 million people. Why are there people in this society who want us to stay in a colonial relationship? When all the trappings are taken away from it, that is what we are when we have someone from another country as our head of state. You go overseas and try and explain to someone from a country in Africa or from many other countries why the British Queen is regarded as the Queen of Australia and why we are not in a colonial situation. For those true patriots in this country, there is no other way than for Australia to become a republic, and a republic with our own Australian citizen as our head of state.10:51:009135Morris, Allan, MPMr ALLAN MORRISFI4NewcastleALP00—This debate has been a long time coming and an even longer time taking place. I want to preface my remarks by recalling my own background and how I became aware just how important this issue was. Thirty years ago I was living and working in the UK. It was shortly after a visit to the country by a then minister who was interviewed on a number of current affairs programs that colleagues at work commenced to harass me about the fact that, as they said, `If we wanted to be a country in the world, how come we couldn't get our own monarch? If we wanted to have a Queen, why didn't we get our own?' It had never occurred to me quite so strongly that, as an act of self-deprecation, we as a country had chosen or chose still to have as head of state the monarch of another country, or even the resident of another country.As I said, colleagues in England found that very difficult. In fact, some of them were actually quite offended that, on the one hand, we used to play them at cricket and football and argue with them about trade and the like, yet, at the same time, we took this forelock in hand view that, despite all those things and our claims to sovereignty, we still chose to have their monarch. This, to them, was both hypocritical and contradictory: we could not be a sovereign country and still have their monarch. I can assure members that amongst a lot of English people—and this is 30 years ago I am talking about, and I would expect that it is much more so today—there was some level of resentment and certainly some level of mocking about the fact that we seemed to be so unable to stand on our own feet.Like many members of this House, my background and upbringing were very much in English. My university degree has majors in English. Going to England and working there was almost a return to my being, in the sense that the English writers, the things they described, the buildings they described, the streets that were in the novels and so on, the Dickenses and all the rest of it, were very much part of my childhood and my growing up. So those wanting to see this move for a republic as being in some way anti-British or anti-England, or whatever, are quite simply foolish or malicious.The fact is that we have before us as parliamentarians a challenge that many have had before. The challenge to the national leaders at Federation was to craft in this country a process of evolution from the British Westminster system. Late last century there was no doubt that the English Westminster system, as a stable, level form of government, was both effective and viable in the long term. How do you transplant that to a country halfway round the world, with very different geography and disposition of people and, in many ways, a very different background of people? So those who crafted our Constitution were given a challenge not only to translate the English Westminster model into an Australian context but also, at the same time, to give it potential for further evolution and development.Over the years since 1901 we have had a series of constitutional changes, by convention, through High Court interpretation or through political leadership. The last and most dramatic one was in 1986. I am sure most members of the Australian community do not realise that, until 13 years ago, we as a country chose to retain the English House of Lords and Privy Council as the final arbiter in many Australian legal cases. We chose that, as a country, for 85 years and then we moved on, as we have moved on on so many other issues.The constitution that those founding fathers gave us is a base. We need to move on with it. This is the opportunity to take the Constitution to the next logical step, the next logical progression. It is understandable that some are fearful and apprehensive, but what those who are simply backward looking and malevolent are doing is very un-Australian, even anti-Australian. Every country needs to evolve and develop, to move on to craft its own future. And that is always based on the past.What we are seeing in the current debate, however, is a most trivial, malevolent and hypocritical exercise. Let us take the legislation itself, and the title. The Prime Minister is an avowed monarchist—not just an anti-republican but an avowed monarchist, and there is a big difference. There may be a philosophical argument against a republic as a political model. If that is the case, let us have that debate, but that is not what we are getting in this country. We are getting a debate where monarchists are arguing against a republic not on philosophical or structural grounds but simply on historical and emotional grounds, on the basis of their personal attachments.Back in 1995 the current Prime Minister was looking for ways out of the impasse he expected in the republican debate. The holding of a convention and eventually of a referendum was put forward to take the pressure off him. We would all recall the debate that led up to the convention itself. We had all these new forms being tried. Talk about a government wanting to experiment. It experimented with voluntary voting: for the first time in 70 years, at a national level, we had a voluntary vote—by post. This was an amazing introduction. Why was that done? Was it to test the system? No, it was done to minimise the vote. There was experiment with the convention itself, regarding the people who were chosen and how they were chosen. All the way through, the whole thing has been nobbled to get away from the original commitment to have a referendum.There is basically one issue facing this country at the moment on the republic issue: do we want an Australian head of state as a requirement in our Constitution? In other words, do we want to become a country unto ourselves? That is the one question that we should have to deal with. But that is too straightforward. We all know what the answer would be, because the majority of Australians, by a substantial degree, actually want this to become a sovereign country. The only way the Prime Minister could prevent that will from being expressed was to confuse the question, bringing in the form of processes that are involved.The Constitutional Convention was not given the task of advising on that. It was given the task of deciding, if there was to be a republic, what form it should take. There are literally dozens of ways that could happen and dozens of forms it could take, and we would all know that. That could and perhaps should be the basis of a broad ranging national debate. But no, what has happened is that the process has been mixed up with the objectives, and deliberately so.The responsibility of the Prime Minister of this country to lead, to allow and to help engender national debate is manifest. It would seem to be an automatic requirement but this Prime Minister finds ways to avoid it all the time. We find he is reluctant with words. We find he refuses to accept it in the most pedantic way. But, in this case, there has been a clever mixing of the forms and processes. All the way through, this has been aimed at nobbling the expression of what people feel.We now have a debate running which is on invalid grounds because people are not being asked to express their view on the nature of our sovereignty or the mastery of our own fate. They are being asked to determine an extremely complex matter in terms of the selection. Into that a series of scares and misleading, deceptive remarks are being thrown by the Prime Minister and senior ministers. I will take just one example.The Prime Minister, almost gloatingly, said a few weeks back that, effectively, he could get whoever he wanted as President. I find it quite ironic that on the one hand his government drafts legislation and on the other he tells us how flawed it is, but it is not as flawed as he would then make out. But he tells the public, via the media, that all the processes put in place in the legislation to try and ensure there is some public involvement are a waste of time and that they can all be thwarted and that he could get whoever he wanted if he so chose.What he did not say was that the Leader of the Opposition also has the power of veto. Let us work through what that really means. We have also heard this question about how easy it would be to dismiss a President and that therefore we should not do it this way. Just think it through. A Prime Minister dismisses a President, which leaves the senior state leader or governor—whatever they are called under our system—responsible as the then Acting President. For the Parliament to appoint a new President needs the opposition leader to agree with the nomination. The opposition leader could, in fact, decline to do so.The kind of political disaster the Prime Minister would risk engendering is pretty obvious. For the current Prime Minister to say that he can get whoever he wants implies absolutely that the opposition leader would, in fact, do whatever the Prime Minister wanted. Why would he? For obvious political reasons he would not. For the Prime Minister to tell the public of Australia that the system being put forward to involve the community and to ensure that it is as bipartisan as possible are all effectively useless and a waste of time is absolutely and maliciously wrong. The fact is he knows that.This Prime Minister, this tricky John, is out there constantly misleading and deceiving and that charade has to stop. As the Prime Minister of this country, he has to have some obligation to accuracy, to fairness and to public debate. What we are seeing in this current situation is that he set the standard and the minister for employment—or the minister for unemployment—is following that. They are following the standard set by the Prime Minister of saying whatever you like in this debate; there are no holds barred. There is no responsibility to accuracy, to public interest and to national goodwill. This is a Prime Minister who talked about his concern for the people of Australia. What he is doing—and he knows it—is feeding them distorted and deceptive arguments and statements, and this debate is the worse for it.The opposition leader's power of veto in this legislation is immensely powerful and, in fact, guarantees that a President would not be a political figure because no Prime Minister would risk having their nomination for President vetoed, possibly consistently, over and over again because the system would actually allow for that. The pressure on the Prime Minister and the freedom available to the Prime Minister to pick and choose whom he or she wants is actually non-existent. It is not there at all. It is there much more for the opposition leader in our political two-party system.We have heard a whole range of issues in this debate about the direct election of a President and we all understand the concern of our community wanting to be more involved. I point with some awareness to the New Zealand situation where frustration with the politics of the day led the New Zealand electorate to choose a different political model which, from all one can read about it now, is proving extremely unworkable and unpopular. In fact, it seems that the majority of New Zealanders now very much regret that they acted with such frustration in the way that they did because it will