2002-02-204012REPS50102002-02-20—————The SPEAKER (Mr Neil Andrew) took the chair at 9.30 a.m., and read prayers.Bills501R1474501Bill presented by Mr Abbott, and read a first time.50109:31:00501Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLPMinister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.Freedom of association is the cornerstone of the government's vision for a more productive and more prosperous workplace. On first coming to office, the government amended the legislative regime to properly reflect this principle. The Workplace Relations Act 1996 provides for the first time broad legislative recognition of the freedom to join, or not to join, an industrial association.This fundamental freedom has been offended by recent union attempts to impose so-called bargaining agent's fees. These require non-union members to bear a cost for union negotiations at their workplace. In many cases, the fee demanded has been set at $500 a year which is well above the level of annual union dues. This suggests that many compulsory fee demands are being made with a premeditated coercive intent.Clauses purporting to require payment of compulsory union fees by non-unionists have already been included in hundreds of federal certified agreements.Union attempts to justify these fees on a `user pays' basis are a gross distortion of that principle. Compulsory fees for an unrequested service do not constitute `user pays' at all. `User pays' involves an exchange that is freely entered into by willing and properly informed parties. The government believes that industrial associations should be subject to the same standards as ordinary businesses which are prevented by fair trading legislation from providing unrequested services and then demanding payment for those services.In May last year, I introduced a bill to address the imposition of compulsory union fees on non-members in a workplace. That bill, which was the subject of a Senate committee inquiry, was before the Senate when parliament was prorogued for the election.In the coalition's 2001 workplace relations election policy, the government again committed to introducing legislation to prohibit trade unions involved in workplace bargaining from imposing a compulsory fee on non-union employees. The Workplace Relations Amendment (Prohibition of Compulsory Union Fees) Bill 2002 gives effect to that commitment.This bill will amend the certified agreement and freedom of association provisions in the Workplace Relations Act. The amendments address clauses in certified agreements that purport to require payment of bargaining services fees. They also address conduct designed to compel people to pay such fees.Late last year, a full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission found bargaining fee clauses in certified agreements do not contradict the strict letter of the freedom of association provisions of the act, despite their acknowledged coercive intent. This has exhausted the legal avenues to have these clauses removed from certified agreements.A subsequent judgment of the Federal Court in a case involving Electrolux and the AWU suggests that bargaining service fee clauses are not enforceable under the Workplace Relations Act, because they do not deal with a matter pertaining to the relationship between employers and employees. Even so, their continued presence in certified agreements lends them an unwarranted legitimacy.Accordingly, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Prohibition of Compulsory Union Fees) Bill provides that bargaining fee clauses in certified agreements are void and will give the commission the power to remove such clauses on application by the Employment Advocate, or a party to the agreement. In addition, the bill will prevent the commission certifying an agreement containing a clause requiring the payment of a fee for bargaining services. The recent decision of the Federal Court in the Electrolux case reiterates the view that bargaining fee clauses in certified agreements do not provide a basis on which unions can legally compel non-members to pay such fees. Consistent with this, the bill will amend the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to:prohibit employers and others from engaging in discriminatory conduct against people who refuse to pay a bargaining fee;prohibit an industrial association from encouraging or inciting others to take discriminatory action against people who refuse to pay a bargaining fee;prohibit an industrial association from taking, or threatening to take, action with intent to coerce people to pay a bargaining fee; andprohibit an industrial association from demanding a bargaining fee.There is also a need to prevent unions or employers from using other methods to create an impression that employees are legally obliged to pay compulsory union fees. Hence the bill will prohibit the making of false or misleading representations about a person's liability to pay a compulsory union fee.The bill will not prevent people making voluntary contributions, provided there is no coercion or misrepresentative conduct. The bill will prevent demands for coercive, non-consensual fees that are contrary to rights to freedom of association.Bargaining fees are not a legitimate way for trade unions to arrest the dramatic and sustained fall in their membership.Australian laws recognise an important statutory role for registered industrial organisations and confer upon them significant rights and obligations. But that legal standing cannot be at the expense of the right of individual employers and employees to freedom of association and to protection from coercive or discriminatory conduct.I commend the bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned.Bills502R1470502Bill presented by Mr Abbott, and read a first time.50209:38:00502Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLPMinister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.The secret ballot process proposed by this bill will create and protect jobs by preventing unnecessary strikes. It will enhance freedom of choice for workers and strengthen the accountability of unions to their members.A secret ballot is a fair, effective and simple process for determining whether a group of employees at a workplace want to take industrial action. It will ensure that the right to protected industrial action is not abused by union officials pushing agendas unrelated to the workers at the workplace concerned.Australia has previously had provisions allowing secret ballots at the federal level, but they have not been a compulsory precondition to industrial action. Since 1994 some industrial action—that associated with genuine workplace bargaining—has been protected.In view of the protections that the Workplace Relations Act 1996 provides against civil liability for industrial action taken in pursuit of enterprise agreements, it is fair that secret ballots are a precondition for protected industrial action.Secret ballot arrangements exist in the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Germany and Ireland.Secret ballot provisions have been operating in the UK since 1984. The Blair government's Employment Relations Act 1999 retained them. Legislative requirements for secret ballots in the UK have:helped to significantly reduce strike activity—strikes which ultimately cost jobs;given union members a direct say in the authorisation of industrial action; encouraged greater consultation by unions of their members; and the support of UK trade union leaders.The government's previous attempts to implement secret ballots aspects have failed. However, the issue remained a core aspect of our 2001 election policy and this bill fulfils our promise to the Australian community.Introducing a previous secret ballots bill, the then Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, my distinguished predecessor the Hon. Peter Reith MP, welcomed further Senate committee scrutiny, so long as such a Senate review focussed on achieving a workable scheme, rather than providing a platform for union opposition to fundamental democratic principles.In this bill, the government is proposing key changes in response to concerns raised during the Senate inquiries into the 1999 and 2000 bills. The bill also incorporates measures which ILO officials have indicated would be consistent with ILO standards.The bill allows applications from a union or an employee who is a negotiating party for ballot orders to be made up to 30 days prior to the nominal expiry date of a current certified agreement, if any, provided a bargaining period is in place. It requires the Industrial Relations Commission, as far as reasonably possible, to determine all applications within two working days.Secret ballots will not impede access to lawful protected action, but will simply provide a mechanism to ensure that protected action is a genuine choice of the employees involved.The 2000 bill contained a strong preference for postal voting. This bill provides postal ballots as a default, but gives the commission discretion to approve a proposal for a more effective method in a particular case. In some circumstances, the commission may choose to order on-site ballots. The 2000 bill required precise details of the nature of the proposed industrial action. This bill eases these requirements.If a union applies for a ballot, only union members whose employment would be covered by the proposed agreement would be entitled to vote. Where employees seeking a non-union agreement make an application, all employees whose employment would be covered by the proposed agreement would be entitled to vote.In addition, employees can appoint an agent to advance these processes in order to ensure their anonymity.Only those union members or employees entitled to vote would be able to take any subsequent authorised protected industrial action.Following discussion with ILO officials and concerns raised during the Senate review, only 40 per cent of eligible voters need to participate in such a ballot.The 2000 bill required ballot questions to include the date on which industrial action would commence. Concerns were raised that this locked parties into a predetermined path that may not reflect progress made during agreement negotiations. This bill allows for industrial action to commence within a 30-day period, beginning from the date the ballot result is declared or the nominal expiry date of the relevant certified agreement, whichever is the later. The commission may extend this validity period once, with the agreement of the parties.The bill makes the Commonwealth liable for 80 per cent of the reasonable ballot cost, which the Commonwealth will pay directly to the ballot agent. This adjustment addresses accessibility concerns by requiring the Commonwealth to bear the majority of the cost, and limiting the impact which up-front costs would otherwise have on applicants.The bill will allow ballots to be conducted by an applicant. Usually this will be a union. To ensure the ballot is fair and democratic in these situations, the bill will also require the commission to appoint an authorised independent adviser to oversee the ballot process.To ensure democratic principles are upheld, challenges to ballot orders and ballots will only be possible in exceptional circumstances, for example in cases of a substantial contravention, fraud, providing misleading information to the commission or an irregularity that affected the outcome of a ballot. At the completion of the ballot, both the authorised ballot agent and the authorised independent adviser, if any, will provide the Industrial Registrar with a written report about the conduct of the ballot.These reports will set out details of any complaints received or irregularities identified in the conduct of the ballot. These matters will not impact directly on the validity of the ballot unless they would have had a significant impact on the integrity or outcome of the ballot. However, the commission will be able to take these reports into account in deciding whether the ballot agent is a fit and proper person to conduct future ballots.It should be clear to the parliament and to the wider Australian community that the government has addressed the reasonable concerns raised about previous bills. Therefore, I enthusiastically commend this bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned.Bills504R1482504Bill presented by Mr Abbott, and read a first time.50409:46:00504Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLPMinister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.In reforming the workplace relations system, the government has ensured that Australia has workplace relations arrangements that sustain and enhance our living standards, our jobs, our productivity and our international competitiveness. The government has also promoted a more inclusive and cooperative workplace system where employers and employees are able to make agreements on wages, conditions and work and family responsibilities subject to a safety net of minimum standards.Australia's system of genuine workplace or enterprise level bargaining has underpinned these achievements. The overwhelming majority of Australian employees in the federal workplace relations system are now employed under enterprise or workplace agreements—whether collective or individual.Enterprise bargaining has produced benefits for both employees and employers. Employees have gained better wages, more relevant conditions, more jobs and greater workplace participation. At the same time, employers have gained higher productivity, increased competitiveness and lower industrial dispute levels.Significantly, the outcomes from this system have been far superior to those of the centrally controlled system which preceded it. Over the life of the coalition government, the lowest paid workers dependent on award rates of pay have received safety net adjustments of $64 a week, or a nine per cent increase in real wages. This contrasts markedly with the five per cent decrease in real wages for low paid workers which occurred under the previous 13 years of Labor government.Workplace bargaining has attracted bipartisan political and industrial support at federal and state levels. The previous Labor government and the ACTU both adopted enterprise bargaining as policy in their Accord Mark VI in 1990, and pursued it vigorously in industrial tribunals, legislatively and publicly.For all of the deficiencies of the previous Labor government, for all of the inadequacies of the bargaining model implemented at that time, Labor knew what we all know—that workplace bargaining is a structural reform that benefits Australia.Employers and employees have clearly embraced workplace bargaining in the past decade. More than 41,000 collective agreements have been formalised under the federal system alone, with thousands more under state bargaining systems. Over 1.3 million employees are covered by current federal wage agreements, including those on one of the 220,000 individual agreements made since March 1997. Agreements made directly between employers and their employees, with limited third party involvement, are increasingly being used as a vehicle for better wages and flexible and innovative employment conditions and work practices. This bill will ensure that enterprise bargaining continues to benefit employees with more jobs and better wages, and employers with higher productivity, increased competitiveness and fewer strikes.Bargaining PeriodsWorkplace bargaining helps the economy because wages and conditions are determined by genuine workplace negotiations by employees and employers with outcomes based on local knowledge and circumstances and mutual interests. However, elements within the union movement have attempted to orchestrate a return to industry level bargaining through the process known as pattern bargaining. Unions use pattern bargaining to conduct their negotiations across a range of employers or an industry and do not genuinely negotiate at an enterprise level.Pattern bargaining ignores the needs of employees and employers at the workplace level. It represents an outdated, one-size-fits-all approach to workplace relations where union officials utilised the centralised system to dictate their agenda to both employers and employees. This discredited approach works against the goal of an inclusive and cooperative workplace relations system that sustains and enhances our living standards, our jobs, our productivity and our international competitiveness. This bill would not prevent unions from making the same claims over a number of employers. However, it does reinforce the Industrial Relations Commission's ability to end protected strike action by suspending or terminating bargaining periods if unions are not genuinely bargaining about their claims at the workplace level.The bill draws on the commission's decision in Australian Industry Group v. Automotive, Food, Metals, Engineering, Printing and Kindred Industries Union & Ors where the commission drew a distinction between unions making common claims across a number of employers and unions refusing to bargain at the workplace level.The bill would insert a new subsection 170MW(2A) into the Workplace Relations Act 1996 which would list a number of factors that the commission would have to consider when it is determining whether, for the purposes of the act, a negotiating party is not genuinely trying to reach agreement with the other negotiating parties. These factors would not be exhaustive nor would they necessarily decide the issue on their own.This bill would also insert a new section 170MWA, which would apply in circumstances where an earlier bargaining period has ended because the initiating party has given notice to withdraw the bargaining period, to deprive the commission of jurisdiction to hear a case. It would empower the commission to make orders to prevent the initiation of a new bargaining period or to order that conditions attach to any such bargaining period. Before issuing such an order, the commission would have to give the former negotiating parties the opportunity to be heard and conclude that the making of an order is in the public interest.Cooling-off periodsDuring protracted disputes, antagonisms can become entrenched and parties can often lose sight of their original objectives. Cooling-off periods allow negotiating parties to take a step back from industrial conflict and to refocus on reaching a resolution which works for the business in question. Currently the commission does not have the specific ability to order a cooling-off period in the case of a protracted dispute. The commission has used the provisions of section 170MW to order de facto cooling-off periods, to provide a circuit breaker in particularly difficult bargaining disputes, but it is not able to do this in all situations where a cooling-off period may be warranted. The government believes that cooling-off periods should be given statutory recognition because of their potential to refocus negotiations. Accordingly, this bill would give the commission discretion to suspend a bargaining period for a specified period, on application by a negotiating party. Proposed paragraph 170MWB(1)(c) would require the commission to consider a number of factors to determine whether a suspension is appropriate, including: whether suspension of the bargaining period would assist the parties in resolving the issues between them; andwhether suspending the bargaining period would be contrary to the public interest or inconsistent with the objects of the act.Proposed subsection 170MWB(2) would make it clear that the duration of a cooling-off period is a matter for the commission's discretion. In considering the application, the commission would give the negotiating parties an opportunity to be heard. The commission would be able to extend the cooling-off period on the application of a negotiating party, after hearing the other negotiating parties. In determining whether to extend a period of suspension, the commission would consider:the factors required to be considered when first ordering a suspension; and whether the negotiating parties genuinely tried to reach an agreement during the period of the initial suspension.Only one extension of the cooling-off period would be allowed, at the commission's discretion. There is no prescribed duration for a cooling-off period as the appropriate length of a suspension or extension will vary according to the nature of the dispute and the industry in which the dispute occurs.If the commission suspends the bargaining period, or extends the initial suspension, the commission will have to inform the negotiating parties that they may choose to attend private mediation or ask the commission to conciliate the dispute. This bill reinforces the positive trends of more jobs, better wages, higher productivity, increased competitiveness, and fewer strikes. The government's workplace reform has brought these benefits to the Australian economy and the wellbeing of all Australians. We cannot afford to allow these gains to be neutralised or wound back for the benefit of radical elements within the union movement. The bill is a moderate but necessary reform to ensure this does not occur and I commend it to the House and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned.Bills506R1478506Bill presented by Mr Abbott, and read a first time.50609:55:00506Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLPMinister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.This bill proposes to amend the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to ensure fairness in termination of employment, and to promote the creation and protection of jobs for Australian workers. The bill will restore for businesses the previous level of protection from dismissal claims from short-term casual employees. It will also move provisions imposing a filing fee for dismissal applications from the regulations into the act, and provide for the fee to be indexed annually in line with the consumer price index. These measures demonstrate the government's commitment to a system of dismissal laws that is fair to employers and employees and a system which protects and creates jobs.Last November, the Federal Court ruled invalid the regulations excluding short-term casual employees from making dismissal applications, on the technical ground that they went further than allowed by the regulation-making power in the act. The regulations excluded casual employees from accessing termination of employment remedies, unless they had been working for their employer on a regular and systematic basis for at least 12 months, and had a reasonable expectation of continuing employment with the same employer.Excluding short-term casual employees from termination of employment remedies is not new. Indeed, the exclusion for short-term casuals was first introduced in 1994, by then ALP industrial relations minister, Laurie Brereton. It is worth noting that, on the reasoning applied by the full Federal Court in Mr Hamzy's case, Mr Brereton's regulations would also have been invalid. The 1994 provisions have remained largely unchanged, except that in 1996 the government, with the support of the Democrats, amended the regulations to require casuals to work for their employer for a minimum period of 12 months, rather than six months, before being able to make dismissal applications.For almost a decade then, businesses have organised their employment practices around an exclusion of short-term casuals, and it is important that they continue to be allowed to do so. The exclusion ensures that businesses have the flexibility they need to hire short-term casuals without worrying about dismissal proceedings if it turns out that the employee is not needed permanently.After the court decision, as an interim measure, the government made replacement regulations giving employers the widest protection possible within the parameters of the Hamzy decision. If the government had failed to do this, then employers may have been reluctant to hire casuals. This could have affected their ability to do business, and could have left those seeking casual work, such as working parents, without a job.However, the government cannot reinstate the full casual exclusion through regulations. This requires changes to the act. This bill will move the short-term casual exclusion out of the regulations and into the act, and restore its full scope.In addition, in order to provide certainty for businesses that made employment decisions based on the law as everyone understood it to be at the time, this bill validates the operation of the invalid regulations.These provisions will declare that, as far as possible, the rights and liabilities of employers and employees are the same as they would have been had the invalid regulations been validly made—and as if the interim replacement regulation made after the Hamzy decision had not been made.However, casual employees who have already had their cases determined by a court or by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission are specifically protected by the bill and they will be unaffected by the validation provisions.This bill also contains measures to ensure that the exclusion provisions are easy to find and understand. Currently, regulation 30B excludes other types of employees, such as probationers and high-income earners, from accessing dismissal remedies. Also, regulation 30BA excludes some types of employees from particular dismissal provisions, including requirements for employers to provide notice of termination. Examples of employees excluded under this regulation include longer-term casuals and daily hire employees in the construction and meat industries.It is again worth noting that in 1994 the then Labor government excluded broadly similar categories of workers from termination remedies. The bill will move these other exclusions in regulations out of the regulations and into the act. This means that employers and employees wanting to know their rights and obligations will only need to check one piece of legislation rather than two.The bill makes slight and non-substantive alterations to these other exclusions. For example, the exclusion for employees on probation in regulation 30B(1)(c) has been simplified with the removal of the term `qualifying period of employment'. The Workplace Relations Amendment (Termination of Employment) Act 2001 now requires all employees, whether probationers or not, to work for their employer for a qualifying period unless they agree in writing in advance to alter or waive the period. The use of the phrase in two different provisions could have proved confusing. Therefore, the reference to a qualifying period in regulation 30B(1)(c) has been removed.Other changes are necessary to keep the provisions relevant and up-to-date.Further measures in this bill deal with the $50 filing fee for lodging dismissal applications. This requirement is currently in the regulations. The bill would honour the government's election commitments by moving the provisions out of the regulations and into the act, ensuring that the filing fee is a permanent requirement and providing that the fee be indexed annually in line with movements in the CPI. The filing fee will discourage frivolous and vexatious claims while ensuring that genuine dismissal applications can be dealt with efficiently. In fairness to low-income earners, the act will continue to provide that the fee can be waived where it would cause financial hardship. In addition, the fee will be refunded where an application is discontinued at least two days before being dealt with by the commission.The Senate has repeatedly endorsed regulations containing the filing fee. However, there has been disagreement over whether the fee should be made permanent or continue to be subject to parliamentary review. With this in mind, the government included in its election platform a commitment to making the fee permanent and now has a mandate to implement it.I commend the bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned.Bills508R1473508Bill presented by Mr Hockey, and read a first time.50810:03:00508Hockey, Joe, MPMr HOCKEYDK6North SydneyLPMinister for Small Business and Tourism10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.The Trade Practices Amendment (Small Business Protection) Bill 2002 proposes amendments to section 87 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 to allow the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC, to bring representative actions in respect of contraventions of sections 45D and 45E of the act.Section 45D of the act prohibits secondary boycotts undertaken for the purpose of causing substantial loss or damage. Section 45E prohibits certain contracts, arrangements or understandings with organisations of employees which affect the supply or acquisition of goods or services.At present, section 87 of the act allows the ACCC to bring representative actions in respect of contraventions of all of part IV of the act, except for sections 45D and 45E. The proposed amendments will not give the ACCC new powers in a new area. Rather—in simple terms—they will make it easier for affected businesses to gain advantage of the secondary boycott provisions of the act. This government recognises that Australia's 1 million small businesses lack the economic power of large corporations to take action when they experience unfair treatment.This is particularly so in relation to secondary boycotts.Without these amendments, small business will be effectively denied the full protection offered by the Trade Practices Act and will continue to bear the costs incurred as a result of restrictive trading practices.Since becoming Minister for Small Business and Tourism, I have heard from a number of businesses that have been the victim of secondary boycotts.One business reported that, after negotiating a particular workplace agreement with employees, the relevant union declared the agreements to be unacceptable. The company went on to lose a number of contracts as a direct result of its industrial arrangements.Other businesses reported one or a number of unfortunate economic circumstances as a result of unlawful union secondary boycotts. These circumstances can include the refusal of employee access to workplaces and lost savings or cumbersome overdrafts required to cover the costs of lost trade.Worst of all is the news that many businesses are afraid to speak out about the impact of secondary boycotts for fear of further union reprisals. Since 1996, the government has implemented reforms to improve protection for small business against restrictive or unconscionable trading practices.The Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1996 restored the secondary boycott provisions to the Trade Practices Act.The Trade Practices Amendment (Fair Trading) Act 1998 prohibited unconscionable conduct in business-to-business transactions.The Trade Practices Amendment Act (No. 1) 2001 enabled the ACCC to take representative actions for breaches of the restrictive trading provisions of the act—excepting, of course, the secondary boycotts provisions of sections 45D and 45E.Buoyed by support from the Labor Party opposition, it was in the Trade Practices Amendment Act (No. 1) 2001—last year—that this government attempted to pass these secondary boycott amendments through this parliament.At that time, the then shadow minister for small business, the member for Hunter, stated on 9 November 2000 in this place:The ACCC already has the power to take representative action under Parts IVA and V of the act, and it makes sense to extend that to Part IV. ... This is a sensible amendment ...The member for Wills went further on 28 November 2000 when he said:... this change will help make the Act more consistent and help to protect small business people. Let me also indicate that I think these changes are very modest and that more action is needed in this area generally.But when this amendment came before the House, the opposition dropped its support and forced the government to sacrifice these amendments for the sake of the remainder of the bill in the Senate.Small business is a significant contributor to the economy, accounting for more than 95 per cent of all businesses and employing close to half of the work force. This contribution is built on the wealth of the owners who often invest their personal savings in their business. Small businesses also operate on tight margins and with limited cash flow. They are less able to afford disruption to their trade and certainly struggle with costly legal action.It is important that the ACCC can seek compensation in cases of unlawful secondary boycotts as it can with other restrictive trading practices. The ACCC undertakes preventative as well as enforcement action. Allowing the ACCC to bring representative action can act as a deterrent to unlawful activity and provide redress for victims.The proposed amendments are therefore necessary to enable the ACCC to bring representative actions in regard to unlawful secondary boycotts in order to provide adequate protection for Australian small business. I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and I look forward to the opposition's support after the bill is debated.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned.Bills509R1480509Bill presented by Mr Tuckey, and read a first time.50910:09:00509Tuckey, Wilson, MPMr TUCKEYSJ4O'ConnorLPMinister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.The Transport and Regional Services Legislation Amendment (Application of Criminal Code) Bill 2002 amends certain offence provisions, in legislation within the Transport and Regional Services portfolio, to reflect the application of chapter 2 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (the Criminal Code) to all Commonwealth offences from 15 December 2001.The amendments proposed by this bill will harmonise the offence provisions with the Criminal Code and will ensure that the provisions operate in the manner they did prior to the application of the Criminal Code. The bill affects a small number of offence provisions that were not included in the Transport and Regional Services Legislation Amendment (Application of Criminal Code) Act 2001. As a result the offence provisions are inconsistent with the Criminal Code principles and may be interpreted and enforced in an unfamiliar manner. The bill provides for amendments that clarify the physical elements of an offence and the corresponding fault elements, particularly where those elements vary from those specified by the Criminal Code.The bill also provides for amendments that specify whether an offence (or physical element of an offence) is one of strict liability. In the absence of such an amendment, offences (or physical elements of offences) that, prior to the application of the Criminal Code, were interpreted as being of strict liability, would be interpreted as not being of strict liability.The bill also restructures certain offence provisions so that any defences to the offence are restated separately from the physical elements of the offence.The amendments proposed by this bill will not have retrospective effect. I commend the bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum of this bill.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned.Bills510R1483510Bill presented by Mr Tuckey, and read a first time.51010:13:00510Tuckey, Wilson, MPMr TUCKEYSJ4O'ConnorLPMinister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.The Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Amendment Bill will amend the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983 (the `Pollution Prevention Act'). The Pollution Prevention Act implements the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, commonly known as MARPOL, and it is therefore the principal Commonwealth act intended to prevent pollution from ships.Recent amendments to the Pollution Prevention Act revised the offence and penalty provisions. These were implemented by the International Maritime Conventions Legislation Amendment Act 2001 (the `IMCLA Act') most of which commenced on 1 October 2001.Prior to the commencement of the IMCLA Act amendments only owners and masters of ships could be prosecuted for discharges of pollutants, such as oil, noxious substances or garbage from their ships. The IMCLA Act amended provisions in the Pollution Prevention Act to ensure that any person, rather than just the ship's master or owner, whose negligent or reckless conduct causes an unlawful discharge of pollutants from a ship into the sea is guilty of an offence. Owners and masters of ships remain strictly liable for discharges of pollutants from their ships, whether or not other persons have recklessly or negligently discharged pollutants, although owners and masters, because they are held strictly liable, are subject to lesser penalties.An unintentional consequence of the IMCLA Act amendments to the Pollution Prevention Act was to exclude the offence provisions from taking effect in Australia's exclusive economic zone. In accordance with the original policy intent behind the IMCLA Act the current bill provides that the offence provisions in the Pollution Prevention Act have effect in the exclusive economic zone.In relation to the offences of strict liability there are a number of existing defences set out in the relevant provisions of the Pollution Prevention Act. For example, there is no strict liability offence if a discharge occurs for the purpose of securing the safety of the ship or saving life at sea or the discharge occurs in accordance with the strict conditions set out in MARPOL.I commend the bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum to this bill.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned. Bills511R1448511Bill presented by Dr Nelson, and read a first time.51110:17:00511Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSONRW5BradfieldLPMinister for Education, Science and Training10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.Under the policies of this government universities have enjoyed an unparalleled opportunity to be key institutions in Australia's social, cultural and economic life. Most have used that opportunity well. Universities are earning record levels of revenue—an estimated $10.4 billion in 2002. The sources of revenue are more diverse than ever before, indicating how far universities have come in engaging with the community. Universities are providing more opportunities for Australians to access higher education in the manner which suits them. There are now around 55,000 more full-time equivalent domestic students in our universities than there were in 1995. The satisfaction level of graduates with their education has also never been higher.In building this impressive record, universities have been able to rely on a strong and undiminished commitment of public funding. The bill currently before the House is a clear expression of that commitment. The major measure in this bill is the provision of university funding for the year 2004, the final year of the current funding triennium. In keeping with the government's commitment to higher education, the moneys we seek to appropriate through the parliament for that year are significantly increased. In 2004 universities will receive operating funding through the Education, Science and Training Portfolio totalling $6.35 billion, some $480 million more than in 2001.Last year the Prime Minister made the most significant set of policy and funding announcements in support of innovation that has ever been made in this country. It should be obvious that innovation has become a vital driver of economic growth and the key to economic prosperity. Universities produce much of the knowledge and skilled work force that sustain the innovation system.The benefits of that package are already being enjoyed by universities. This bill puts in place the next stage of that commitment. I would like to remind the House of the extent of that commitment. The government's innovation action plan, Backing Australia's Ability, commits an additional $3 billion over five years for science, research and innovation. It includes an additional $1.5 billion for the university sector.The funding is comprised of an additional $736 million to double the Australian Research Council's national competitive grant schemes. It includes $583 million to build up the research infrastructure in our universities and an extra $151 million over five years for additional university places in the priority areas of information and communications technology, mathematics and science.The bill provides for a number of legislative housekeeping measures. It updates the funding amounts in the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Australian Research Council Act 2001 in accordance with indexation arrangements. It also varies funding amounts to reflect revised estimates for HECS contributions, the Commonwealth's superannuation liability and the provision and repayment of an advance of operating grant to the University of Adelaide.The bill provides for internal transfer of funding amounts between sections of the act that will enable the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Australian National University to participate in the government's performance based block research funding schemes. This is an important step in building a more integrated and competitive higher education research system.The bill reduces the compliance burden on universities in relation to the accountability of Commonwealth funding. As it stands, universities are required to meet separate, and sometimes inconsistent, acquittal of requirements for different types of grant. These will be replaced with a single consistent provision applying to all funds provided under the act. The requirement for institutions to send a `notice of liability' to overseas fee-paying students will be removed under the bill. There is currently no requirement to send liability notices to domestic fee payers. The government thinks it is best left to each institution to determine such administrative processes.The bill contains two measures to streamline the administration of ARC grants and the provision of expert advice to the ARC board. The amendments to the ARC Act will enable the minister to formally approve research grants for a period of four years, rather than the two currently allowed by the act. This will reduce the amount of paperwork involved in administering grants and provide certainty to grant holders. They will also allow the ARC board to create advisory committees, other than those specifically involving advice on funding allocations, without the approval of the minister, thus streamlining the processes for the ARC board to acquire expert advice on other matters.In minor technical amendments, the bill changes two sections of HEFA to reflect changes in taxation legislation. It also amends the name of Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in schedule 1 of HEFA, which is currently listed as `Batchelor College'. It remedies a minor drafting oversight in relation to the postgraduate education loan scheme.I commend the bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Cox) adjourned.Bills512R1476512Bill presented by Ms Worth, and read a first time.51210:23:00512Worth, Trish, MPMs WORTH8V5AdelaideLPParliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing10— I move:That this bill be now read a second time.I am pleased to introduce the Therapeutic Goods Amendment Bill (No 1) 2002 to the House.The amendments provided for in this bill are necessary to strengthen the ability of the Commonwealth to plan for, and respond to, national emergencies in which there is the potential for large numbers of people to require emergency pharmaceutical treatment. Examples of such emergencies would include acts of bioterrorism or the emergence of a new, highly contagious disease in Australia.Either of these circumstances may result in the need for emergency pharmaceutical treatment of large numbers of people to counteract the effect of such substances or diseases.The recent bioterrorist activities in the United States have highlighted the need for nations to be prepared for chemical, biological and radiological disasters.The government in its planning has placed a high priority on the availability of pharmaceutical treatments (antibiotics, vaccines and chemical antidotes) to counteract the effects of chemical and biological weapons. There are two main issues that need to be addressed in relation to pharmaceuticals.Firstly, the rarity of likely agents used in these terrorist activities is such that some of the recommended drugs for prevention and treatment are not registered and therefore not readily available in Australia. However, in the event of a chemical, biological or radiological disaster such treatments will need to be supplied to many casualties with minimum delay. Some of the other recommended treatments, particularly antibiotics, are marketed but not approved for indications associated with the pathogens that could be used for bioterrorism.Secondly, as many countries round the world face the same problem, we have to be able to deal with the possibility of global shortages of antibiotic treatments and vaccines.It is therefore important that Australia has the capacity to stockpile the essential pharmaceutical agents that may be expected to meet a crisis. Australia has a very strong and efficient drug regulation scheme, administered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. The Australian system is acknowledged as one of the best in the world and ensures that all products are adequately evaluated for quality, safety and efficacy before being allowed to be sold to the Australian public.Currently there is no workable provision within the Therapeutic Goods Act by which the counter disaster personnel can receive ready approval for supply of unregistered products to mass casualties in emergency situations.Late last year the government made a number of amendments to the Therapeutic Goods Regulations that allowed for some contingency planning to take place. This ensured that Australia was prepared for possible terrorist threats. These changes were intended only as an interim measure.This bill amends the Therapeutic Goods Act to enable the Minister for Health and Ageing to make a decision, either in the case of a real emergency situation, or in order to plan for the possibility of an emergency situation, to allow the importation, manufacture or supply of unapproved products which are needed to treat patients in an emergency.The proposed amendment would allow for specified essential unapproved therapeutic goods (such as antibiotics, vaccines and chemical antidotes) to be imported and supplied in Australia. The specified products would be those that are considered by the minister to be essential to the protection of public health. Because products cannot be fully identified at this time, and may change over time, it is not proposed that a list be included in the legislation. Not having the list of products in legislation will also enable rapid changes to be made. However, to ensure adequate control of goods that may be stockpiled for such emergencies, it is intended that only the minister or the secretary can specify what products are to be exempted from the usual regulatory scrutiny of goods before their supply to the general public.The amendments in the bill will also enable the minister to impose conditions on the exemption, where it is necessary to do so in the national interest to counteract a potential or actual threat to public health.Examples of such conditions are requirements about where and how the goods are to be stored, where they are to be sourced from and the kinds of records that must be kept about the goods.The decision by the minister to exempt products necessary to meet an emergency will be subject to public scrutiny through tabling in both houses of the parliament and the gazettal of the decision. As some details of an exemption may be particularly sensitive, restrictions on notification of all details of the exemption may be necessary. It would not be in the interests of public safety for example to release details such as the location where specific goods are being stored. A number of measures are also included which will strengthen the offence provisions of the legislation to ensure that tight control is maintained over the importation and use of these unapproved therapeutic goods.I commend this bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum.Debate (on motion by Mr Edwards) adjourned.Bills513R1472513Bill presented by Mr Ian Macfarlane, and read a first time.51310:30:00513Macfarlane, Ian, MPMr IAN MACFARLANEWN6GroomLPMinister for Industry, Tourism and Resources10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.The Space Activities Amendment Bill 2002 is a bill to amend the Space Activities Act 1998. This bill implements new arrangements relating to liability, insurance and safety. It will provide greater protection to the public and industries underlying flight paths, improve the competitiveness of Australia's space launch industry, and increase opportunities for non-profit, scientific and educational organisations to engage in space science research. The bill also implements a number of minor matters to enhance the operation and efficiency of the Space Activities Act 1998. The act established a licensing regime to regulate space launch and re-entry activities from Australia, and overseas launches of space objects in which Australian nationals have an ownership interest. It ensures that space launch activities will only be undertaken where the applicant has presented a strong case to demonstrate the safety of the proposed activities. The act also ensures that such activities do not compromise Australia's foreign policy obligations or national security, that procedures to protect the environment are in place, and that the Commonwealth complies with its obligations under United Nations conventions. This bill will enhance existing liability and insurance arrangements for space launches. In doing this, it will afford greater protection to key economic assets, including Australia's offshore oil and gas facilities. Proposed amendments will require proponents undertaking launch activities to procure insurance for each launch up to a defined maximum probable loss or $750 million, whichever is the lesser. Beyond this, the Commonwealth will accept liability of a further $3 billion in respect of Australian nationals. The Commonwealth is already liable for damages to foreign nationals under international law.These amendments bring insurance requirements for launch activities in Australia into line with international standards. This bill will also apply a stronger test of risk to space launch activities, which is that risk should be `as low as reasonably practicable' or ALARP. Adoption of the ALARP principle will ensure that applicants for authorisations under the act demonstrate that they have achieved the lowest practicable risk within the bounds of reasonable cost.The bill implements new arrangements to license scientific and educational institutions conducting research based launch activities. These arrangements will provide for an alternative application process and fee structure, which is less onerous and better suited to the modest scale and limited risks associated with scientific and educational launches and returns. A number of minor administrative and technical amendments are included in the bill, including defining the point at which the act becomes effective, clarifying the fee regime, and making provision for an annual review of a space licence. These amendments will improve the operation and efficiency of the act. Passage of this bill will facilitate the development of Australia's space industry by putting in place the regulatory framework needed to create a competitive environment and encourage space research. Passage of the bill will also ensure that the Australian space safety regime is amongst the most stringent in the world and that our insurance and liability arrangements are appropriate to the needs of space launch activities in Australia. I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill.Debate (on motion by Mr Edwards) adjourned.Bills514R1468514Bill presented by Mr Ian Macfarlane, and read a first time.51410:35:00514Macfarlane, Ian, MPMr IAN MACFARLANEWN6GroomLPMinister for Industry, Tourism and Resources10—I move:That this bill be now read a second time.The purpose of this bill is twofold: firstly to confirm that the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 commenced on 1 January 2002 as intended; and secondly to validate all actions taken on the assumption that it commenced on 1 January 2002. Last December the Governor-General in Executive Council made a proclamation setting the commencement date at 1 January 2002, but because of an administrative oversight the proclamation was not gazetted before that date, which means the act may not have commenced on 1 January as intended. This has ramifications for actions taken by the New South Wales government which rely on the commencement of the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001.The Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 provides for the dissolution of the Joint Coal Board and enables New South Wales to transfer all of its functions, staff, assets and liabilities to a new body established under New South Wales law. This removal of unnecessary Commonwealth involvement in the New South Wales coal industry has been supported by all parties. The commencement by proclamation of the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 was timed to coincide with the commencement of New South Wales legislation—the Coal Industry Act 2001—establishing a new body to take over the properties and functions of the Joint Coal Board. As well as allowing for a seamless transition, the coordinated commencement date also reflects a parliamentary undertaking that the government would not proclaim the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 until New South Wales was ready to go ahead.From 1 January 2002, New South Wales has acted as if the proclamation fixing the commencement date of the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 had been properly constituted. The legal basis of many of the actions taken by the New South Wales government and the ongoing activities of Coal Services Pty Ltd—the new body established by New South Wales to take over the properties and functions of the Joint Coal Board is uncertain.While this uncertainty remains, it can act as a constraint on the activities of Coal Services Pty Ltd in providing essential services to the New South Wales coal industry. There is an urgent need to remedy this situation and to put beyond doubt the validity of all actions taken on the assumption that the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 had come into force on 1 January 2002.The government has taken urgent action to remedy the situation and provide certainty to the operations of the New South Wales coal industry.As an interim measure, the Governor-General's proclamation was gazetted on 1 February 2002. This provides a signal confirming the Commonwealth's intent that the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 commenced on 1 January 2002. However, the validity of the proclamation and, hence, the commencement of the act, still remains uncertain.This bill is necessary to put beyond doubt that 1 January 2002 is the date of commencement for the Coal Industry Repeal Act 2001 and to validate all actions taken on the assumption that the act had come into force on that date. I seek the full support of this parliament in progressing this bill quickly. I present the explanatory memorandum to the bill.Debate (on motion by Mr Edwards) adjourned.Bills515R1442515Debate resumed from 14 February, on motion by Mr Slipper:That this bill be now read a second time.10:39:00515Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALPLeader of the Opposition00—The opposition will support the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2002. We consider it to be a mostly non-controversial one, as it makes appropriations in line with recommendations of the Remuneration Tribunal. The Australian people are not opposed to appropriate salaries for members of parliament or for its ministers. These salaries are determined by a tribunal that is independent of the parliament. But, in saying that it is not the salaries that are of concern, what is of concern is the indecent haste of certain ex-ministers in rushing to lucrative private consultancies in fields of activity directly associated with their government portfolios. While this has been recently highlighted in the cases of former ministers Reith, Wooldridge and Fahey, it is the not the first time that it has happened and it has not always been confined to the coalition. It is time we addressed the issue. Let me put it in context: last week, on the election of the Speaker, I made proposals to modernise the parliament, including making the Speaker independent, making ministers answer questions without notice, making ministers answer questions on notice more promptly, stopping ministers abusing question time for the purposes of announcing policy and making parliament take more note of petitions. I proposed these reforms in good faith and offered to talk to the Prime Minister about them. I am pleased to say that discussions have commenced between the government and the opposition, and I am encouraged that we may make progress in this direction.But we must go further. If we are to have a truly modernised parliament that the people can trust and respect, we must also modernise and enforce the ministerial code of conduct. The current document is not being enforced by the Prime Minister. There are many examples. Last year the current Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, Mr Macfarlane, who has just introduced legislation into this parliament, was involved in a GST scam with the Groom Federal Electorate Council of the Liberal Party. This was exposed by Labor. The tax office audited the Queensland Liberal Party and confirmed the scam, and they were forced to pay more GST. The minister misled the parliament and did not correct the record at the earliest opportunity. He failed to uphold the standards required of ministers, but he remains a minister. We are still awaiting the report into the incident that the Prime Minister commissioned and said he would produce to the parliament. We still await that report with interest.Now there is the furore over the asylum seekers issue. The Prime Minister and other ministers claimed that the asylum seekers threw their children overboard. We now know there were reports as early as 7 October, the very day that claims were made, that showed that it was a claim that had no foundation. The government knew about these claims and counterclaims but chose not to tell the truth. They chose not to correct the record. I remind the House of what the Prime Minister's code of conduct says:Ministers must be honest in their public dealings and should not intentionally mislead the Parliament or the public. Any misconception caused inadvertently should be corrected at the earliest opportunity. We have just seen an example in this last week where, clearly, there was misrepresentation and misleading of the public. The government knew it was wrong but did not correct the record. So it is self-evident that that clause has not been enforced. It is these sorts of examples that diminish the public's confidence and trust in our institutions of government.There is a simple solution to this mess: the Prime Minister must enforce his ministerial code of conduct. As I said earlier, people want politicians to be adequately paid, but if they are going to receive these salaries they expect them to adhere to the code of conduct. But the people who are bound by this code of conduct have ignored advice, breached the code and let the public down.Since the last election, there have been astonishing revelations about three former ministers, all of them senior, leaving parliament and, in doing so, taking up lucrative consultancies in industries directly related to their former ministerial responsibilities. For example, in December the former Minister for Health and Aged Care, Michael Wooldridge, joined the board of Research Australia Ltd, a lobby group partly funded by the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies. In January he was hired as a part-time consultant to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, to whom he had given $5 million in taxpayer funds the month before the election was held for the building of a new Canberra office. He gave them $5 million for an office that no doubt he will be using. He gave them taxpayers' funds for a building into which he goes, works and gets paid.Three weeks ago, the former Minister for Finance and Administration, John Fahey, signed on as an adviser to investment bank JP Morgan. The firm has admitted that he will help secure government deals and provide advice on government relations. But the most breathtaking example is now the thoroughly discredited former Minister for Defence, Peter Reith—now a lobbyist and consultant for Tenix Defence Systems. We only learned about Mr Reith's appointment early this month, but yesterday it was revealed in the Age that Mr Reith's appointment was confirmed over lunch as long ago as 27 November last year—that is one day after he ceased to be Minister for Defence. This has to be an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for securing the quickest job interview and selection in history. It appears that Mr Reith was using the last few days of his tenure as minister teeing up a highly paid job in which he could sell his insider knowledge of Australia's defence systems to the highest bidder. One day he is being briefed on top secret defence issues and protecting the security and financial interests of the public; the very next day he is telling defence firms how they can squeeze every last cent out of the taxpayer, and taking a cut for himself.We have seen reports already of him providing access to the Prime Minister's own office for clients in Tenix. This is disgraceful. The ministerial entrance now should have a huge sign up, saying `For sale'. It should be hung out as a shingle. It is the sort of hypocrisy that we have come to expect from Mr Reith and his government, a government that will not protect the redundancy, sick leave and holiday pay of average Australian families, but misses no opportunity to line its own pockets; a government that denounces unionists and everyone else who disagrees with it, but that misleads whenever it can get away with it; a government that demands obedience and sacrifice from our armed forces, but sets such a low standard for itself; and a government that weakens regulation and weakens public bodies, like the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, and then moves in to exploit the weaknesses that it has created.As we have discovered over last week in the `kids overboard' affair, the government have lied, spied and denied; now they have a ticket to ride. As the member for Brand said last week, this is not a conservative government; this is a political gang. It is the consultants' coalition. The fact is that this government is in it for themselves, not for the average Australian. They care only about their perks, cars and postministerial consultancies, not about better schools and hospitals or the future of our nation. They are about creating jobs for themselves, but not jobs for Australians and their children.If we are going to justify the salary increases contained in the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2002, we have to ensure that the behaviour of former ministers Fahey, Wooldridge and Reith is never repeated. To do this we have to modernise the code of conduct that governs ministerial behaviour. Australia has fallen behind the rest of the world in regulating the behaviour of former ministers. Under chapter 11 of the US Criminal Code, employees of the executive branch are banned from any attempt to lobby government for two years after they leave their job. The penalty, as I pointed out in relation to Mr Reith, is up to two years in jail. In Britain, former ministers face a two-year ban on taking up employment related to their past roles. An independent body, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, examines appointments and can defer employment and even direct former ministers to stand aside from certain activities of their new employers that involve a potential conflict of interest with their former role. We need to catch up with the rest of the world.In the near future, I will be releasing a new ministerial code of conduct, called Standards of Ministerial Ethics, which, like my proposals to modernise the parliament, I will offer to the Prime Minister in a spirit of bipartisanship. The opposition has on a number of occasions, including in its national platform, committed itself to developing this code. It has involved professional ethicists and represents the cutting edge in codes of ethical behaviour from politicians. It will set out the ethical standards that should be required of ministers and senior staff, as well as minimum procedural requirements to give effect to these standards.The standards recognise the Australian community's right to scrutinise, rigorously and publicly, the conduct of those elected to office. The so-called Howard code of ministerial conduct is essentially a list of conventions and rules that have developed in Australia in relation to ministerial conduct. The Prime Minister took credit for being the first Prime Minister to set down in a coherent and accessible form such a code. But for most of the Howard code, whilst I accept that it is unexceptionable, the standards dealing with ministerial responsibility are out of date. And, as I outlined before, he is not enforcing it. Initially he applied the standards to his ministers but, after losing six scalps in his first term, he watered them down and began to refer to them as a guide, not a death sentence. Our standards will improve on the existing code in a number of ways. First, they will not be merely a recitation of conventions but an elaboration of five widely accepted and well understood ethical standards relevant to public office: integrity, fairness, accountability, responsibility and the public interest. Second, they will reflect national and international best practice. Third, they will be much tougher than the existing code when it comes to shareholdings.This comes to the question of the Reith-Wooldridge exercise. On the Sunday program earlier this week, in light of the revelations around Minister Reith, I foreshadowed my intention to do something in this regard. What I am proposing today is that we develop an approach that would see ministers, for a 12-month period after ceasing to be a minister, not take employment with, nor act as an adviser or consultant to, any company or business interests with which they have had official dealings as minister in their last 12 months in office. Ministers will also be required to undertake that on leaving office they will not take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a minister where that information is not generally available to the public. In the case of exceptional circumstances, former ministers may seek an exemption from the independent auditor of parliamentary allowances and entitlements—an office that we would establish—provided that they can establish to his or her satisfaction that the activity to be undertaken does not constitute a conflict of interest or the appearance of it. In other words, we are talking about a cooling-off period, with a mechanism for exceptional circumstances that is transparent and requires to be tested. Labor first put forward the proposal to create the office I referred to—the independent auditor—back in 1997. It followed in the aftermath of the travel rorts affair. We continue to believe that such an office is needed, and yet the Prime Minister has not acted to establish it. The auditor, who would be part of the ANAO, would investigate complaints relating to the use of entitlements, inquire into any matter referred by the minister or parliament, undertake sample audits of the use of entitlements by members of parliament and make recommendations for changes to the entitlements system. We have also proposed that the auditor provide advice to members of parliament on ethical issues, including conflicts of interests associated with the use of parliamentary entitlements. Advising ministers or former ministers on post-ministerial employment would be a natural extension of the role.These are important reforms if we are serious about creating a truly modern parliament. If we are serious about restoring the public's confidence in Australia's parliament and government, they should be reforms that the government responds to. I hope that, in the same spirit in which the Prime Minister has responded to my proposals to modernise the forms of this parliament, he responds equally to the proposals I have put forward to lift the standards of the parliamentarians, in particular the ministers, and to modernise the code of conduct that governs them.Debate (on motion by Mr Andrews) adjourned.Miscellaneous518Mr LLOYD (Robertson) (10.56 a.m.)—by leave—I move:That the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2002 be referred to the Main Committee for further consideration.Question agreed to. Bills519R1451519Debate resumed from 19 February, on motion by Dr Nelson:That this bill be now read a second time.10:56:00519Grierson, Sharon, MPMs GRIERSON00AMPNewcastleALP00—It is a great pleasure for me to be able to speak in this House on a matter affecting education. Unfortunately, though, there is little pleasure embodied in this legislation for those with a true commitment to education. The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 sets limited educational goals and so will achieve limited educational outcomes. This bill is confined to the automatic allocation and appropriation of funds to all newly established non-government schools. It has little to do with government's responsibility for providing quality education in primary and secondary schools throughout Australia. The legislation contains the long-standing policy of providing set-up grants for new non-government schools. Historically, this has been an accepted policy that attracted bipartisan support. But the spirit in allocating establishment grants to non-government schools was changed by the government, and it is this change in spirit that makes this legislation unacceptable in its current form. Historically, new non-government schools gained Commonwealth funding support in their initial period of functioning because they were schools established in response to identified educational, social or cultural needs. This was a considered and agreed policy which offered financial support to new non-government schools during their initial set-up period, when costs could be particularly high.With this legislation, we have an approach that makes sure that every new non-government school receives a per capita establishment grant with no strings attached. There is no attempt in this legislation to apply any eligibility criteria. No expectations are set regarding the use or purpose of the establishment funds. There is no attempt to predict the educational benefits of the so-called new non-government schools. Yet in these times of competing economic and educational demands we cannot afford a `no strings attached' approach to education. The Australian public want strings attached, and they want them attached to the application of government funds. They want some guarantees that public moneys for education are linked to achieving the best educational outcomes possible for their children and for all children. They want value for their education dollar. Unfortunately, under this narrowly focused legislation, the public will not get value for their education dollar. The amendments to this legislation that the opposition propose attempt to provide some assurance that our education dollars will be well spent, but they are a poor second to having good strategic policy.Previous speakers supporting the government's bill have claimed that we on this side of the House oppose this legislation because we oppose all new non-government schools as part of some outdated class war. That is a tired and outdated argument from a government that has only tired and outdated educational policies for this country. The reality is that we on this side of the House have always supported establishment grants for new non-government schools, and this has not changed. Historically, our support was based on recognition of the need to assist locally identified or required new educational services and to ensure that the demands of meeting set-up costs for this new non-government educational service did not compromise standards in that initial and costly period. Frequently, in this way, new non-government schools were set up and were complementary to government schools and both flourished side by side. For example, in the Newcastle electorate, as a result of this bipartisan approach we have non-government schools that provide a religious focus or a cultural focus desired by local families. We are also fortunate to have non-government schools in Newcastle that focus on special and specific needs. I particularly draw the attention of the House to schools like the Margaret Jurd Learning Centre, which takes on the hardest education role of all—the role of helping some of our discouraged and troubled youth to believe in themselves and attain a path back into mainstream education, usually government education. In Newcastle, we also have non-government schools that cater for students with special, physical and emotional needs, such as autism and hearing impairments. As is frequently the case in other communities around Australia, these types of non-government schools work in close partnerships with government schools to collectively enhance the learning needs and educational outcomes of all the students of their region and in their particular learning communities. These schools are very valuable resources to education in Newcastle and are deserving of ongoing government support. The new application of the establishment grants in this legislation has nothing to do with ensuring that community needs are met or educational opportunities are enhanced. All this legislation in its present form will achieve is the proliferation of non-government schools whether we can afford them or not and whether we need them or not.The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 provides a fixed establishment grant to any organisation claiming to be setting up a new non-government school. It requires no application form, no accreditation process, no demonstration of need, no assurance of standards and it includes no equity criteria. The legislation reflects an expansionist approach where new non-government schools can simply be a franchise of an existing non-government school enterprise. In that way, they can then receive government establishment funding grants as though they are a genuine new school. Previous speakers have detailed several cases where a new campus of an existing non-government school has been funded under preceding legislation. The legislation before the House allows this wasteful practice to continue. It overlooks that in these `franchise' cases extensive infrastructure may already exist, current resources can be reallocated rather than acquired new, centralised administrative structures are already in place at no extra cost and collective assets and sponsorship may already exist to benefit the so-called `new' non-government schools.This legislation makes no differentiation between newly established non-government schools that have no existing resource base and those that have established riches to tap into. This legislation lacks economic rigour as well as education rigour. This lack of economic rigour has led previous speakers to tell the House that the funding appropriations in the legislation are urgently needed and that the legislation must be urgently passed. Yes, additional funds are urgently needed to cover the cost blow-out created by this ill-considered policy—a cost blow-out that saw funding demand grow by 330 per cent in 2001 and 260 per cent in 2002. This new legislation makes no attempt to manage or limit that growing demand; instead, it continues the practice of catering for all-comers—and come they did and come they will with their non-government hands out for more and more of the public education dollar.As was the case with the previous legislation, this bill is not based on accurate cost predictions, educational needs have not been mapped and new educational partnerships and opportunities remain ignored. How do the government justify this lack of rigour? Their previous speakers in this debate assert that this legislation embodies and enshrines the important doctrine of choice. Apparently, choice must be the overriding principle—overriding educational standards, overriding equity of educational opportunity and overriding responsible economic management of the education budget. In reality, `choice', as espoused by members of the government benches and the legislation they support, usually means an expensive option out of reach of the majority of education consumers; that is, the parents of the children of Australia.In my electorate of Newcastle, more than 76 per cent of primary and secondary students choose to attend non-government schools. I can personally attest that they are well served by the existing public schools of Newcastle. But their families are aware that federal funding to the school of their choice is continuously diminishing; in fact, the percentage share of Commonwealth general recurrent funds continues to grow more for the non-government sector than for the government sector. The legislation that we are debating perpetuates the new inequitable distribution of the education dollar. The amendments proposed by the member for Jagajaga, on behalf of the opposition, introduce some important checks on government education expenditure embodied in this bill. These amendments attempt to properly link funding to the actual establishment of genuinely new non-government schools. They define the eligibility criteria for `new' schools and introduce the principle of providing more to those who demonstrate that they need it most. No longer should the most exclusive and wealthiest of private schools expect a handout from the public education purse. The amendments will also introduce a review requirement that will allow some rigour to be applied to the expenditure of future education funds. In this way, the amendments attempt to stop further funding blow-outs, as we have seen in the previous term of the government. No amendment to this legislation can ensure that the government provides what is really needed in Australia— that is, support for technology and innovation, support for relevant learning experiences delivered in new ways for our new generations, support for vocational and educational training partnerships and programs that promote employment, support for early intervention programs that assist young learners, support to overcome the special needs crisis that exists in our schools today as they try to do more with less and support to increase retention rates in our secondary schools promoting continuous learning so we have a skilled and clever nation. The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 falls far short of serving any of these goals.In conclusion, I urge members to support these amendments and oppose the legislation in its current form as it mismanages the limited financial resources that the government has to nurture the unlimited potential of the children of this nation.11:07:00521Gambaro, Teresa, MPMs GAMBARO9K6PetrieLP10—I rise also today to speak to the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002. The basis of this bill is to amend the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 2000, the Commonwealth's principal act for school funding for the period 2001-04. When the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 2000 was passed by parliament in December 2000, it signalled a historic reform to the way that non-government schools are funded. The act provided a much more equitable, objective and transparent approach to funding and ensured that recurrent funding of non-government schools would be distributed according to need. Schools serving the neediest communities throughout Australia would consequently receive the greatest financial support. I dispute much of what the member for Newcastle said earlier about choice. This legislation was passed unamended by the opposition. Since the legislation was passed, it has become apparent that the act appropriated insufficient funds to pay establishment grant entitlements for all eligible schools. On two occasions amendments to the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act were put before the House to provide additional funds for establishment grants, but the opposition failed to pass these amendments.The amendments contained in this bill are framed differently from those previously put before the House. They seek to increase the amount available under the act for establishment grants by amending schedule 7 of the act. The bill before us today will alter the mechanism for establishment grant funding for new non-government schools. It will replace section 75 and schedule 7 of the act with new provisions. These new provisions set out the per capita entitlements for eligible schools, which are similar to those applying under the general recurrent grants program. The changes in this bill will ensure that the amount of establishment assistance available to new non-government schools will always meet demand. Establishment grants have been provided to assist new government schools with costs occurred in those very early formative years, enabling them to be much more competitive with existing schools. The bill sets out the method of calculating a school's entitlement to establishment assistance. It enables the amounts to be paid to the school or the school system under the current arrangements to be deducted from the school's entitlement as calculated under the new arrangements. Included in this is a provision to ensure that a school already paid grants for 2001 and 2002 will not receive less for a year than it has already been paid for that year.It is estimated that about $11.9 million for the provision of establishment grant funding for the 2001-04 program years will be appropriated by this bill. The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 2000 currently appropriates a total of $4.957 million to those program years. This bill will increase the available funding to $6.9 million over the four years. Establishment grants are available at a rate of $500 per full-time equivalent student in the first year of the school's operation and $250 per full-time equivalent student in the second year of operation.The bill is necessary because a revision of the estimate of students likely to be assisted under this program has shown that without an increase in the total assistance available there is insufficient funding to pay all new schools their full entitlement. In effect, there is a shortfall in the funds required. One important feature of the bill is that it does not change the policy inherent in the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 2000. Because of the opposition's failure to pass the amendments before the House last year, a total of 58 schools with valid entitlement to establishment grants experienced a shortfall in funding.849Sidebottom, Sid, MPMr Sidebottom—It was because it was a cock-up; incompetence.9K6Gambaro, Teresa, MPMs GAMBARO—You have a lot to answer for for that. Of the 58 schools, 49 schools received only 50 per cent of their entitlement for 2001—members opposite can tell those schools why they experienced that downfall—and nine received 25 per cent of their entitlement. Some 4,900 students attend these schools and some of these students are located in my electorate of Petrie. The Living Faith Lutheran Primary School at Murumba Downs in Brisbane's outer north is one of the very schools that I am speaking about. It received only 25 per cent of its entitlement for 2001. Although the school is in the electorate of the member for Dickson, its location near the border of our two electorates means it services students from the electorate of Petrie as well. This school, with its SES score of 99, is just one of the 60 per cent of new non-government schools eligible for establishment grant assistance for serving those lower SES communities. These schools include Catholic, Aboriginal, Christian, Montessori, Islamic, Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican and Assembly of God schools and three special schools. Many of these schools are located in remote areas where the availability of government schools may be some distance away. The Howard government believes that parents should have the right to choose. That is why we support both government and non-government schools.The children of today represent our hope for the future of a thriving economy and a high quality of life. Education provides that pathway, and every Australian child should have access to quality education that will help promote a child's success. They are the fundamental principles behind the government's States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 2000. The previous speaker, the honourable member for Newcastle, spoke about choice. It is about choice, and it is about those fundamental principles that encourage a child's success. Because this legislation reflects the socioeconomic composition of the school community, schools in disadvantaged communities have access to funds to provide quality education and promote equality of opportunity.Last year in this very chamber the member for Rankin raised a motion that equality of opportunity in education is fundamental to a fair society and that a high quality education for all young people is necessary for achieving equality of opportunity. I spoke to this motion and I endorsed the member for Rankin's belief in equal opportunity in education. But where has that ideal gone if the opposition keep rejecting this bill? If the bill fails to be passed, no new non-government schools will receive more than 50 per cent of their full entitlement for the year 2001. These schools have been denied $1.5 million in funding in 2001 and the shortfall will continue for the remainder of the four-year term. If the opposition reject this bill they will effectively deny 5,000 students equality of education and opportunity. When the opposition passed the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 2000 they demonstrated their support for the policy of paying establishment grants to new non-government schools. However, last year when the amendments to the act were put forward the opposition argued that they could not support the bill unless the government agreed to provide a comparable increase in funding of $30 million for capital works for government schools. They chose to ignore the fact that an extra $238 million was given by the Howard government to government state schools in the 2001 budget.In Queensland, under the Commonwealth schools program in 2001 over $42 million was given to the Beattie government for capital works and in my electorate with 19 government schools not one cent has been spent on a government school since 1999. I have written to the state minister for education to ask why and the response I received was totally inadequate. It seems that the only recourse to finding an answer and to determine how much money is being spent in government schools in my electorate of Petrie is to do a freedom of information search and I am intending to do that.In August last year the deputy opposition leader said on radio that his government, should they be elected, would put more money into public education but that money would come from the funding designed to service non-government schools. That is exactly what the unions wanted to hear. In fact, last year they mounted an incredible campaign against me and failed to tell the full story, as usual. One of the amazing things is that in Queensland we have had an increase in federal government funding to government schools. In comparison, the Beattie Labor government increased their state education budget by less than one per cent in the 2000 budget and only by approximately 4.1 per cent in the current budget.The President of the Queensland Teachers Union, Julie-Ann McCullough, said last year that they needed 800 extra teachers. In the CourierMail of Friday, 15 February she said that the Queensland Teachers Union had stated that there was a need for more teachers. Two things that never get mentioned are the $3.7 million that was given to the state government for the quality teacher education program funded by the federal government and also the $10 million that we have given to the six centres of excellence as part of our funding. One of these centres is Redcliffe State High in my electorate.The essence of the bill that we have before us today is that it enables students in schools that are located in regional and remote or suburban Australia to also experience quality education and equality. As a country that has weathered the Asian crisis and maintained strong growth forecasts despite a global downturn we need to invest in the future of our nation. Support for this bill will put Australia's youth in a better position to make significant contributions to our global future. I urge the House to support the bill. I remind the opposition that when they supported the State Grants (Primary and Secondary) Education Assistance Act 2000 unopposed they supported the principles inherent in this bill—to provide funding for new non-government schools. I ask that they revisit that time and support this bill in the interests of Australia's future.11:17:00523Sidebottom, Sid, MPMr SIDEBOTTOM849BraddonALP00—Thank you, Deputy Speaker Causley, and congratulations on your election. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to speak to the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 and to endorse the amendments that are foreshadowed by the shadow minister for education. It also gives me an opportunity to reflect on education and the fact that in Tasmania, my home state, schools in the public system have only just returned. I would like to wish all students and teachers the best for the year and commend the work that teachers do in our public schools in particular. I would also like to reiterate Labor's statement at the last election that it would be committed to the provision of quality education for all students, most particularly in the public education system, where it is absolutely vital that quality education is offered to all students. Encouragement and support are given for the provision of well-educated and well-prepared teachers to help our young people. The bill before us today seeks funding for the establishment of new schools; in fact, it offers the provision of a different type of funding, going from appropriations to a system of recurrent grants so that the government does not need to go back and seek appropriation amounts every time applications come in for new schools. I think that is a much better system in terms of streamlining, but it does contain within it flaws from the old system. We have had members on the other side saying how Labor has attempted to block the government in its attempts to offer choice to Australian families in the provision of new schools. What Labor is doing is saying: `We support choice and the funding of new schools for needy students and their families. What we do not support is open slather of public funding to new schools and private schools.'The amendments seek to put some equity in funding and also to put in some provisions in terms of eligibility, transparency and accountability. We do no more. Members have been screeching on the other side saying that we do not support choice in education; that is nothing more than hysterical rhetoric. What we are trying to do is provide equity in terms of eligibility.In the past the former minister tried to wrap up in one bill a series of measures which in actual fact would have advantaged the most privileged of private schools. That is what the Labor Party took umbrage with. We were prepared to support students in private schools that were needy and seeking assistance. When the Labor Party offered $800 million more to private schools it sought to redirect some of those funds away from the most wealthy private schools into the public education system by offering scholarships to teachers, by offering professional development programs for teachers and by introducing the concept of education priority zones, which I believe was a very innovative and very important initiative in the last election. I am sorry that we are unable to implement those at this stage but I look forward to seeing that re-emerge in the future.We sought to stop the offering of public moneys to very wealthy private schools. We are not stopping the offering of assistance to new schools where there is need, and that is all that these amendments seek to do. We do not need to hear the bleating on the other side that Labor is anti private schools and that Labor is anti choice. Labor is for equity and fair choice. I remind members opposite that we hear them saying all the time that the Howard government—this government of honesty and decency!—has been increasing funds to public education and that we on this side will not accept the facts. I would like to discuss the facts. The budget papers clearly show that when this government came to office in 1996, 43 per cent of Commonwealth outlays on schools and specific purpose payments to the states for schools was allocated to government schools. By 2004, according to the estimates, it will have fallen to 34 per cent. When we look at the estimated allocations under the states grants programs in terms of out-turn prices, we see that the grand total in 2000 was 37 per cent; in 2001, 36.4 per cent; in 2002, 35.7 per cent; in 2003, 34.7 per cent; and in 2004, 34.1 per cent—going down, not going up. It is very interesting, too, to reflect on this:Ministerial media releases issued at the time of the 1999 Federal Budget—this is still relevant now—referred a billion dollars extra in funding for government schools.It was heralded and trumpeted then and it has been repeated in this House. However, let us read on:This amount referred to the compounded total increase in funding for government schools in the 2001-2004 quadrennium, in comparison with the previous quadrennium. However, after discounting these amounts for price adjustments of 24.8%, and enrolment growth of 0.05%, the real increase in monies to government schools is negligible. On the same basis of a 24.8% price adjustment of 5.9%, the non-government sector will see a real increase of 7.9%. That is in the budget papers, yet members on the other side trumpet every day that this government has poured billions more dollars into public education, as though it were a real increase. It is not. We on this side say that if you are going to establish a new school, we want you to prove the need for a new school.We want to clarify the purposes of the establishment grants and link conditions for funding to meeting that purpose, to make them set out eligibility criteria, to make them transparent and to make them accountable. That is not denying an allocation; it is asking that there be some form of transparency. We want to improve the accountability and transparency provisions of the bill; that is, an application process to replace automatic conferral of grants following state or territory registration. In other words, instead of getting money automatically, applicants should make an application and follow a process in that application. We ask that the definition of Commonwealth eligibility criteria for new schools be improved and that we establish a sliding scale of per capita grants for new schools with an SES score exceeding 100. In other words, do not give the money per capita willy-nilly to whoever makes the application. At least look at their ability to raise funds inside that school and look at their assets and the fees that they charge. They are not all the same.I am not a suspicious type, but it makes me suspect that this is almost like the introduction of a voucher system; it is the thin end of the wedge. Now we will have moneys following students, so off they will go willy-nilly, wherever, as the public education system begins to grind down. That is where public moneys should go, that is where the public's interest is, and that is where the majority of funding from this place should go. We should make ineligible for establishment grant funding schools that derive income from student fees in excess of per capita average government school recurrent costs. That is on the basis not of attacking people's choice but of equity. It is a basic principle. We believe that we should insert a legislative requirement for review of the establishment grants program to report to the parliament within 12 months. That is pretty sensible. It is public moneys into new schools. Why shouldn't they be accountable for the expenditure of those funds so that we know that those funds are being spent on educational outcomes that will benefit directly the students in those new schools?We are not saying that we will reject this bill, contrary to what members on the other side have said. What we are asking for is that it be based on the principles of equity and accountability and that eligibility be quite clear. That is what I look forward to. The new minister disappointed me last question time. It was like seeing the former minister sitting next to him and seeing the new minister's lips moving—as if some form of ideological transplant had taken place. It was disappointing to hear his recent comments about after-school and continuing education. Whatever his motivation, it was totally unclear. I have some faith in the new minister. I hope that he will look at questions of equity and act on them. I was very disappointed at yesterday's performance, but he has an opportunity to take up our proposed amendments to be moved in the Senate so that we can have bipartisan support on an issue that we used to have in the 1970s but have lost since.11:29:00525Secker, Patrick, MPMr SECKER848BarkerLP10—Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I also offer my congratulations on your elevation to the august position of the deputy speakership and I am sure you will do a very good job.I always enjoy following my good friend the member for Braddon. He always tends to bring up some very interesting figures, but the problem with his argument is that he only talked about percentages and not real figures. There is that old saying about statistics and lies, and he failed to tell us of the real increases in spending for both government and non-government schools. The fact is that we have increased the funding for private schools at a greater rate because the Labor government froze funding to private schools for 13 years—those schools were actually going downhill under their regime. He spoke of equity, but Labor's idea of equity is to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator, and that really is not in the best interest of all Australians. The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 is a very important piece of legislation. I am extremely passionate about this sort of legislation; it is the root of providing a caring and competent education system worthy of our young people. In fact, in August last year, I also participated in the debate on the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2001. This is vital legislation and I am astounded that those opposite have chosen to make this a lengthy debate and delay the provision of funds to schools because of their petty political platforms.In my electorate of Barker I know of at least one school that is desperately awaiting the passage of this bill so they can access the correct amount of funding based on their true enrolments—unlike 2001, where they suffered from a shortfall in funding. Encounter Lutheran School in the coastal town of Victor Harbour has had to rely on the Lutheran system to make up the shortfall of funding which resulted from the estimates supporting the original legislation suffering from a surge of enrolments to more than double that of 1999. That means that teachers have been unable to access the usual professional development schemes because the funding is just not there. We are not just talking about teachers at Encounter Lutheran School and Vineyard Lutheran School but teachers in the entire South Australian Lutheran system.Like adequate funding, professional development for staff is vital for the running of any school—government or non-govern-ment, religious or non-denomination-al, rural or urban. Professional development is vital so that our students receive an education that is current and modern, will stand them in good stead for the future and provide them with as level a playing field as possible. However, because of circumstances beyond this government's control, these schools, their teachers and, most importantly, their students have suffered. I am talking about real children in real schools with real parents, which is why I am still astounded that those opposite do not recognise the urgency of the legislation.I see that the Speaker has now taken over the chair, so may I have my first opportunity to offer my congratulations on your re-election to the speakership. I am sure that we will continue to be served well in this parliament.