now be equally hard to change it. I suggest the same thing is occurring in Australia.It has been put to me by a couple of people—and I think accurately so—that, on the last election results, if we had had a contest between someone like, say, Bob Hawke as a candidate for President and the current Prime Minister as Prime Minister, both would have won, and you would have had a Labor endorsed President and a Liberal endorsed Prime Minister. So those who propose a direct election really have to recognise that problem. For the minister for employment and the minister for unemployment to put forward these ideas of a direct election—and even for the previous Governor-General to put forward these ideas in the farcical way that he has—as being a workable model, denies all the potential dangers.This is an evolutionary step. It is a big step, but in many ways it is the smallest one we could take for this next part of our national evolution and national development. We have the responsibility to move this country forward in its forms, processes and institutions. The institution of the head of state needs to move forward so that it is an Australian institution, one that we can all be involved in. This legislation and this report help move that process onward.11:06:009138Price, Roger, MPMr PRICEQI4ChifleyALP00—We are noting the advisory report on the Constitution Alteration (Establishment of Republic) Bill 1999 and the Presidential Nominations Committee Bill 1999, a report of the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum which I was pleased to serve on. Essentially, we are debating the issues surrounding a vote on the republic, and it is always a pleasure to see such a staunch republican in the chair.10000Price, Roger, MPMr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hollis)—In this position I have no position at all.QI4PRICEMr PRICE—I appreciate that, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have to say that in your own electorate and amongst your colleagues your strong views are well known but they have never influenced your decisions from the chair. I am more than happy to concede that.Firstly, I need to say that the Attorney-General has had, I think, a pretty good track record as a minister of the House in terms of referring bills to committees and, indeed, the House committee. It is a pity that more use is not made of this procedure. I think that this report reflects the good work that a committee can do, not only in gathering expert advice, in particular, but also in gathering in the views and opinions of ordinary Australians.A lot of attention has been drawn to the recommendation of the committee for the long title of the bill: `A Bill for an Act to alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with the Queen and Governor-General being replaced by an Australian President.' It is a source of regret to me that the government could not bring itself to accept what was clearly a unanimous recommendation by the committee of all those members that actually considered the matter in the report.It is true that there were some members who put in a minority report. In terms of the contribution, one member, I must say, did not travel outside of Canberra but submitted a minority report after attending one meeting of the committee. I find that disappointing. But clearly, it was a unanimous recommendation and it was surprising, I think. I do not think people believed that we would be able to reach that point.Not only did the government reject it but they made a couple of changes. Firstly, they deleted `Australian' before the word `President'. I suspect that was done because it assists the no vote. That is why the word was deleted. Secondly, they added the words, `approved by two-thirds of parliament.' We are not witnessing leadership and statesmanship from the Prime Minister on this issue. The insertion of that last clause was clearly designed to minimise the chances of the yes case because to mention just that part of the whole nomination approval process is totally mischievous.We need to compare that process with the current situation. There is absolutely no process whatsoever at present. You cannot pick up PM&C guidelines for selecting and appointing a Governor-General. Malcolm Fraser clearly, in his evidence, said that it is a decision uniquely and solely with a Prime Minister. He does not even have to go and get under-the-line cabinet approval of the selection. As a matter of courtesy he informs cabinet, but all he has to do is select a person and then make the phone call to Buckingham Palace and we have a Governor-General. The point is that apart from it showing a lack of respect for his own office, a Prime Minister can select his head gardener or his chauffeur to be Governor-General. There is no breach of the law, there is no breach of any convention, and that is within his grasp now. It has not been done and it is unlikely to be done.This nomination process is a recommendation of the Constitutional Convention. We will have a process of nominating and selecting a President. Ordinary citizens can be involved should they desire to do so. Just as we are going through the process of identifying worthy citizens—older people—in my community for recognition, so too could individuals or organisations identify people who they feel are appropriate people to be considered for the position of President of Australia.Mr Deputy Speaker, like you I have many schoolchildren visit this Parliament House to see how the institution works. Wouldn't it be a really great thing if we were to see one day someone from our electorate, some young person, nominated or considered for the position of President? That nomination then would go on to a nominations committee—half made up of community representatives, and half made up of federal, state and territory parliamentary representatives—to sift through the nominations. At the end of the day a short list is provided to the Prime Minister.The Prime Minister then would need to consult with the Leader of the Opposition because you need a two-thirds approval process to get the thing through. That means that rather than it being a very partisan thing, rather than it being a jobs for the boys matter, the person who is going to be thrown forward by this process is going to be well and truly above politics. This really strengthens the standing of the President rather than diminishes it.However, using the words `approved by a two-thirds majority of members of parliament' is really trying to suggest that there is something sleazy about the process, that it will be members of parliament who will be making the decision whereas, Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I and other members would have a very limited role. A nomination would be moved by the Prime Minister at a joint sitting, presumably seconded by the Leader of the Opposition, and we would vote yes or no. We will not even be given a choice, we will be voting yes or no. In a sense it is a very limited role that we have, and that the parliament has for that matter.I heartily approve of the idea that prime ministers and leaders of the opposition should be required to consult and cooperate in the best interests of the nation. I think it is a very positive thing. The words chosen by the Prime Minister have been a bit demeaning of the whole process. I am still hopeful that the referendum might get up. I make no apologies for saying that I am a republican and I can clearly do that as I speak here before you. I am uncluttered by high office in making an unambiguous statement.QK6SERCOMBEMr Sercombe—Such unfairness.QI4Price, Roger, MPMr PRICE—Indeed. I have to admit that I had never really thought that in my lifetime we would be voting on the proposal. I want to make an important point. It is fanciful to suggest that somehow there is some value in voting no on this issue but that, at some later date, a new and better model will evolve. That may be true, but our record on referendums in this country is not really very good in terms of their success rate. Only eight of 43 referendums have been successful. The last referendums that were put before the people occurred with the bicentenary and I thought some of them were pretty mundane propositions. History will record that Peter Reith made his mark, or cut his teeth, in running a vigorous no campaign to some radical propositions such as states should be required to pay full and proper compensation if they take over someone's land. It is not easy to have a referendum passed.We should not be apologetic when we refer to this model as the minimalist model. Had the Constitutional Convention gone for anything more radical, I do not think we would have the support on board to get it up. At the end of the day, to be successful in a referendum, you need bipartisan support. You need the government of the day and the opposition on board. The opposition and most of the government are on board on this proposal. We are not likely to get another opportunity to look at this issue for quite some time. If people are republican, they really should be voting yes to the major proposition, which is whether we should be a republic and reserve for some unknown date an opportunity to look at whether this is the best model. I think it is a good model.I think we can say that we have tried to keep the powers of the President similar to those of the Governor-General. I know some learned experts have said it is exactly the same, but some monarchists point out—and I will give them a point, if you like—that, having varied the nomination process and put a safety net in the dismissal process, the powers are not exactly the same. They are broadly similar but not exactly the same. I think what changes have been made are overwhelmingly for the better, but I concede that they are broadly similar. They are certainly nothing to be worried about.It is interesting that, in contributions about the relative role of the President and the Prime Minister, it is the powers of the Prime Minister that have been marginally diminished and certainly not those of the President. Yet some commentators, and some who get involved in the debate, believe that the goodwill that has operated for 100 years in the office of Governor-General and the office of Prime Minister—with one exception—is suddenly going to leave us. We suddenly need to contemplate psychotic rogue prime ministers and psychotic rogue presidents.These are great offices in the land and it is very fanciful to suddenly say that, under this sort of extreme scenario, we would require safeguards that are not in the current system. Even if there were an extreme scenario, there are already safeguards that would prevent the serial dismissal of a President and an Acting President.Mr Deputy Speaker, I know you cannot comment on the report. I believe it is a very good report, worthy of consideration by parliament and the people of Australia. I hope that, when we have our referendum on 6 November, the people of Australia will vote yes to the two propositions put before them, particularly yes for a republic.11:21:009141Murphy, John, MPMr MURPHY83DLoweALP00—I am pleased to participate in the debate this morning on the report of the Joint Select Cpommittee on the Republic Referendum on the Constitution Alteration (Establishment of Republic) Bill 1999 and the Presidential Nominations Committee Bill 1999. There is a lot of confusion in the community about what is proposed on 6 November next. Whilst most people know there is a referendum on 6 November, just over half know what the referendum is really about.The referendum waters are constantly being muddied by prominent members of the Howard government, the spoilers who all seem to delight in taking different positions on the model being proposed. Worse, issues like the claimed loss of the Queen's birthday, the said loss of our flag, the said changes to our national anthem, the said loss of how parliament will operate, the claimed changes to our membership of the Commonwealth and the claimed changes to Australian money and our legal and tax systems—the list goes on and on—are all clearly designed to frustrate the will of most Australians.I cannot help feeling that the referendum is doomed, but that will not stop me campaigning for the yes case. Why? Because when I speak to my constituents in my electorate of Lowe, in Five Dock, Drummoyne, Strathfield, Burwood, Croydon, Ashfield, Enfield, Concord and Cabarita, overwhelmingly they want an Australian, one of us, to be their head of state.We know the Prime Minister is an avowed monarchist, as the member for Newcastle just reminded us a few moments ago in his speech. He also reminded us of the trickiness of the Prime Minister's position. This was also picked up by the member for Chifley, who spoke before me. However, in a colossal demonstration of double standards and hypocrisy, we have the Prime Minister believing that the Prime Minister should be the person to open the Olympic Games. If it is not good enough for Her Majesty to open the Games, how can the Prime Minister go around defending the monarchy? He wants to open the biggest event in the world, for his own self-interest. It is not good enough for Queen Elizabeth II to open the Games. It is absolutely disgraceful and it exposes the Prime Minister for the hypocrite that he is on this issue.The referendum is as much about revealing our maturity as a self-confident nation as it is about the extent of our political ignorance. We will face the greatest indictment by future generations if this referendum is lost as a result of ignorance or, more particularly, some opportunists exploiting that ignorance to create a fear campaign to paralyse the decision making process.It has been argued that to superimpose an elected President in our Constitution, giving that person the powers that our Governor-General currently enjoys, would be a recipe for disaster. On the literal powers, a virtually unrestrained discretion is given to our Governor-General in the current Constitution, and there is a risk that we would be creating a republic at the expense of our democracy.It must be acknowledged that the majority of Australians want to elect their President by a direct vote. The reason commonly given is that Australians do not want a politician as President, and believe that if members of parliament have a role in the process that is what they will end up with. In fact, people overlook the political reality that to win elections it is imperative, one, to establish an agenda of issues which you propose to address; two, to create media opportunities, some would say by appropriate gimmick or thrill-seeking opportunities; three, to engage advertising agents to produce propaganda, presumably based on a populist message; four, as is increasingly becoming commonplace, to vilify opponents; five, to obtain a massive financial base; and, six, to obtain a massive human resource base.All these factors make it extremely likely that it will only be a person endorsed by one or other of the major political parties who would succeed in such a popular election. In any event, as an alternative, on the assumption that the successful candidate was independently wealthy or somehow able to capture the patronage of wealthy businesses, that person, if they were not a politician at the start of the process, would be an extremely adept politician by the end of it. We would be creating a political rival to our Prime Minister and possibly to the government of the day. That is not to say that, if attention was given to codifying the reserve powers, the prerogative powers and the constitutional conventions which have developed, such a system could not be workable. To do so without so codifying those aspects and specifically stating them in a written document would be a recipe for potential disaster. That fact is overlooked by those who are currently advocating an immediate move to a directly elected President.Given the level of ignorance about our current Constitution or, indeed, what is being proposed at this year's referendum, one needs to rhetorically ask: what hope is there of Australians currently being able to come to terms with issues associated with the exercise of reserve powers, prerogative powers and constitutional conventions, such that they are in a position to agree on a codification of those? The answer is my hope and Buckley's. Similarly, any referendum proposing a directly elected President at this point in Australia's history would inevitably be destined to fail because of the substantial threat that it would present to our stable system of government unless and until those issues were resolved.What is proposed in the referendum, which is based on the Constitutional Convention model, is a detailed nomination procedure which is set out in a separate piece of legislation, the Presidential Nominations Committee Bill. That being an ordinary act of parliament and not part of the Constitution, it will be capable of amendment through the normal parliamentary processes. The link to the Presidential Nominations Committee Bill is contained in a new proposed section 60 in the Constitution which provides for the bipartisan nomination procedure by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition after considering the report of a committee established and operating as parliament provides to invite and consider nominations for appointment as President. The Constitution, in other words, will specifically acknowledge that it is for the parliament to provide for the establishment and operation of the nominations committee. There is nothing whatsoever to prevent that nominations committee developing and becoming increasingly sophisticated. For instance, there is nothing to prevent the committee developing and evolving into a collegiate system based on the American presidential nominations colleges.Our system of government is quite different from the impression one gets reading the black and white wording of our Constitution, and that is as a result of the development of conventions. There is nothing preventing conventions developing in respect of the nomination procedures and, moreover, those conventions can specifically be incorporated in amendments to the nominations procedures bill. It must be accepted that section 60 of the Constitution does not make it mandatory for the Prime Minister to accept the recommendations of the nominations committee. However, the political reality is that even today, given the high profile nature of the nominations procedure, any Prime Minister would be committing political suicide to do so. That would become more so if the nominations procedure evolved to such an extent that it was based on a popular vote.In conclusion, opinion polls are important to the extent that they provide a meter of national sentiment and also of the level of public knowledge. They reveal that two out of three Australians regard the British monarchy as an anachronism, and approximately 60 per cent would like to replace the British monarch with an Australian President. They reveal also that a majority of Australians would like to directly elect the President, primarily because they do not want a politician as their President. I happen to feel that, if this referendum on 6 November is doomed and if at some time we put to the people the proposition that they can directly elect the President, so be it. And if we end up with Shane Warne or Cathy Freeman or Ian Thorpe as President in some future year, I accept that—and so should we accept it—because that is the will of the people. I do not see any problem with that. If that is what the people want, that is what we should be prepared to give the people. We are here representing the people.The polling in respect of the level of knowledge of our current constitutional arrangements demonstrates, regrettably, profound ignorance in the bulk of the community. In a recent speech, Chief Justice Spigelman cautioned that, when we are looking at significant change, change must evolve cautiously and conservatively so that it can be adjusted and readjusted to make sure it does not have an unforeseen effect. No more is that caution warranted than when we are talking about constitutional change.The model proposed for this year's referendum will not replace a democracy with a republic. It will entrench our democracy under an Australian head of state. It still allows for the development and evolution of the nominations procedure over time, and there is nothing at all preventing the development of that procedure to the point where it could develop to allow a popular vote. At the same time, that procedure has the fundamental protection that it would constantly be reviewable by our democratically elected representatives.To oppose the republic bill as Peter Reith is suggesting, on the basis that he favours a direct election, is short-sighted. With respect, it demonstrates ignorance of what is involved in establishing such a model and is quite inconsistent with constitutional change being by evolution rather than revolution.In short, what is proposed at this year's referendum is a significant improvement on our current system. For the first time our written Constitution will reflect our political reality, whereby the executive acts on the advice of the government of the day. Secondly, whereas one person now selects the Governor-General, that will involve broader community consultation. The person so elected must be above party politics because selection requires the endorsement of both sides of politics. Finally, whereas there is, effectively, nothing preventing the Prime Minister from dismissing the Governor-General at his whim, there will at least be some accountability in the system whereby the Prime Minister must account to parliament for the reasons for dismissal. All these things are significant improvements on our system of government.The selection mechanism can evolve, replacing a foreign citizen with an Australian as our head of state. This will undoubtedly express our confidence and maturity as a nation. Nothing has ever been achieved in our history by those who have constantly said no. Our achievements as a nation have all been made by those who have said yes. What I am putting is that there is no justifiable reason to say no at this year's referendum. If we do, we will be judged very poorly by history.11:34:009144Theophanous, Andrew, MPDr THEOPHANOUSQJ4CalwellALP00—I want to refer to a number of issues which do come out of the report of the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum but which also have a broader basis in relation to the whole question of the republic referendum. Recommendation 2 of the committee, in paragraph 3.19, reads:The Committee recommends that cl.11 of the Nominations Committee Bill be amended to require the Prime Minister to, as far as practicable, have regard to the diversity of the Australian people when appointing community members of the Nominations Committee.As far as I am aware, that amendment has not taken place.This actually goes to the heart of the concerns that I have about this whole referendum process. A number of members have expressed their concern that the community has not been allowed to really participate in this process. I think this is one of the issues which have led a number of people to go for a no vote in this referendum. I do not agree with that approach but I can see where they are coming from because they feel that the process that has been put down is not really reflective of the true nature of the Australian nation as it is today.The emphasis that I want to talk about is the multicultural nature of the Australian nation. That clause which refers to the diversity of the Australian people specifically came out of a discussion as to whether, first of all, there was going to be a sufficient