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—Thank you, member for Barker.848Secker, Patrick, MPMr SECKER—Coming back to this bill, I am not standing here attempting to politically point-score on minor technicalities; I am merely telling it like it is and trying to convey to the other side of the chamber that there are schools in need out there—schools who need us to pass the legislation and vote to improve their situation.At the time of the review in October 2000 it was found that, while the number of new school commencements was relatively constant, enrolments had climbed an average of 92 students per school. A small number of new schools were established in 2000 with relatively large enrolments, and the education system suddenly found itself faced with an increase of 40 per cent in enrolments from 1999, leaving some schools, such as Encounter Lutheran School, with shortfalls in their budgets as they had already allocated their funding. At the first sign of the shortfall, which became apparent in the review, the Howard government chose to act. We did not try to hide the fact that the figures had changed, we did not try to hide the fact that some schools were suffering because of this shortfall and we did not ignore the problem. Instead, we got to work and drafted new legislation designed to take into account the new enrolment numbers and provide flexibility.While the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 alters the mechanism for establishment grant funding for new non-government schools to a per capita entitlement payable to all eligible schools as a standing appropriation for the 2001 to 2004 funding period rather than to a fixed legislated special appropriation, it does not alter the policy already agreed to by the opposition and passed by the parliament in 2000. However, the original act appropriated insufficient funds to pay establishment grant entitlements for all eligible schools. As the minister has already mentioned, the government has twice introduced amendments to provide the additional funds. However, for reasons only known to them, the opposition saw fit to knock these amendments back. Claims last year that the amendments did not cater for government schools ignored the extra $238 million the coalition provided for government schools in the 2001 budget. In that budget we allocated $143 million over four years to develop students' scientific, mathematical and technological skills; a further $28.8 million for literacy and numeracy; $32.7 million over four years to assist people moving from school to further education via the Jobs Pathway Program; $6.7 million over four years to the Enterprise and Career Education Foundation for extra work placement coordinators in remote areas of Central and Northern Australia; and $2.5 million to pilot career and transition advisers.In fact, of the specific initiatives in the budget, 87 per cent of the funding was directed to the 69 per cent of students in the government sector and resulted in $20 million more for government schools than they otherwise would have received under the shabby amendments that the opposition sought. Needless to say, we did not support their amendments. Their reasons for not supporting ours still remain a mystery. The opposition has also conveniently overlooked the fact that the Commonwealth government funding of government schools is at the highest level ever. All states and territories have received increased funding every year since 1996 for their government schools. Funnily enough, that just happens to be the year that the Howard government took over.The government's record for government school funding is to be commended—an increase in 2002 of $715 million, or 46 per cent since 1996. The Commonwealth contributed $227 million to state governments in 2001 for capital works in government schools with figures suggesting that total Commonwealth and state funding for capital works in government schools in each year would be in excess of $650 million. You would all be aware of all the unsubstantiated allegations raised last year by the Australian Education Union. There were allegations of loopholes and rorting, and stories of funding being allocated to schools which were not entitled to it. I repeat that these were unsubstantiated allegations. The reason why I take such an interest in this is that one of those schools that the AEU had their puppets opposite raise during the debate was Glendale College in my electorate.Glendale College, formerly Glendale Christian College in Goolwa, was bought out by the South Australian Anglican schools system in late 2000 or early 2001. What happened was that, in late 2000, Glendale Christian College fell into financial hardship and was forced into receivership. For at least two months, I watched the staff and the students struggle to stay afloat and I shared the heartbreak when it finally became apparent that it was not meant to be. So I know that the opposition's claims that this was an existing school prior to 1999, and therefore should not be entitled to receive establishment grants, are just not true. The South Australian Anglican schools system purchased the school's assets and a new school and Glendale College opened in 2001 with significantly—and I repeat significantly—different administration and staffing. Even the South Australian Non-government Schools Registration Board registered the new Glendale College as a new school and it met all the requirements for a new school under the states grants act. So why all these claims of untoward behaviour? I am not sure. I could suggest that perhaps they operate a little differently on that side of the House and therefore only suggest these things because they think everyone is like them. However, I would rather think that it was more a simple case of them not liking the fact that we had a good idea which provides useful assistance to non-government schools when they need it most—and they did not. Why are those who sit opposite delaying passage? I cannot imagine any of us here, regardless of our political persuasion, creed or colour who would want to disadvantage students. Without the passage of this bill, no new schools will receive more than 50 per cent of their full entitlement for the year 2001. Without this bill, eligible schools will be denied over $1.5 million in funding in the 2001 round. Without this bill, full payments to schools for 2002 to 2004 are also under threat.I urge those opposite to come to their senses and act in the best interests of all Australian students. I urge them to consider the plight of our schools, our students and the future of our country. Today's students are tomorrow's leaders. I hope that the opposition comes to their senses and allows for quick passage of this bill to stop the hardship that new schools are facing. I commend this bill to the House.11:41:00528Plibersek, Tanya, MPMs PLIBERSEK83MSydneyALP00—The member for Barker said that we operate a little differently on this side of the House and I think he has hit the nail on the head. We see that education funding should be directed to students in schools that are most in need. It should not be used to prop up wealthy schools in the way that the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 recommends. We are happy to pass this bill as soon as its anomalies are ironed out. The member for Barker said that the government has not tried to hide the fact that the figures have changed. It would be a little difficult to hide these figures. The funding that was originally appropriated for this bill quickly ran out. Funding for establishment grants grew by 330 per cent in 2001 and 260 per cent in 2002. The problem that we face here is a massive blow-out in the costs of this legislation. We need a government that is prepared to introduce measures into the bill that make sure that the legislation controls the amount of money being spent and that there is some accountability, some equity and some fairness in the distribution of establishment grants instead of what is happening now with this proposed legislation which merely deepens the trough available to new schools.I looked forward to the reign of the new Minister for Education, Science and Training. I thought that the new minister, with his Labor background, might have been a bit more interested in issues of equity and fairness in public schools. I thought that perhaps we would see an improvement on the proposals of the former Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Of course, it was not a high standard to beat. I did not think there would be a requirement for a dramatic change for me to be pleased with the improvement, but I have got to say that I have been disappointed. The former minister's priority in his portfolio was entrenching privilege in the education system and it seems that the new minister has taken over that role. Our intention on this side—and, as the member for Barker pointed out, we operate a little differently—is to provide the best possible education for all Australian children. This measure that we are discussing today once again benefits wealthy non-government schools. What we seek is not to undermine non-government schools as a whole, but to ensure that funding is directed to those schools that need it most.Labor has always supported financial assistance to genuinely newly commencing schools. Of course schools have normal set up costs that include managing class sizes when schools are just starting out, and expenses such as purchasing teaching and library materials. There is no discussion about whether we support these things. The discussion is about how we can best ensure that the funds that are available go to the schools that need them most. This legislation is necessary because establishment grant funding ran out because the government vastly underestimated the funds that would be necessary to set up new schools. I went through the figures earlier about how the funding has run out because of the very fast growth in new funding—330 per cent in 2001 and 260 per cent in 2002. The government's response to this is merely to establish an uncapped and unchecked stream of funds that will flow automatically to non-government schools. This legislation was necessary because the government has lost control of the scheme and, instead of trying to regain control of the scheme by attaching conditions to new funding grants, the solution is merely to, as I said, increase the pot of money available. The legislation actually needs to be amended to bring discipline, accountability, transparency and equity into the funding model. Labor will be moving amendments in the Senate to ensure that that happens. I am disappointed because the government system has no regard for need: it provides a flat per capita grant whether a school is rich or poor. It has no regard to the fees that schools charge and the capacity of parents to pay. We would like to see support to schools on the basis of need, so the poor non-government schools that the members opposite keep raising are the ones that will benefit from Labor's proposed changes.Last year's Senate inquiry on the issue showed that many of the schools partly responsible for the increase in the cost of establishment grants were, under the department's own guidelines, technically not entitled to receive these grants because they were new campuses of existing schools. Our shadow minister for education, Jenny Macklin, gave us a number of examples in her speech in relation to this problem. The guidelines for the establishment grants program prohibits grants being made to new campuses of existing schools. Of course it is not the schools' fault that they receive these grants; the fault is with the legislation and it really points to the necessity for amending the legislation. The legislation that Labor is proposing is: firstly, to clarify the purpose of establishment grants and to link conditions for funding to meeting this purpose; secondly, to improve the accountability and transparency provisions of the bill, including an application process to replace the automatic conferral of grants following state or territory registration, and definition of Commonwealth eligibility criteria for `new' schools; thirdly, to establish a sliding scale of per capita grants for new schools with an SES score exceeding 100; fourthly, to make schools that derive income from student fees in excess of per capita average government school recurrent costs ineligible for establishment grants funding; and, finally, to insert a legislative requirement for a review of the establishment grants program to report to the parliament again within 12 months. This reporting mechanism is very important as we have seen the cost blow-out with the initial legislation and we need to ensure the money being distributed is, in fact, reaching the schools that need financial assistance most.The purpose of the establishment grants scheme and its accountability has been the greatest concern that we have had on this side. Neither the current legislation nor the associated administrative guidelines are very clear about what establishment grants are actually for and this has led to some confusion about establishment grants. For example, the minister included in a press release his disappointment that a school which had planned an excursion was forced to cancel the excursion because funding was not forthcoming. Funding excursions is in no way related to establishment grant funding; there is no way that you should be relating the two things. Yet the minister responsible for this legislation has confused the two issues by saying the school was forced to cancel planned excursions because the original scheme had run out of funding.On closer examination of the way these funds have been used, I believe it is very important to introduce tighter administration to avoid anomalies, including, for example, schools using funding to pay for advertising and other marketing strategies. These also should not be funded by establishment grants. Explicit accountability provisions linked to the purpose of establishment grants would also enable the government to assess whether the program had been effective. I think it is fair to say that in any program that government introduces we must have accountability measures and some measure of whether taxpayers' money is being spent effectively. We would like to see some explicit accountability provisions.Labor has also been critical of the sliding scale of grants. I think it is fair to say that a flat per capita grant is not particularly equitable. It certainly does not reflect the principle of need that I believe should be central to school funding. Dr Nelson, the minister, has called on the Labor Party to support poor non-government schools. With that in mind, I hope to see the minister supporting Labor's amendment that would see additional support going to poorer non-government schools and, consequently, less funding going to the wealthiest schools. In the Senate, Labor will be moving an amendment to provide for a differential establishment grants scheme linked to a school's SES score. In the past we have been very critical of the SES score as a measure of a school's entitlement to funding. There are quite severe problems with the SES funding model, and I think Michael Lee did a very good job in describing many of the anomalies thrown up by the SES funding model. However, we have to work with what we have. We would be prepared to use the SES funding model in the short term to establish a sliding scale of establishment grants funding to ensure the most money goes to the schools that need the most help.We have also identified a problem with schools whose fee income exceeds the resource standards in public schools. We propose to limit establishment grants to those schools whose fees income does not exceed the resource standards in public schools. Most new schools only have access to fees and other private income that is well below the average cost of running a primary or secondary school in the public sector. But a very small number of very wealthy schools that charge very high fees have access to fee income which is dramatically higher than the recognised cost of running a school in the public sector, which is set at around $6,500 for a primary school student and $8,500 for a secondary school student on an accrual accounting basis. That is using the government's own measure which is called the average government schools recurrent cost.Those schools with very high fees would of course be operating at a dramatically higher resource standard than your average non-government school, and certainly much higher than your average government school. It is clearly inappropriate for the Commonwealth to increase the financial advantages to new schools that are charging substantial fees, and we will be moving an amendment in that area as well.Our aim in moving the amendments in the Senate is certainly not to undermine the non-government school system, but to target funding to the schools which are most in need. Our amendments will be introduced to improve accountability requirements on the program and to inject some provision to make sure that grants are made according to need and that poorer private schools get higher establishment grants.11:54:00530Martin, Stephen, MPDr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—It is with pleasure that I enter the debate this morning on the issue of the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002,because it gives me an opportunity to reflect on one of the more significant issues of the last federal election campaign, whilst at the same time making some comments specifically about the bill before us. Honourable members would be aware that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and shadow minister for employment, education, training and science, Jenny Macklin, has foreshadowed that we will be moving a series of amendments to this legislation because we want to ensure, unlike this government, that the basic principles of equity and fairness can in some way be enshrined in the funding arrangements associated with the school systems of this country.In the last election campaign and since, we have heard much from this government in terms of claims about areas of responsibility under the Constitution. One of those areas of course is education, and we heard much talk during the election campaign from the then minister, David Kemp, and from the Prime Minister, saying that education was a state responsibility. Honourable members will recall that the Labor Party took to the last election a comprehensive policy on education, dealing with education from university through to TAFE colleges and schools. We took a policy to the last election that saw us in partnership with the states; for example, providing funding of a matching nature for capital works programs. We took a policy to the last election that gave opportunities, or would have given opportunities, to teachers for retraining. We took a policy to the last election which suggested that, when face-to-face relief was required in schools so that teachers could go to retraining programs and so on, it would be provided and that the Commonwealth had a real role to play in that. We did not buck-pass and suggest that the states and the territories were the only responsible authorities, but rather suggested that the Commonwealth had a legitimate role to play in education. We also said that the views that we were putting forward very much reflected the concept of equity and fairness in educational funding. We said that, to fund many of the proposals that we had outlined, we would, as a government, take back what we considered to be excesses of this government in funding category 1 schools, and ensure that that money was directed to those schools that were in need. That concept is enshrined in this legislation, and particularly in the amendments that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has moved. If you reflect on the fact, responsibility for education—within both the government and the non-government school sector—by governments of both a federal and a state complexion is a responsibility that should not be shirked. What the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has proposed is a series of amendments that would, firstly, clarify the purpose of the proposed establishment grants and link conditions for funding to meeting this particular purpose. I think it is important that we do that, simply because of what we have seen in the past. And that is the reason for the second amendment: to improve accountability and transparency provisions in the bill. We have seen in the past that some schools, by developing a satellite campus, have been successful in getting access to new funds to establish what they consider to be a new school in the non-government sector, when clearly that is not the case. In many of those cases, as has been amplified by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and others in debate on this side, very wealthy schools by comparison have had access to those funds, and it has not been judged on the basis of equity and need.Labor believes that that is a fundamental approach here. We also should reflect that, during the last election campaign, I think there was a reasonably effective scare campaign being run that the Labor Party was only concerned about the public education process and not the poorer, low fee paying non-government school sector. That was absolute rubbish. The fact of the matter is that the Labor Party always has and always will stand for equity and fairness in funding for education. We believe that any system that any government—whether it be at the national or the state and territory level—puts in place must similarly reflect that fairness and that equity.I defy people to go around their own electorates and to visit public schools and the low fee paying non-government schools and see that the problems in those are not the same. I defy people to go there and see that P&Cs or P&Fs, respectively, are not similarly struggling with fetes, fundraising activities, fashion parades and the never-ending chocolate drives to raise funds so that their schools can have adequate resources, whether they be library ones, computer resources or shadecloth in the playgrounds. The schools would require a whole raft of public works that, because of the demands on the state education system, are not coming as quickly as those schools would like. The fact of the matter is that when you look at this legislation, which proposes to be open-ended in supporting the establishment of new schools in the non-government sector, it makes no sense not to build in some accountability and not to build in some provisions, as identified in the Senate inquiry, whereby campuses being established as satellites of existing non-government schools qualify for these funds.It is important as well that we reflect on the fact that what the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has proposed by her amendments is some fairly lateral thinking on the way in which these funding outcomes might be derived, because the third amendment seeks to establish a sliding scale of per capita grants for new schools with an SES score exceeding 100. It is a fact that the Labor Party is not necessarily wedded to the appropriateness of that SES score as a way of working out a particular school's socioeconomic status and therefore that its application for funding is determined by it. I know in my own electorate, with one school that I have quoted in this place before—a Catholic parish school in Gwynneville in Wollongong—that, simply because of certain pockets in the immediately surrounding area, when the SES—the socioeconomic scaling system—is worked out for it, the school rates a lot higher than what is identified as the actual socioeconomic status of the children that go to that school. So it is disadvantaged in that respect because of that measure being applied. I hope that in government we will be looking at ways in which that particular matter might be addressed. Certainly, I know that in the last parliament my friend the former member for Dobell, Michael Lee, was making some suggestions in that respect. I am sure the Deputy Leader of the Opposition will be similarly looking at that over the coming couple of years. The fourth amendment that has been proposed makes schools that derive income from student fees in excess of per capita average government school recurrent costs ineligible for establishment grant funding. Again, this goes to that issue of equity and fairness in the system. I do not believe it is important whether, in the non-government sector, we are talking about schools that are established from some religious background or cultural background. They should not in any way be disadvantaged because they are competing against a school that is able to subvert the true meaning of this legislation, as I have said, by establishing satellite campuses and other similar devices to get around the funding scheme.With the amendments that we are proposing to move on this side of the House, we have to make sure that transparency is there, and the per capita grants being dictated by a consideration of the SES score exceeding 100 and by the income from school fees being taken into consideration is a significant step forward. It is a little different—and again it is the Labor Party that is making the suggestion. Once again, it is the Labor Party that is making a suggestion to government on how to improve the system. We ask that the government give this serious consideration for the betterment of education in Australia. This is not politics; we are not playing petty party politics here. What we are saying is that fairness and equity should underpin everything that is done in education. What we are saying is that, in order to achieve that, here are two sensible amendments that the opposition is proposing and that we just ask the government to think about.Lest the nonsense gets peddled by those on the other side that, again, this is demonstrating that Labor are only concerned about the public education system and that we want to get rid of the non-government sector and so on, that is just rubbish! Those sorts of debates went out in the 1960s and they are not back again—I can assure people of that. The support from Labor for, as I have suggested, a fair and equitable system across the government and non-government sector is there. Equally, of course, those in the public sector who would like to try to trade off this particular view that Labor are putting forward, as in some way a betrayal of the public schools system, should look very carefully at what we are saying.Too often people that have points of view at either end of the spectrum cannot see a middle position, and too often people that are vehemently opposed to any funding for non-government schools and are passionately in favour of only funding public education cannot see that there is a balance that must be struck and that that is not going to be turned back by the way in which governments of any persuasion deal with these issues. That fundamental point that Labor have always advocated—that fundamental plank on which our education policy has always been founded—of fairness and equity in funding is here in the amendments that the opposition are proposing.As a genuine attempt to look at these issues, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has similarly moved, as a fifth amendment, that we need to have a legislative requirement for review of the establishment grants program, to report to the parliament within 12 months. I have seen so many programs that have come forward in goodwill from governments of different persuasions in my time in this place that seem to just run without any accountability provisions built in or indeed any accountability provisions to the parliament being built in. A review in 12 months of this program, under what the government has proposed and hopefully incorporating those other amendments that Labor are proposing, is a very eminent and sensible proposition that I hope the government will support. 12:07:00533Price, Roger, MPMr PRICEQI4ChifleyALP00—Mr Speaker, may I offer my sincere congratulations to you. I guess it is a bit like it is for us back in our electorates: there are any number of people who feel they can do the job a lot better. I have some sense of the difficulty of the task, and I wish you well in your high office.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—I thank the member for Chifley, and I look forward to him joining the team.QI4Price, Roger, MPMr PRICE—Thank you. I will put the theory to the test. Mr Speaker, please forgive me if I take an opportunity to make a few remarks about my friend John Aquilina, the former Minister for Education and Training in the New South Wales government. He is someone who has occupied a position of responsibility for education for some 14 years in opposition and in government. For the Labor Party, of course, education is always so vital, so it would be fair to say that as the shadow minister, and particularly as a minister, his tenure was not without some conflict, and maybe even controversy. But he has overseen a lot of reforms in New South Wales, and perhaps one my most favourite recent reforms was his institution of the Chifley College in my own electorate, and I sincerely thank him for it. In reviewing those reforms I would have to say that, as minister for education, his single most outstanding achievement was actually to keep the money up to the portfolio at a time when, for example, in Victoria there was slashing and burning and closures of TAFEs and schools all around that state. So I do thank him for his enormous contribution.It is a pleasure to follow the honourable member for Cunningham in this debate on the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002. There is so much that he said that I would want to endorse and, perhaps, to go over as well. I do want to take up the point he made that the federal government sees little role for itself—and stated that before and during the election campaign—in education. If we look back over the last 19 years, really, of change in education, we can see that we have lacked an emphasis on infants and primary schools. When we say there is no role for the federal government in education, I have in my mind discussions I have had with the principals of primary schools. Two things stand out in my mind. One is that, for infants and primary school children, there is in my state an absolute lack of allied professionals.Let me give the example of speech pathology. In just one district, Mount Druitt, an estimate was given that we could do with six full-time speech pathologists. I guess language and speaking are something that we take for granted. But, of course, there is the reverse—that is, in the worst cases, if we do not have these health professionals, people who have no reason to be mute can become mute. That is a horrible thing for children. It is true that schools have provision to pay for an assessment of a student in need, so they can set up the initial visit, but they cannot pay for ongoing treatment. If the parents are able to pay the private fees, we can get that child treated and back on a normal curve over time. The situation is the same with clinical psychologists. If we can get the children treated, we can in fact get them back on a normal curve.The other point that I want to make is on the issue of class sizes—and I hope to do a lot more work in this area. It is an old but very worthwhile debate. I am advised that there is great benefit in having reduced class sizes, particularly in the earliest years of schooling—in the kindergarten and first years. If we were able to provide the federal funding to reduce those class sizes, we would be well rewarded with better progress of those students throughout their school years. I wish to reject, totally, the argument that there is no Commonwealth role in education. There is a lot of need. There is a need for innovation. There is a need, perhaps, to take some new direction. Hopefully, as an opposition we can constructively look at the education area and determine what our priorities ought to be because, on this side of the House, we do not believe that someone's future should be dependent on what their mummy and daddy do in life. We believe in the inherent right of every child to succeed, irrespective of their parents' circumstances. 10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—I hesitate to interrupt the member for Chifley; I appreciate that his remarks are relative to education but they are not exactly relative to the bill, and I thought for that reason that I should interrupt. I have extended about as much latitude as he would have expected me to extend, I thought.QI4Price, Roger, MPMr PRICE—I am quite happy to get back on to the bill, Mr Speaker. You are generous to a fault, as always, Mr Speaker. This is a bill that deals with the establishment of new private schools. Again, I want to draw on the contribution of the member for Cunningham—that is to say that, on this side of the House, we are supportive of government schools, of course; but we are also supportive of private schools. We believe that people should have choices—choices between government schools; choices between private schools; and choices between government and private schools. What we are passionate about is ensuring that young students, the real wealth of the country, have every opportunity to have their potential realised and their skills developed.What is so offensive about this bill is the sneaky tearing up of a bipartisan approach towards education funding. It is very sneaky because we are giving per capita grants to new schools, irrespective of the schools' ability to meet some of those costs. We are not targeting; it is just a flat rate. I do not think any other member for Chifley would have been to the opening of as many private schools in the electorate as I have been privileged to attend. It is one of my joys. I am proud of all those schools: the Catholic school, the Anglican school, the Coptic school, and even one of the latest additions, an Islamic School. I am proud of them all. But I find it offensive that they receive the same amount of money as would King's School if they were opening as new.The great irony about this States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 is that we are dealing with a problem of—I will not say rorting—questionable use and application of these funds where people have opened a satellite school or a school building next door to an existing school. Philosophically these things, we say on this side of the House, are wrong. It is appropriate for government money to go to private schools, it is appropriate for private school students to benefit from this government money, but surely in such tight economic circumstances it should not be in a blanket way. There ought to be always, I feel, some accountability in the process, some transparency in the process and, most important of all, some targeting in the process.Our deputy leader, who has responsibility for this bill on this side of the House, has foreshadowed amendments that we will be, as I understand it, moving in the Senate. I hope that the government pays heed to them, but most particularly of all I hope that they have a mind to preserve the bipartisan approach to government funding of private schools. This is something that has been worth while. It is something that many students have benefited from and should continue to benefit from. Let us not undermine that. Let us return a degree of decency and accountability to these matters so that the tradition can continue. Mr Speaker, I again apologise for straying. Thank you for your generosity. I conclude my remarks.12:17:00534Andren, Peter, MPMr ANDRENKL6CalareIND00—Mr Speaker, I have already congratulated you on the retention of your position. I look forward to working with you in this parliament. The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 seeks to provide additional funds to pay the full entitlement of establishment grants to 58 new schools which have been denied that funding due to the failure of the parliament to pass necessary amendments last year.According to the minister in his second reading speech, 49 schools which have a valid entitlement have been paid only around 50 per cent of their entitlements for the 2001 year, while nine have received about 25 per cent of their 2001 entitlements. The minister says that a continuing failure to provide these funds, totalling $6.9 million, will cause these schools and their 4,900 students financial difficulty and will adversely affect the quality of their education provision. I have no intention of voting to deny this funding, but I have grave concerns about the funding formulae used by this and previous governments for the non-government school sector. I would like to deal with each aspect of the coalition government's independent school funding formulae as they apply to the socioeconomic status measure and the general recurrent grants and establishment grants. I will deal with the latter two first. Unlike the major recurrent grants for non-government schools, establishment grants are not scaled according to need. I will take up the issue of the adequacy of the need measurement in just a moment.There is widespread concern in the community about the level of funding to education, especially to the state school sector. I note the minister says that 60 per cent of the schools needing funding under the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002 represent the poorer socioeconomic suburbs throughout the country. I have said before and I will say again that the growth of new schools following the abolition of the previous government's cap on new independent schools is satisfying the wonderful aim of providing choice in education, but I question whether it is spreading the scarce school education dollar over a broader and broader base.One can argue that because we have had a Catholic and Protestant system alongside a state system for 150 years or thereabouts, so too should any religious group set up a school if it so chooses. My argument is that that not only guarantees a growing mass of non-state schools but also, by its sectarian emphasis, moves away from a holistic educational experience for the young Australians of the future. It could well run counter to the benefits of our multicultural society.Let me repeat some of the words I delivered to a country teachers conference in Dubbo last year. It is all right to talk about freedom of choice in education, in health, in union membership, indeed in superannuation for anyone other than an MP, but freedom of choice implies a capacity to exercise that choice. Many parents and children just do not have that capacity, but should in no way be penalised because they do not. Freedom of choice is one thing; equality of choice is what we should be aiming at, especially in education. Financial constraint should be no barrier to opportunity, yet I fear the trend towards market based education at a preschool, primary, secondary and tertiary level is delivering exactly that unwanted result.The government would no doubt argue that, by denying passage of these amendments, the right to exercise choice is being denied to those parents whose kids are attending the 58 affected schools covered by this bill. I do not disagree with that argument, but let me add some more of my words to the Dubbo conference. I worry that scarce resources are likely to be spread over more and more and smaller and smaller schools with a wider and wider social, ethnic and religious spread. I just question what that does for the homogeneity of our society. While we think we should celebrate cultural differences and strengths, I do not know that a mushrooming of sectarian education is what we need to achieve that.This bill is framed differently, as the minister points out, from the two previous unsuccessful attempts to amend the act. The amendment bill establishes eligibility for payments of establishment grants consistent with the criteria for general recurrent grants and specifies per capita rates for establishment grants at $500 per full-time equivalent student in the first year of a school's operation and $250 per FTE student in the second year. These amounts will not be supplemented in line with changes in average government school recurrent costs and are set in legislation, not set by ministerial determination.That is all well and good as far as establishing legislated criteria beyond the whim of the minister of the day. These changes go a fair way to satisfying calls for clearer guidelines and accountability procedures. However, nowhere do I detect anything to prevent such grants being used for advertising, although one would presume that the 58 schools to get overdue funding under these amendments are not looking to use it for advertising purposes if the majority are in the poorer socioeconomic groupings, as the minister suggests. I also cannot see anywhere that these establishment grants are based on need. There is no such change in these amendments to the original legislation, which provides for the automatic conferral of the grants without examination of the particular circumstances of the schools. Unlike the major general recurrent grants for non-government schools, establishment grants do not appear to be scaled according to need. Perhaps there is no necessity to establish the need of 60 per cent of the 58 schools covered by these amendments, but what about the rest of them? As I said, I have grave difficulties with that so-called scaling anyway. It is the perception, as much as the reality, of public money going to the not needy that has caused so much dismay in the community. Let me revisit the socioeconomic status, or SES, funding formula, which the minister in his second reading speech said ensures that `recurrent funding of non-government schools is distributed according to need and schools serving the neediest communities receive the greatest financial support'. As a former state schoolteacher with schoolteacher siblings and as someone who sent their children to state and independent schools, I reckon I have a fair handle on the most responsible use of the publicly provided education dollar. I can see how a formula can look fair but have an effect that distorts reality. Under the application guidelines for recurrent grants to independent schools, such grants can be applied to teaching and ancillary staff salaries, professional development of teachers, curriculum development and maintenance, and general operation provisions. There is no problem with that: it reads like the equitable use of the taxpayer's dollar, whatever their choice of school.However, the provision of these grants undoubtedly frees up other substantial private financial resources to provide the extra facilities that give many independent schools that exclusive edge. `That's okay,' I hear you say, `the parents pay a squillion anyway.' And, after paying for two boys over a combined 12 years, I know all about it. But I am talking here about equity and access to quality education. As in my argument about nursing homes, if people want to pay for a five-star service, that is their choice; but our first priority should be to provide a basic three-star education across our school systems—state and non-state. I do not believe in subsidising the five-star when we do not have a level schooling field. We do not have that three-star level, I am afraid, and until we do there is no justification for a formula that does not distribute funds to state or non-state schools on an equitable basis.Under the SES formula, we have discarded the concept of a school community's capacity to pay. While many new schools are no doubt in low socioeconomic areas and many existing schools are also in that social category, many are certainly not, yet the SES formula may well indicate that their students are. The SES was supposed to be a better way of providing funds to non-government schools in terms of equity, certainty, simplicity and flexibility. As we know, the SES funding method assesses a school's need according to a measure of the socioeconomic status of the community or communities from which it draws its students. It is a statistical measure of the socioeconomic profile of the community and is made up of a number of different aspects, including income, occupational status and educational status. That sounds fine: perhaps it is in line with the sentiments of Greg Fletcher of the Bird In Hand Inn, quoted by the Minister for Education, Science and Training in question time yesterday. Perhaps it is the sort of fairness that Mr Fletcher was alluding to, but I wonder whether Mr Fletcher is aware of how the SES measure is compiled and whether he is satisfied that public funds are distributed on an equitable basis. It is measured as follows: students' home addresses are collected and then linked to the Bureau of Statistics census collection district data, which typically comprises about 250 