number of women represented on bodies such as the nominations committee, and also whether there was going to be representation from people of ethnic and indigenous or Aboriginal background. What has happened is that this proposition has been ignored on the basis that the government feels that it can do the right thing and it does not need to have any legislative requirement.You would not want to be relying on the recent experience of what has happened in the area of multicultural affairs and the ethnic communities as a basis for great confidence in the Prime Minister taking this matter into account. The fact of the matter is that we have been going backwards in the whole area of multicultural affairs in the last few years. We have been going backwards in the area of consultation with the ethnic communities in the last few years and, of course, we have not made progress in the area of indigenous reconciliation or indigenous affairs in the last few years.I think it has been estimated that about 40 per cent of the population of Australia is either of non-English speaking background or has at least one parent that is of non-English speaking background. You would not know it looking at the representation, for example, in the federal parliament, in the state parliaments or in other bodies in this society at the top levels. You would not know that. Never mind looking at our general mainstream media where they seem to make a major point of trying to represent Australia as a monocultural society, rather than as a multicultural society.But this is a matter for another debate. What is important at this point, however, is how we are going to ensure that the nominations committee actually takes into account the multicultural nature of Australia. How are we going to ensure that there are enough people on the nominations committee from non-English speaking backgrounds and from indigenous backgrounds? How are we going to ensure, in other words, that the nominations committee reflects the actual nature and multicultural character of the Australian society?This is a question and maybe if we had a minister responding to this debate, we might get some answers, but unfortunately we do not have a minister responding to all the important issues which members are bringing up in relation to this matter.The attitude is reflected in, for example, what has happened in the preamble debate. The Prime Minister has moved away from certain aspects of his original preamble, which was so old-fashioned and ancient you would think it might have been written 50 years ago instead of today. He moved away from that to some degree.There is still not in the preamble any reference to a commitment to Australia being a multicultural society and to the values, philosophy and ideas of multiculturalism. There is no such commitment given, even though we still have the Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs and we still have a minister, supposedly, with responsibility for immigration and multicultural affairs. The Prime Minister has a lot of difficulty even using the word `multiculturalism'. He does not like it at all. We know that; that has been his history for the last 20 years.Nevertheless, you would think, given that it was a government position, that there might be some attempt to include reference to the fact that Australia is a multicultural society, or supporting our multicultural society, or supporting and affirming the fact that the Australian people believe in multiculturalism—which, by the way, they do. Notwithstanding the propaganda of some of our mainstream journalists who keep attacking multiculturalism, the fact is that the majority of Australian people have shown in various ways that they support multiculturalism.Given all of that, it was of concern that there was no reference to it in the preamble. It was particularly of concern to me that the Democrats, who have a very strong policy on multiculturalism, appeared to make no effort to include reference to multiculturalism in the proposed preamble. This concern has been expressed by a newly formed group with which I am associated, called the National Multicultural Support Group. The Victorian convenors of that group are Councillor John So, Professor Tasos Tamis and Mr Bill Cope—all prominent activists in multicultural affairs in Victoria. They issued a statement on the day on which the preamble suggestion came out, in which they stated as follows:"The Prime Ministers new Constitutional preamble not only fails Australia's indigenous people, it also fails to positively affirm the values of multiculturalism. There is no acknowledgment of the positive features of our multicultural society or the need to respect our cultural diversity.". . . . . . . . .We believe that the reference to the role of immigrants in building the Australian nation is welcome, but it does not go far enough. The preamble should have referred to the often-expressed desire of the Australian people to live in a multicultural nation, one that respects and fosters the diversity of our cultural traditions.We call upon the Senate to reconsider this issue by adding to the first clause to the Preamble. This first clause states: "proud that our national unity has been forged by the Australians of many ancestries."We ask that the following words, or an equivalent, be added: "and, on this basis, affirming our support for our multicultural society."We call upon all parties to show their commitment to our multicultural society by supporting an addendum of this kind.We also wish in this statement to support the indigenous people of Australia in their request that their custodianship of the land of Australia be recognised. The preamble should be changed to accommodate this request.Only through the recognition of our multicultural society, and the rights of our indigenous people, can we hope to unify the nation.This important statement reflects, from what I have been able to determine in discussions with representatives of ethnic communities' councils and other multicultural groups around the nation, the view of many people in ethnic communities that there should be greater recognition of those communities—the role that they are playing in Australia and multiculturalism in general in this constitutional process—in the preamble and, as I have mentioned, in the nominations process.If we do not have sufficient people of these backgrounds on the nominations committee, how are we going to ensure that the short list for the position of President will at least include people from a diversity of backgrounds—an Aboriginal background, an ethnic background, as well as people of an Anglo-Saxon background? Unless we have a committee which is going to be fair in its determination of this process and in which Australians have confidence as reflecting the whole of the Australian nation, then obviously we are not going to be in a situation in which there will be confidence in the process.I hope that, in the run-up to the referendum and when it is passed—and I will have some concluding remarks about that—we will be assuring people from the ethnic and Aboriginal communities that they are going to have equal access to the rights given under these new provisions for the determination of the President.That leads me to another point about the actual argument in terms of the constitutional referendum. Obviously, we have a large number of people from our ethnic communities who do not speak or read sufficient English. In the constitutional referendum debate, are we going to have material provided to them in the various key ethnic languages? If we are not, then I think it will be a serious gap in a genuine debate amongst the people with respect to the referendum, because there will be significant numbers of people who will be confused.I think the majority of the ethnic communities are going to vote yes in the referendum because they do want a change, they do want progress. Nevertheless, just like every other Australian, they are entitled to hear the points of view in their own languages. What provisions are being made by the government to ensure that the various parties are going to be putting out material in the ethnic languages so that people understand the arguments in their particular language? I have not heard much about this. I do not know what provisions are going to be made. I am just saying, `Let's hope that, because there's a short period of time and translations and the production of material take time, people are already actively putting their minds to this.' And I would say that this is a responsibility which the Prime Minister himself ought to be taking up—not pushing it off to other bodies, not pushing it off to some subsection of a subsection of the department of immigration, but actually making it a responsibility of his own department.If we are, as I say, going to have a debate which is going to be informed and in which all of the Australian people are going to participate, then those people who have come from other countries—who have become Australian citizens, who love Australia and who want to participate in the society, but whose English may not yet be sufficient to understand the full complexities of the debate—need to be able to be informed in their own language.Notwithstanding the deficiencies that have been mentioned about this referendum, even the fact that the committee's recommendation has been rejected by the government—the actual recommendation—I still think that much progress can be made with a positive yes vote in this referendum. It is only progress; it is not the final answer to all of our constitutional problems. Far from it. Big changes need to be made to the Constitution in the future, including the guarantee of people's rights—a bill of rights, for example. But we do need to do more, and I would urge everyone to vote yes in the referendum. (Time expired)11:49:009147Mossfield, Frank, MPMr MOSSFIELDMK6GreenwayALP00—I rise in this debate to make a few brief comments on this issue of a republic for this great nation of Australia. The starting point in my submission is the Second World War, when it became evident to most if not all Australians that, while it was important that our nation defend to the utmost the issue of democracy, it also became evident that, in the great motherland of the UK, there was not the same feeling of family being directed towards our country.We were required to make decisions to protect Australian shores—decisions that were clearly not going to be taken by our relatives in the UK. I refer specifically to the decisions that the political leaders of this nation had to make at that time. The great Labor Prime Minister John Curtin had to make that tremendous decision to bring Australian troops back from the Middle East to defend our shores. He made that decision against the wishes of the British Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill. John Curtin deserves a mention in this debate because I believe that was a turning point in our history. It put a tremendous strain on his health that he had to go through that period worrying about whether those troops would arrive safely back in Australian waters. As we know, fortunately that did happen and that may have been one of the reasons why we were able to successfully conclude the war.As I have explained, we showed by our actions that we could and would defend ourselves while at the same time not going back on our obligations to assist the birthplace of our democracy, the UK. Since 1945 we, in Australia, have continually shown that we are independent and quite capable of looking after ourselves, and we have done so. We accepted that, in a family sense, we should recognise our democratic roots by legislation and so we created the Queen of Australia.Now the time has come to take the next step forward on the long walk towards total independence. Not only do we need to ensure that we pass legislation