households. An average SES index will then be applied to calculate the average SES score for each community. Each school's SES score will then be calculated on the basis of the average SES of the communities from which its students are drawn, and weighted according to the number of students at the school from each census district. The lower the SES score of a school community, the lower its capacity to support its school will be judged and the more government funding it will be entitled to.As I have said before in this place, my problem with the SES is its sole reliance on this measure of socioeconomic status to determine the amount of support a school receives. The test might work for a local school drawing students from a fairly evenly distributed socioeconomic status district, but how about rural postcodes, for example, most of which are the poorest districts in the country but are from where some of the most well-off kids from well-off backgrounds come—the children of business professionals, particularly—who can benefit from the overall lower SES score for their district?To make it fair, I think the SES requires a second-tier test to eliminate the bias such a measurement will perpetuate. A second-tier test could look at the proportion of a school's students, especially those from sub-85 SES schools, in receipt of the youth allowance or whose student body is benchmarked against the youth allowance formula. The youth allowance, with its actual means test, now gives an accurate picture of individual incomes. By the way, I am disturbed by allegations I have heard recently in my electorate about how the allowance is being manipulated by some farm businesses, whereby cattle is sold in the names of children to give them the eligible income over 18 months—about $14,000—required to qualify them for independent youth allowance status. That is not the intent, surely, of the principle of qualifying for the independent youth allowance. Hard work and saving over 18 months is worth rewarding. A rort like this, though, is hardly the sort of independence we should be encouraging.A test on actual means would be the only fair and logical test of the qualification for SES funding of a student at a school. The actual means test now gives an accurate picture of an individual family's income, so we would test the real status of the student, not just the community from which he or she comes. Then we might begin to get a level of acceptance in the broader community about the fairness of our school funding processes.A school should not be allowed additional funds until its student population accurately reflects the population of the broader community. I am not convinced the SES formula achieves that. Unless we find a fairer way of delivering every education dollar, not just for the 58 schools in this bill but all schools, we will widen the growing divide between the private and public school sectors and the students within those sectors and even among schools within the same sectors. As I said in debate on the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2001:It is one thing to recognise and to react to a change in where students are being educated; it is another thing entirely to try and drive that change. In speaking to that bill I cited figures that show that, while the state school-independent school split of school student population remains at around the 70 per cent level for state and the 30 per cent level for independent, recent increases in funding to the non-state sector appear to me, from what I can read in it, to favour the independent sector by about 22 per cent. While no-one denies the need for all to share in the distribution of their taxes, it does not mean that distribution should increase the opportunities of some at the expense of others. I have listened to the opposition spokesperson's speech and heard her flag amendments in the Senate. Yet again, I am disappointed the opposition does not introduce its amendments in this place and will only, if necessary, reintroduce them in the Senate. If oppositions join with governments in handing over our legislative role to the Senate, this place becomes an irrelevant backwater from a legislative point of view. I understand those planned amendments will require schools to apply for an establishment grant which will obviate the concern about separate new schools being established on the same campus. If that practice is widespread and still possible, even after it was highlighted during various inquiries into earlier legislation, then it should be wiped out because it is quite simply double dipping. Any call for improved accountability I would support. However, I have some problems with a funding formula that is based simply on the level of fees a school charges. There are ways to raise funds other than fees, such as tax advantage foundations, bequests, investments and so on. Surely, we should be looking again at the capacity of a school to raise its own resources, as well as the validity of the SES measurement. I am glad the opposition has indicated it will look at the suggestions I have made. I would be interested in hearing what the minister has to say—why such an actual means test cannot be applied to independent schools and, indeed, to well-off state schools. It could also be applied to any school in the system, as some schools in the state system no doubt have the capacity to raise funds well beyond the ability of other state schools and, indeed, some non-government schools. Our taxes should provide as good an education as we can to all Australians. I do not believe the current formula is doing that.I said at the beginning that this specific bill is about catching up on funding due to 58 schools that have missed out. We cannot isolate them from those schools that have received their establishment grants so I will support the bill at this point, even though I do not support the government's funding formula, its funding policy, or indeed much of its drive to create an unbridled marketplace education model.12:33:00538Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSONRW5BradfieldLPMinister for Education, Science and Training10—in reply—Firstly, I would like to thank all of the members who contributed to the discussion and the debate on the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002. As always, the contributions were of a varying quality. In particular, I enjoyed the contributions from government members and I listened with great interest to the member for Calare. I am heartened by the opposition's statement of support, at least, for the objectives of establishment assistance for new schools.But before I go on further in summarising, I think it is important that we remember what the principle is that is involved here. We live in a country where essentially we say that all Australians should, and must, contribute to the adequate resourcing of government schools. Having done that, the government will make available, on some kind of means tested basis, resources to parents who, for a wide variety of reasons, choose to send their children to non-government schools, having made provision through taxation for a place in a public system which they do not take up. I remind the House again that, included in this legislation, as we have heard, are 58 schools. The member for Lingiari spoke at length, quite rightly, about what I would describe, although he did not—and I repeat what Bob Collins said in the Northern Territory—as the crisis in Aboriginal education, the basis of which is non-attendance at school. Ironically, one of the schools of these 58 is the Nyikina Mangala Aboriginal Community School in Derby. There are 25 families and their children at that school who are waiting for in excess of $6,500, conditional on the support of this piece of legislation. Then you can add to that school the other 57. It is estimated that the effect of the bill will make available about $11.9 million for establishment grant funding for the 2001-04 program years.Again, as I go through the response here, it is important to remember just what kinds of Australians are choosing to send their children to non-government schools. I repeat what I said yesterday in question time: 14 per cent of the people in this country who have a household income of less than $20,800 a year send children to schools and of those one in five send their children to a non-government school. Twenty-one per cent of families who earn less than $26,800 a year, or $73 a day, have children in schools and, again, one in five choose a non-government school. I think all of us need to remember the enormous sacrifices that those families and many, many others are making to fulfil what they consider to be the legitimate educational aspirations of their children. As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has noted, the bill does not alter the policy underlying establishment grants. The policy has been presented to the parliament since June 2000. The opposition already supports establishment grants, and has done so since December 2000 when the Senate passed the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 2000. While there is no change to the existing entitlements of schools, the funding mechanism has been altered to a standing appropriation consistent with the General Recurrent Grants Program arrangements. Transparency of entitlements has also been improved, and this reduces the likelihood of budgetary shortfalls arising simply as a result of difficulty in precisely forecasting, several years out, the numbers of new schools and student enrolments.It is worth reminding the House that the opposition originally agreed to this policy. The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 2000 was introduced into parliament on 29 June 2000. The bill was referred to a Senate committee and in this context there was detailed scrutiny of the provisions in the bill, including establishment grants. The bill was subsequently passed with the support of Labor on 7 December 2000. Throughout the debate, twice before the parliament in 2001, Labor reiterated that it opposed the bill to increase the funding available for establishment assistance only on the basis that the government was not providing `any balancing increase to public schools'. Now, in 2002, after a changing of the guard, the opposition has chosen to call this bad policy. It has now chosen to dispute the basis of the original policy by questioning the parameters of the eligibility entitlements and foreshadowing amendments in the Senate. The effect of the foreshadowed amendments would be to introduce certainly increased, if not considerable, complexity in the name of tighter administration and improved accountability. Not only is this late in the day, especially from the perspective of the 58 schools and their families involved, who must be wondering why the full entitlements are being denied, it is perhaps an indication that the opposition lacks confidence in the new school planning and approval processes that are currently conducted by state Labor governments. It may signal a return to policies of the eighties. I certainly hope that it does not.In relation to the opposition's foreshadowed amendments, in speaking to the member for Jagajaga I have indicated that we will of course give scrutiny to the amendments when we see them. I will discuss the amendments and the potential consequences of them with my department in some considerable detail. The basis of the foreshadowed amendments is, I understand, to introduce to some extent some sort of SES linkage between the establishment grant and the amount of money that will go to schools and the schools it goes to. Secondly, I understand that the opposition would seek to have taken into account the level of fees charged by schools, and say that in some way the Commonwealth itself should run a process for determining whether or not a school is indeed a new school, as it purports to be.Firstly, all schools that are seeking to be established, whether they be government schools or non-government schools, whether they be servicing some of the poorest people in this country or others who perhaps enjoy relatively higher levels of wealth, are by definition schools that are seeking to overcome a significant number of hurdles. These hurdles often have a commonality attached to them, whether the schools serve relatively higher income areas or lower income areas. Secondly, when a school applies for general recurrent funding under the act, the Commonwealth department already examines the veracity of the application on the basis of it being a new school. I am advised by the department that there have been some instances where the consideration of an establishment grant has been denied. Also, of course, the Commonwealth takes advice from state and territory governments as to whether they consider the school to be a new school.Another point is fees. Again, I listened intently to the member for Calare in this regard, as I did to the member for Jagajaga. If, for example, the government were to consider an amendment which would reduce establishment grants to these schools on the basis of fees, it would in fact have the potential to build some perverse incentives into the arrangements. Also, some schools may well be in a situation where they are forced to charge higher fees because they are being denied full and reasonable access to an establishment grant. But, as I said, I will consider the amendments once we have received them formally. Like the member for Calare, I am a little disappointed the amendments were not moved here in the House; that they were instead foreshadowed for the Senate. But I appreciate that the opposition may have had some difficulties in terms of time constraints, and at this stage I certainly would be prepared to accept that. There is another point that I think needs strongly to be made. The member for Throsby in particular, as did a number of speakers on the opposition benches, made the suggestion that in some way the Commonwealth government is seeking to support non-government schools, and in this case establishment grants for non-government schools, on the basis of denying adequate funding to government schools. I think the member for Macquarie made an excellent contribution, some of which is worth repeating here. I will be repeating this quite a bit over the next year or two. Government schools traditionally were known and are known as state schools because they are basically run and funded by state governments. The 2.2 million students who attend government schools receive in total around 78 per cent of all public funds—as they should do—and the 31 per cent of students attending non-government schools receive in total 22 per cent of public funds.The Commonwealth government, under successive Labor and coalition governments, has provided assistance to state governments in meeting their responsibilities to fund government schools, but has done so as a minority funder through a series of governments. Yet in spite of that, if you go back over the last six years, enrolments in government schools have increased just over one per cent. In that period of time, the Commonwealth government has increased its funding to government schools by 46 per cent—by any standard a substantial increase in funding.In fact, last year, 87 per cent of all budget funds for Commonwealth specific programs for schools went specifically to the 69 per cent of students who attend government schools. On a per capita basis, if you wanted to look at it in that crude way—which the Commonwealth does not, but if you did— that would mean that there has been $50 million more provided to government schools on a per capita basis through Commonwealth specific programs and, further to that, $20 million more than had been asked for in any Labor Party agreement put to this legislation over the controversial last two years.So, in concluding, I ask the opposition to seriously consider supporting the bill in its current form. I accept that it has the right to move amendments and it has foreshadowed these amendments will be moved in the Senate. We will be giving, and I will be giving, consideration to those amendments, although I must say it will take an enormous amount of convincing to further delay funding being denied to these extremely worthy schools. I have received some quite moving correspondence, which has also been sent to Labor members, from families who under the foreshadowed amendments would actually receive a lower level of assistance than is proposed by the legislation. I will not read those into Hansard because I think the opposition, in reviewing its position on a number of issues—this being one—at least needs to be given the opportunity to come to the party, and hopefully that will be in the Senate.Question agreed to.Bill read a second time.Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.540Dr NELSON (Bradfield—Minister for Education, Science and Training) (12.47 p.m.)—by leave—I move:That this bill be now read a third time.Question agreed to. Bill read a third time.Bills541R1449541Debate resumed from 13 February, on motion by Mr Abbott:That this bill be now read a second time.12:48:00541McClelland, Robert, MPMr McCLELLANDJK6BartonALP00—I should indicate that later in the course of this speech I will be moving a second reading amendment. The Clerk accurately read the title of the bill: Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. I think the drafter—perhaps the minister—has been watching too many ads over the Christmas period; in particular, the Le Tan advertisement regarding irony. The irony of this bill is that what it is proposing to do is to prevent employees of businesses with less than 20 employees from being protected against being dismissed in circumstances which are harsh, unjust or unreasonable. How anyone could honestly look an Australian in the face and say that they are therefore proposing a fair dismissal bill is quite beyond me.In terms of the principles that we are looking at here, two days ago the Prime Minister, on the 7.30 Report, said: Give the man the opportunity of replying, give him a fair go.I entirely agree with him. He of course was speaking in respect of allegations against our current Governor-General, Dr Peter Hollingworth. I think all Australians would say that our Governor-General is entitled to the right to be heard in respect of allegations that have been made against him, and indeed that he is entitled to a fair go.But we have in this country a principle of equality before the law. If the right to a fair go is the right of the highest office holder of the land, surely the right to a fair go is the entitlement of the lowliest worker, the most marginalised and vulnerable worker in this community. To say otherwise is just abhorrent to the Australian philosophy. What is good enough for the highest office holder of the land is good enough for the most vulnerable worker in this land. That is basically in a nutshell where the Australian Labor Party is coming from on this bill.The concept of a fair go all round is referred to in the objects of the act and that concept was introduced by the Howard government in 1996—appropriately. That in turn is based on a famous New South Wales case of Loty and Holloway versus the Australian Workers Union, a New South Wales case obviously in a New South Wales jurisdiction but that principle, that concept of a fair go all round, is the underlying philosophy of unfair dismissal jurisdictions right around Australia at a state level and also at a Commonwealth level. The government, by this legislation, is— in a nutshell—seeking to deprive a significant number of Australian workers, and their families who are dependent on those workers, from that concept of a fair go. That, quite frankly, is un-Australian. One of most commonly used phrases in the Australian community is, `Give him a fair go. He's entitled to a fair go.' This government is seeking to take that away from a large number of Australians and, as I said, their families. The consequences of a worker losing their job can be quite devastating—there is no doubt about that—for themselves and for their families. But, quite frankly, to turn around and insult Australians by telling them that what is being proposed is a bill for fair dismissal is worse than misleading; it is an insult. There is one thing that Australians will not cop: being conned, which this government are trying to do in the manner in which they are bringing in this legislation. I shall demonstrate a few points on this. No Australian worker employed by a small business under a federal award could feel secure if this bill were passed. There would be no protection for them if, for instance, they arrived late because their car had broken down or if they were held up in a train delay. They would have no remedies, and that is unacceptable. If they had a legitimate reason for being late, for instance, or a legitimate expectation for some grievance the employer had, they surely are entitled to be heard. They will not even be given that right if this bill goes through. If you cut through all the rhetoric and political posturing that have been going on over the past five years in respect of this legislation and legislation like it, it is fair to analyse the government's approach to workplace relations as an ideological commitment or predilection towards the concept of managerial prerogative. That is, that management should not be constrained in the decisions that they make in the workplace—although it must be said—unless there is an important safety net issue involved. How we can say logically on the one hand that the issue of unlawful dismissal is an important safety net issue—that is, the right not to be dismissed for reasons of discrimination, whether they are reasons of religious belief, trade union activity, or even sexual preferences and the like—and that the protection which will still remain despite this legislation in respect of unlawful dismissal is a safety net issue but that protection against being unfairly dismissed is not an important safety net issue is beyond me, quite frankly. Quite clearly, particularly in these insecure times with globalisation and the like, society sensibly regards the right to reasonable security of employment, if you are doing your job properly, as an important safety net protection.Indeed, the paradox of that is that if, for instance, a worker took time off work because they were a member of a religious sect and they wanted to engage in the rites of that religious sect, assuming they prove their case, they would at least have the ability to file an application seeking a remedy. But an Australian worker who took time off work to fight the recent bushfires—I note that the minister, to his credit, was so engaged over the Christmas period—in other than a few states which have specifically legislated for protection, would be left without remedy if they were given the sack because of that public participation. These are far more than symbolic issues.Again, turning to those issues of political posturing, government speakers will turn up and say that the Labor Party is beholden to the trade union movement in this. I should say that in the small business sector—certainly in the private sector—trade union membership is very low indeed, for a number of reasons, but the bottom line is that we are all concerned about protecting the most vulnerable members of our community. Returning to the first point I made, if the highest office holder in the land is entitled to the right to be heard and is entitled to a fair go, which we say he is, surely the most vulnerable and marginalised worker in our community is similarly entitled to the right to be heard and a fair go. The Labor Party very much recognises the significance of the small business sector in the Australian economy. If we leave aside the agricultural sector, we are looking at about 95 to 96 per cent of Australian businesses being small businesses. About 3.1 million people are involved as proprietors, sole traders or employees—a very significant proportion of the Australian population, as the minister will pick up. There is no question that the small business sector has been a significant job generator. On the research that I have, from 1995 to June 1998 there were 516,000 jobs created in the small business sector, whereas only 374,000 jobs were created in medium to large enterprises. It is a significant sector of the Australian economy and we have to get our policies right from the point of view of not only small business owners, of course, but also our nation's economic prosperity and Australians having employment opportunities in the small business sector. In that context, we recognise that red tape and other administrative burdens are an impediment of some kind to small business. Quite frankly, the government are not recognising the totality of the package. They have a desire, from the point of view of their political strategy coming up over the next month, to focus on this supposed wedge or division or the idea that Labor is beholden to the trade union movement.The reality is that there are a whole basketful of issues affecting small business. For instance, the November 2001 Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey indicated that far and above concerns about unfair dismissal laws were the frequency and complexity of changes to tax laws and rules, obviously with the introduction of the GST. Equally, the level of taxation was very high on the list. Telecommunications costs were also involved, so there are issues of Telstra privatisation and the like that could impact there. The complexity of government regulation rated highly. And then came the issue of unfair dismissal legislation. We are not saying that it does not register; quite clearly, it is one item in the basket of items that are of concern to small business. But we believe that there are ways of addressing those concerns without depriving ordinary Australians or everyday Australians—no Australian is ordinary—of the fundamental right that we are saying the Governor-General has, and that is the right to a fair go. Regrettably, there has been very little from the government in terms of addressing that range of other issues in the basket of concerns. In looking at the issues facing small business, I think we are also obliged to represent the Australian people generally and not one sector. Whether it is from the labour or employee side of the equation or from the business side of the equation, our job as legislators is to achieve a balance. Certainly, administrative burdens generally are a concern from the point of view of small business. But looking at it from the point of view of Australian workers and their families—and I turned 44 over the Christmas period—if workers without special skills who are aged 44 or higher lose their jobs they are in real trouble these days. The prospects of them getting full-time employment, particularly in rural and regional Australia—EZ5Abbott, Tony, MPJK6McClelland, Robert, MPMr McCLELLAND—Perhaps not well enough; it is still an issue. The point is that it is very significant for someone to lose their job. There are all kinds of strains about whether they can hang onto the family home. The previous debate was about schooling, and there are all kinds of issues about whether they can pay for private school fees, for instance, if that is where their kids go to school. There are issues about whether they can afford to pay for their kids' braces, whether they can afford to take the dog to the vet. All these are issues that affect everyday Australians. And the calamity of losing their jobs can quite obviously put all kinds of strains on marriages and on self-esteem generally. In other words, it is a very significant thing. We are saying that there therefore needs to be a balance. You do not get a balance by approaching this issue from the point of view of any blinkered ideology, whether it is from the employee or the employer side of the equation. We recognise however—as I wish to repeat—that, in protecting rights, small business proprietors are entitled to be protected from those actions which are fabricated, unwarranted or vexatious. We recognise and appreciate that, and are prepared to work with the government, the small business sector, employees and, of course, peak bodies in coming up with solutions.We recognise that this bill was introduced as the first bill of the new parliament at 9.30 a.m. on the first legislative day because of the significance that it has in the political dynamics—it is a holy grail issue. We recognise, equally, that the government will probably wish this to be defeated so that it becomes a prime double-dissolution trigger. So be it. But we still have registered out there, and are standing up here in the parliament to assert, a commitment to work through and address these procedural and costs issues from the point of view of small business, and protect the fundamental rights of everyday Australians and their families.I ask: why would the government take this step of removing rights? On one or two occasions this week, whether I have been damned by faint praise by the minister or otherwise, he has commented on some quotes which have been attributed to me. I would say in respect of this minister, if I may be as presumptive, that he has been brought up with a social conscience and would not readily deprive Australians of rights unless he believed there was reason for that to occur. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that perhaps his views from an industrial perspective are probably more aligned to those of the Democratic Labor Party as promoted by BA Santamaria, perhaps, than to those of the HR Nicholls Society that, to digress, the Treasurer had some involvement in in its early days. The point I am making is: I recognise that the minister would not override fundamental rights—and we say a fundamental safety net right—unless he was satisfied that there was reason to do so. If you read the second reading speech you see that reason. It is the assertion that this bill will create jobs. While there has been some easing of language, we note, from the words previously advanced by former Minister Reith, there is still a hypothetical proposition that, if one in 20 small businesses employed one person, 53,000 new jobs would be created. I want to point out clearly that the Federal Court of Australia has found, in the case of Hamzy v. Tricon International Restaurants handed down on 16 November last year, that that relationship simply has not been sustained. Indeed, I refer to the cross-examination of Professor Wooden, who presented evidence on behalf of the government.Professor Wooden is reported in the judgment as having agreed that the peak in increased employment from 1993 to 1996 appeared to coincide with the most protective provisions from the employees' point of view. The judgment states:He—Professor Wooden—also agreed that the pattern in relation to permanent employment was similar. It was suggested this rather demonstrates that the existence or non existence of unlawful dismissal legislation has got very little to do with the growth of employment and that it is dictated by economic factors.Professor Wooden agreed with that and said, `The driving force behind employment is clearly the state of the economy,' and mentioned the recovery from recession in those periods. The judgment stated that there had been very little research done which could validate the assertion. It found that it was not established that there was this necessary causal link between unlawful unfair dismissal laws and employment generation. Indeed, at a federal level, what are we looking at? To be covered by federal unfair dismissal laws a business needs to be a respondent to a federal industrial award and it also needs to be a corporation. So it does not apply to mums and dads or to sole traders. They, of course, are not corporations. We are talking about businesses which, whether for reasons of taxation, protection of liability or for capital raising purposes, have actually taken the step of forming corporations. Research by Dr Rowena Barrett, who is from Monash University and has published articles in the Financial Review, suggests that around 25 per cent of small businesses are in that category—that is, respondent to an industrial award but also a corporation. Where we are not being frank with the small business community—which must be recognised in the small business community—and insofar as there is perceived to be a problem with unfair dismissal laws, the great bulk of matters are at a state level and will not be affected in any way, shape or form by legislation. This is clearly demonstrated by the figures. Leaving aside Victoria, where there is only federal legislation in place, there were 2,534 claims filed in the year 2000-01 against all businesses, large and small, in the federal system. In the same period, in all states other than Victoria there were 8,485 claims filed under state laws. That situation will continue despite this legislation. On my calculations, a small business proprietor is 3½ times more likely to face a state action than a federal action.It has been put to us persuasively by many in the small business community that a greater issue facing small business is the lack of uniformity in this area. In many sectors, including the manufacturing sector, there will be some employees who will be under state regulation—the clerical section, for example—and other employees who will be under federal regulation, such as manufacturing employees. To have employees working side by side with differing rights in respect of this important issue is, quite simply, ludicrous. In that context, I ask—rhetorically, but I think it answers itself—are we more likely to establish a national framework if we have agreement that the underpinning principle of that framework is a fair go all round for all employees and business proprietors rather than carve-out where a whole sector of the work force is exempted? I think to frame that question answers it and, if we are about coming up with uniformity, this carve-out is not the way to do it. The other point I wanted to make to the minister—and not in the context of being overly boring—is that I would like the department to look at how the legislation has been framed. In particular, proposed subsection 170CE(5C) talks about a prohibition on an application under paragraph (1)(a) being made. It is essentially trying to block a tunnel to a remedy through that section. But it does not in any way, shape or form, on my reading of the act, preclude other remedies—under either federal law or state law. I think this is a case of not wishing for something too much because you might get it. If this legislation is effective, it would have the prospect of opening up small business to a whole range of other more complex and costly forms of litigation. For instance, there are common-law developments in respect of the concept of an implied obligation of good faith developing in Australia. I note there is a seminar in Melbourne in the next couple of weeks on this, and there is specific United Kingdom authority where that has been developed in the context of the employment relationship. You are looking at the unfair contracts jurisdiction, which exists under section 106 of the New South Wales act, where remedies have been given in respect of unfair dismissal deemed to be the operation of an unfair contract. You are looking at a range of remedies under the federal system. For instance, in terms of the arbitral authority that the commission has, as confirmed by the High Court in a case of the CFMEU v. Australian Industrial Relations Commission, if there is a certified agreement containing a dispute resolution clause, depending on the wording of that clause, the commission has its general arbitral jurisdiction enlivened. You also have as part of that enterprise bargaining process the ability of the commission to grant the same sorts of orders it gave in the past, before the unfair dismissal jurisdiction existed, as part of its general dispute resolving powers. For example, there was the Ranger uranium case and the Boyne smelter case, where disputes were notified to enliven the jurisdiction of the commission. I would concede that has probably got to be in the context of a very serious dispute occurring in the enterprise bargaining situation, but, nonetheless, those powers remain. What I am saying is that there are two choices: we can have a simplified, procedurally streamlined process which minimises costs and which allows everyone with a legitimate grievance to have an opportunity to have a say and the capacity to resolve matters expeditiously and cheaply; or we can expose small business to these very complex and costly arguments that will be enlivened should this legislation be passed.However, I should say—and I am on the record publicly as saying—that the Australian Labor Party is committed to developing procedures and procedural simplifications. We note, for instance, under section 170CT of the act that a small claims procedure is available with respect to the unlawful dismissal remedy. Clearly, that is something that can be looked at with the unfair dismissal remedy. It was pointed out to me by someone presenting an application for unfair dismissal that a worker can elect whether to seek reinstatement or compensation. They can elect to seek both, of course, but they need not seek reinstatement if they seek compensation. Clearly, the original intention of this unfair dismissal legislation was to preserve employment security, and I do not think the minister would have too many arguments from this side of the House if we were to focus the priority of this legislation on those persons who genuinely desire to obtain employment rather than those who desire only a fistful of dollars. We have also floated the concept of a gatekeeper role being performed by someone; whether it is an employment ombudsman or ombudsperson is something to be talked through.In the House, we must reject this bill because it proposes simply a carve-out. It does not address these procedural issues that I have referred to. Clearly, they need to be explored and worked through with the small business community and with employees and their peak bodies. But there are answers that can be obtained so that we have a system that is operating effectively. Our proposals are contained in the second reading amendment, which I have circulated in my name. Therefore, I move:That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the Bill a second reading, the House: (1) confirms that the protection from being unfairly dismissed is a fundamental safety net issue for Australian workers and their families irrespective of the size of the business in which they are employed;(2) notes that the Australian Labor Party, in Opposition and as a future Government, is committed to working with small business, employees and peak bodies to make unfair dismissal laws more effective by addressing procedural complexities and costs; and(3) condemns the government for:(a) promoting socially divisive policies for its political purposes;(b) using the issue of unfair dismissal to deflect criticism of the fact that its taxation policies have tied up small business in an unprecedented level of complexity and red tape;(c) proposing legislation that would actually expose small business to other areas of more complex and costly litigation;(d) undermining the security that unfair dismissal laws have given Australian workers and their families;(e) failing to assist small business to develop effective human resource strategies in terms of the selection, ongoing training, supervision and management of employees;(f) failing to heed calls from the small business community for a more constructive approach to the issue of unfair dismissal that is likely to result in uniform national standards underpinned by the concept of a “fair go all round”.10000Hawker, David (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hawker)—Is the amendment seconded?5K6Ellis, Annette, MPMs Ellis—I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.13:18:00546Bishop, Julie, MPMs JULIE BISHOP83PCurtinLP10—Over the past five years, the government has introduced three bills and two sets of amending legislation to exempt small businesses from unfair dismissal laws. All were rejected by the Labor Party in the Senate. There have been nine occasions when the arguments in favour of this reform have been rehearsed in this House and the other place. This is the fourth bill to be introduced. This is, on my calculation, the tenth time that arguments in favour of this most important reform have been articulated. Given the history of the government's attempts to exempt small business from unfair dismissal laws, the Australian people could be forgiven for thinking that this February day in our national parliament is indeed Groundhog Day. I am not sure whether Groundhog Day is prized amongst your video collection, Mr Deputy Speaker, but, as I listened to the opposition spokesman, I thought of Phil, the TV weatherman, who finds himself trapped in a bizarre time warp in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Every morning he wakes and it is Groundhog Day all over again, and the next day and the day after. It is deja vu gone mad: the same necessary reforms, the same opposition party, the same trade union ideology. The government receives yet another mandate, and still the opposition remains intransigent. Why is this so? Who profits from the Labor Party's intransigent opposition to the reform of unfair dismissal laws? This is a theme that I explored in my contribution to the debate on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Unfair Dismissals) Bill 1998 [No. 2]: the piece of legislation that I think represented the ninth attempt by the federal government, in both legislation and regulation, to implement its election commitments. That commitment was repeated in last year's election campaign, the coalition acknowledging explicitly that it would, if re-elected for a third term, pursue a full exemption from unfair dismissal claims for small business employers. So now the House considers again a bill to implement these reforms, and again it seems that the opposition is blind to the mandate of the government.`Cui bono?' asked Cassius; what good will this do? Who benefits, we ask the opposition? Do the current unfair dismissal laws benefit the unemployed? By raising the aggregated costs of employment, the current unfair dismissal laws discourage the taking on of job seekers. In fact, it is oft repeated, but it is also undeniable, that at least 50,000 unemployed Australians will benefit from the passage of this bill. The member for Barton, leaving the chamber just now, focused on unfair sackings; the government focuses on getting jobs for people in the first place. Do the unemployed thank the Labor Party for preserving this barrier to jobs, to a higher standard of living, to dignity through work? No, they do not. Do Australia's small businesses thank the Labor Party for imposing on them the blanket condemnation that they would dismiss employees unfairly, given half the chance? No. Do they thank the Labor Party for making it disadvantageous to take on new workers to expand to relieve the burden they shoulder personally where they might otherwise share their workload with an employee? No, they most certainly do not. So I ask again: who does benefit? The answer is the trade unions and their parliamentary ciphers on the opposition benches. The member for Barton says, `Oh well, union membership isn't high in the small business sector,' but it is in their interests to set employees against employers and ensure that an atmosphere of foreboding and tension hangs over each and every Australian workplace. That is the modus operandi of the trade union movement.I think it important to articulate the terms of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002, for the misrepresentation of those terms by the opposition spokesman on workplace relations has been breathtaking. Those misrepresentations deserve detailed examination. They go way beyond what he had to say in the House this afternoon. On 21 December 2001, the member for Barton sought to link the reform of unfair dismissal laws with some Dickensian visions of bleak Christmases. `Four million families face instant dismissal,' he claimed. The absurdity of the member's position was apparent by his remarkable reasoning as to the government's motives in this regard. Not for him the obvious interest of the government in promoting employment and the health of Australian small business. No, for the member for Barton the government's interests in implementing its election policy endorsed by the electorate were `creating social divisions for its political purposes'. According to the member for Barton, the government exercising nothing but the basest political expediency decides—at least in his imagination—to throw 4 million families, millions of Australian voters, onto the streets. I think the secret to the ALP's last three disastrous election campaigns is now revealed. The member for Barton must have been running the show!Come last week, the member for Barton again lapsed into doublethink. In a press release responding to the introduction of this bill, he asserted that the Federal Court had, in a recent judgment, `poured scorn on the claim that there was a relationship between employment growth and unfair dismissal laws'. That is what he said: `the Federal Court had poured scorn'. Leaving aside the blind foolishness of the proposition that increased costs—namely, those regulatory and cost burdens associated with potential unfair dismissal claims—do not stem demand for labour, one's attention is drawn to the quotation provided by the member to support his argument. He has tried it again this afternoon, although I note he has shifted his emphasis somewhat. The quote, apparently from the Federal Court in Hamzy v. Tricon International Restaurants—but without particular reference, I note—makes no such claim. Rather it notes that, in its opinion, the evidence to reach a conclusion one way or another does not exist. This was in the context of a case on the exclusion of casual employees from termination remedies, not small business employees. There may well be limited evidence relating to casual employees, but this is a far cry from the attempt by the member, who also happens to be the shadow Attorney-General, to enlist the Federal Court in his defence of the unfair dismissal laws of the Keating government. Perhaps the confusion of the opposition spokesman is to be expected, even excused, if he is taking his riding instructions from the leadership of the ALP. Was it not the Leader of the Opposition who acknowledged publicly last December, just days before his shadow minister recommended more burdensome unfair dismissal laws, that the establishment of a Labor committee to look at unfair dismissal procedures was `recognition by Labor that employment termination procedures for small business can be improved'. They can indeed. In fact, they will be improved by the passage of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002, a bill that will, firstly, prevent employees other than apprentices or trainees working for small businesses from applying under the Workplace Relations Act for a remedy in respect to their alleged harsh, unjust or unreasonable dismissal and, secondly, require the Industrial Relations Commission to order an unfair dismissal claim lodged by the employee of a small business to be invalid if the commission believes the application contravenes the small businesses exemption. The commission would be able to make such an order without the necessity of a formal hearing. The first measure does nothing to compromise the protections afforded to all employees from unlawful dismissal. Dismissal from employment for unlawful reasons, be they related to union membership, pregnancy, race, gender or whatever, is, by definition, unlawful. The offending employer is subject to the full force of the law. The second measure ensures that there is a simple and appropriate means of dealing with invalid applications that might be lodged with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in contravention of the intended exemption for small businesses. Under the present law, once an application is lodged, it must be considered by the commission within the setting of a formal hearing with all the attendant costs, regardless of whether or not it is clearly invalid. This measure will resolve that anomaly by giving the commission the latitude to seek information in writing from the parties concerned.The opposition has the opportunity to abandon its unreasonable stands on this issue and embrace the reform of unfair dismissal laws and the benefits that those reforms will bring to employers and employees alike. One only need consider developments in Western Australia to appreciate that Labor has no regard for the interests of small business. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations noted in question time on Monday that the Western Australian state government's proposed workplace relations legislation actually exacerbates the difficulties of smaller firms, of which there are some 116,000 in Western Australia alone, in dealing with unfair dismissal claims made under state law. Whereas an employee who believes that their employment has been unfairly terminated now has 28 days to lodge a claim for unfair dismissal, the amendments introduced by the Gallop government will remove the time limit entirely. That is ridiculous. Employers could be hit by claims for unfair dismissal lodged years after the alleged events. Concerns related to the workplace relations policies of the Gallop government do not stop at unfair dismissal. The member for Barton sought to draw support for some point in his speech from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Perhaps he missed yesterday's West Australian newspaper—it no longer gets delivered here in a timely fashion. Yesterday, the West Australian carried a full-page advertisement from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry condemning the retrograde steps being taken by the state Labor party. The chamber noted that the Labor Relations Reform Bill 2002 will roll back the very laws that have driven Western Australian incomes and employment levels above the national average since 1993; price the lower paid workers out of work; cause businesses to flee the state industrial relations system; threaten the financial instruments of the 250,000 Western Australian workers on established workplace agreements; return Western Australian work sites to the industrial anarchy of the 1970s and 1980s; allow the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission to impose new wages and conditions across whole industry sectors regardless of individual circumstances or differing capacities to pay; and, allow trade union officials to enter private workplaces at their whim and demand access to workers' pay and employment affairs regardless of whether or not the employees are union members. In so doing, the state government is running counter to public opinion surveys that indicate 57 per cent opposition to the repeal of workplace agreements and reveal that more than 60 per cent of the Western Australian workforce would prefer to work under such agreements. That is what the Labor Party ideology on workplace relations is all about. In fact, in his answer to the House, the minister suggested that the federal Leader of the Opposition should call the Western Australian Premier to warn him off this ride `back to the future'. I concur with the minister's advice and add my own suggestion: that the federal opposition clean up their own backyard by throwing their support behind the reforms before the House today. I do not hold great hopes for such an outcome. I suspect, come tomorrow, it will be Groundhog Day all over again. We do live in hope in the interests of small business in this country. I commend the bill to the House. 13:31:00549McLeay, Leo, MPMr LEO McLEAY4I4WatsonALP00—This Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 is just another example of the minister's affection for Orwellian newspeak. If you remember what happened in that brave new world of 1984, the minister is still stuck there. The previous speaker, the member for Curtin, says that it is Groundhog Day. I think that if we are seeing anyone trapped in a bit of a time warp on this piece of legislation it is the government.We have the minister here now dressing up a bill—the effect of which has been around since about 1997. This is the eighth or ninth attempt by the government to try to get a bill containing these provisions through the House. It fails every time in the Senate because the majority of senators, not just the Labor Party, see this bill for what it is. It is a bill which will cause great disadvantage, not only to a lot of workers but also to small businesses. This time, because of his affection for Orwellian newspeak, the minister has gone a step further than even Peter Reith did. He has now called this bill, which will allow people to sack employees more easily, a `fair dismissal bill'. There is not much fairness at all in this legislation. There is a lot more propaganda than practical help for small businesses.As I said at the beginning, the Prime Minister announced in 1997 that the government wanted to change the unfair dismissal laws and exempt small businesses. Whose interest is this in? The government has been propelling this along for five years now. Is it in the government's interest? Is it in small businesses' interest? Is it in the interests of people who work for small businesses'? I would suggest that the only people whose interest this is in is the government's. This is a smokescreen by the government so that the government can have something to go out and talk to small businesses about, to deflect small businesses from all the other problems that this government has visited upon them, particularly the GST but also red tape and a whole range of other things. If you talk to small businesses about it, they will tell you that these are their first order priorities, not unfair dismissal. The only people who have unfair dismissal as a first order priority are those in the government.Small businesses out in the country want access to government services; they want better telecommunications systems; they want to have computer operations which will allow them to order goods and services; they want a transportation system which will deliver goods and services to them. Whether or not they can sack their employees easily is something that is a long way down the line in their agenda. The government are doing this because they need some reason to get out there and talk to small businesses, so they keep hyping up this issue.If you ask small businesses what their most important industrial issue is, those of them who think about the matter will tend to tell you that they would prefer some harmonisation of federal and state industrial laws. The problem for a small business person, particularly those in regional and rural areas, is that, if they end up having someone take an unfair dismissal case against them, they can end up in the wrong jurisdiction because they are not experts on industrial relations, their employees are not experts and, as the shadow minister said, the vast majority of employees who work in small businesses are not unionised. So what you have are people on both sides, the respondent and the applicant, who really do not know what the system is about. They would prefer simplification and harmonisation of the systems far more than some draconian law like this one that the government is putting forward. What this piece of legislation will do is make it harder to get harmonisation. It will just draw the Commonwealth and the state systems further apart. So I do not know whom this bill is fair to, except that it is fair to the government because it allows the government to go and cause division among employers and employees. It is certainly not fair to employees. Is it fair to say to two similar groups of employees that they have different rights? If we are in a country town like Wagga Wagga, Yass, Dubbo or Canberra, should the person who works at Coles have different industrial rights from the person who works down at the local shop? Should the person who works at the head office of Richardson and Wrench have more rights than the person who works at the Richardson and Wrench franchise in Wagga Wagga? I do not think that is fair, but that is what this legislation will do. It will give fewer rights to those employed by small business. The people who are employed by small business tend to be lower paid as well. So what you find is that the people at the bottom of the pile are going to have some of their rights taken off them so that we can have a system the government says will help small businesses.In 1997 this definition of what was a small business was somewhat different. When the Prime Minister first announced his attack on people who work for small business, he defined a small business as an enterprise with 15 or fewer employees. Now, in this eighth or ninth attempt to change this legislation, we find that the number of employees who are in a small business has gone up to 20. Maybe the next time around it will be up to 25. Look at this number 20 and ask yourself, `How many people would be covered by this legislation?' If it applied to all the workers in Australia, all the enterprises in Australia, you will find, from the ABS statistics, that 3.12 million employees work in 951,000 enterprises that have fewer than 20 employees. That is nearly half—47 per cent—of the Australian work force. So if this legislation covered both state and Commonwealth, half the work force would be covered by it. Half the work force in Australia would be taken out of the industrial relations system if we applied this to the Commonwealth and the states. If we applied it to the Commonwealth alone, it is estimated that it would affect 600,000 employees, if the organisations they work for are incorporated. That is about 10 per cent of the work force who will be affected by this.The important thing is to have a look at what some unscrupulous employers could do with this legislation. If you say the number 20 is a high enough number, then it is very simple for an employer who has 40 people to split their work force in two and have two companies employing their work force, and they are out of the system. If they have 60, it is just three companies and they are out of the system. That does not cost a lot to do and it does not take a lot of effort. So by setting a number—and the number, as I said, keeps getting higher every time this gets mentioned by the government—you make it very easy for unscrupulous employers to dole a whole lot more people out of the system than are in it at present.Why is it necessary to have this present legislation? Is there some plethora of unfair dismissal claims out there in the community? Is the federal Industrial Relations Commission being deluged by unhappy employees? Again, that is not the fact. The recent figures show that under all jurisdictions, not just federal jurisdictions, only 2.5 per cent of employees who were dismissed have taken an unfair dismissal case. So they are not all out there deluging the commissions with applications: 2.5 per cent of those who were dismissed have taken unfair dismissal actions. To look at the coverage of these people, you only have to go to the minister's own answer earlier this week, which Senator Alston provided in the Senate to Senator Murray on behalf of the minister for workplace relations. If you look at the jurisdictions where these unfair dismissal claims were made, you will find that in the last financial year, from 1 July 2000 to 30 June 2001, there were 8,095 claims in the federal commission and 9,105 claims in various state tribunals. And remember that the Northern Territory and the ACT do not have state tribunals, and the Victorian tribunal is a federal tribunal at present—the Victorian government are trying to get out of the federal system. So if you took Victoria out of those statistics, you would find that only 25 per cent of those unfair dismissal claims were made in the federal jurisdiction. If you look at how many of those are small businesses, interestingly, another survey that Senator Murray was given in an answer came from the minister's department. The federal workplace relations department surveyed respondents to the registry and asked them whether they had the Prime Minister's number of 15 employees or fewer. Of the respondents who replied, 33 per cent said they had 15 employees or fewer. As the shadow minister said, some people say that that is a high number, but there are other estimates that say that 20 per cent of the respondents are small businesses. Even taking the 33 per cent, what you really have here is that, if it is a quarter of the claims in the federal jurisdiction, when the Victorians get out of it, only a third of the quarter or one-twelfth of the claims are from small business. So small businesses are not overly represented in the claims people are making for unfair dismissal. They are less than 10 per cent, if the figures given in the minister's own answer last week are right.One of the other claims that the government make—and the previous speaker made this claim—is that the unfair dismissal laws really hamper employment in small business. This is one of the drum beats that you hear from the government, and it is one of the issues that have become a matter of some myth. It is like having people telling you that there are huge numbers or small numbers or big numbers or little numbers. But there is some authority in this and there is some myth. As a number of people have said, the Hamzy case said that it is pretty hard to determine whether the unfair dismissal laws have an effect one way or the other on employment. The Hamzy case never said it went up or it went down; it said it was hard to determine. But if you listen to some government advocates your hair will stand on end. Gary Brack, from the New South Wales Employers Federation, who is one of the more flamboyant of them, said that he thought between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs were lost because of unfair dismissal laws. The minister said in his speech the other day that he thought there were 53,000, and in an answer to a question the other day he then said he thought there were 50,000. So it is a myth; no-one knows. And the reality probably is that there is not much effect from unfair dismissal laws on employment.How fair are these proposals and how can we make them a little fairer? We could make them a little fairer for employees as well as employers. We could ensure that employees do not find that the company they thought hired them did not hire them. For employees, we could ensure that the company's ABN and name appear on their pay slip. In that way, they would at least know who employed them. But we could change some things for the commission. We could say that people, if they wanted to be represented by agents, should not have that ability. We could say that representation by agents or lawyers could only occur by leave. But, importantly, we should remember that most of these matters are dealt with before they get to hearing, most of these matters are dealt with to the satisfaction of all sides—and, as far as small business is concerned, there are not all that many of such matters. This legislation is part of the government's smokescreen to try and get away from the fact that all it has done for small business is cause them trouble. This will not solve the problems of small business; it is just another example of Minister Abbott's affection for Orwellian `newspeak'. The House should reject the legislation. We should work at trying to do some things for small businesses to make this system more harmonised and to give them a better chance to get an outcome that is fair to them—but at the same time we should make sure that we do not create two classes of employee: one class working for the big companies, and the other class working for the small companies. That is not fair—and even Minister Abbott should recognise that that is not fair.13:46:00551Billson, Bruce, MPMr BILLSON1K6DunkleyLP10—The Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 is something that we have all discussed and debated in this place on a number of occasions. We had two goes at it in 1997 and one in 1998. The Senate has had a number of shots at it and it keeps rejecting a proposition that not only has been put to the Australian parliament on many occasions but has been put to the Australian people on many occasions. Those who have just listened to the member for Watson's speech will understand why there is such resistance. Labor has failed to grasp the basic issue here. It is not solely about the language, the terminology and the stuff that might be appealing at a Labor branch party meeting. This is about giving an opportunity to people who could work in small business if small businesses had the confidence necessary to make vacancies available: that is what this is about. This is about removing the disincentive for small businesses around Australia to take on that extra employee, because they are fearful of the consequences of unfair dismissal laws.The member for Watson was saying, `Well, we're unclear on exactly how many extra jobs are created. Is it 53,000; is it 50,000?' There did not seem to be much dispute about the fact that there would be extra jobs. He is saying, `This is a myth; what is the actual number?' The fact is that we know the removal of this disincentive will create extra jobs because small businesses themselves are saying that they are dissuaded from employing additional people because they fear the consequences of the current unfair dismissal regime. That is what this is about. If there is any suggestion that there is some fantasy standing in the road of this proposition, it is the fanciful fantasy that the Labor Party wishes to push that all small businesses are evil—that they are all running around with devil ears and pitchforks, ready to stab the next employee they find. That is the Labor defence: you cannot trust small businesses. These small businesses are Australians who are helping to build up our nation, creating employment opportunities for millions of Australians—and we are hoping to create more employment opportunities for Australians through these changes.You will not hear anybody on the Labor Party side, whether the member for Watson or the retired former president of the ACTU, talk about the people this bill is aimed to help, because they are people who currently do not have jobs. Unions are not interested in people who do not have jobs, because such people are not members of unions. Unions are interested in looking after their own people. The Liberal and National parties are interested in representing those who do not have a job. That is what this proposition is about. No ACTU mandate directing the Labor Party not only to reject this outright but to demonise small businesses right around the country will change the simple fact that the representatives of the people who do not have a job in this country are the Liberal and National parties. We want to create employment opportunities so that they have a job and then they have a choice of whether or not to hand over cash to a union. This is about employment opportunities. It is a bill that has been debated repeatedly in this place and it is supported overwhelmingly by the small business community. It is a practical realisation of election commitment after election commitment, where we keep coming in and banging our heads against the wall that is the Labor Party—because it is directed by its owners, the union movement, to oppose this proposition.The proposition is a simple one: small businesses that employ fewer than 20 employees should be free from the unfair dismissal provisions of the Workplace Relations Act. That proposition does not mean that those employees are stripped of protection; that is not true. There are still protections in place. The measures do not affect apprentices and trainees, who arguably are the most vulnerable in our labour market. Also, there are still remaining provisions for unlawful and discriminatory dismissal; they remain. So, when the member for Watson comes in and says, `My God, these poor defenceless people are going to be subject to the evil of small businesses right around the country,' we know that that is Labor Party branch nonsense. The people that like hearing that stuff might get off on it, but it takes the debate absolutely nowhere. To underline the weakness in the defence that the Labor Party provides, let us look at a couple of points. The member for Watson said, `We should be harmonising our laws,' and then he goes on to talk about how the Bracks Labor government in Victoria wants to go and recreate an industrial relations system after having come in under the federal fold, giving us harmonisation in Victoria. That was the member for Watson's killer point: harmonisation is what we should be on about. But then he went on and cheered about how they want to dissect the arrangements in Victoria, the very arrangements he was saying we should be providing to small business. Subtext: Labor has no idea about small business. He went on to say, `We should be doing something about red tape.' Mr Deputy Speaker, give me a break. That is what this is about: freeing small businesses of the regulatory gymnastics necessary when a disgruntled employee trots off to the Industrial Relations Commission. As you have heard, in 2½ per cent of claims of unfair dismissal, employers are faced with having to get through the red tape of defending such claims—and too many businesses resolve these issues by buying out the problem. The last time I talked about this subject in the parliament, I talked about a motel in Frankston. I talked about the couple who were running that business, who were former teachers and liked to support young people getting a start in life. One of the young persons they employed had their girlfriend come around, and she started transacting marijuana sales on the premises. They thought, `Gee, this isn't quite right. Not only is it unlawful but it is not what we want going on in our workplace.' There were also exhibits being stolen from conferences and exhibitions held at that venue. What did the couple do? They fired the employee, as they should have. Any reasonable person would say, `You don't transact marijuana deals on your premises.' They dealt with that issue by terminating the employee, and what happened? There was an unfair dismissal claim. What? An unfair dismissal claim because someone said you cannot sell marijuana, have your girlfriend over at the motel, and flog bits from exhibitions that are being held? That person was fired, and they should have been. But the person trotted off to the Industrial Relations Commission with an unfair dismissal claim. The couple were facing costs, and this was before the matter was resolved or any argument was heard. They were facing costs of $3,000 to $4,000 just to turn up and fill out the paperwork. The same red tape that the member for Watson—so understanding is he of the small business community—ignores is part of the problem we are trying to resolve with this bill. The couple were facing costs of $3,000 or $4,000 for firing someone who had their girlfriend hang out at the motel, sold marijuana, and flogged exhibits from conferences. Those are reasonable grounds, I would have thought, for terminating someone's employment, but they were facing $3,000 or $4,000 before there was even part of a debate before the commission. They had to buy that problem out by paying out $750 on the advice of their lawyer, who said, `This is your cheapest way home.' What do you think their disposition is now to providing a young person with an employment opportunity in that workplace? Is it fair to say that it would be diminished? They are hardly going to say, `Gee, what a good experience that was; let's go and do that again'! This is what the member for Watson and the Labor Party do not understand: that arrangement is a disincentive for people to employ that extra staff member. In the community I represent, retailing is important. Retailing is about presentation of product, having a nice atmosphere to sell your goods and services and receiving funds from your customers. But there are stock losses. If you find a staff member with an item of stock in their handbag, that item would be pretty clever to fall off the shelf, run across the floor about four metres, hop up onto where the handbag was, open the zip and land in there. That would be one clever piece of merchandise. You'd want to buy it, wouldn't you, if you could train a piece of art to do that? There is a fair chance that it has turned up in someone's handbag and that it was about to walk. There is example after example where someone has been dismissed for flogging stock, and they have said, `I'm going to take you to the Industrial Relations Commission and claim unfair dismissal.' Why? Where is the procedure that says you cannot flog the stock? The employer has to buy the problem out or incur costs at the volition of the person who is being terminated, whose services have ended with that business. They are going to incur costs at the whim of that person by lodging a claim. Think about how horrendous this is. We heard the member for Watson talk about this Orwellian agenda and no practical help to small business. Let's think about the inspiration the Labor Party get here. Their former leader used to always look to the UK. If Tony Blair did it, it has got to be right. That is New Labour: if Blair did it, it has got to be right. What have we got in Australia? We have got No Way Labor. In the United Kingdom, under the Blair government—not from legislation inherited from the Conservatives but under legislation that they introduced—any employee in any size business cannot claim unfair dismissal within the first 12 months of their employment. Has the UK come to a screaming halt? Are their employers and employees throwing tomatoes at one another? Is there industrial chaos in the United Kingdom? That is the new way. That is the third way in the United Kingdom. But Labor is `no way' in Australia. Labor will not even address or come to grips with an industrial regime that exists in other parts of the world—even their idols, the demigods of New Labour in the United Kingdom. They will not even come to grips with that.If we accept the simple proposition that small business employs 6.7 million people in Australia—and in the area I represent small business people are overwhelmingly the drivers of the local economy—and if just one in 20 of these businesses employed one more person that would be 53,000 more Australians with a job. No-one in the union movement will turn up and defend the rights of those people who do not have a job. This measure is designed to support those people who do not have a job, by opening up opportunities in the small business community. In areas in my community where hospitality and retailing are key areas of our economy, these laws are crucial. When you go and talk to small businesses, they say they want to be free of the fear of being dragged before the Industrial Relations Commission for no good reason other than that it is a try-on. It is a try-on that costs small businesses around this country real money. The Blair third way says `12 months, any business, any size, no unfair dismissal claims.' The Blair third way versus the Labor `no way' option from Simon Crean and those other people who are on the opposition benches.DT4Crean, Simon, MP1K6Billson, Bruce, MPMr BILLSON—The opposition leader interjects. Let me remind the opposition leader: there is only one side of politics that represents people who do not have a job, and that is the Howard government. We are the only ones who are there battling for people who do not have a job. The Labor Party had its instructions—it actually thought about supporting this proposition, but then the message came down from above from the ACTU: `Don't you do that. We own you people. Don't you support this proposition.' The key thing that we are talking about today is helping those people who do not have a job. Central to that proposition is that the coalition government supports those people who do not have a job. The Labor Party, with their ACTU agenda, are looking after those people who already have a job. If they read the contents of the bill, they would see that it is not even retrospective. It applies into the future, after August for people who take employment understanding and knowing that this is the situation. So the third way Blair way in the United Kingdom versus the `no way' Crean way in Australia is denying many people the opportunity to get employment in our small business sector. This is important for the small business community I represent, this is important for those people seeking to gain employment who currently do not have a job, and it is further evidence there is only one side of politics that looks after the interests of small business, and that is the Howard government and the Liberal and National parties.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—Order! It being 2.00 p.m., the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 101A. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. Has the member for Dunkley concluded his remarks?1K6Billson, Bruce, MPMr Billson—Yes. Questions Without Notice55555514:00:00555Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, do you recall last Thursday I asked you in relation to the photographs whether the former Minister for Defence had expressed on the night of 7 September: ... any view that might cast doubt on whether children were thrown overboard.Do you recall your reply, and I quote:At no stage did he—Mr Reith—communicate to me that he had received any advice that would contradict the veracity of the original advice tendered to ministers.Prime Minister, why then did you tell the media yesterday that Mr Reith had advised you that he was still in doubt as to whether the photographs were from the wrong day and that Mr Reith got conflicting advice from Defence? Prime Minister, why didn't you tell the House the truth about your conversation with Mr Reith last Thursday?555Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I stand by what I said last week, and it is not in conflict with what I said yesterday, because—DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr Crean—Of course it is.ZD4Mr HOWARD—No, it is not, and I will explain why. What I said last week and what I repeat, and what is the case, is that at no stage did he communicate to me that he had received any advice that would contradict the veracity of the original advice tendered to ministers. The original advice did not include any reference to the photographs.55514:01:00555Baird, Bruce, MPMr BAIRDMP6CookLP10—My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer advise the House what policies the government put in place to assist home buyers? Will the Treasurer provide the House with an update on the uptake of the First Home Owners Scheme?555Costello, Peter, MPMr COSTELLOCT4HigginsLPTreasurer10—I thank the honourable member for Cook for his question. I can inform him that the government has made helping young home buyers, and home buyers in Australia generally, very much at the forefront of its policy considerations. That has been done in two particular ways: the first is by lower interest rates and the second has been the government's very successful First Home Owners Scheme. I can inform the House that, since the government commenced this in July 2000 as part of the new Australian tax system, 271,000 Australians have received the first home buyers grant.CK6Hardgrave, Gary, MPMr Hardgrave—How many?CT4Mr COSTELLO—A total of 271,000. Of those, 31,000 received the full grant of $14,000 for the construction of a new home. As a result of that, dwelling investment increased by a record 13.7 per cent in the September quarter, the largest quarterly rise in the history of the national accounts. No doubt housing will come off in quarters which are to come because of that extraordinary rise.The variable home mortgage interest rate at present is 6.05 per cent, compared to 10½ per cent when this government came into office. On a $100,000 mortgage, that means Australians are saving $370 per month, which is great, isn't it—helping young families? If you want to compare the home mortgage interest rate of today with that of the Labor Party at 17 per cent, the saving on a $100,000 mortgage—wait for it—is $10,950 a year of after-tax money. And that is on a $100,000 mortgage.The honourable member for Cook, and I think the member for Hughes and the member for Parramatta, are now sitting in safe Liberal seats in outer Sydney. One of the reasons of course is that mortgages in Sydney are much higher; therefore, low interest rates have saved people a great deal more money. In fact, the average new mortgage for first home buyers in Sydney is $183,000. So, if the saving per annum on $100,000 is $10,950, in Sydney the saving could almost be double that in terms of the difference between a coalition government and a Labor government.These are some of the benefits that good economic policy is bringing to the people of Cook, Hughes and Parramatta and in other seats around Australia. We notice that the Labor Party is now talking about changing its rhetoric on interest rates. It would have the public believe that it is now in favour of low interest rates. It did nothing about low interest rates when it was in office, but now it is saying, `Me too—we are in favour of low interest rates.' I will return to this in due course when I get asked a question by the opposition spokesman on Treasury matters, who has not asked a question in this parliament yet. He may recall that, back in July 1989 when home mortgage interest rates were at 17 per cent under the Labor Party, he put out a statement, along with left-wing MPs, saying: `In current circumstances, all arms of economic policy will need to remain tight, including monetary policy.'Home mortgage interest rates were at 17 per cent and what was he calling for?—keeping monetary policy tight. It was a classic press release! I am sure he will also remember it because he proposed a new tax on homes over $400,000. We will be interested to see, when he asks his maiden question in this parliament, whether he is still committed to tight monetary policy, 17 per cent interest rates and taxes on $400,000 homes—because we do not actually believe this conversion to low interest rates; we think it is nothing but political opportunism.55614:07:00556Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—My question is again to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, do you recall that last Friday you were asked by 3AW's Neil Mitchell and subsequently other journalists about your conversation with Mr Reith on the night of 7 November last year? Prime Minister, why did you state in response that it was your `strong recollection' that you had discussed with Mr Reith the video and whether the original advice was correct, but you did not state that you had also discussed with him the veracity of the photographs? Prime Minister, why didn't you tell the media the truth about your conversation with Mr Reith last Friday?556Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—There is nothing that I said last Friday on that radio program that was wrong.55614:08:00556Neville, Paul, MPMr NEVILLEKV5HinklerNP10—My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Minister, are you aware of recent statements that have been made relating to the sinking of a vessel off the Australian coast in October? Would you inform the House whether there are any obstacles which might prevent a clear understanding of the events which occurred at that time?556Ruddock, Philip, MPMr RUDDOCK0J4BerowraLPMinister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Reconciliation10—I thank the honourable member for Hinkler for his question. I must say that I awoke this morning to a media broadcast alleging that the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Mr Keelty, had stated that Indonesian crew had sabotaged the boat causing it to sink on 8 October. The commissioner yesterday appeared before a Senate estimates committee and was responding to a number of questions in relation to the sinking of the Indonesian vessel that carried a number of suspected unlawful non-citizens towards Australia. I am familiar with the way in which Senate questioning occurs, and sometimes with some of my longstanding friends, the questioning is somewhat circuitous, particularly when it comes from Senator Cooney. But further responses by Commissioner Keelty—YU5Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr Tanner—What have you got against him?0J4Mr RUDDOCK—Nothing against him. Keelty indicated that the Australia Federal Police's considered view was that asylum seekers were responsible for the sabotaging of the vessel causing it to sink and not—let me stress—the crew. The answer reported this morning was obviously selectively quoted, not in context, and it is worth noting that, in particular, the ABC has since apologised for the report and withdrawn the story. But the issue of course demonstrates what can happen in relation to the way in which these issues are pursued. It is a case here that the unfocused questioning by a Labor senator proved to be an obstacle to the clear understanding of what the facts were in that particular case.The fact is that the Leader of the Opposition was not listening in to the estimates debates last night. He did not pick up this morning a copy of the transcript—as I have—and go through it and satisfy himself as to what was being said. He was quick to be out there picking up the comments and suggesting that they were true. Of course, what we have seen from the Leader of the Opposition is that he has now come out and said, `Well, I'm terribly sorry; I got it wrong.' What it demonstrates more importantly than anything else is that trial by parliament won't give you an adequate hearing in relation to these matters. DT4Crean, Simon, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—Order! The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw that reference to the minister.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr Crean—I withdraw the reference. I think the record stands.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw the reference unconditionally.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr Crean—I withdraw the reference unconditionally, Mr Speaker.55714:11:00557Swan, Wayne, MPMr SWAN2V5LilleyALP00—My question without notice is directed to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, do you recall that, following your National Press Club address on 8 November, you were asked by the ABC's Fran Kelly specifically about the veracity of the photographs, and only about the veracity of the photographs? Prime Minister, given that Mr Reith had expressed doubts as to the veracity of the photographs just the night before, why did you fail to take the earliest opportunity to correct the public record as required by your own guide to key elements of ministerial responsibility?557Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I will have a look at the question that I was asked and I will, later in question time, give an answer. But I would like to see the text of the question. Unsurprisingly, Mr Speaker, I do not automatically accept versions of what I have said from those who sit opposite and nor should the commissioner of the federal police.55714:12:00557Pearce, Christopher, MPMr PEARCEA8WAstonLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister update the House on the increasing prominence of border protection issues in international relations? Minister, what steps is Australia taking to protect its own borders and are you aware of any alternative approaches in this area?557Downer, Alexander, MPMr DOWNER4G4MayoLPMinister for Foreign Affairs10—I thank the honourable member for Aston for his question. I acknowledge not only how well he did in the Aston by-election last year but how extremely well he did subsequently in the general election, where the voters endorsed their own wise choice a few months earlier.The fact is that state sovereignty and the protection of international borders are a fundamental tenet of international law and international relations. There is no doubt that, as you go around the world, each country is increasingly looking at ways of ensuring that it has the capacity to protect its own borders. Border control, after all, is recognised in all of the appropriate international conventions and through the whole process of international law and there is no doubt that the international community, broadly speaking, is very concerned about the issue of people smuggling. In the European Union, where I have been recently, it is a substantial preoccupation—people smuggling into the European Union coming through eastern and central Europe. The different European governments are taking different approaches and examining further approaches that they could take to try to address these issues.The amount of support the Indonesian and the Australian governments have for next week's regional conference on people smuggling is witness to the international concern there is about this issue. It is true that not every newspaper in every country of the world agrees with the strong stance that the Australian government has taken on border protection matters. I would be the first to make that point. The London Guardian and the Independent, both newspapers of the left of centre of the British political spectrum, have criticised us for the tough stance we have taken. I think you will find increasingly, not just amongst the populations of like-minded countries but amongst the governments of many—certainly not all, but many—like-minded countries, a good deal of sympathy for the position that the Australian government has taken. I was asked also by the honourable member for Aston whether there are any alternative approaches. In the course of the last election campaign the then Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, and his colleagues, made it clear to the Australian people that they were at one with the Australian government on the issues of border protection. They agreed with the government on border protection and the war against terrorism, so they agreed that the election should not be about those issues; it should be about a range of other issues. That was the commitment that every elected member of the Australian Labor Party in this parliament took into the last election campaign and people voted for members on the other side on the basis that they supported the government's position on border protection. It is now a matter of record that no sooner was the election out of the way than the Australian Labor Party changed its position altogether on border protection. For a start—and I think very significantly—the Labor Party came out and said it opposed what is sometimes described as the `Pacific solution'. In other words, before the election the Labor Party said it supported the government but after the election it said to people smugglers that, if there were a Labor government, Australia would not stop people landing in Australia. They would not do what the coalition was doing and stop these people landing in Australia. The Labor Party's position is to oppose sending people to Manus Island and to Nauru. That is the Labor Party's position. I am not making that up. That has been clearly stipulated by the Leader of the Opposition.I make the point that, when it came to the great deception of the 2001 election, it was the great deception by the Australian Labor Party that the Labor Party told the Australian public that they supported the government's policy and after they won back their seats they said they did not. That is the great deception. We need to know what Labor members and shadow cabinet ministers said amongst themselves during the election campaign. The member for Kingsford-Smith, who has been demoted—I think appropriately, by the way—Opposition members interjecting—4G4Mr DOWNER—Yes, I think that it is quite appropriate. The longest serving shadow minister for foreign affairs in Australia's history, he used to boast, and now, tragically, it is all over. He said during the election campaign, `On this issue of border protection we will review all commitments.' Did the member for Brand or the then Deputy Leader of the Opposition ring up the shadow minister and ask him what he meant, that this was out of line with Labor Party policy? If so, I think the same standard should be applied to the opposition as to the government. I think we should be told what conversations went on to make it possible for the Labor Party to undertake its great deception during the 2001 campaign. The Labor Party has a lot to answer for, telling people that it supported the government on border protection before 10 November and changing its position afterwards. I think the Australian public will damn the Labor Party for its weakness, for its division and for its hypocrisy.Honourable members interjecting—10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition is seeking the call and he is entitled to be heard in silence on both sides of the House. 4T4Melham, Daryl, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Banks apparently has difficulty hearing the chair.55814:19:00558Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister and it does go to deception. Does the Prime Minister recall telling the parliament last Thursday:The truth is that we were given unambiguous advice from people whom we were entitled to rely on that children had been thrown overboard. At no stage did I receive advice from my department or from Mr Reith or from any other official or from my staff indicating that the advice was wrong.Didn't the chief of the Navy, Vice Admiral Shackleton, raise doubts in a media interview on 8 November 2001 as to whether the `children overboard' incident had occurred? Wasn't the statement you made to the House last Thursday simply untrue? 559Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—It was not untrue because the statement I made to the House last week referred inter alia to the report of the people smuggling task force, the document that I released yesterday—and that was unambiguous. In fact, you referred to Rear Admiral Shackleton. Rear Admiral Shackleton put out a statement on 8 November confirming that advice had been given to ministers that children had been thrown overboard.That is what Rear Admiral Shackleton said—that is the reality. Once again, for the benefit of the Leader of the Opposition, the sequence of events was that the minister for immigration rang me at Sutherland on 7 October and on the basis of that—which, in turn, was on the basis of advice he received from the head of his department—he made a statement and I made certain statements. That evening, on 7 October, I received the most unambiguous advice imaginable from the people smuggling task force which said quite unequivocally that children—DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr Crean—It was wrong.ZD4Mr HOWARD—The Leader of the Opposition is yelling out, `It was wrong.' We are talking about the credibility of statements based on advice. When I was speaking back on 7 and 8 October I did not have before me the reports that I tabled in the parliament last week. The Leader of the Opposition is carrying on as if I did. I can only speak from the knowledge I have of matters at the time I make my statements and I repeat that at the time I made my statements I believed on the strength of what the minister had said and on the strength of what had been contained in that task group report that children had been thrown overboard. Nothing referred to by the Leader of the Opposition casts any doubt on that. I was asked a question by the member for Lilley. I have had a look at the question that was asked of me by Fran Kelly and there is nothing I gave in the answer that is untrue. I make the observation that she referred to the photographs. There were, in the media about that time, references to doubt in relation to the photographs. I think that, on either 7 or 8 November, there was a report about the photographs on one of the television news bulletins, but in any event any doubt about the photographs was taken over by the release of the video. One of the reasons why the video was released was in fact to see if that could address the question of the photographs. Can I just take the Leader of the Opposition back to the beginning of this. At the beginning of this, there was no reference to photographs. There was no reference to a video. Back on 7 October the statements made were not based on photographs, they were based on advice that had been received. It was given in good faith and the statements made were in good faith, and nothing that the Leader of the Opposition has said and nothing that anybody can say on this issue, either today or at any time in the future, can alter that one simple, unassailable fact. We were given advice in good faith; we made statements in good faith on that advice. As I said last week, at no stage was I given any advice which contradicted the original advice given to us which I have referred to in this answer.55914:25:00559Johnson, Michael, MPMr JOHNSON00AMXRyanLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister inform the House how the government is acting to ensure a fairer and more democratic workplace for all Australians so they can exercise the right to choose, without fear or coercion? What opposition exists to creating such fairness and democracy in Australian workplaces?559Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLPMinister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—I thank the member for Ryan for his maiden question in this House. I should express my confidence that, under his stewardship, the electorate of Ryan will once more be one of the brightest jewels in the coalition crown in the great state of Queensland.Let me say that this government is completely committed to more democracy and more freedom in Australian workplaces, because this government has faith in the decency of Australian managers and in the commonsense of Australian workers. Because we have this faith, we prefer workplace agreements to one-size-fits-all industry-wide awards. We are committed to giving workers real freedom to join or not to join a trade union and we do not believe there should be strikes without secret ballots first, because strikes cost jobs, and workers should not have their wages put at risk by militant union officials who do not face a similar threat to their livelihoods. The real issue here is union power, because the last thing that militant union officials want is real democracy in Australian workplaces. The real problem is the nature of the Australian Labor Party. Is the Australian Labor Party a democratic political party or is it nothing but a branch office of the ACTU? I want to congratulate again those members opposite who have had the courage and the decency to criticise and attack the notorious 60-40 rule which is doing so much to destroy democracy inside the Labor Party. I want to congratulate the member for Barton, the member for Melbourne, the member for Werriwa, the member for Fremantle and the member for Hunter. The only member opposite who does not know where he stands on the 60-40 rule is the Leader of the Opposition, who cannot decide whether he is the leader of a political party or whether he is still the president of the ACTU. On 25 November last year the Leader of the Opposition said:The influence of trade unions necessarily has to wane.That is what he said on 25 November, but two days later he went to a closed-door meeting of the ACTU and he emerged from this meeting to declare—listen to this:I am not Tony Blair. I won't forget where I come from.