to bring on the republic referendum but we need to work assiduously towards ensuring a strong yes vote all over the nation. We must not be deflected by the antics of people such as the Minister for Employment Services or the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business who are trying to deflect the issue with some outrageous argument about the flag. Even the Deputy Prime Minister has jumped on the bandwagon.There is no doubt that, in their efforts to defeat the referendum, they are now muddying the water by suggesting that there may be a change to the flag if the referendum is carried. We all know that is not right. They, as allegedly responsible federal ministers, know only too well that to change our flag requires a plebiscite of the people—and there is no such plebiscite even hovering quietly in the wings. Arguments such as those being flown in daily press releases from the Hon. Tony Abbott ought to be scorned for what they are: silly childish pranks being run by a very immature young minister, aided and abetted by the Hon. Peter Reith, who is only a spoiler trying to ensure his name is not forgotten when the time comes to replace this present Prime Minister—prior to the next election, of course, because we all know there will be a change of Prime Minister after the next election.Even the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, is running the flag argument. An article in the Canberra Times of 24 August states:The flag would be changed if Australia became a republic, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson warned yesterday.However, the Opposition said this was a diversionary tactic because the Howard Government had specifically introduced legislation to prevent any flag change without a national plebiscite.Although public opinion in favour of a republic is nearing a majority, the community is strongly against changing the Australian flag.Further on, the same article states:Opposition legal affairs spokesman Robert McClelland said claims about the flag were an attempt to divert attention from the issue of having an Australian head of state.The Flag Act requires a national ballot to be held before a change to the flag could be made. "The referendum in November proposes no such change," he said."The fact that Peter Reith and other `No' vote advocates are resorting to the use of these diversionary tactics shows just how desperate they are. They obviously don't want to talk about the real issues at stake in November's referendum."That was said by the opposition's spokesman on legal affairs, Robert McClelland.We need to ensure that these silly pranks are exposed to enable us to look at the real issue of a democratic, independent nation whose head of state is not dependent on royal prerogatives or precedents. What we are asking people to give is a resounding yes to having a Constitution that recognises that the head of state must be from Australia and is not a political appointment. To choose a head of state in a non-political way will be a major and important change for us. Even our most respected present Governor-General was a political appointment by the previous Prime Minister. That appointment was made by a prime minister not required to get any sort of approval from anyone but to make his own political decisions.If the referendum is approved, the head of state can be nominated by anybody in Australia. The nomination will be viewed by a selection committee. The Prime Minister will consult with the Leader of the Opposition and when they agree, and only when they agree, will the nomination go to parliament. The parliamentary vote must be a two-thirds majority for the nomination to be accepted. Of course, the Prime Minister could put up a candidate that had not been approved, but a two-thirds majority of the parliament would be almost impossible to achieve under these circumstances.What we are asking the people of Australia to recognise is that by voting yes to the referendum they are not cutting off the heads of the Queen or her family. They are standing up and saying, `We are our own nation. We will be proud to belong to the Commonwealth of Nations chaired by the English royal family leader but we will be a truly independent nation amongst these nations.' Why should we feel tarnished and embarrassed because we want to ensure that our head of state truly represents the ambitions and attitudes of our nation? We do not need a head of state whose powers are lent to us by an English monarch. We need a head of state whose powers are entrenched and recognised in our own Australian Constitution. Our power and pride as a nation should come from our belief and trust in our own Constitution, and our own head of state should reflect that power and pride. Let us vote yes in the referendum to provide an Australian head of state for all Australians, from among Australians, supported by our own Australian Constitution.To summarise my position on the republic referendum: my belief is that Australia has moved on. The royal family is not relevant in today's mainstream political life. The point in history when we started to move on was during the Second World War that I have referred to earlier. The High Court of Australia now, of course, is the senior legal authority in this country. We no longer appeal to the Privy Council. We have the Governor-General who, I personally feel, would fill the role of the President with distinction.The large number of migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds that have come to Australia in recent times have changed the character and outlook of our country. This gives these great people the opportunity of putting their stamp on the Constitution of this country. I am proud to come from an electorate that I claim to be the multicultural capital of Western Sydney. We have over 120 multicultural groups in the electorate that I represent, and about a quarter of those people in the electorate would come from a non-English-speaking background. This referendum will give those people a great opportunity to put their stamp on the future of this country. What the upcoming republican referendum seeks to do is to put into our Constitution a cultural change that I believe has already happened.11:59:009149Albanese, Anthony, MPMr ALBANESER36GrayndlerALP00—I am pleased to speak in this debate on the report of the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum on the Constitution Alteration (Establishment of Republic) Bill 1999 and the Presidential Nominations Committee Bill 1999 to once again put on the record my support for an Australian republic. This is an idea whose time has well and truly come. Some 100 years ago there was a similar debate in Australia about whether we should become a federation. We will celebrate that in the year 2001. It would be appropriate as we enter the new millennium that we send a signal to the world that we are a mature, developed nation. We believe we have a right to govern ourselves fully and we do not any longer see ourselves as tied to the apron strings of the British motherland.This debate got a real push along when the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in his campaign launch prior to the 1993 election, committed Australia to becoming a republic. Of course, this had been the policy of the Australian Labor Party since 1981. Once again we have the Australian Labor Party leading the way in terms of social and political reform for this nation.It is unfortunate that everyone in this parliament does not simply agree with this position. However, we have a Prime Minister who is in a mind-set of the 1950s at best. The problem is not that we have a Prime Minister who wants to be stuck in the past himself, the real problem is that we have a Prime Minister who wants the rest of us, the whole nation, to stay back and keep him company in the past because he is so uncomfortable with the present Australian nation that he simply cannot contemplate a future Australia.I want to address also some of the questions that have been raised in regard to the republican model which is going forward at the referendum in November. This model will ensure that we have an Australian head of state who can attract broad support. A model which allows for public nomination by the Australian people, which allows for the nomination to go forward with the support of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, and which requires the support of a two-thirds majority of the Australian Parliament for that nomination to be successful, will ensure that we have an Australian head of state who we can all be proud of.The alternative model, the direct election model, would ensure that we have a straight-out Labor versus conservative race for the President of Australia. That would be divisive. That would ensure that someone, whoever was President, owed political allegiance to one or other political party. It would not ensure that we have the sort of quality which we have with the current Governor-General, Sir William Deane, who brings a great deal of honour to this country. It would also ensure that we were not able to gain the input and ideas from ordinary Australians about who the President should be. It would be decided, essentially, by the national executives of both political parties, and we would all be the poorer for it.It is unfortunate that this report which we are taking note of today was not simply accepted by the government. It is unfortunate that we have a Prime Minister who is determined to try to distort—and rort, if possible—the result of this referendum. The committee was a bipartisan committee, it had representatives from both major political parties and from the minor parties. Therefore, surely the question which was put forward by that committee should have been agreed to. But what we see is an undermining at every possible opportunity.The latest undermining is that of the Minister for Industrial Relations, the Kama Sutra of the republican debate; the person who has had every position possible and some which have not been seen before. We have had to draw new diagrams to work out exactly where Mr Reith was coming from on this. The furphy of raising the flag issue, which I am pleased to see was raised in the coalition party room yesterday, really highlights the depths to which people will go in spreading misinformation in order to distort the result of the republic referendum.This will be a referendum which has nothing to do with the flag. It is simply the case that it is a very straight change from a head of state who is the representative of the Queen of another country to a head of state who would be an Australian citizen chosen by the Australian parliament. It would be a simple change and a symbolic change—but an important one, nonetheless, because the Australia at the time of Federation is no longer the Australia of today. Nations all around the world have fought for and gained independence and freedom. We, in Australia, have a multicultural society which is very important in terms of reflecting no allegiance to any particular foreign nation.We do not forget our past and where we came from. We acknowledge that this change should ensure that we would remain a member of the Commonwealth, and I support that. We do not forget our past, just as we do not forget the real and full past, which is not the very short blimp of time of the 200-odd years that European settlers have been in this nation but the some 40,000 years of very rich history in which the indigenous people of this country undertook their custodianship of this land.It is very important that we are able to move forward. Young people in this country simply cannot identify with Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles being our head of state. When you travel overseas it is seen as quite bizarre and embarrassing. I well remember the lunch held for President Clinton in which the Prime Minister toasted the head of state, the President of the United States. Everyone stood and duly gave the toast. When President Clinton replied by toasting the Queen of Australia, the gasp of embarrassment which went around that room really did show. These changes occur and then they are accepted.When the Olympics are on next year, and Ian Thorpe wins gold medals, we will hear Advance Australia Fair; we will not hear God Save the Queen. Thank goodness, because that also was a necessary change which occurred. It was a very positive change and one which gives us pride in being Australians. It is quite symbolic that the Olympics next year will be opened by the Prime Minister. I have no objection to that. The standard is that it should be opened by the Australian head of state.I well remember when the then Prime Minister Paul Keating had the audacity to place his hand gently on the back of the Queen. It created front-page stories in British newspapers that it was inappropriate behaviour. This Prime Minister has shoved the Queen off the platform at the Olympics. The big shoulder charge has been on so that he can open them. He knows that, when watching the opening of the Olympic ceremony, the whole world would think, `I thought this was in Sydney, not Manchester, or London; I thought Sydney won the bid.' That is why it is appropriate that an Australian do the job.Frankly, I think Sir William Deane would be a lot better. We would all be much more comfortable if Sir William Deane were to do it, simply because of the hypocrisy of this Prime Minister. On the one hand, we are not able to have the change but, on the other hand, the Prime Minister wants this opportunity. This failed frustrated sportsperson has chosen to do this.We are a mature nation. We do need to have our own head of state and I think the desperation of those who wish us to stay back is very embarrassing. That desperation, of course, has also led to the fact that there will be two questions in November: one on whether or not we become a republic and the second on the preamble. I want to address my comments to that.The Labor Party will be recommending a yes, yes vote in that referendum. But we will not be out there campaigning in support of the preamble, because the preamble has very clearly been an attempt by the Prime Minister to distort the issues. The first farcical embarrassing preamble that was put up by the Prime Minister, which contained the word `mateship' and that sort of incomprehensible language, has been rejected. The current preamble that has been put forward is substantially better but the Prime Minister still could not make that simple step to include `custodianship'.There are historical inaccuracies. It talks about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as Australia's first people when, in fact, Aboriginal people were Australia's first people. There is an important distinction there. Our preamble should give us a great deal of pride. It should have gained a proper debate. It should not have been rammed through the parliament without any chance for us to debate it, because of a sleazy deal between the Prime Minister and a couple of Democrats around a table. That is no way to write the preamble to a Constitution. I do not think that brings any credit to the Prime Minister.I began by saying that my real problem with this debate, with the Prime Minister, was not that he was someone who was stuck in the past; it was that he wanted the rest of us to stay back and keep him in company. That has shadowed this debate. I believe we will be in a win-win situation. The Prime Minister thinks he is so smart with these tricks on the preamble. If this republic goes down, students and young people in 30 or 40 years time will look at this and say, `How embarrassing for us as a nation that, in 1999, we had that opportunity to declare that we were ready to stand on our own and have an Australian head of state, but we had a Prime Minister who just could not make that leap of faith, who wanted us all to stay stuck in the past.' I urge people to support the republic and to support it now because it is inevitable—everyone accepts that. We should do it now, so we can do it with pride.12:14:009152Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO7T4ProspectALP00—I, too, would like to have a short involvement in this debate on the republic. Originally, I had a firm commitment on what I wanted to say. But when yesterday, probably like everybody else, I received on my desk a press release from the member for Warringah, I must admit my whole opinion of what has been happening certainly changed. That press release had nothing to do with his portfolio—heaven forbid; it concerned Mr Abbott's views on the republic. According to the Minister for Employment Services—and I quote that press release of yesterday that he circulated to every member of this parliament:It's now clear that voting yes to a republic is also voting yes to change the flag. It's impossible to change the Constitution and keep the flag—If this rubbish was just a one-off from a figure on the fringe of the debate we could laugh it off, but that is not the case. The member for Warringah is a major player in the no campaign. His is just the latest in a long line of statements from the no side of the vote which bases itself in half-truths and misinformation, or even worse.Overall, the conduct of the individuals running the no vote has been, in my belief, very shameful indeed. They have long since given up making any sort of principled case for the Constitution they would like to retain. Rather, their contribution has been largely characterised by vicious personal attacks, hate-mongering, scaremongering and wild inaccuracies of the highest order. They have substituted constructive debate with rubbish. I would like to spend my time exposing some of that rubbish here today.The minister, the member for Warringah, intensified that mud-slinging a few months ago when he chose a very `slow news' Sunday to hop into Andrew Robb and the Conservatives for an Australian Head of State. There was really no point to that attack. He had no justification for it. I personally believe the minister was simply hurling invective for the sake of it, and hoping to get himself on TV in the process. I am pleased to say that Mr Robb, sensibly and admirably, remained above the fray.The minister made his comment at a meeting of young monarchists in Melbourne. Apparently, he was attempting to palm off these young people and their opinions as an average sample of young adults in Australia, young adults who, we are supposed to believe, are dead against a republic. Not only were those young people the furthest thing from a cross-section of Australia's youth as was probably humanly possible, but it was a severely telling moment for the no campaigners. I do not know if any of you saw it, but, as the television cameras panned down that sparsely populated table, it was clear that that group of twentysomethings that the minister was addressing were certainly very much a part of a very elite set. I did not see a single ordinary young Australian among them.When he is not out there hurling invective, the minister is making wild statements about the power of a future Australian President. Recently he said that there was nothing to stop an Australian President doing a Yeltsin and plunging the country into untold disaster and upheaval. I wish these monarchists would make up their minds. One minute the republican constitution leaves the President completely emasculated, so they say—subject to the Prime Minister's summary dismissal; the next, he or she is going to be a power mad megalomaniac who threatens the very fabric of our Australian society. Which are we supposed to believe?The minister, the member for Warringah, also takes great pains to mention former Prime Minister Keating whenever he discusses the republican movement. The member for Warringah's transparent strategy is that he seems to think he will get some mileage out of it for his campaign, that the yes supporters are in some way embarrassed at any connection with the former Prime Minister, Paul Keating. Well, I can tell you he is barking up the wrong tree in that regard. I am proud to say that I served under Prime Minister Keating's government and I am proud to say that it was his leadership that really got the republican cause off the ground in this country. I am also proud to say that there was once a time in this country when we had a Prime Minister who was willing to take a leading role when it came to our nation's identity.The only people who are embarrassed by their connections are the no campaigners. They are so embarrassed at what really lies at the heart of their argument—that they want the Queen of England to remain Australia's head of state—that they will do anything not to mention her. They will even go so far as to make the preposterous and constitutionally inaccurate claim that the Governor-General is Australia's head of state. Again, all of us know that is rubbish.There are many others in the monarchist campaign team who share the minister's taste for fabrication and fallacy, to put it mildly—and I am being polite in that respect. If I was to be less charitable, I would be tempted to say that some of them seem to be hateful bigots, far more concerned with settling twisted personal political vendettas than they are with contributing to a very sensible debate on the issues surrounding the referendum to be held on 6 November. First of all, you have the campaign director of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, Mr David Elliott. Mr Elliott is a former adviser to the former New South Wales Liberal leader, Peter Collins, and to the current Minister for Aged Care and to the Prime Minister. After you have heard what Mr Elliott has had to say for himself, you would start questioning the employment standards in the offices of Liberal Party MPs.The public, I believe, gained an insight into the troubled workings of Mr Elliott's mind when he stated recently that the Constitution for an Australian republic would be manipulated by `power-hungry individuals . . . until one man could attain dictatorial powers'—much in the same way, he elaborated, as the Nazis orchestrated the collapse of Germany's Weimar Republic government and the rise of Adolf Hitler.At the same time, Mr Elliott made vicious public and personal attacks on the former Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Fraser, the current Attorney-General, Mr Daryl Williams, the former President of the Liberal Party, Mr Andrew Robb, and the highly esteemed Australian diplomat and public servant Mr Richard Woolcott, amongst others, which I thought was absolutely outrageous. Mr Elliott also said publicly, `I do not apologise for scaremongering in this campaign because government is scary.' If this were paranoid garbage coming from the loony, lunar Right or even the crackpots of One Nation, we would normally say, `Well, here they go again,' and ignore it. But Mr Elliott is at the head of the ACM campaign team. This man will have at his control up to $7.5 million of the public's money to support what I believe to be his twisted fantasies and his conspiracy gibberish.Mr Elliott has been ably assisted by Ms Kerry Jones, and vice versa. Ms Jones is the Executive Director of the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and is the chair of the official no case campaign committee, the committee which we have already been told is now having Mr David Elliott as its director. Like Mr Elliott, Ms Jones likes to run around the country making remarks and observations about an Australian republic that are not based on fact. Facts are what we all want in this debate. When she is not content with sprouting uninformed rubbish, she relies on lewd and slanderous innuendo to make her point.Recently Ms Jones said that Canada once held a referendum on becoming a republic that was `lost in