`I won't forget where I come from'—the presidency of the ACTU! Then he went on to say—BV5Adams, Dick, MPMr Adams—Where do you come from?10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Lyons!83LGillard, Julia, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Lalor!K26Latham, Mark, MPMr Latham—Son of the elite.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Werriwa is warned.EZ5Mr ABBOTT—The Leader of the Opposition went on to say:I am not interested in the third way. This was an obvious repudiation of the member for Werriwa who, as members of this House know, is a third way fanatic. It is a very dangerous thing criticising the member for Werriwa, as the Leader of the Opposition has just done. It is a good job the Leader of the Opposition is not a Sydney taxi driver, or he would be in all sorts of trouble criticising—2V5Swan, Wayne, MPMr Swan—I rise on a point of order, Mr Speaker. It goes to relevance. The question was about workplace relations. Could you please bring the minister back to workplace relations.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The minister was responding to the question.2V5Swan, Wayne, MPMr Swan—Mr Speaker, how was what the minister was saying relevant to the question? Are you going to bring him back to the question?10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Lilley will resume his seat and not reflect on the chair. The minister's references to the Leader of the Opposition were not relevant to the question, I agree, and I expect him to come back to the question. But the fact that he had entered into that field was not unusual in my experience in 19 years in this place.83LGillard, Julia, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Lalor—for the second time!EZ5Mr ABBOTT—I have been asked what opposition exists to creating freedom and democracy in Australian workplaces. As I said, the 60-40 rule is one of the biggest single problems.5I4McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan—On a point of order, Mr Speaker: on what criterion are the rules of the Labor Party relevant to the question or any matter for which the minister is responsible?10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Fraser will resume his seat. I had invited the minister to return to the question, and he will do so. I would have raised the issue mentioned by the member for Fraser if I had not been distracted by interjections on my left, as the member for Fraser is aware. EZ5Mr ABBOTT—Tony Blair has a bit of advice for members opposite when it comes to democracy in the workplace. Tony Blair, in a speech to the Trade Union Congress in Britain, said:Modernise your political structures, as we have done in the Labour Party. The old ways of the Labour Party were the resolutionists, the committee rooms, the fixing and the small groups trying to run the show. That has no future.The Australian Labor Party has no future unless it can throw off the shackles and the straitjackets of union power.56114:31:00561Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, you continue to rely in your defence on the advice you obtained on 7 October, but I refer to the question I just asked of you, that you told parliament last Thursday that at no stage subsequent to that 7 October advice did any official advise you that the information was wrong. Prime Minister, isn't it the case that the Chief of the Navy, Vice Admiral Shackleton, did raise on 8 November those doubts with you about the children being thrown overboard? So again I ask you: wasn't the statement you made to the House last Thursday simply untrue?10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—Before I call the Prime Minister, I remind the Leader of the Opposition and all members of my comments at the end of the censure motion debate yesterday as to the necessity to address remarks through the chair.561Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—Can I say it was not untrue. If Vice Admiral Shackleton had given me some private advice which I had not disclosed, then you would have a point.PG6Macklin, Jenny, MPZD4Mr HOWARD—That is exactly it.PG6Macklin, Jenny, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Jagajaga! The Prime Minister has the call.ZD4Mr HOWARD—That is precisely it.PG6Macklin, Jenny, MPMs Macklin—It is precisely it.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Jagajaga defies the chair!ZD4Mr HOWARD—Can I just read out the statement that was made by the Chief of the Navy on Thursday, 8 November. He says:An AAP report attributed to me following today's farewell of HMAS Adelaide and HMAS Kanimbla concerning unauthorised boat arrivals is inaccurate. My comments in no way contradict the minister.This is David Shackleton, on 8 November. He continues:I confirm the minister was advised that Defence believed children had been thrown overboard.Can I make the point that, if in fact the proposition is that in some way I have been concealing advice, the Leader of the Opposition would have a point. But the reality is that everything he is relying on is not private advice but, rather, some public comment made by Vice Admiral Shackleton. Vice Admiral Shackleton says that he has not contradicted the minister. He says this on 8 November. So if you are going to start using public comments of David Shackleton's you have a situation that on 8 November David Shackleton has said that he has not contradicted the minister and the minister has been saying, based on earlier advice, that children were thrown overboard. So, if you want to play the game of using David Shackleton's public comments, publicly on 8 November he is saying that he has not contradicted the minister and he is confirming that Defence believed children had been thrown overboard.Can I also take the opportunity, in answering that question, to say this—and I do thank the member for Lilley for drawing my attention to a question that Fran Kelly asked me at the National Press Club: it is very interesting when you go back a few months and read answers you have given and then you listen to arguments that have been put out in the public domain by your political opponents and you suddenly realise that before the election the context in which this issue was seen by the Australian people—and I believe now is still seen by the Australian people—I anticipated and the government understood. In relation to the `children overboard' issue, I said this in answer to Fran Kelly: ... I don't want to trivialise it because it was a traumatic, emotional turn to the issue — it's not really, you know, directly on the issue of whether you agree or disagree with the policy that we are pursuing. I mean, the Australian people are concerned about the policy that we're pursuing. Those who support it, support it, and those who don't, oppose it. But that's the central issue in the debate but I have to say to all of you who've sort of raised queries about this...Opposition members interjecting—ZD4Mr HOWARD—The reality is that then it was clear to me and it was clear, I believe, to the Australian people that—R36Albanese, Anthony, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Grayndler—for the second time!ZD4Mr HOWARD—the thing that really mattered was whether or not the Australian public supported our policy on border protection. That is what they voted on. They did not vote on the issue of whether children had been thrown overboard; they voted on whether or not they supported our approach to border protection, which was for a strong policy, or the approach of the Labor Party, which was to pretend that they were as strong as the government and that, if they scrambled over the line, they would have plenty of wriggle room to get out of the policy they had pretended to support during the election campaign. Everything that is being done by the Labor Party, and indeed by others, on this issue, including the Senate inquiry, is not about a search for the truth; it is about political advantage.The Leader of the Opposition laughs at that. The Leader of the Opposition would never stoop to try to score a political point! But I will leave the Leader of the Opposition out of it for the moment. I heard on ABC radio this morning Senator Andrew Bartlett talking about the Senate inquiry. He said, `Of course it's political.' When you add Senator Bartlett and you add Senator Cook—Senator Cook is going to be the chairman of this inquiry and, in relation to the Senate estimates investigation, he was literally salivating on ABC television last week; he was talking about a cinemascope coverage of it—and when you put in his cinemascope, what is going to happen in the Senate inquiry will be nothing other than a blatant political exercise, and the Leader of the Opposition knows it.56214:38:00562Haase, Barry, MPMr HAASE84TKalgoorlieLP10—My question is directed to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Would the minister inform the House of whether efforts to frustrate Australia's border protection measures are isolated occurrences? Is the minister aware of instances where officers and staff have been placed under duress in carrying out their lawful duties in relation to unauthorised arrivals?562Ruddock, Philip, MPMr RUDDOCK0J4BerowraLPMinister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Reconciliation10—I thank the honourable member for Kalgoorlie for his question. I think it demonstrates the concern that he has in relation to many of his constituents who are employed in the detention centre environment, particularly at Port Hedland and at Curtin, near Derby. I am aware of a number of incidents where officers for the Defence Force, Customs, my own department and other border control agencies have been placed in very difficult circumstances by those seeking to frustrate our efforts in relation to border integrity.Yesterday, and I think the day before, I read to the House from a report by naval officers in relation to circumstances they had faced where engines had been sabotaged, fuel lines had been cut—particularly as it happened on 31 October—steering gear had been disabled, fuel and water had been dumped overboard and people were jumping overboard in order to flee rescue. We had the deliberate sinking of vessels and, in other cases, attempts to sink vessels.My department has also received reports of aggressive and uncooperative behaviour towards boarding parties. Of course, this behaviour has put the safety of Australian citizens clearly at risk. As the Navy report I quoted from yesterday makes clear, lives were placed at risk when fuel drums were positioned near fire that had been deliberately lit. These are not isolated incidents. The staff at detention centres and others should not be expected to go to work and face violence and potential injury— YU5Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr Tanner—So are they all violent?10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Melbourne!0J4Mr RUDDOCK—One would expect that members opposite who claim to have some interest in the circumstances in which Australians work and their conditions of employment would have regard to those matters.YU5Tanner, Lindsay, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Melbourne!0J4Mr RUDDOCK—As I say, when detention staff go to work they should not expect to be beaten up. The fact is, as I have informed the House before, some of the fires that have damaged and destroyed buildings at Woomera have left a bill of $20 million, and I have to say that these incidents are not isolated. Detention is not easy policy, as the British government is finding. They have had damage to substantial buildings, amounting to something in the order of A$100 million. Again, they were deliberately lit by people who disagreed with the way in which they were being managed and being required to leave. Here we had on television last week a video of some of the unacceptable behaviour at the Port Hedland detention centre last year. In relation to that screening, some of the events that were not shown were the destruction of property and the injuries sustained by officers attempting to end that disturbance. I am advised by my department that 19 officers suffered injuries requiring treatment after rocks and lumps of concrete were thrown at them.YU5Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr Tanner—Are all asylum seekers to blame?0J4Mr RUDDOCK—Not all asylum seekers—some.YU5Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr Tanner—Good! That's a big concession.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Melbourne has not even exercised the common courtesy of recognising the fact that his interjections have drawn the chair's attention. I warn him.0J4Mr RUDDOCK—One or two people throwing rocks do not produce 19 officers injured as a result of those items being thrown at them. In that incident one detainee reported afterwards a cut to the arm. Most members would have seen the incident of 26 January at Woomera, where an APS officer was struck on the head by a rock while attempting to assist an injured detainee. That is what happened. An officer was seriously injured by a rock thrown at his head while attempting to assist an injured detainee. On 19 December, my staff report that six detention officers were injured after being pelted with missiles. In this same incident that I mentioned yesterday, detainees threatened officers with aerosol cans that were being used as flame throwers. A report of that incident notes that some 40 to 50 detainees gathered, arming themselves with bed frames, metal poles and other weapons. I am sure that most members on this side of the House would agree with me when I say that no Australian going to work each day should be expected to have to put up with behaviour of that sort.56314:44:00563Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, you have now had 48 hours to answer my question on who got the photos sent to Mr Reith's office. Have you got an answer on this yet? In light of reports that the office of Peter Reith ordered the Department of Defence to doctor photos of children in the water before releasing them to the media, what action have you taken to verify these reports? Was Mr Ross Hampton—then working for Mr Reith, now employed by the Minister for Education, Science and Training—the one who ordered the doctoring? If so, what action will you be taking?563Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—The first part of the question goes to what I had put on notice two days ago. The answer is: no, I have not.Opposition members interjecting—ZD4Mr HOWARD—The reason is that I have sought advice through the minister's office of, I think, the public affairs section of Defence. There are something like 300 or 400 photos, and I think you have most of them anyway. DT4Crean, Simon, MPZD4Mr HOWARD—You have a fair number of them, and you know that. Let me make it clear that I am perfectly happy to fully answer after the Leader—10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The Leader of the Opposition knows the obligation he has to allow the Prime Minister to be heard in silence, just as the Prime Minister extends the same courtesy to him. The Leader of the Opposition understands that and I expect him to adhere to the standing orders.ZD4Mr HOWARD—I was asked the question a couple of days ago by the Leader of the Opposition and I will answer that question, but I cannot answer that question without the assistance of Defence. The Leader of the Opposition will be aware that I was given some inaccurate advice in relation to the photographs on Sunday. I do not wish to unduly labour that point. These mistakes can happen and I move on from that. But I am going to be absolutely and completely satisfied that I am getting the right advice on this before I release any more material, because I do not intend to be falsely accused by the opposition then of misleading the Australian public.As to the question of cropping, I was told on Sunday—and I have not been given any advice to the contrary, but I will check it again—that there was no cropping.2V5Swan, Wayne, MPMr Swan—What about Hampton?ZD4Mr HOWARD—I was told that there was no cropping. That was the advice I had. I am perfectly happy to check that again. I would regard cropping as being quite inappropriate. If I thought people had deliberately doctored the photographs, I would take action—of course I would. I think that kind of conduct is quite unacceptable—it does not matter who engages in it. I am perfectly happy to say that. If that causes anybody who has heard my answer any discomfort, so be it. We are not in the business of doctoring photographs.While I am on my feet, the Leader of the Opposition asked me a couple of questions about some comments that Admiral Shackleton had made during a doorstop interview. Although most of Admiral Shackleton's comments focused on the day and immediately before the election on the AAP attribution of what he had said about the video, it is quite interesting when you go through the full transcript of what Admiral Shackleton said. It actually contains a statement which bears very directly on the subject matter of the Leader of the Opposition's questioning. One of the questions asked by the journalist on 8 November—and it bears on the question of whether any contradictory advice was received—was:On the boat people issue, did Mr Reith ... sorry, did the Navy ever change the advice they gave to Mr Reith?And the advice we are presumably talking about there is the advice about the children having gone overboard. The answer from Admiral Shackleton was:No, no, it did not.In other words, on 8 November, Admiral Shackleton is saying there was no change in the advice.56414:49:00564Secker, Patrick, MPMr SECKER848BarkerLP10—My question is to the Minister for Education, Science and Training. Could the minister outline for the House the measures this government is taking to improve the outcomes for young people in our education system? Is the minister aware of other policies in this area?564Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSONRW5BradfieldLPMinister for Education, Science and Training10—I thank the member for Barker for his question and deep interest in the educational outcomes of young Australians.Honourable members interjecting—RW5Dr NELSON—I am sorry if I am distracted, Mr Speaker. I am just wondering what the leadership issue is—10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The minister has the call! Any distraction he has will be from people behind him. He will respond to the question.LS4Ferguson, Martin, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Batman is not assisting. RW5Dr NELSON—Despair, disillusionment and disengagement amongst young people have many causes, even more manifestations and can take the form of self-harm, drug use, risk taking behaviour, disengagement and disillusionment, both from life and from the education system generally. What this government and what this country is aspiring to do is to see that every Australian—young people and those who are not so young—is able to find and achieve their own potential, whatever that is. For many young Australians, that means that we develop and we articulate a vision of education that sees that Australians remain in the education system for as long as they are able, that they are encouraged and have the opportunity to complete year 12 and to go on and pursue a university education. Many Australians, in fact some 330,000 Australians, are now undertaking new apprenticeships—it has more than doubled since 1996. For other Australians, their natural abilities and their instincts lie in vocational education and training—in TAFE, in new apprenticeships and in all of the fine things which are a product of the great work done by my predecessor.I was surprised last week when I saw that the member for Jagajaga had made a 20-minute contribution in this House on the issues of education, and not one positive remark was made about TAFE, vocational education and training or the legitimate career choices of Australians who choose not to undertake a university education. On the first day that I had the privilege to be the Minister for Education, Science and Training, I opened the Australian newspaper to see a photograph of Tyson Hoey and Melissa Dinon from Salisbury High School in the electorate of Bonython, adjoining the electorate of Makin. These two young people, led by Helen Paphitis, the principal at that school, attend a school that has gone from having only 30 per cent of students complete year 12 and five per cent go to university to now having about 30 per cent of the students go on to university, having completed year 12, with a year 12 completion rate of 50 per cent. Most importantly, through the Enterprise and Career Education Foundation, vocational education and training programs, the support of local businesses and the Jobs Pathway Program, every other student in that school who would otherwise be condemned, as the newspaper said, to a life of poverty is now engaged in some sort of training and/or work.The other point that needs to be made is about Tara Thomson. Five days after my swearing-in, I opened the Adelaide Advertiser, I read about Tara Thomson and I picked up the phone. Tara Thomson is being cared for in the electorate of Kingston by the Hallett Cove Youth Project. I phoned Tara and I spoke to her. She dropped out of school when she was 14 and she has a sister who has followed in similar footsteps. Now, as a result of vocational education and training programs, she has re-engaged with the education system. She has a part-time job and she also has a first aid certificate, of which she is as proud as I am of my university degree. The one thing that the Australian Labor Party needs to understand is that every single Australian should be recognised and respected for the career choices that he or she makes. They should not under any circumstances feel that their choices are debased because they do not undertake a university education, which is the current Labor Party position and obsession.I should point out to honourable members, by the way, that I received a lot of correspondence about this issue. For example, an academic from a Queensland university wrote this:Dear Dr NelsonIt is good to see some commonsense comments regarding tertiary/vocational education. As a university academic, I am committed to excellence and, quite frankly, it is not possible for some students to satisfy our requirements.The one thing that we must do as a nation is make absolutely sure that young people feel that they are not being pressured and forced to remain in the education system beyond their natural abilities, to be studying things to which in their hearts they know they are not suited. The Labor Party might not be interested in young people who want to do apprenticeships, but as a nation we are only as good as the technicians and those people who support us in our professional and scientific endeavours. 56614:56:00566Macklin, Jenny, MPMs MACKLINPG6JagajagaALP00—My question is to the Minister for Education, Science and Training. Has the minister seen allegations that his media adviser, Ross Hampton, then working for Mr Reith, ordered the defence department to doctor photos of children in the water before releasing them to the media? Minister, what have you done to satisfy yourself that Mr Hampton is an appropriate person to be employed as your spokesperson to the Australian public?566Nelson, Dr Brendan, MPDr NELSONRW5BradfieldLPMinister for Education, Science and Training10—As the Minister for Education, Science and Training, I am very satisfied that all of my staff are doing an excellent job to assist me in articulating the government's policies in education, science and training. The particular staff member to whom you are referring, for example—and I challenge some of the Labor members to do the same—came out to Cabramatta with me on a train to spend the afternoon with street kids re-engaged in the education system through the Links to Learning program. If the member for Jagajaga wants to focus on issues about which Australians are genuinely concerned, how about giving a bit of thought to those young people who are currently undertaking apprenticeships and training and all of the initiatives, supported by all of my staff, which mean that kids who had lost hope have now been given it?56614:58:00566Washer, Dr Mal, MPDr WASHER84FMooreLP10—My question is addressed to the Minister for Small Business and Tourism. Is the minister aware of reports of potential legislative changes that will increase uncertainty for small businesses in my electorate of Moore? How will these changes act as a deterrent for those businesses to take on new workers?566Hockey, Joe, MPMr HOCKEYDK6North SydneyLPMinister for Small Business and Tourism10—I thank the member for Moore for not only advocating the interests of small businesses in his electorate but also being interested in the interests of all small businesses, particularly those in Western Australia. The Gallop Labor government's proposed workplace relations bill is the biggest threat to small business employment in Western Australia. This Labor Party bill has the potential to undermine Western Australia's 116,000 small businesses, which employ more than 350,000 people. As an example of what this bill could do: the bill proposes to expand the definition of `industrial matter' to allow the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission to rule on any matter in dispute, including social or political issues not connected with the worker's job. For example, taking a printing business in Joondalup in the member for Moore's electorate, if the workers go up to the boss and say, `Look, we'd like to take a day off to go to the May Day rally in the main street of Perth,' and the boss says, `Look, I've got a lot on my plate at the moment; I can't afford to lose you for a day', under the proposed Labor Party laws, that printing business can be forced to not only give the workers a day off to attend the May Day rally but also, in fact, pay them in full. Under the Labor Party's proposed new Labor laws, every day becomes a union picnic day in Western Australia.Small business cannot afford to have its feet put in concrete boots by the Labor Party. The Labor Party says that, under the contract with the people that the Leader of the Opposition has, he is turning over a new leaf. We all recall that. He said he was turning over a new leaf. He also said that he was going to go into bat for small businesses. I say to the Leader of the Opposition: there is a very simple opportunity here. Ring up Geoff Gallop and say, `Mate, this is madness. This is going to cost jobs in small businesses. This is going to force small businesses to close. It will be the biggest impediment to employment in Western Australia if every employer in every small business thinks that the unions are going to run the workplace instead of the small business itself.'56615:02:00566Price, Roger, MPMr PRICEQI4ChifleyALP00—My question without notice is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, do you still claim that you were never informed about the caveats on the Office of National Assessments report you read to the National Press Club on 8 November, even though your foreign policy adviser, Miles Jordana, was told of them on 7 November and reminded again on 9 November by ONA? Did Mr Jordana inform anyone else in your office about the ONA report? Prime Minister, didn't you sack your friend and confidant Grahame Morris for less? Aren't you refusing to sack Mr Jordana because he did tell you and you did know? 567Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—The answer to the last part of the question is that he did not tell me. As to the rest of the question, I stand by what I have previously said.56715:02:00567Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLYFK6DawsonNP10—My question is to the Minister for Trade. Would the minister advise the House what measures the Liberal-National government is taking to counter the effect on Australian cane farmers by the proposed US farm bill.567Vaile, Mark, MPMr VAILESU5LyneNPMinister for Trade10—I thank the honourable member for her question. Obviously, the member represents one of the prime sugar growing areas of Australia. The sugar industry in Australia is obviously very concerned at the prospects of the US farm bill that is going to extend the excessive level of subsidy and support that has been provided over a number of years. At the moment Australia, as a result of negotiations that were undertaken a number of years ago, has a sugar quota, I think, of around 89,000 tonnes into the US market. The US producers, against whom we compete, have been heavily subsidised. On all reports, the farm bills that have been proposed by the House and the Senate intend to continue that.We have undertaken a significant lobbying effort in Washington at a political level. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and indeed the Prime Minister and I have been engaged in that effort, as have a number of industry organisations, including those from the member's electorate representing the sugar industry. Some of the interesting analytical work that has been done with regard to the proposed farm bills by independent sources in the US has indicated that the percentage of the support that ends up going to farmers who really need it is rather low. An independent report published by a Washington NGO, the environmental working group, shows that total farm support payments rose from $7.3 billion in 1996 to $23 billion in 2000, and that the top 10 per cent of recipients—or the wealthiest 10 per cent of recipients—received 67 per cent of the payments. The report further stated that two-thirds of all farmers received no payments. This is the case that we have been taking to our counterparts in the US administration, in the Congress and the Senate.What is the government going to do? We will continue to argue our case with the Americans. We will continue to argue our case within the multilateral system of the WTO—a policy perspective that we have held from the time that we were elected to office to launch a meaningful round of negotiations in the WTO, which is the area where we will see, ultimately, the benefits of trade liberalisation regarding agriculture. We will continue to argue a sound case as far as the Australian sugar industry is concerned. We will continue to work broadly across the markets of the world to open up new markets for the sugar industry, such as those that are opening up in places like Taiwan and other parts of the world. We will not just put all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. We will continue to work on our market access agenda and at the same time argue the case right until the final point as far as the US farm bill is concerned, so that our sugarcane farmers, who operate in an unsubsidised fashion, and transparently, can compete efficiently in the international marketplace.56715:06:00567Katter, Bob, MPMr KATTERHX4KennedyIND00—My question is to the Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government. In the light, last week, of Biosecurity permitting into Australia Californian grapes with Pearce's disease and it therefore being assumed that, similarly, Biosecurity will force the entry of bananas from the Philippines with Black Sigatoka, can the minister approach the government to seek assistance for shire councils and communities at Coffs Harbour, northern New South Wales, Kununurra and North Queensland to provide financial arrangements to cope with the 9,500 Australian families who will lose their incomes as bananas produced by people on wages of $382 a year close down the $300 million Australian industry? 84HZahra, Christian, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for McMillan is warned.568Tuckey, Wilson, MPMr TUCKEYSJ4O'ConnorLPMinister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government10—I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. Most of the substance of that question is of course the responsibility of the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, but I heed the member's request and certainly will make a call on the minister—hopefully when he has a spare moment in the near future—to question him on those matters. I might therefore be able to correspond his advice to me to the member. It is worthy of note in many of these issues that my constituents were very strong in seeking the current WTO rules. We have imposed them on the world, and the world seeks to impose them on us. It is an area of great difficulty for the minister controlling that issue.56815:08:00568Gambaro, Teresa, MPMs GAMBARO9K6PetrieLP10—My question is to the Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. Would the minister inform the House of what action the government is taking to encourage permanent residents in Australia to take out Australian citizenship?568Hardgrave, Gary, MPMr HARDGRAVECK6MoretonLPMinister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs10—I thank the member for Petrie for her question—another member from this side of the House who sees the great value in the unifying concept of Australian citizenship being promoted amongst the almost 1 million permanent residents in this country who are yet to take out citizenship and commit themselves and offer their loyalty to Australia. It is very worth while reminding the House also that this side of the House sees citizenship as a very strong, unifying force—something that is worth while promoting. The value of Australian citizenship is of course recognised and appreciated all around the world. It is astonishing to know that those opposite went to the last election with no policy pronouncements on the matters of citizenship and multicultural affairs, and they have still failed to produce any clear undertaking to endorse the government's programs in this regard.In contrast, the government are honouring our election commitment to add to the critical mass we created by a deliberate campaign last year which saw record numbers of people taking out citizenship and also saw in September the first ever celebration of Citizenship Day. We are honouring our commitment to put $1 million annually into promoting Australian citizenship as the single most unifying force in our community. Last year's very successful promotion of Australian citizenship during our Centenary of Federation year saw a record number of people—in fact, a 56 per cent increase over the same period in the previous year—applying for Australian citizenship. That was just in a three-month campaign which ended at the time the election was called by the Prime Minister. This year the government are committed to working with grassroots Australian communities through service clubs and local governments to encourage their interaction with and encouragement of permanent residents to take out Australian citizenship.It is also important for those of us who were born in Australia and who want an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment and loyalty to Australia to know that affirmation ceremonies—some of which took place on Australia Day with some 4,500 people in Victoria alone and several hundred in my electorate—are another way of members in this place, and indeed the Australian community, coming together. We need to focus in on those things which unite us as Australians: our commitment to citizenship of this country, our understanding of the English language and our support for the rule of law and for parliamentary democracy are all important aspects of bringing this nation together in an even stronger and united way than is already the case. As we live in the best country in the world we should have nothing to fear from the notion of promoting citizenship to those who have yet to take it out.Again, it is surprising that those opposite failed to produce a policy in this regard. I certainly hope that members opposite join those on the government side in our ongoing efforts to promote the great virtues and the unification of our community which Australian citizenship brings. 56915:12:00569Ripoll, Bernie, MPMr RIPOLL83EOxleyALP00—My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, didn't you tell John Laws on 9 November 2001 of the ONA report, and I quote:Now, if you're told that by a body like that, you are entitled to go out and argue it.Prime Minister, as you were saying this, wasn't Miles Jordana in possession of written advice that the ONA report was flawed? Wasn't Mr Jordana contacted that day by ONA and reminded of the report's flaws?569Howard, John, MPMr HOWARDZD4BennelongLPPrime Minister10—I did say that, and I have responded to the other questions. Nothing alters the fact that the statements made by me and by the minister and by the former defence minister were based on advice we received from Defence. I would remind the House again that, in the exchange that took place between the journalists and Rear Admiral Shackleton on 8 November, he did two very important things. First of all, he confirmed in a statement he made that Defence had advised its minister that they believed children had been thrown overboard. And then, in answer to another question, he said that the Navy had not changed its advice to the minister. That is a public statement by the head of the Navy acknowledging that Defence had given advice to its minister that they believed children had been thrown overboard. And then, in answer to the question: did the Navy ever change the advice they gave to Mr Reith, he said, `No, no. It did not.' That is a public statement by the head of the Navy.I know that the Bryant report has given a different complexion to the service advice, but that of course has come after this statement and it has come after the election and it has come after all of the statements that I continue to make in good faith. I cannot stress that too strongly. The Leader of the Opposition is saying, `If you heard this or you heard that'—which I did not—`but if you did.' He is trying to verbal me into saying I did.83ERipoll, Bernie, MPMr Ripoll—Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order on relevance. My question was very specific. It was about—10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Oxley will resume his seat. Prime Minister.ZD4Mr HOWARD—For the past few days I have been asked quite a number of questions about this issue. I have no doubt I will be asked a few more before we move on to something else, but that is fine. Can I just quietly make the point that the Leader of the Opposition drew my attention to this by asking me about what the Vice Admiral had said—but remember the context. The Vice Admiral was interviewed after the farewell of the Adelaide and certain words were attributed to him. He put out a statement confirming an antecedent event: namely, that the minister was advised that Defence believed children had been thrown overboard. I find that in the course of his earlier interview he was asked whether the Navy had ever changed the advice that they had given to the minister. He said, `No, no, they didn't.'83ZIrwin, Julia, MPMrs Irwin—I rise on a point of order.SJ4Tuckey, Wilson, MP83ZIrwin, Julia, MPMrs Irwin—Put your teeth back in.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Fowler will resume her seat.5I4McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan—I rise on a point of order.GK6Kelly, Jackie, MP10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Fraser has the call and the chair needs no assistance from the member for Lindsay.5I4McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan—Under what standing order are you entitled to decline to hear the point of order raised by the member for Fowler? The standing orders make it clear that you must hear a point of order when it is raised.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Fraser and the member for Fowler are well aware that the member for Fowler would have been heard had she exercised the courtesies reasonably expected of all members in this House.5I4McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMullan—I understand that other standing orders give you the right to take action with regard to members who say things with which you disagree but the standing orders also make it clear that when a member raises a point of order you must hear it. The standing orders are quite explicit. They say, `You shall hear it.' 10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—The member for Fraser is wrong on a couple of accounts.Government members interjecting—10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—If members on my right would like me to take action, I happily will. The member for Fraser is wrong on a couple of accounts. First, there are a number of things the chair hears with which it disagrees and takes no action. Secondly, if the member for Fowler has a valid point of order, of course it will be heard. But I have acted as all previous occupiers of the chair have acted and required her to resume her seat when she acted in an unparliamentary manner, as indeed she did. I will hear her point of order because clearly she was provoked by the Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government. My requirement that the member for Fowler earlier resume her seat was nonetheless entirely consistent.83ZIrwin, Julia, MPMrs Irwin—Thank you, Mr Speaker. Under standing order 145 it is quite obvious that the Prime Minister is not answering the question, which is about ONA.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—If the member for Fowler's point of order was a matter of relevance—that is what I can glean from the remarks she made—given the number of questions asked on the subject of children overboard and the range given to answers and questions, I might observe that the Prime Minister was being entirely consistent with what has been the practice for the last five sitting days.ZD4Mr HOWARD—I will simply repeat, and then conclude, that there has been a lot of questioning of me and my colleagues about whether contradictory advice was given in relation to the original advice. I am simply pointing out to the Leader of the Opposition and those that sit opposite that on 8 November you had a situation where the head of the Navy confirmed an antecedent event: namely, that the former defence minister was advised that Defence believed children had been thrown overboard. Plainly he was referring to the advice given. The initial advice—and I am grateful for the support from the Leader of the Opposition on this occasion—was that children had been thrown overboard. But, interestingly, the Vice Admiral on that same day in his media doorstop when asked the question, `Did the Navy ever change the advice they gave to Mr Reith'—and the Leader of the Opposition agrees with me that it was the original advice—said, `No, no, it did not.' In other words, he was confirming the original advice. I rest my case.57015:20:00570Draper, Trish, MPMrs DRAPER0L6MakinLP10—My question without notice is addressed to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. Would the minister outline to the House recent developments in child care and whether it is meeting the needs of Australian families?570Anthony, Larry, MPMr ANTHONYXJ6RichmondNPMinister for Children and Youth Affairs10—I thank the member for Makin for her question. I know she is a very keen advocate of family friendly policies, and why shouldn't she be? There is a very good story to tell of what the coalition has done, particularly when it comes to child care. What we have seen in child care over the last couple of years with the child-care benefit is that there has been a substantial reduction in cost and the utilisation rates have expanded dramatically.I think it is a very good opportunity for the member for Lilley—and I certainly encourage the member for Lilley—to have a look in his own electorate at the fantastic work that child-care centres are doing. He may wish to go and visit Teddy House—he could perhaps check in there next week—a very good centre in his electorate which has been flourishing under the child-care benefit. I certainly encourage him to take up my advice.Let us look at the facts and what has been happening with the child-care benefit over the last few years. In the last four years there has been a 36 per cent increase in child-care funding compared to the last four years of Labor—$4.7 billion in the last four years and $6.7 billion has been committed for the next four years. Despite all the doom and gloom that was proclaimed by the Australian Labor Party prior to the introduction of the child-care benefit, there are now 20 per cent more child-care facilities in this country than there were prior to the increase—that is 2,118 new child-care centres. That means that there are now just under 200,000 new child-care places available since the introduction of child-care benefit, which has been a tremendous part of the ANTS package. The other important point is that there are now 670,000 children using formal Commonwealth funded child care compared to around 480,000 when Labor was last in government. The reason they are using child care is that it is far more affordable. On maximum child-care benefit rates, for one child in a child-care centre it is $129 a week; for two children it is $269.64; for three children it is $420.86. That is a substantial amount. It is all about giving families choice. One of the reasons why it is becoming affordable, not only because of the increase in payments, is that the last ABS survey of the CPI showed that there was an 8.7 per cent decrease in the cost of child care. Why is that? It is because this government have increased payments through child-care benefit because we believe in giving families choice. We have also introduced a quality assurance program, because we want to see the standard of formal child care increased. It is about giving a safe, caring environment to Australia's most precious asset—that is, our children. That is why the Howard-Anderson government have introduced for the first time since Federation—he is a very good Prime Minister, with foresight—a ministry for children and youth affairs.ZD4Howard, John, MPMr Howard—Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.Questions Without Notice571571571Ruddock, Philip, MPMr RUDDOCK0J4BerowraLPMinister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Reconciliation10—Mr Speaker, I refer to an answer I gave earlier in question time. If the Hansard reveals that I said that the damage to the Woomera Detention Centre was $20 million, it should read $2 million.Questions to the Speaker57157115:25:00571Swan, Wayne, MPMr SWAN2V5LilleyALP00—In question time over the last few days we have used three parliamentary questions to request information from the Prime Minister on defence photos and who they were addressed to. He has said that he will take them on notice, but he is not answering them. How many more questions do we have to waste in this House before the Prime Minister comes back and answers the questions?571SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER10000PON/A10—I have been in this House for almost 19 years, and in that time only one standing order has referred to questions being answered, and that is that the answer must be relevant to the question. If the member for Lilley seeks to have the standing orders amended, it is entirely in the hands of the parliament, through the Procedure Committee.Documents57115:26:00571Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLPLeader of the House10—Papers are tabled as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members. Details of the papers will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings and I move:That the House take note of the following papers:ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S DEPARTMENT—Administrative Review Council—Twenty-Fifth Annual Report 2000-2001—section 58(2) of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975. (25 January 2002/25 January 2002)DEPARTMENT OF THE PRIME MINISTER AND CABINET—National Australia Day Council—Annual Report 2000-2001—clause 37(a) of the Articles of Association of the National Australia Day Council. (13 February 2002/14 February 2002)ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION—Annual Report of the Ngaanytjarra Council (Aboriginal Corporation) Native Title Unit 2000/2001—Annual Report 2000-2001—section 203DC(6) of the Native Title Act 1993. (13 February 2002/13 February 2002)ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION—Kimberley Land Council—Annual Report 2000-2001—section 203DC(6) of the Native Title Act 1993. (13 February 2002/13 February 2002) ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION—Gurang Land Council (Aboriginal Corporation) Native Title Representative Body—2000/2001 Annual Report—section 203DC(6) of the Native Title Act 1993. (13 February 2002/13 February 2002)ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION—Cape York Land Council—Annual Report 2000-2001—section 203DC(6) of the Native Title Act 1993. (13 February 2002/13 February 2002)ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION—Mirimbiak Nations Aboriginal Corporation—Annual Report - Reporting on the Financial Year 2000-2001—section 203DC(6) of the Native Title Act 1993. (13 February 2002/13 February 2002)ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION 2000/2001—Annual Report of the Queensland South Representative Body Aboriginal Corporation—section 203DC(6) of the Native Title Act 1993. (13 February 2002/13 February 2002)Debate (on motion by Ms Macklin) adjourned.Leave of Absence57215:27:00572Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALPLeader of the Opposition00—by leave—I move:That leave of absence from 19 March to 18 August 2002 be given to the honourable member for Chisholm for maternity purposes.10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—I am sure the House will join me in wishing all the best to the member for Lindsay and the member for Chisholm.Question agreed to.Matters of Public Importance57257210000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—I have received a letter from the honourable member for Griffith proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:The Government's systematic abuse of the public service and the defence forces for political and other purposes.