every province'. Wrong. Canada has never had such a referendum. The only referenda carried out in Canada in recent times were held solely in the province of Quebec in 1993 and 1995, and concerned that province's desire for secession from the rest of Canada. If Ms Jones cannot base her arguments on fact, she relies on gutter innuendo to make her point. She asked recently, `What if we had a situation akin to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal?' And when all else fails for Ms Jones, like Mr Elliott, she sets up her tent in that final refuge of the cowards in the monarchist camp, the fear campaign. Ms Jones has said, on the public record, that an Australian republic is a step towards `civil unrest or civil war'.I am sure we would all remember the last notorious Australian to predict civil war in this country. That was Pauline Hanson. Here we have again the link between the extreme, radical Right in this country and the arguments and beliefs of those behind the pro-monarchist campaign. It might be helpful to remember at this moment what one well-known Australian had to say when Pauline Hanson made her dire prediction of civil war in this country. It was the Prime Minister who said, `It's ridiculous. I mean that is just a silly uninformed comment that nobody is going to take the least bit seriously.' I agree with the Prime Minister. He went on to say, `She is wrong when she claims that Australia is headed for civil war.' It is these same words that condemn and dismiss Kerry Jones's unhinged and Hansonesque ranting.Earlier I said that some on the monarchists' side appeared driven in their campaign by hate and bigotry rather than a genuine attachment to their cause and a desire to debate the issues based on fact. To illustrate this let me refer to the briefing paper prepared for Ms Kerry Jones by Mr Gerard Wheeler—who is, by the way, an adviser on the Prime Minister's staff. In the memo Mr Wheeler gave Ms Jones some handy tips on running the no campaign. This is some of what he wrote:Keep in mind—he said in his paper to her—it is only possible to reinforce existing prejudice, not generate entirely new ones. I see this election essentially as a battle between the mainstream and the elites. It's us against them.He went on to say in that paper that he supplied to Ms Kerry Jones:This battle should be presented as real Australians' greatest chance ever to vote against all the politicians, journalists, radical university students, welfare rorters, academics, the arts community and the rich that, deep down, they've always hated.As I said, it is nothing but prejudice and bile, bigotry and hatred. I was ashamed when I read that paper as well and that advisers could be writing stuff like that.I find it very difficult when we are supposed to have a referendum on 6 November and we are supposed to be having the cases argued for the yes and the no sides paid for by public money. This election is not going to be cheap; it is going to be very expensive as far as the taxpayer is concerned and yet the debate is not, I repeat, based on fact. We need to have fact in debate. We also need to have some serious considerations of saying to these people who have a tendency to run off at the mouth that they have to be pulled in. They have to be stopped.I was pleased when I read in today's paper that the member for Hindmarsh, in her party room debate, actually expressed concern about what was happening. I say to each and every one of these people, `Stand up to be counted,' regardless of whether you believe in the Queen—and I think she is a wonderful person and has done a terrific job. But, whether you believe in the republic or not, at least have a debate where we are all above that hatred and bigotry and then let the deciding vote be by the Australian people. That can only be presented if we are prepared to stand up to be counted in a proper ethical way.I personally hope, trust and pray that the republic will get up on 6 November. Unlike the member for Grayndler, I have already got grandchildren on the way. My eldest grandchild is 16 and she cannot even understand the debate as to why we are not there with our own head of state. I say to many of our older constituents that we represent who voice a concern about what will happen in the future: we have now, we believe, come of age and I think the Queen and all of her people would understand and appreciate it as well when we as a nation, following in excess of 200 years of European settlement, can stand up to be counted as an independent nation and say, `We do not want to sever all of our ties with England as with the rest of the countries that we deal with. But what we want to do is to make sure that in future we are recognised with our own head of state.'I would like to think that, of the children I represent in my community, one day a boy or girl can stand up and say, `I could possibly be elected as President of this country.' What a wonderful aim for those younger people. If we do not provide an opportunity we will lose it for many years to come. I know that a lot of people have misinformation going to them. I say to them and I appeal to them: please read through and make sure that you vote on that day on the facts as they are presented to you and not be scared with some of the misinformed notions that seem to be coming out from the other side of the debate.12:28:009155Neville, Paul, MPMr NEVILLEKV5HinklerNP10—I was not going to speak in this debate but I was a little taken aback by the presentation of the last three or four speakers, especially in their pejorative statements about the Prime Minister, the member for Gwydir and the member for Warringah. Undoubtedly, the referendum is a seminal issue for all Australians, and the way that the bills are presented to the public is also important. The previous speaker calling for unanimity and reasoned debate was there calling people `hateful bigots' and talking about people being unhinged.The matter of a flag seems to have been a bit of a worry to my colleagues opposite but I put the proposition that Mr Anderson, the member for Gwydir, and Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, were not so much saying that the changing of the Australian flag in itself was the core issue. What I think they were trying to say was that the flag is a representation of our symbols. Our symbols are integrally linked with the system of government that we have had.YK6WILTONMr Wilton—It has nothing to do with the flag.KV5Neville, Paul, MPMr NEVILLE—Let me finish. I did a survey in my electorate not so long ago where I asked people what they thought about changing the flag. To my great surprise, of all the issues that I had on the paper that day—things such as Medicare and employment—far and away the biggest concern to them was the flag—72 per cent. I think the next biggest issue in their minds was about 46 per cent. I do not think it is just the colours, shape and design of the flag that are of concern; it is the symbolism of that flag and what it had to do with our military history, its derivation, and how it integrally links with our system of government.Honourable members opposite have talked today about our developing a new system of conventions that will sandbag us against any future difficulties in respect of a republic. But I say to them that the traditions that we have are those that have been developed over 1,000 years of law and parliamentary government. Some of the traditions that we still have in this place today—for example, the very role of the Speaker which has been adopted by parliaments all over the world—have their derivation in the people taking a certain degree of power from the king. We still partake in a number of the niceties in the parliament, not just for the sake of tradition, but because they are an important part of a system of checks and balances that has reinforced and developed democratic government.As we move towards the decision of whether we want to stay a constitutional monarchy or become a republic, we have to understand what sort of government we want at the end of that process. This is the thing that has been missing from the whole debate. I may as well say where I come from. I have no fawning regard for the Windsor family of England—I never have had. I have a great deal of respect for the current Queen and the role she fulfils, but no fawning regard. But I have a passionate belief in the system of government that we have. That passionate belief has a lot to do with the separation of powers. One of the keynotes in our system of government is that there is someone over and above the day-to-day political process, an ultimate sanction against an abuse of the system. At present that system is found in the monarchy.The fact that we are not quite clear on how we can replace that system came out of the Constitutional Convention. The Constitutional Convention showed that even amongst republicans there was no certainty in which model should be followed. A great number of republicans recognise that those conventions were bound up in the fact that if you elected a President you created a mandate for the supposedly independent head of state.What situation would arise in the case of an elected President that contested the right of a Prime Minister or a government to dismiss him or her? People recognise—as did the member for Grayndler—that such an election would also be very divisive. Even if you mandated in the act that there was to be no political party involvement, inevitably there would be a de facto recognition that Bill Smith was a bit pro-conservative and Frank Jones was perhaps a bit pro-Labor. That would inevitably happen, and there would be division.Once that person is elected the question then arises: do they derive their powers from their popular election by the Australian people, or do we have to then have a whole system of new checks and balances in prescribing the powers of the President? That, in itself, then starts to remove some of the reserve powers that we have relied on previously in the monarchy to protect and guarantee our democratic way of life.If you look at all the systems of government around the world, it is interesting to see that there are only six nations that have had continuous constitutional government for the last 100 years. That is quite an extraordinary thing. Think about it. Think about the number of nations in Europe that have had their systems up-ended by either the First or Second World War, or been taken over behind the Iron Curtain, the upheaval in France during the De Gaulle days, or the civil war in Spain.You can go through all the countries of Europe and South America and all over the place and you will find that only six countries have come out of it pretty much unscathed. Those countries are the United States, Switzerland, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Four of the six are constitutional monarchies. And if you really look at the Swiss system, the presidency there is somewhat of the nature of a collective monarchy, or a collective presidency if you like. They have seven people and they rotate the ceremonial role of president for one year in a cycle of seven years. That is the model if you are looking at direct election.Then we have the model that is being put to the Australian people, that the President be elected by a two-thirds majority of the parliament on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, that presidential nomination having come from a committee. I am not particularly enamoured of that, especially of the fact that the Prime Minister of the day can effectively dismiss the President. I think you have to have a system that is above that because you are also, by implication, prescribing that person's powers if you say the bloke that you are going to have to discipline has the right to sack you. There is an illogical element in that.I have never argued that our relationship with Great Britain will not change. In fact, it has been evolving since the day that Captain Phillip ran up the flag at Port Jackson. Our relationship with the British throne and the government has been evolving. It evolved through self-government in New South Wales in the 1850s. It went on through the Commonwealth. It went on in the 1930s through the Statute of Westminster. There was the removal of the influence of the Privy Council on the High Court. All those things changed the nature of the relationship.I think the mere fact that the two wings of the republican movement cannot make up their minds on this is probably in itself a good reason for voting no, because what is the alternative? The alternative is a proposition that I heard put just a few weeks ago by one of the leaders of the republican movement that we should vote for the republic and get it right later—the leap of faith. In fact, a number of members opposite used the phrase `the leap of faith'.Probably the most vital thing we have after our families and our personal religious beliefs is our hold on democracy. That is the most vital thing we have. Who, in the interests of their family or their religion, would jump into a dark room not knowing what was on the other side of it? No-one would. No-one in their right mind would even contemplate it.What are we asking people to do by way of this blind leap of faith? `Look, let's go into a republic and somehow later we'll sort it out. If it stuffs up the whole fabric of the Westminster system, we'll try and sort that out, too.' That is not the basis on which to start a republic. That is not the basis on which to alter our relationship with the constitutional monarchy.I would like to make another point which relates to the same matter. I think, on reflection, if the Australian people are given another shot at this, they will probably find a lot of benefit in examining the McGarvie option again. The other one was put up by the Hon. Ian Sinclair and could not be debated, sadly, because he was the chairman of the convention. Let me tell you roughly what that model was—and it could work even under the existing system and could later form the basis for a republic: between the Governor-General and the Queen, you create a new body known as the Council of State. The Council of State would be made up of the six state governors and the Governor-General. That Council of State would have two functions. One would be to appoint subsequent governors and Governors-General and, if they became incompetent, corrupt, bankrupt or whatever, to remove them. In other words, that Council of State would assume the role of the monarchy.I think a lot of people would be comfortable with that as a first step, because it would work under the existing system of monarchy; it would just add another layer as a temporary measure. It would be a very small step from that to using exactly the same system for the election of a President. The role of the Governor-General would be replaced by that of the President. In other words, you would have a President and six state governors who would become the Council of State.You might say, `That's far-fetched. There's nothing like that around the world.' There is. This is the system that Malaysia uses. The 10 heads of state, the maharajas and the governors of the 10 states of Malaysia, elect the king. The king has a five-year term. It is an admirable system. In their case, it takes the best of the Westminster system and the best traditions of the Malay people. The Swiss system, as I said before, has such an element about it, whereby the cantons elect seven people and they take it in turn, year about, to be the ceremonial head over a seven-year term.We have heard a lot of nonsense peddled today. I resent the implication that the Prime Minister acted less than properly in this matter. He mandated in his election pledge the Constitutional Convention. He delivered on it. He said that the model to emerge from that, if there was a united model, would be put to the public. That was the two-thirds model; that cannot be contested. The other clear thing that emerged from that convention was the need for a preamble, and he is putting that to the public. To say that he is living in the past or anything else is quite incorrect. He is giving the Australian people this opportunity. It was not an opportunity presented by the opposition when they were in government. It ill behoves them to criticise him for doing what he said he would do.Debate (on motion by Mr Wilton) adjourned.Main Committee adjourned at 12.45 p.m.Answers to Questions in Writing9159The following answers to questions were circulated:9159(Question No. 671)6719159Ferguson, Martin, MPMr Martin FergusonLS4BatmanALP00 asked the Minister representing the Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government, upon notice, on 1 June 1999:(1) Has the Minister or a department or agency administered by the Minister provided grants to the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) or bodies related to the NFF since 2 March 1996; if so, (a) in each case, (i) what was the nature of the grant and (ii) for what purpose was it provided and (b) what was the total sum provided.(2) To what boards, committees or other bodies for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility have (a) Mr Donald McGauchie (b) Dr Wendy Craik or (c) other officers or staff of the NFF been appointed since 2 March 1996.(3) What sums has the Commonwealth paid in (a) sitting fees, (b) board fees, (c) travel costs and (d) related expenses with respect to each appointment referred to in part (2).9159Anderson, John, MPMr Anderson4K4GwydirNPDeputy Prime Minister10—The Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:(1) A grant to Farmwide Pty Ltd was made under the former Government's Regional Development Program for the Online Services Project. An Agreement was signed in February 1996.(a) (i) The grant was for the conduct of specific project work and payments were based on the achievement of milestones.(ii) The purpose of the project was to identify the information and other service needs and the technological requirements of farm enterprises nationwide in accessing on-line information and other services. The project included trials and pilot program work.(b) The total sum provided for under the Agreement was $1,542,220. A partial payment of $634,220 was made on signing the February 1996 Agreement and payments totalling $908,000 have been made since April 1996. (2) (a) Mr Donald McGauchie has not been appointed to any portfolio boards, committees or other bodies since 2 March 1996.(b) Dr Wendy Craik has been appointed to the Regional Australia Summit Reference Group.(c) The NFF has been represented on the Supermarket to Asia Transport and Logistics Working Group by, in turn, Mr Robert Skeffington, Mr James Ferguson and Mr Richard Calver.Mr Mark Needham was employed by the Australian Cane Growers' Council (ACGC) at the time of his appointment as a member of the Rural Communities Program Advisory Committee on 28 January 1998. Mr Needham resigned from the ACGC in May 1998.(3) (a) The Commonwealth has paid $713 in sitting fees to Mr Needham. The other appointments referred to in part (2) have not received sitting fees.(b) Nil.(c) The Commonwealth has paid $65 in travel costs to Mr Needham. The other appointments referred to in part (2) have not received payments for travel costs.(d) Nil.9159(Question No. 691)6919159Bevis, Arch, MPMr BevisET4BrisbaneALP00 asked the Prime Minister, upon notice, on 7 June 1999:Has a Department or agency for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility entered a contract with or made a grant or payment to an organisation registered under subparagraph (a) 188(1)(a) or (b) 188(1)(b) of the Workplace Relations Act 1996; if so, in each case, (i) which organisation, (ii) what sum was received and (iii) in what State or Territory is the organisation located.9159Howard, John, MPMr HowardZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:I am advised that contracts, grants or payments made by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet include:(a) (i) to (iii)OrganisationFinancial YearState/TerritoryAmountTasmanian Logging Association Ltd *1996/97Tasmania$3,000Victorian Association of Forest Industries1998/99Victoria$5,000* Please note that the Tasmanian Logging Association Ltd is not registered under subparagraph 188(1)(a) of the Act, however, the Tasmanian Logging Employers Association, which is essentially the same entity, is registered under that subparagraph of the Workplace Relations Act 1996.(b) (i) to (iii)OrganisationFinancial YearState/TerritoryAmountCFMEU National Office1996/97South Australia$10,000CFMEU VIC1996/97Victoria$10,000CFMEU Tasmania1996/97Tasmania$10,000AWU National Office1997/98New South Wales$20,000AWU WA1997/98Western Australia$20,000AWU QLD1997/98Queensland$20,000CFMEU National Office1997/98South Australia$20,000CFMEU VIC1997/98Victoria$20,000CFMEU NSW1997/98New South Wales$20,000CPSU (ACT)1997/98Australian Capital Territory$100AWU National Office1998/99New South Wales$20,000AWU QLD1998/99Queensland$20,000CFMEU National Office1998/99South Australia$20,000CFMEU VIC1998/99Victoria$20,000CFMEU NSW1998/99New South Wales$20,000Independent Education Union of Australia 1998/99New South Wales$5I am also advised that the following portfolio agencies have not entered into a contract or made a grant or payment to an organisation covered by the honourable member's question:Public Service and Merit Protection Commission; Australian National Audit Office; Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security; Office of the Strategic Investment Co-ordinator; Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman; Office of National Assessments; and Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor-General.In responding to the question:. the period involved is taken to be from 31 December 1996, being the date of effect of the relevant criteria for registration of organisations under the Workplace Relations Act 1996, to 7 June 1999; and. the relevant organisations are taken to be those registered as at 7 June 1999.9160(Question No. 702)7029160Bevis, Arch, MPMr BevisET4BrisbaneALP00 asked the Minister for Finance and Administration, upon notice, on 7 June 1999:Has a Department or agency for which the Minister has portfolio responsibility entered a contract with or made a grant or payment to an organisation registered under subparagraph (a) 188(1)(a) or (b) 188(1)(b) of the Workplace Relations Act 1996; if so, in each case, (i) which organisation, (ii) what sum was received and (iii) in what State or Territory is the organisation located.9160Fahey, John, MPMr FaheyHQ5MacarthurLPFinance and Administration10—The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows:(i) Organisation(ii) Sum received(iii) State/TerritoryAssociation of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia2,400.00VicAustralian Trainers' Association250.00VicAustralian Trainers' Association250.00VicCommunications, Electrical, Electronic, Energy, Information, Postal, Plumbing and Allied Services Union of Australia (CEPU) Communications Division250.00QldCivil Contractors Federation20.00VicCPSU, the Community & Public Sector Union (Advantage)900.00VicCPSU, the Community & Public Sector Union (Training Services)450.00VicCPSU, the Community & Public Sector Union (Training Services)450.00VicPastoralists and Graziers Association of WA (Incorporated)375.00WAPastoralists and Graziers Association of WA (Incorporated)375.00WAVictorian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry2,219.20VicIn responding to the question:. the period involved is taken to be from 31 December 1996, being the date of effect of the relevant criteria for registration or organisations under the Workplace Relations Act 1996, to 7 June 1999; and. the relevant organisations are taken to be those registered as at 7 June 1999.