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—10000SPEAKER, TheThe SPEAKER—Before I call the member for Griffith, I remind members, particularly new members, that warnings that have been offered in question time extend through the matter of public importance. It would seem quite out of character for us to have to take any action at this stage of the week as a result of someone forgetting that they have been warned.15:28:00572Rudd, Kevin, MPMr RUDD83TGriffithALP00—One of the interesting things about the debate on `children overboard' is that it is occurring at two levels. We have the level at which it is occurring in this parliament, which is all about who did what and when, and the truth will eventually out, either in this place or in another place. But there is arguably a more important debate going on in the minds of the Australian community at the moment, and that is about the overall character of this government. When we stand back for a moment from the detail of the Prime Minister's frenetic and forensic exercise in self-defence, what do we see in terms of the pathology of this government as it emerges? We see two or three different things: truth as an object of political convenience; policy as an object of political convenience; and, most damagingly, the pathology that sees the Public Service and the public institutions of this nation as objects of political convenience as well. Trust in any democracy is a fragile thing, and trust is based on truth. If you fracture truth, you fracture the trust upon which it is based. What authority do we look for on that? We look to the great man himself, who said:It is undeniable that a major cause of the reduced respect for government, specifically in Australia, has been the deterioration in the simple trust and confidence which used to exist between people and their governments.Further:As well, honesty is being swamped by cynical election campaigns based on fear, the big scare, the massive lie.Those are fine words indeed. Their author: John Winston Howard in his headland speech of June 1995, raising for us the interesting dilemma of when does a headland speech become a swamp speech? The truth, however, is that for this government the truth is becoming a foreign country as they writhe and twist and turn and try to escape the tangled web which they weave in this place. It was only a week ago today that we had the firewalls reasonably intact. We had the PM&C firewall, because PM&C did not inform the Prime Minister of what was going on; we had the PMO—the Prime Minister's office—firewall, because they did not know what was going on; we had the Peter Reith firewall, because Reithy either did not know what was going on or forgot to tell the PM what was going on; and we had the Philip Ruddock firewall. `Philip the forensic', the author of the statement of 7 October which gave rise to this entire saga—presumably after that point settling down to a solid month of reading spy novels but not actually focusing on anything further on the matter to which he had given rise in the national debate. A week after that—that is, today—where are we? Let us look of the state of the firewalls. The PM&C firewall has become the Jane Halton firewall, as Jane basically gets tipped overboard; we get the PMO firewall—with that we have got Miles Jordana now tipped overboard as well; Peter Reith's firewall—as for Ross Hampton, I think he is about to go over the wall as well as soon as Brendan pushes the eject button! What we have got with all of this is not so much `kids overboard' as `minders overboard', because that is the political strategy which the government has currently employed to get itself out of hot water. You see, with all of this, there is one principle at work: this Prime Minister's determination to bring about his own personal political survival. The ABM principle—not in disarmament terms; that is, `anybody but me'. That is what is guiding the Prime Minister in all of this. But the grandaddy of them all is what we have had in this place today of the discussion which appears to have occurred between the Prime Minister and Peter Reith on 7 November about the photographs. Of course, the Prime Minister's line with all of that— which I think involves a level of hairsplitting of which medieval theologians would have been proud—is along the lines of, `How many angels can dance on the end of a pin?' `Peter Reith, John Howard and a photo album' seems to be the answer to that, because that is where the defence currently rests! The Prime Minister's argument that you can separate out these two propositions of a discussion about the photographs and a discussion about the basis of the whole argument just beggars belief. Can you imagine this conversation? You have got Reithy there and the Prime Minister on the other end of the phone talking about the happy snaps. Is the conversation about the degree of resolution? Is the conversation, `Oh, there's too much exposure in this one, Prime Minister'?DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr Crean—We can give the other one more exposure.83TRudd, Kevin, MPMr RUDD—`More exposure, not enough smiling from the people in the photograph in this one. Oh, there is a nice one to put on top of the telly.' No, it is not about that at all, because the discussion is about whether or not the photographs constitute the basis of the proof or otherwise of whether kids were tossed overboard. This separation of the two issues in the Prime Minister's argument beggars fundamental belief. It is there, I think, the Prime Minister's so-called defence of yesterday and again today hangs. One of the great barometers of what degree of difficulty the government is in is the state of the advisers box! It is one of the great barometers of life! One of the great measures of what is going on is the number of briefing folders that Tony Nutt, the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, brings into this place. I have been counting them during the week. On Monday there were two. Yesterday there were four. My count today? Six.DT4Crean, Simon, MPMr Crean—Sure they weren't resignation letters?83TRudd, Kevin, MPMr RUDD—I do not think they were resignation letters. When you are weaving a very tangled web indeed, the exit routes become more and more complex. The cross-indexing exercise must be a feat best left to the higher minds of bureaucracy. But basically if there is one absolute mathematical formula in life, it is this: the greater the degree of political difficulty a government is in, the fatter and the healthier the size of the briefing folders which are put at ministers' disposal as they seek to wriggle their way out. Talking about these questions, it would be wise for the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff to reflect for a bit on the advice provided by one other political adviser to another political leader some years ago—just before the Prime Minister entered this parliament, in fact—when he said in a different context:I think there is no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we have got—said this adviser—we have a cancer within close to the top that is growing. It is growing daily. It is compounding. It grows geometrically now because it compounds itself. People are going to start perjuring during themselves very quickly, because they have had to perjure themselves to protect other people and the like ... There is no assurance at all that it all just won't bust.So said John W Dean to Richard Milhous Nixon in the Watergate tapes of 21 March 1973. The more tangled the web, the more complex the defence which is necessary to try and wriggle your way through. So much for the truth as an object of political convenience. This whole debate is also about public policy as an object of political convenience. The government went to the people and it spun the proposition that it actually had a serious new policy to enhance this nation's security. What this debate has demonstrated absolutely and unequivocally was that, at that time, what we were presented with had nothing to do with real policy at all. From beginning to end this entire strategy was conceived out of market research and executed out of market research, conceived out of political spin and executed through political spin. It was conceived by Mark Textor, executed by John Howard, Philip Ruddock and Peter Reith. And the Foreign Minister, who should have known better through this exercise, has either cheered from the sidelines or added no effective voice of constraint, as he should have.In all of this what you have had is not real policy at work; what you would have had is a political stratagem to get this mob through an election. Let us just assume for a moment, though, that they have been serious momentarily in this as an exercise in public policy. This is a question which has not been sufficiently debated in the country. If this was a real exercise in public policy, what did this government do about 197 previously arriving, suspected illegal entry vehicles on the shores of this nation? What did they do? Why did they suddenly act when the 198th boat arrived? Why the sudden call to arms when Tampa appeared on the horizon? What did the government do about the 10,000 previous arrivals on those 197 boats? The 42 boats that arrived in 1998? What did they do about the 75 that arrived in 1999 or the 54 in the year 2000? Absolutely diddly-squat until we got to the eve of the election. Then over the horizon came the exceptionally televisual Tampa and at that point we saw that the opportunity lay there to ram home the message upon which Textor had briefed them and on which basis the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs had already laid some groundwork—as my colleague the member for Lalor demonstrated yesterday in her contribution to this parliament.If the government were actually serious about this as an exercise in public policy, action would have been taken then, but when it comes to the rest of the picture, we have seen inaction as well. If they were really serious about a new approach to national security we would have seen a solid diplomatic initiative with Indonesia years ago. We would have seen a solid diplomatic initiative with Malaysia years ago. They are the two principal transit states. We would have seen a solid diplomatic initiative with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, the home to 6 million Afghan refugees—the source countries from which refugees derive. But we have seen nothing. What we have seen instead is this government beard the UNHCR as if it is some international demonic institution rather than one which is seeking constructively to solve the problems of refugees world wide—the 23 million refugees world wide. If the government were serious about that, they would have been engaging—and would have engaged over some time—in rational dialogue with the UNHCR to bring about a global outcome to what is a global problem. But no, we have had none of that. We have had half a billion dollars on the Pacific solution, the most expensive processing arrangement anywhere on the planet for asylum seekers, all because the politics of the time dictated that that was what was necessary. When it comes to the execution of this particular strategy however, it has not exactly gone without a glitch. We have had the problems of the last week when we had a significant report in terms of a bit of free enterprise—a bit of taxpayer-funded people smuggling on the way through. We had confirmed in estimates that $25,000 was paid to an individual who it was reported in the Sunday Program dabbled in a bit of people smuggling himself on the way through; $2,000 a month. Consider the irony that, at the time the Tampa was happening, your taxpayer dollars, those of people in the gallery and of the Australian community listening, were going to an Australian agent who, if this report proves to be accurate, was himself engaged in the business of people smuggling. If this was a serious exercise in public policy, that would never have been allowed to occur. So much for the truth so far as it is concerned with this government. So much for the government's abuse of public policy per se and their non-seriousness about their approach to national security in this whole debate and their use of it purely as a political stratagem.However, there is a third dimension that goes to the heart of the abuse of the independence of the Public Service and the armed services of this country. I do not think, Minister at the table, that your government has any idea how fundamentally offended the APS and the armed services of this nation are in terms of the extent to which they have been used for partisan political purposes, abused for partisan political purposes, left out to dry for partisan political purposes and used also in a vain attempt, in the case of the Prime Minister's department, to try and get them off the political hook.Let us look at the first example—the Bryant report. Who is this Jenny Bryant? Jenny Bryant is an assistant secretary in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. When I left the Australian Public Service, I was an assistant secretary. It is the lowest position in the Senior Executive Service. For those unfamiliar with the structure, you have a first assistant secretary above you; above that a deputy secretary and then you have God—Max Moore-Wilton—at the very top. Now, can you picture the position? There is poor old Jenny Bryant. She gets the call from Max, `In you come, Jenny. Jenny, have I got a surprise for you; a little job for you to do over Chrissie. You need to knock up a report on whether the Prime Minister and two cabinet ministers have been telling pork pies to the Australian people.' What an invidious position Jenny Bryant finds herself in. This is not Caesar appealing to Caesar; this is Caesar appealing to the sergeant of the Praetorian Guard. This is an impossible position for Jenny Bryant to be in and that is exactly as she found it—and doubly so for this reason: she is a member of the IDC so she is Praetorian Guard investigating Caesar, she being a member also of the committee whose key activity she is supposed to report on. What a double bind she finds herself in. And the flawed nature of the report is doubly demonstrated in terms of the fact that Ms Bryant failed to interview representatives of the Prime Minister's office who are so key, as the Leader of the Opposition's questioning has demonstrated in this chamber, to finding out finally the truth of this matter—hanging on the person of Miles Jordana.Then we come to the ONA report on which the member for Chifley asked an excellent question in this chamber today. The core of the Prime Minister's defence on the question of his presentation at the National Press Club was that he had received an ONA briefing the night before—an ONA document. Leaving aside the fact that what we have is Jordana ringing ONA to see what they have got which might be of some use, leaving aside the question about the qualifications about the source of the information contained within the ONA document, what else have we got on that? We have the question of classification. Let me tell you what it is classified: `COMINT. Top Secret. AUSTEO'. For the benefit of honourable members, let me tell you what COMINT stands for—and it does not stand for community interest. It stands for communications intelligence. `Top Secret'—I think even they understand what that means. `AUSTEO' means `Australian eyes only'. So here we have the Prime Minister saying, `Well, I don't particularly care about that.' When I signed the relevant provisions of the Crimes Act when I was in the Australian Public Service and had access to these documents, it became a criminal offence to release one of these documents. The Prime Minister, it seems, is above the law when it comes to these matters. We have an abuse of Public Service process in this respect, an abuse in relation to the PM&C process on the report which has been constructed which is intended to get the government off the hook, a prostitution of the independence of the Public Service for which this government deserves to be condemned. (Time expired)15:43:00576Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTTEZ5WarringahLPMinister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service10—I have to say that obviously the member for Griffith has put a lot of work into his speech. As a display of the member for Griffith's erudition, I have to say that the speech wasn't too bad, but as a case for the prosecution it utterly and completely fails. I like the member for Griffith. The member for Griffith is a good bloke and he has a lot to offer this parliament. I like the member for Griffith, but he is certainly not going to convict John Winston Howard by re-running the conviction of Richard Milhous Nixon, which is what he tried to do for us today. It ought to be quite clear from the member for Griffith's speech today that the opposition simply does not have a case. What the opposition has been arguing for the last few days is not in the end about advisers, about public servants: it is about the Prime Minister, and it is abundantly clear today that the opposition does not have a case against the Prime Minister. It has not been able to establish that the Prime Minister of this country has misled anyone at all. It has become apparent over the last few days that, despite an abundance of suspicious minds on that side of the House, on this side of the House you have a Prime Minister whose reputation for honesty and honour and integrity is absolutely unscathed. He stands as the most honourable and the most honest Prime Minister this country has had since Bob Menzies. He is the best Prime Minister this country has had since Bob Menzies.The member for Griffith was certainly right in this sense at least: this debate is being conducted on two levels. There is the debate here within the confines of Parliament House where people who really know better have worked themselves into absolute lathers of indignation against a non problem and a non issue, and it has been conducted out there in the community where people know who they can trust to protect Australia's borders. Out there in the community people know that they can trust this government to protect Australia's borders but they cannot trust the opposition to protect Australia's borders because the opposition is hopelessly and irreconcilably divided on this issue vital to the strength and the security and the future of this nation.Mr Speaker, you would not necessarily have known it from the speech of the member for Griffith but this MPI debate is supposed to be against abuse of the Public Service by the government. The only abuse of the Public Service which has taken place recently is the abuse the member for Griffith ladled onto an unfortunate public servant, a woman of integrity, character and ability, who has done a very good job in her position. This is a government which respects and admires the professionalism of the Australian Public Service. I have to say from my own personal experience that the Australian Public Service provides advice without fear or favour and, once that advice is given, the Australian Public Service implements outstandingly well the policy of the elected government of the nation. This government treats the Public Service with respect. We treat the defence forces of this country with respect. We would never—as the member for Griffith's great friend and mentor the former Senator Gareth Evans did—instruct the Australian Air Force to run spy flights over Tasmania to spy on political opponents in the Tasmanian government. The other issue that was supposed to be central to this matter of public importance debate is alleged abuse of the defence forces. One of the great changes that has come over Australia since 1996 is that the Australian people have rediscovered their patriotism. The Australian people have rediscovered their pride in this great country of ours. That manifests itself in so many ways. It manifests itself in the great community and volunteer organisations. It manifests itself in the marvellous work of the rural fire service and the surf lifesaving clubs and so on. But above all else, that patriotism shows itself in the great armed forces of this country. There is a sense in which the armed forces embody the spirit of this nation. They did at Gallipoli, and they do today. This government has used the armed forces of this country wisely and well in defence of the national interest and to support universal human values and the common decency of mankind. That is what we have done with the Australian defence forces. They have been used to bring peace and freedom to the people of East Timor. They have been used in the war against terrorism where they are serving with tremendous courage and professionalism, and they have been used to protect Australia's borders. It is a hard job; it is a harrowing job; it is a difficult job, but they have carried it out with the professionalism, decency and humanity you would expect of Australian military personnel.We are now on the fifth parliamentary day of the great Labor dummy spit of 2002—the great argument over spilt milk, the great explosion of sour grapes from sore losers. That is what this debate is about. It is sour grapes from sore losers. Let me review the two central contentions of members opposite. The first contention is that the Prime Minister of this country has lied.VU5Griffin, Alan, MPMr Griffin—He has.10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—The member for Bruce will withdraw that.VU5Griffin, Alan, MPMr Griffin—I withdraw.EZ5Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTT—The Prime Minister of this country, a man whose honour and integrity shines all the brighter through the mud which has been flung by members opposite, has commissioned two separate reports into the affair of the children overboard. He has not sat on those reports. He has not tried to hide them. He has done the right and decent and honourable thing and released those reports to the Australian public. It is on the basis of those reports that members opposite are attempting to convict the Prime Minister of lying even though those reports clearly state again and again that at no stage was the Prime Minister provided with official advice that the original advice was wrong.The Prime Minister released the reports and he has faced unrelenting scrutiny since then. He has faced a full press conference which has gone for more than an hour. He has taken every question that the investigative bloodhounds of the Canberra press gallery could throw at him. He has faced now five days of question time. He has faced all the questions and every question that members opposite could throw him. He has instructed the Public Service to attend the Senate inquiry and to give full and frank answers. This Prime Minister has done everything humanly possible to get to the truth of this matter and this Prime Minister has shown nothing but honour and integrity over the last five days during which this controversy has run.The second contention is that the `children overboard' affair resulted in what members opposite like to say was `stealing the election'. The contention of members opposite is that, if the `children overboard' story had not been true, the government would not have won the election. That is the contention of members opposite. That is what has been said constantly and repeatedly by members opposite.83LGillard, Julia, MP10000DEPUTY SPEAKER, TheThe DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Lalor! Standing order 55 is quite explicit.EZ5Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTT—Let me repeat: this government never had official advice stating that the original advice was wrong. If members opposite want to say that the election was stolen because no-one knew that there was some doubt about the `children overboard' story, they obviously were living on a different planet over the last couple of days of the election campaign when everyone was being told through the front pages of the newspapers that there was some doubt in some circles about some aspects of the `children overboard' story. But the one person who did not seem to be jumping up and down and screaming about it then was the man who is jumping up and screaming about it most now—that is to say, the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand. If it was as bad as all that, what was he doing over the last couple of days of the election campaign? RH4Kerr, Duncan, MPMr Kerr—Trusting the Prime Minister!10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER—The member for Denison will remove himself from the House under standing order 304A.EZ5Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTT—It is very clear that, if there were any lies told during the recent election campaign, it was the big lie being peddled by members opposite. The big lie being peddled by members opposite is that they supported the government's border protection policy. That is what they said, up hill and down dale, in every possible forum. They said before the election that they supported the government's border protection policy, knowing full well that they would change it the instant that they got into government. We know that they would change it the instant they got into government, because that is precisely what they are all saying now. What we have seen since the election is complete confusion, complete disagreement, complete division inside the ALP, and complete deception about where they really stand on border protection. Let us listen to some frontbench members of the Labor Party on this issue. This is what the member for Fremantle says about border protection:I feel ashamed that many of my colleagues have not spoken yet. We have to make good that shame.The border protection policy, she says:... is demeaning to our fellow human beings; it is damaging to the asylum seekers and to our society, clearly demonstrating we need a change in policy.To this, the member for Barton, the shadow attorney-general, said:Her views are totally unrealistic if she wants to be part of a party aspiring to government.We have the very voluble member for Denison, who is finally absenting himself from the House—10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER—Minister, you will restrain yourself.EZ5Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTT—He said:I want us to get back to a position where Australia can feel proud of where Labor is standing.Then of course we have the member for Werriwa, who says:To claim that people who oppose an open-door policy are ignorant, racist and emotive is a massive slur against the working class.What the member for Werriwa is saying is that half his frontbench colleagues are guilty of a massive slur against the working class. He says:In my experience, working people do not regard this as a question on race, they see it—that is to say they see border protection—in terms of decency and legality.On this issue, the member for Werriwa is dead right. According to no less an authority than Mike Seccombe of the Sydney Morning Herald, the member for Werriwa continues to say that the member for Fremantle's position:... appeals to the latte sippers of Labor's trendier electorates, but is poison among real people.Given this ferocious division amongst his own ranks, and given that the real argument in Australia today over border protection is not between this government and the Australian people, it is between Labor and Labor, why doesn't the Leader of the Opposition tell us where he stands? Why doesn't the Leader of the Opposition finally clarify where the Australian Labor Party stands on something? We have had the Leader of the Opposition try to tell us that Labor supports a policy which is `tough but compassionate'. He might as well say that he is hot and cold, that he is long and short, that he is blonde and brunette all at the same time. The truth is that on this issue, as on so many other issues, the Leader of the Opposition is Captain Contradiction. He is the Mr Oxymoron of Australian politics and he is completely incapable of providing any leadership. The Leader of the Opposition is not paid to be a critic, he is paid to be a leader, and leadership is precisely what we are not seeing from him right now. What has clearly emerged over the last few days is a seismic shift in the position of the Labor Party. It is clear that, despite a rearguard action by decent honest supporters of traditional Labor values such as the member for Batman and the member for Werriwa, members opposite no longer support turning boats around, they no longer support mandatory detention, they no longer support a policy of border protection, but they are too scared to admit it to the Australian public. The only liars in this parliament are members opposite.10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER—I ask that the minister withdraw that.EZ5Abbott, Tony, MPMr ABBOTT—I withdraw. I got carried away.15:58:00579Snowdon, Warren, MPMr SNOWDONIJ4LingiariALP00—There is only one aspect of the minister's speech which was at all relevant to this debate and that is his contention that it was about the honesty and integrity of the government, because that is exactly what this debate is about. It is about the honesty and integrity of this government, the truthfulness of the Prime Minister, his capacity to lead a government properly in the traditions of Australian governments—not interfering in the independence of the Australian Public Service and not using the ADF for political purposes. That is what this debate is about. I have to say that it is also about incompetence, and we will come to the issue of incompetence shortly. But at the heart of the debate is the integrity of government and the honesty of the Prime Minister and his ministers.We have learnt over the last few days, indeed since the commencement of this parliament, that we cannot believe the Prime Minister. We have learnt over the last few days, indeed since the beginning of this parliament, that we cannot believe the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. We cannot believe the previous Minister for Defence, and I will come to him a little later. What we know is that we are seeing here the question of obfuscation—lies, duckshoving, buck-passing, not accepting any responsibility for what happened with public information and not accepting responsibility for the honesty of what was said by successive ministers after 8 October. I say that the person who is directly responsible for that is the Prime Minister. He is, after all, under the conventions which govern this country the leader of the government and responsible for the way in which the government operates.What we have seen is an abuse of power. What we have seen is an abuse of office. What we have seen is an abuse of the Australian Public Service and, most importantly in my view, an abuse of the Australian defence forces. If the Prime Minister is any doubt about that abuse, he should go and talk to Australian Defence Force personnel. I have, and I can tell you that from September onwards last year, from the Tampa event onwards, they have been very cranky. Naval personnel in particular have been irate at the way they have been used and abused by this government. We know that, as for the incident to do with the children overboard, the Adelaide is not in Australia—it is in the Middle East, in the Gulf—and we cannot actually talk to those people. But after that incident those personnel arrived on Christmas Island—Christmas Island is in my electorate—and they went and spoke to the island's citizens and said how appalled they were at the way in which the photographs taken by Defence Force personnel on the ship Adelaide were wrongly used by this government, which misconstrued the event so purposely.We know that—and I will come to the heart of this question of public responsibility in a moment—Minister Reith's office, no doubt in concert with the Prime Minister's office, sought directly to suppress information from the Department of Defence. Who could ever believe that? We know now that there has been discussion by Mr O'Leary in the Prime Minister's office about these photographs, by Mr Jordana from the Prime Minister's office about these photographs, by Mr Scrafton from then defence minister Mr Reith's office about these photographs and by Mr Hampton from the then defence minister's office about these photographs. Are you saying to us and are we expected to believe that they did not talk to each other? Are we expected to believe there was no conversation in the Prime Minister's office which went along these lines: `Do we know what the photographs show?' Mr O'Leary picks up the blower: `Excuse me, what's in those photographs? Can we have them?' `Oh, listen, mate, I wouldn't touch them just yet. We've got to doctor them.' That is exactly what they did. They doctored the information and purposely misled the Australian community. They did it in pursuit of bare political motives—to validate the Prime Minister's attack on asylum seekers and to create a climate of fear and division in the Australian community. This Prime Minister and his government have systematically abused the Australian Public Service and the Australian defence forces. They have, by their actions, jettisoned any pretension that the Public Service and the ADF are not to be used as political tools of the government of the day. They have confirmed they have no regard for the standards of professionalism and independent advice and counsel that have been the core of Public Service tradition in this country for over a century. They have brazenly deployed significant defence war fighting assets and personnel to validate their political opportunism, and in so doing have abused the integrity, goodwill, professionalism, patriotism and the bravery of defence personnel, particularly those in the Navy. If we are in any doubt, what I ask the government to do is release all the 393 photographs so that the public can see the professionalism which the Navy employed to look after the interests of the people who went overboard.There is a significant relationship between the inability of this government to understand the notion of ministerial responsibility and accountability. There is a significant relationship, one for this government to understand and this Prime Minister to acknowledge, to do with the importance of having an independent source of advice in the Public Service who provide that advice without fear or favour. What this Prime Minister has done is deliberately undermine that tradition.We have heard a lot about written information. In the days of the dog and bone, mate, you pick the blighter up and you say: `Excuse me, I've got some information for you. There's a problem with those photographs'—as was told to Max Moore-Wilton. Max Moore-Wilton did not get the message—or did he? That is a question we will wait to answer. The cabal in the Prime Minister's office, the drivers of public policy in the government, have developed to an art form codes and firewalls to protect the Prime Minister from acts of commission and omission. The person who is responsible for driving that, the person who must know what happens inside his office, is the Prime Minister. I hope, Mr Tuckey, you know what happens in your office—do you?SJ4Tuckey, Wilson, MPIJ4Snowdon, Warren, MPMr SNOWDON—He reckons he knows what's in his office.10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—The member will address other members by their seats.IJ4Snowdon, Warren, MPMr SNOWDON—I imagine the clown who was here a moment ago, the leader of government business, would say he knows what goes on in his office and would say he knows what his staff do in his office. I know that Minister Reith knew what was going on in his office, because he told them what to do—as the Prime Minister has done. The Prime Minister knew full well what was going on in his office. They may not have written him a note. They may not have informed him by saying, `Prime Minister, here's a problem for you.' What they have said—and the Prime Minister knows they have said it—is: `We'll look after your interests, Prime Minister. Don't you worry about that.' That is exactly what has happened. We need to examine this whole question of ministerial responsibility with a great deal of diligence. What we know from the ADF photographs is the important way in which the ADF have dealt with the asylum seekers. They wanted the truth to come out. Today we have had the Prime Minister mercilessly verbal Admiral Shackleton and—by verballing Admiral Shackleton—everyone else in the chain of command from the person who took the photographs upwards. Under the system that operates in this country, the defence minister receives advice about operational matters from the defence forces. There is a dual chain of command within the Department of Defence. The administrative aspects go through the secretary, Dr Hawke, and the operational aspects go through the CDF. We know that the chain of command does operate. The chain of command operates well. We know from the documents that have been produced in this place that the chain of command did operate, because the Navy alerted the government to the problem. The government took no action. What they have done by their denial, what they have done by their obfuscation and what they have done by their dishonesty is to actually attack and undermine the integrity of the Australian Navy and the Australian defence forces, as well as the Australian Public Service generally.I do not think that sits well with the Australian community. We have heard about how importantly the government sees the Department of Defence and Defence Force personnel. They have told us how much respect they have for them. If you have that respect, tell the truth. If you do not have respect, you do not tell the truth. What we know about you, Leader of the House, is that you are very lax with the truth when it suits you. I want to conclude by going to Laurie Oakes's article in today's Bulletin. He said:But really, the answer to the “what did they know?” question is pretty obvious. Howard and co. knew enough to know they did not want to know. And that would have been clear to key bureaucrats. If ministers were kept in the dark, treated like mushrooms, it is because that is the way they wanted it. Knowing the truth would have created too many political difficulties in an election campaign.The alternative explanation—that bureaucratic timidity and incompetence caused the prime minister, the defence minister and immigration minister to be kept in ignorance on such an important matter—is almost too disturbing to contemplate.That is correct. The reason it is too disturbing to contemplate is that they have taken for granted the ADF and the Australian Public Service. (Time expired)16:08:00581Bishop, Bronwyn, MPMrs BRONWYN BISHOPSE4MackellarLP10—I read the matter of public importance and I thought, `This is indeed a serious proposition.' Yet, when I listened to the lightweight contributions from both the member for Griffith and the member for Lingiari, I have to say that the people of Australia really cannot take the opposition seriously. I would like to point out right from the beginning that, whereas the member for Griffith has attempted to take the moral high ground, if we really recall where he comes from, he of course was the head of the Premier's Department in Queensland under Labor. He was put there as a party hack in order to see politicisation of the Public Service in that state. Everyone knows that background.83TRudd, Kevin, MPMr Rudd—Bronnie, you've got it wrong.SE4Bishop, Bronwyn, MPMrs BRONWYN BISHOP—Everyone knows the background from which you came. The fact that you wish to try to cast aspersions upon a Prime Minister who has shown transparency and honesty, who commissioned those two reports and released them, is simply not tenable coming from the other side. I think that rather, when we look at the question of systematic abuse of the Public Service, we would do well to look at the history of the Labor Party and know precisely where it comes from. Let us take a look first at what they had to say about Western Australia Inc. and what was concluded by the royal commission into how Western Australia was politicised under a government of which Carmen Lawrence was a part. The report said:The Public Service lost, if not its way, then some of its role and character in the political and governmental environment into which we have inquired. Denied an effective advisory role...it was reduced to impotence in circumstances where ministerial advisers, favoured appointees to the Public Service and others captured the advisory role which traditionally has been seen as a raison d'etre of an experienced Public Service. Exposed! Let us take a look then at the federal arena, where we saw the way in which, under the Hawke and Keating administrations, there was an intimidation of the Public Service that resulted in the infamous letter being written by Deputy Commissioner of Taxation Mr DJ Courtese to Mr Paul Keating. The letter read as follows:The purpose of this letter is to draw your attention to the need for you to file your 1986 income tax return which is now outstanding.As recently discussed your 1985 return is also well overdue.I appreciate how busy you have been but I ask that you now give urgent attention to the filing of your returns especially that for the 1985 year.Should you wish your return can be posted marked for attention: Ms YVONNE ELLIS, Liaison Officer, Priority Control Section—or he could deliver it to her in person—Your co-operation and early response would be appreciated.Yours faithfully,What other Australians got treatment like that from the Australian Taxation Office? We bothered to ask. We asked in the early 1990s and the answer was that, in the year 1990-91, 10,794 ordinary Australians were convicted of non-lodgment of returns. Was Mr Keating even penalised? Was Mr Keating prosecuted? No. Because of the politicisation of the Public Service, and the tax office in particular, he simply got a letter of comfort that said, `Would you mind putting in your tax return if it's not too much trouble.'Of course, we went further, didn't we. We went to the situation where we had the cosy deal cooked up between the then Commissioner of Taxation, Mr Boucher, and the then Treasurer, Mr Dawkins, over the whole of $2 million in the budget of 1992-93. They were suddenly able to find $1.7 million to fill in that gap in order that the government would not be embarrassed, and it would give away a most unpopular proposition on which the commissioner had given advice to the then Treasurer. In return, of course, we saw Mr Boucher go off to the OECD and the then ambassador to the OECD recalled. It was a most disgraceful period in Australian history when we saw the politicisation of the Public Service being defined at the highest levels and where the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of the day were the immediate beneficiaries.83TRudd, Kevin, MPSE4Bishop, Bronwyn, MPMrs BRONWYN BISHOP—But, of course, the granddaddy of them all is Centenary House. To this day you personally, member for Griffith, are a beneficiary of the $4 million that is paid in rent by the Australian National Audit Office to the Australian Labor Party. This goes on to this very day. In the next few years that will rise to $8.9 million. This whole politicisation of the Public Service is the result, or rather the lease, that gives that money to the Australian Labor Party. I might add that only Barry Jones ever had the decency to put it in his return as being a benefit gained. Not one other member of the executive of the Australian Labor Party or ordinary member of the Labor Party ever disclosed it. Yet there were people who are ministers of the Crown who were beneficiaries who were part and parcel of the executive negotiating that disgraceful agreement to lease, and then finally the lease.The Audit Office was held in contempt. The Audit Office was never told that the Australian Labor Party was to be their landlord. The correspondence, which is all on the public record, showed that at no time was the Auditor-General or the Audit Office told that the Labor Party was to be the landlord and indeed to cohabit in the same building. It is an absolute disgrace. Yet, to this day, if you look at the financial returns of John Curtin House, you will see how the campaign account of the ALP was guaranteed by the money that flowed from the public purse, via the Audit Office, into the coffers of the Labor Party—and you have the temerity to stand here today and talk about the systematic abuse of the Public Service in the area of the defence forces.Let me tell you that when I became Minister for Defence, Industry, Science and Personnel and we looked at the privatisation that was being carried out, what was the first thing I found that the Labor Party had put in place? It said that on every occasion the trade unions—your real masters—had to be consulted about whether a privatisation would take place. They were part and parcel of every negotiation—quite improperly so. So to stand here and to listen to the abject nonsense that you have pushed forward as so-called evidence of there being a misleading somehow of the Australian people by the Prime Minister comes from a very poor base—a group of people who have no basis to say that you can stand scrutiny and have any integrity at all. The fact of the matter is—and I repeat my opening remarks—the Prime Minister has acted with transparency and with honesty. He has indeed commissioned those reports and released those reports. That is the way that proper governments should operate—not in the gutter, which is where it was with your previous Prime Minister, Mr Keating. The honourable member for Griffith said that we ought to have had a proper policy of diplomacy with Indonesia. You had one—in spades. It was called: negotiating for the sale of the piggery. The piggery was sold off via those business transactions that were negotiated under the cloak and dagger of somehow wanting to advance the Australian people's interests. The Australian people's interests were only ever advanced when this government had the courage and integrity to finally come to the defence of the Timorese people. It was then that we saw a change in the way in which the boat people came from Indonesia.When you talked about a need for a diplomatic relationship, where was the diplomatic relationship that was necessary with Malaysia, when the only response of the then Prime Minister was to call the then Prime Minister and the now Prime Minister recalcitrant? Where was your sense of diplomacy and the need for proper policies when it came to Timor? Self-interest came first to that government when it sat on the Treasury benches. There is a lot of work that you have to do to get rid of that legacy of a policy of self-interest, corruption, intimidation of the Public Service—intimidation being the tool which you use to bring about those outcomes, which were finally of benefit to the Australian Labor Party, not to the Australian people.Again I repeat, you have absolutely no basis on which to stand and say that the Public Service has been in any way abused. It has not. To personally attack a woman as a public servant in the way that you did, I thought was ungallant to say the least. But to put it in its most stringent form, at the end of the day transparency and honesty are this side of the House and abuse and malpractice are the other side. (Time expired).10000Jenkins, Harry (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)—Order! The time for this discussion has concluded.Committees58358358316:19:00583Causley, Ian, MPMr CAUSLEY4K6PageNP10—In accordance with standing order 331, on behalf of the Selection Committee, I present a report on the proposed general principles relating to the selection of private members business.583583Mr TUCKEY (O'Connor—Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) (4.19 p.m.)—by leave—I move:That the proposed general principles relating to the selection of private Members' business reported to the House by the Selection Committee this day be adopted.Question agreed to.58358316:20:00583Causley, Ian, MPMr CAUSLEY4K6PageNP10—I present the report of the Selection Committee relating to the consideration of committee and delegation reports and private members business on Monday, 11 March 2002.The report read as follows—Report relating to the consideration of committee and delegation reports and private Members' business on Monday, 11 March 2002Pursuant to standing order 331, the Selection Committee has determined the order of precedence and times to be allotted for private Members' business on Monday, 11 March 2002. The order of precedence and the allotments of time determined by the Committee are as follows: PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESSOrder of precedenceNotices1 Mrs Crosio: To present a bill for an Act to provide for the establishment of a scheme to guarantee the payment of wages and other accrued liabilities owed to employees in the event of employer insolvency, and for related purposes. (Employee Protection (Employee Entitlements Guarantee) Bill 2002 —Notice given 12 February 2002)Presenter may speak for a period not exceeding 5 minutes —pursuant to standing order 104A.2 Mr McClelland: To present a bill for an Act to amend the Corporations Act 2001 and the Workplace Relations Act 1996, and for related purposes. (Corporate Responsibility and Employment Security Bill 2002 —Notice given 18 February 2002)Presenter may speak for a period not exceeding 5 minutes —pursuant to standing order 104A.3 Mr McMullan: To present a bill for an Act to provide small businesses with a simpler method of calculating Goods and Services Tax payments. (Taxation Laws Amendment (A Simpler Business Activity Statement) Bill 2002 —Notice given 18 February 2002.)Presenter may speak for a period not exceeding 5 minutes —pursuant to standing order 104A.4 Mr Latham: To present a bill for an Act to amend the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992, and for related purposes. (Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Amendment Bill 2002 —Notice given 18 February 2002.)Presenter may speak for a period not exceeding 5 minutes —pursuant to standing order 104A.5 Mr Forrest: To move—That this House:(1) acknowledges the seriously depleted nature of rainfall patterns across south east Australia in the last decade;(2) recognises that adequate water availability is a limiting criterion for Australia's economic and population growth; and(3) encourages the implementation of water conservation projects, including capital upgrades for inefficient and wasteful water supply projects, increased public education on measures to conserve water and increased meteorological research into changing rainfall patterns and possible intervention measures. (Notice given 18 February 2002.)Time allotted —remaining private Members' business time prior to 1.45 p.m.Speech time limits —Mover of motion —10 minutes.First Opposition Member speaking —10 minutes.Other Members —5 minutes each.[Proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins, 6 x 5 mins]The Committee determined that consideration of this matter should continue on a future day.6 Ms Grierson: To move—That this House calls on the Government to support improved quality of life for people with Alzheimer's disease and their carers by:(1) amending the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee's eligibility requirements and conditions to include greater recognition of qualitative measures rather than quantitative measures; and(2) allowing greater consideration of the advice of medical practitioners and carers involved in the daily management of patients to determine the continued eligibility for the use of the drug Aricept on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme list. (Notice given 18 February 2002.)Time allotted —30 minutes after the resumption of private Members' business after Question Time.Speech time limits —Mover of motion —10 minutes.First Government Member speaking —10 minutes.Other Members —5 minutes each.[Proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins, 2 x 5 mins]The Committee determined that consideration of this matter should continue on a future day.7 Mr Kerr: To move—That this House expresses its concern at the growth of untargeted financial subsidies paid to the well off in the community and calls on the Treasurer to provide transparent information regarding the cost of tax concessions and direct payments to those who have high incomes in multiples of average weekly earnings. (Notice given 18 February 2002.)Time allotted —remaining private Members' business time.Speech time limits —Mover of motion —10 minutes.First Government Member speaking —10 minutes.Other Members —5 minutes each.[Proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins, 2 x 5 mins]The Committee determined that consideration of this matter should continue on a future day.Bills585R1437585Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment, appropriation message having been reported; certified copy of the bill presented.Ordered that this bill be considered forthwith.Bill agreed to.585Mr TUCKEY (O'Connor) (4.21 p.m.)—by leave—I move:That this bill be now read a third time.Question agreed to.Bill read a third time.Bills585R1444585Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment; certified copy of the bill presented.Ordered that this bill be considered forthwith.Bill agreed to.585Mr TUCKEY (O'Connor—Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) (4.22 p.m.)—by leave—I move:That this bill be now read a third time.Question agreed to.Bill read a third time.Bills585R1442585Bill returned from Main Committee without amendment, appropriation message having been reported; certified copy of the bill presented.Ordered that this bill be considered forthwith.Bill agreed to.585Mr TUCKEY (O'Connor—Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) (4.23 p.m.)—by leave—I move:That this bill be now read a third time.Question agreed to.Bill read a third time.Bills585R1449585Debate resumed.16:24:00585George, Jennie, MPMs GEORGEJH5ThrosbyALP00—I am pleased to be able to participate in this discussion on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 and obviously support wholeheartedly the propositions put forward by the member for Barton on behalf of the opposition. I want to refer in particular to the views expressed by a number of business and employer organisations in my own region of Illawarra. I do so because I think the member for Watson very succinctly pointed to the fact that this debate, and the way that it is being handled by the minister, is really a smokescreen to deflect the issues of genuine concern that face the business community.I take as one example the views expressed by a number of members of Australian Business Ltd. ABL is a business and employer organisation with 6,500 member companies. Recently it conducted a survey, and 58 per cent of the responses came from small business. I looked at the results of the survey to get a feeling about where unfair dismissals might stand in the list of priorities for the Australian Business Ltd companies. Companies were asked to rate their top 20 issues of concern. From the way that the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations is arguing in this House, you would think that the issue of unfair dismissals would rate 1st out of 20. But no—it rated 15th out of 20. And guess what the first priority issue of ABL was? I do not think that it comes as any surprise that the priority issue that was identified by the member companies was the cost and complexity of tax laws. In the document that ABL provided to all politicians in the lead-up to the federal election, what were they suggesting should be the proper policy response? Was it to deny employees in small business access to unfair dismissal jurisdiction? No. ABL said that they wanted to `ensure unfair dismissal provisions are equitable and balanced in their operation and consistent across all jurisdictions'—much in line with the argument in support of harmonisation put earlier in this debate by the member for Watson.Those are the views of ABL—what are the views of AiG, the Australian Industry Group, again a very important employer and business organisation? Its chief executive, Bob Herbert, was reported in the media on 14 February as saying:... we believe there should be a middle of the road solution that would appeal to the Opposition and the other parties.Coming into the office this morning I saw a survey of small business undertaken by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Again, I looked at it wondering whether the issue of unfair dismissals would jump out of the survey results. But, again, they did not. With a survey sample of 1,185 small businesses, the survey concluded that business taxes and government charges were the most important impediments to small business investment during the period of the survey. I agree wholeheartedly with the proposition by the member for Watson that the government is using this issue as a smokescreen to deflect attention away from the genuine issues that confront many small businesses across the nation.The opposition does not dispute that an unfair dismissal action impacts more heavily on small business and that there are matters of procedures and costs that should be examined. I think those proposals were outlined quite comprehensively in the contribution made by the shadow minister for workplace relations, the member for Barton. But, put simply, the legislation that is before us really opens the door to workers being sacked unfairly. Minister Abbott's Orwellian decision to name the bill `the fair dismissal bill' is absolutely preposterous. What is fair, first of all, about discriminating against a class of employees just because they happen to work in a small business? What is fair about providing one employee in Australia with a different set of rights from another? What is fair about removing the safety net for employees who are often in the most vulnerable employment situations? What is fair about further undermining and eroding job security? And what is fair about allowing the possibility of capricious sacking without redress or recourse to a proper tribunal?Australians have long accepted that what is fair and what is reasonable is for people to have the right to stand up and argue their defence against unjust dismissal. The changes proposed by the minister offend normal principles of equality before the law, which I think is a fundamentally important underpinning of the law in this society. It is absurd to argue that 21 employees in a particular business will have protection and access to redress while 19 employees in the enterprise across the road will be left exposed to the possibility of capricious sacking. Twenty-one employees in one firm will have protection and redress, but if you happen to be the 19th worker in the factory next door you will have none.It is a matter of natural justice that all Australian workers should have the right to a fair go when it comes to the prospect of losing their job and all the consequences that flow from that. This bill denies those rights to workers in small business. Not only does this bill discriminate on the basis of the size of business, it also discriminates between workers covered by federal as against state industrial jurisdictions. As people in this House well know, federal dismissal laws apply only to a minority of small businesses which are corporations and further respondents to a federal award. When you look at the absurdity of this proposal, it becomes evident that, in the very unlikely event that it was to see the passage of day in this House, you would be exempting about 170,000 small businesses and about 700,000 employees. But what you would, in fact, be doing is setting up a discriminatory barrier between the federal and state jurisdictions. For example, you could have at one factory the clerks in the office covered by a state award and the manufacturing workers covered by a federal award. The clerks would still have recourse to coverage under a state award in the state jurisdiction but, if the manufacturing workers had a federal award and were in a small factory, they would have none. So you would have in the one enterprise the possibility of different outcomes. Fairness should be a test and standard for all workers, and the denial of rights and protections because you happen to work for a small business under a federal award offends basic principles of fair play and natural justice. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations argues that we need this bill to be carried because of the costs and the administration associated with the processing of unfair dismissal claims. He also argues that new jobs will be created miraculously. On one occasion, I think he said 53,000 jobs and, on another, 50,000. The claim is untested and it is hypothetical. It is not based on any research, modelling or comprehensive data. It is a big `if'. I have been around long enough to hear these exaggerated claims about employment impacts. When you go back 20 years, women were to be denied the right to equal pay on the basis that jobs would disappear if women were given justice. So these claims are not new about employment impacts; we have heard them all before. I think most sensible economists would understand and agree that what leads to jobs growth is economic growth and demand. It is not the case—as the minister is suggesting—that, once we remove these protections for small business employees, nirvana will occur. The minister would be well advised to look at his own department's survey back in 1995—AWIRS. In the last comprehensive federal government survey, only 0.9 per cent—less than one per cent—of small businesses gave unfair dismissal laws as a reason for not hiring staff. Most states have maintained their own unfair dismissal regimes for decades with no apparent effect on jobs growth. The minister would be well advised to consider the possibility of producing outcomes that are quite contrary to employment growth if businesses choose either to limit or downsize their work force, under that 20 barrier, to maintain and attract the exemption. There is no doubt that greater casualisation would inevitably result. If he does not believe what I am putting in this debate, I suggest he look at the full bench ruling in the Federal Court in the Hamzy case, referred to earlier in the day, which states:In the absence of any evidence about the matter, it seems to us the suggestion of a relationship between unfair dismissal laws and employment inhibition is unproven. I again assert that the argument about employment creation has not been tested, it is hypothetical, and there is no substantial evidence to support the kinds of measures that the bill is seeking from members of parliament.Let us now examine the other claim about costs and the administrative burden. There has been a huge reduction in the number of unfair dismissal claims from their high peak in 1996. In that year there were about 15,000 claims; in the year 2000, there were 7,600 in the federal jurisdiction. The trend after 1996 was the result of the reversal of the onus of proof. However, the statistics that I have looked at indicate that fewer than 0.3 per cent of small businesses experience a federal unfair dismissal claim each year. So it is not as if there is an avalanche of claims. Over 90 per cent of the 2,800 small business unfair dismissal claims that are lodged on average each year are settled by agreement or do not proceed. I think the minister has exaggerated the propositions that he has advanced in support of the bill that he has brought to this House. Let me conclude by saying that Labor's response does recognise the importance of small business in our national economy and as the motor for employment growth. In the Illawarra, about 91 per cent of businesses in my region employ fewer than 20 people. I care about the wellbeing of those 14,368 small businesses locally, but I care just as much about the rights of their employees. This bill does not provide for balance and a fair go all round. For that reason the bill should be rejected and the matters contained in our amendments referred to the appropriate Senate committee. 16:36:00588Bartlett, Kerry, MPMr BARTLETT0K6MacquarieLP10—The comments by the last speaker, the honourable member for Throsby, were sadly predictable: a total failure to really understand or to empathise with small business, a total disregard for the unemployed who could be given a chance and, again, acquiescence to union demands on this bill. The Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 honours the coalition's election commitment to reform the existing unfair dismissal laws, to replace Labor's unfair dismissal laws with the coalition's fair dismissal laws, to give small businesses a fair go and to give the unemployed, particularly unemployed young people, a chance. Many in the community, and certainly many of our business constituents, will be well aware of the government's determined efforts over the past six years to pass this legislation, yet time and time again the Labor Party and the Democrats have obstructed these attempts. In all, 17 times a vote has been taken in this parliament to reform the unfair dismissal legislation and 17 times the Labor Party have refused to pass that legislation. We thought this time there might have been some hope, there might have been a chance that the Labor Party were considering some compromise. They had given indications of that last year, yet, as we read in this morning's Melbourne Age, they have rolled over on that. The Melbourne Age article this morning said:Labor has abandoned plans for a compromise with the government on exempting small business from unfair dismissal laws.Despite indications from opposition workplace relations spokesman Robert McClelland late last year that Labor was prepared to negotiate on the legislation, Labor caucus yesterday voted to oppose every element of it.The opposition spokesman attempted a compromise, attempted to make some progress, but was overruled yet again by the union movement. Labor rolled over again. The sufferers in this are small businesses, who want to give employees a chance.What does this legislation do? In essence, it exempts small businesses—those with fewer than 20 employees—from the current unfair dismissal laws and gives them some freedom to run their businesses in the way they need to. These businesses, which take all the risks, which often mortgage their homes in order to establish their businesses and which work extremely long hours, want to put employees on and want to be able to manage their businesses in the way that is needed. That includes the right to hire and if necessary—if the situation requires it—to dismiss employees who are not doing their job properly. It is important to point out that this legislation does not exempt employers from unlawful dismissal action. It does not exempt them from action against dismissals arising out of discrimination on the basis of race, colour, sex, age, membership or non-membership of a union or absence due to injury or illness. Those protections are still there for employees in those situations. This legislation is simply about bringing about a fair dismissal regime so that an employer who has an employee who is not doing the right thing can ask them to leave.Consider the following cases. These are all examples of cases in my electorate, related to me by the proprietor concerned. Case 1: an employee dismissed after turning up drunk on three occasions in a hospitality-tourism business, the third time abusing customers—action which was clearly detrimental to that small business. The ensuing legal case cost the employer many thousands of dollars and that employer had to reinstate that employee, because he was not given sufficient written notice. I might add that the union representative involved said to the employer, `You'll be in the gutter with nothing by the time we've finished with you.' Case 2: a company which used flammable liquids had a strict non-smoking rule for obvious safety reasons. All new employees were warned in writing that any breach would result in instant dismissal, yet two employees who broke the rule, causing substantial risk to other employees, had to be reinstated because of unfair dismissal legislation. The result? The employer's safety codes were effectively undermined and costs were incurred by the employer in fighting that outrageous case. Case 3: a small retailer whose employee was found taking money from the till and stealing other equipment. Despite clear evidence, including some photographic evidence, and police action, the employer lost the unfair dismissal case. It cost him $6,000 and $1,000 extra in legal costs to eventually dismiss the employee. Case 4: a financial service business with an employee that began causing significant problems at work, undermining staff morale and causing so much disharmony within the staff that the other staff threatened to leave if this particular woman did not leave. She was initially awarded $5,000 in severance pay on top of generous redundancy payments, and the agreement was that she would leave. She then asked for an extra $50,000 for emotional suffering. My employer was, as you would understand, aghast. The employer took further legal action and ended up paying a total of $40,000 in payouts and legal costs to finally be rid of this disruptive employee. Incidentally, this employee had already successfully launched an unfair dismissal case against her previous employer and, as I understand, is in the process of launching another unfair dismissal case against her subsequent employer. I could go on and quote many other examples.For the sake of small business, for the sake of those who could be employed by small business, this bill must be passed. Labor's iniquitous, unfair dismissal legislation must be amended. It is worth noting that the coalition was successful in making some changes to Labor's iniquitous 1993 act, largely related to changing the onus of proof and to preventing vexatious claims. These helped. We had between 1996 and 2001 a reduction—by about 45 per cent—in unfair dismissal applications. But further changes are necessary. It is obvious that small businesses are more adversely affected by unfair dismissal claims than are large businesses. They simply do not have the resources to fight such claims. The current laws discourage employers from taking on staff. How many times do we hear our small businesses saying, `If you can change this legislation, if you could get rid of the unfair dismissal laws, I would take on someone tomorrow. I don't want to be working 80 or 90 hours a week in my business. I'd like to give a youngster a chance in my business, but I'm not game to, because of the unfair dismissal laws.' Time and time again, despite what the opposition tries to tell us, businesses say, `Give us a chance to put people on.' Even Bob Carr, in 1996, commenting on Paul Keating's unfair dismissal laws, said:There are kids going without jobs because of the way the unfair dismissal provision works in the federal law.Rob Bastian, Chief Executive of the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, said changes to this law would probably mean 50,000 jobs created. On we can go. A survey by the New South Wales Chamber of Commerce in May 1997 found that 56 per cent of businesses said that the prospect of unfair dismissal claims had discouraged them from recruiting additional staff. The Yellow Pages Small Business Directory Index Survey 1997 found that 33 per cent reported that they would have been more likely to recruit new employees if they had been exempted from unfair dismissal laws.We could go on. In March 1998, the New South Wales Chamber of Commerce issued a press release stating that 85 per cent of small businesses nominated unfair dismissals as the key issue for their business. Fifty-one per cent of businesses surveyed said that the unfair dismissal laws were a deterrent to employing new staff. We could quote many more examples; we could go on and on. Small business has made it very clear. They would be providing new jobs if they could be exempted from this legislation. It is so obvious that this bill is necessary and that these amendments are necessary. Anyone who stands back and looks at this objectively must be absolutely astonished at the Labor Party's approach to this bill. They do not want to see what is so obvious: employers would give people a chance, would take on new employees, if they could be confident they were not going to be subjected to unfair dismissal claims.We get this nonsense from the other side that somehow the unfair dismissal laws as they are currently are protecting employees from mass sackings. This is ridiculous. Anyone in small business knows that if a businessman has an employee who is doing the job properly they are like gold. If you are in business and you have got someone who is productive and they are doing the right thing you will do anything to hold on to them. The last thing you are going to do is try and get rid of them. This bill—the changes to legislation—will not cause any threat to existing employees. What it would simply do would be to give employers the chance to take on new employees and to give some of the unemployed—currently unemployed young people—a chance to have a job. The Labor Party knows this. We have had members from the other side who have got close contact with small business admitting this very thing. The tragedy in all this is that despite commonsense, despite what they know to be the case about how small business works, despite the fact that they know that small business would be freed to take on new staff, they have rolled over to the trade union movement. They have betrayed small business and they will continue to betray the unemployed in order to protect the union bosses and in order to obey the dictates of the union movement. I urge the Labor Party to show some commonsense in this. I urge the Democrats in the Senate to not be hoodwinked by the Labor Party and their union bosses but to do what is commonsense and to do what is fair: give small business a chance and give the unemployed a chance to get a job.16:48:00590Mossfield, Frank, MPMr MOSSFIELDMK6GreenwayALP00—The remarks of the previous speaker, the member for Macquarie, were very predictable, with their lack of concern for the welfare of ordinary working people, particularly those people working for small business. It is not a strong case to simply quote six or seven cases that appear to be based on one side of the argument and which would appear to be unfair to small business. I do not think this is a sound argument in support of the legislation. I was interested to hear the member for Macquarie quoting Bob Carr in support of his arguments. That is the first time I have ever heard him praise Bob Carr. He is usually roasting the Carr government and Bob Carr in particular. Can I congratulate the member—it was a good speech, putting one side of the argument.I would like now to put the other side the argument, but before I do that I mention the issue of the trade union involvement. What the honourable member should realise is that the trade union movement is not strong in small business. There are not a lot of trade union members in small business. What we are doing in this legislation is trying to protect, in relation to unfair dismissals, those people who are not members of trade unions.I rise to speak on the so-called fair dismissal bill. It is a bill that we have seen many times before under a different name. No Orwellian change of name can change what this bill is about and what it represents for ordinary Australians. The intent of this bill is to deny one section of the population the same rights that another section has, based solely on the size of the place where they work. If you work for a large firm you have certain rights regarding the way you can be sacked. There are protections in place to prevent harsh and unfair dismissals. Should this legislation go through and should you work in a small business, you will lose that protection. You will have fewer rights than somebody employed by a large employer.The intent of Labor's position in this unfair dismissal legislation is to provide peace of mind to all employees, whether they are employed by small or large employers, that they will not be dismissed in a manner considered to be harsh or unreasonable—in other words, to improve the job security of all Australian workers. Job insecurity continues to be a major concern to many workers. An economic survey conducted by the Age newspaper suggested that, despite an expected global economic recovery later this year, unemployment in Australia could still hit well above the seven per cent mark by Christmas.The needs of the employees must be balanced with the concerns of the employer, particularly small employers who argue that, in addition to the payment that a tribunal may order, the time involved in pursuing such claims is time away from running their business. The Labor Party recognises the genuine concern of small business and the shadow minister has consulted widely with industry. Labor's position is a considered one that attempts to deal with the complex issues involved. The Labor Party is not interested in the type of reactionary, short-sighted and unfair so-called solutions that this bill represents. Proposals to streamline federal unfair dismissal legislation have been discussed over the last five years. This is the seventh time this legislation has been introduced. The government is not willing to negotiate on this. It does not want a bipartisan solution that has positive outcomes for all involved. If something was actually done in this area, particularly with help from this side of the House, the government would lose its double dissolution trigger, which appears to be the main purpose of this legislation. It would also lose the opportunity to score petty political points at Labor's expense and it would lose the scare campaign that it is unjustly running on this issue.Prior to March 1994, workers covered by state awards had access to unfair dismissal laws, but people working under federal awards did not. The Keating government put in place the first major piece of federal legislation dealing with unfair dismissals—the Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993, which came into effect in March 1994. During the term of the Keating government, a number of changes were made to the unfair dismissal legislation to improve the scheme and address some of the concerns of small employers. These included restricting access to termination provisions and setting an upper limit on the level of compensation that could be awarded. From June 1994, the Industrial Relations Court's jurisdiction in unfair dismissal cases did not extend to workers earning in excess of $60,000. The court could award only up to six months salary as compensation for unfair dismissal for people working under federal awards. Further changes were made by the first Howard government, with the Workplace Relations and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 1996, which was enacted in December of that year.It is difficult to argue that people working for small businesses should be subject to less protection than people who work for large employers. People working for small companies are in the firing line more than their colleagues working for large companies, as they are in direct contact with their employers, and the irritations of everyday life are likely to have a greater impact on personal relationships and could lead to animosity between the parties.In a survey conducted by recruitment company TMI Worldwide, which was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 January, it was claimed that employers were more aggressive towards employees than they were 10 years ago. The survey found that, out of 5,000 Australian employees contacted, 18 per cent complained about bosses yelling at workers and making unrealistic requests, demanding longer hours and using intimidation. The issues that were highlighted in the report were: bosses were belligerent when under pressure from boards or shareholders to lift productivity or performance; bosses were more demanding, assertive and aggressive in economic downturns; the economic cost of workplace bullying was estimated by the ACTU at $3 billion; and 33 per cent of workers surveyed in the legal profession said that they experienced regular bullying from their employer or manager.There was an expectation by some bosses that staff should work longer hours because their supervisors were burning the midnight oil. Solicitors' workloads were increased in the past 10 years through legal aid funding cuts and pressure from court administrations to cut waiting times. In the government sector, 22 per cent of workers surveyed said that their employers were bullies. Increased demands from government for the public sector to meet private sector performances, productivity and customer targets were responsible for added stress. Industries such as information technology and banking were getting rid of staff, leaving fewer employees to do more work. That has put additional strain on workplace relations. I am not suggesting that all employees are subject to harsh working environments, but in the current work climate employees are under more pressure than they have ever been. In many cases it is not the principle of unfair dismissal legislation but the administration of the act—the time taken in attending commission hearings et cetera—that is causing some employers concern. The Labor Party has indicated that it will support moves to reduce some of the procedural steps required before dismissing employees. Another point to consider is: how do you determine who is a large employer and who is a small employer? The government itself does not seem to know—first it was 15 employees and now it is 20. Who is to say that, if the legislation were passed, it will not go up to 25, 30 or 35? On the other hand, with industry downsizing and the number of small businesses reducing their work forces, we will have a situation in which fewer workers are covered by unfair dismissal legislation. Maybe that is what the government really wants. Do the 20 have to be employed, for example, at one location? What happens if one employer owns three separate businesses that each employ 10 people? Just determining these and other questions that the government has not thought about will add administrative complexities that will turn the administration of this legislation into a nightmare. The government claims that if small businesses were exempt from unfair dismissal legislation, they will employ more people. There is, of course, no way to prove this claim. In fact, in Hamzy v. Tricon International Restaurants on 15 November 2001 the Federal Court said:It seems unfortunate that nobody has investigated whether there is any relationship between unfair dismissal legislation and employment growth. There has been much assertion on this topic during recent years, but apparently no effort to ascertain the factual situation.This minister and his predecessor have been using made-up numbers and dodgy maths in order to push their arguments on this issue. If they actually cared about proving their case, they would have done some homework. We all know, however, that if they did, they would find themselves losing the argument and looking like fools for having used wildly inaccurate made-up statistics. But the question is: would the ability to employ more people actually lead to more jobs, or would there simply be a greater turnover of staff, more people being sacked and more people being redeployed?In short, this legislation seeks to create two Australias: the first where employees are protected from harsh and unreasonable dismissal from their job—their livelihood; and a second where there are no similar rights of protection. The government knows that this legislation will not pass this parliament—it has not done so on the previous seven occasions that it has been put forward—simply because the government does not wish it to pass. What this government wants is a double dissolution trigger and another tool to attack Labor unfairly with distorted arguments and false figures. After the `children overboard' saga, the public no longer believe this government. They will not believe the government on this issue, either. The bill should and will be consigned to the rubbish bin of history.16:59:00592Pearce, Christopher, MPMr PEARCEA8WAstonLP10—Small business is the engine room of the Australian economy, with over 1 million private sector, non-agricultural small businesses across Australia. Its impact on our economy is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that in the last decade it has generated over 80 per cent of the jobs growth in this country. More importantly, small business embodies the values shared by this coalition government—initiative, a strong work ethic and independence. Those on this side of the House—unlike those on the other side—are committed to supporting small business.The Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 proposes to amend the Workplace Relations Act 1996, to exempt small businesses from the unfair dismissal provisions of the act and require the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to order that an unfair dismissal application is not valid if it relates to a small business employer. The exemption will apply to those businesses with fewer than 20 employees. The bill would not affect existing employees and would not exclude new employees from making claims for unlawful dismissal. This bill is designed to protect small businesses from the costs and administrative burden of unfair dismissal claims, helping to increase employment opportunities in this critically important sector. Even if only one in 20 small business employers took on an additional employee as a result of these changes an extra 53,000 jobs would be created.The opposition is quick to question the motives of the government. Let me tell you what our motives are. With this bill we want to help small business to grow and prosper, and to remove barriers to employing staff. This government believes that dismissal laws have an important role in providing a safety net for employees, but they need to be made fairer for both employers and employees, and we need to make sure that they do not prevent new jobs from being created. The Howard government's workplace relations reforms have delivered real benefits to Australian workers and Australian businesses. They have provided greater flexibility in the labour market, which has meant more jobs, improved productivity, fewer industrial disputes and increased living standards. This has been driven by the coalition's belief in a system that allows for sustainable increased living standards and a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. The government has delivered significant real wages growth for workers on awards and agreements, particularly for low-paid award workers. Under the Howard government, the real wages of low-paid award workers have increased by more than nine per cent. In comparison, under 13 years of Labor, real award wages for low-paid workers fell by over five per cent. This wages growth has been generated by increased productivity backed by low inflation, low interest rates and income tax cuts. This is the best way for government to help working families.The Howard government has a strong track record of supporting small business. This government has delivered stable economic conditions of low interest rates, low inflation and solid economic growth, which are vital for business growth and viability. The government has worked to reduce the tax burden on the small business community. We have also implemented a workplace relations system that provides employment flexibility for small business, which encourages these businesses to grow and to employ people.While the coalition has a strong track record of supporting Australian workers and the small business community, I am amazed that the opposition is now claiming that they, firstly, understand and, secondly, support both the small business community and Australian workers. What is Labor's record of support for this critical sector? In 13 years of Labor government, what did they deliver to Australian small businesses? They delivered the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, with record small business interest rates of over 20 per cent; they delivered high inflation and record business related bankruptcies; and they delivered an industrial relations system dominated by the union movement, which restricted flexibility for small business employers to provide new employment opportunities for unemployed Australians. Under Labor, a lot of Australians were unemployed. In fact, unemployment peaked at a record 11.2 per cent. Labor were not finished there—they had new taxes and increased taxes for small business. Labor's legacy left Australian small business with a capital gains tax, a fringe benefits tax, a compulsory superannuation tax, a compulsory training tax and increases to company tax, wholesale sales tax and fuel excise tax. They have kept up their commitment in opposition. They have opposed legislation protecting small business from damaging union secondary boycotts and they have opposed tax reform, which all Australians recognise was vital for this nation's future. Don't just take my word for it that Labor really is not interested in helping small business. Listen to the member for Brand, who said on radio in July 2000:We have never pretended to be a small business party, the Labor Party, we have never pretended that.If they do not support small business, then maybe they support Australian workers. Again, it is very informative to consider their record. As previously mentioned, real wages growth is what helps Australian families enjoy a better standard of living. But real wages fell under Labor, and they were proud of it. In fact, the current Leader of the Opposition said on ABC radio in 1988: We've almost made a virtue of the fact that what this system—meaning the accord—has produced is falls in real wages. It has produced falls in real wages.I remind the House that Labor's legacy for Australian workers was record unemployment. The news was no better for those Australians who still had a job. Not content with increasing unemployment, Labor thought it would reward those still employed by increasing the tax burden and by eroding purchasing power! That is why we had mortgage interest rates at a high of 17 per cent under Labor.The Howard government is committed to supporting Australian small businesses and Australian workers. This bill seeks to provide more jobs for Australian workers by supporting small business through an exemption from unfair dismissal laws.The opposition claim that they have turned over a new leaf. Well, this is an opportunity for them to prove it and clearly some of them on the opposite side of the House want to prove it. They want to support this. It is interesting that we see, in an article published today in the Age newspaper, that the opposition spokesperson faced opposition to his suggestion of a compromise in the Labor Party room last week. Clearly, some people on the opposite side of the House want to support this bill. They talk about the need to maintain a degree of independence from the union movement. Now is the time for them to demonstrate their commitment to doing what is best for Australia and for Australian small businesses. I urge the opposition to join the government in supporting small business and I commend this bill to the House.17:08:00594Bevis, Arch, MPMr BEVISET4BrisbaneALP00—The more things change, the more they stay the same. The sense of déjà vu about this debate is pretty strong. With very little amendment and very little adjustment, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 has been before this parliament many times. I am not sure of the exact number and I have seen a couple of different tallies, but I can think of five occasions in the last four years when this measure, in one form or another, has been before the parliament. On every occasion it was rejected by the parliament—and, I might say, overwhelmingly by the Senate. Those on the government side in this debate who have wanted to demonise this as some trade union dominated plot would do well to have a close read of the report of Democrat Senator Murray's minority report in relation to a Senate inquiry on a very similar bill a few years ago in which he quite clinically took the government's arguments apart. I do not think that the government would allege that Senator Murray is a puppet of the ACTU, but it is a good line that it likes to run out every time there is a debate in this place about industrial relations.The public might be forgiven for thinking that, hearing what Liberal and National Party members say about this, they actually think it is important. They might be forgiven for thinking that because the government keeps introducing it, the government thinks it is an important matter of public policy, yet the government is restricting debate in this parliament on it. Instead of allowing members the normal period of time to debate the issue, members have been asked to cut their contributions in half. This is not the first time the government has done that with this issue. I recall in the last parliament the then minister actually gagging the debate when only one Labor spokesperson had spoken. Twenty-one Labor members were denied the opportunity to even talk about the bill on that occasion.On this occasion, the government is saying we can talk about it, but we can only have half the time that would normally be made available for debate on a bill. We need to understand the way the government approaches this and how it has approached it throughout. From its perspective, it is some sort of quickie vote getter that is a tried and true formula for conservative governments which have run out of direction and policy. There is one change that the minister made to this bill: he changed the title. We no longer have a bill about unfair dismissal; we now have a bill about fair dismissals. But in its haste to change the title, in its Orwellian efforts to redress this, even the explanatory memoranda on page 1 lapse back into what we all know it is about—which is unfair dismissal. Even in the government's own explanatory memoranda, barely half the way down page 1, it says that it requires... the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (the Commission) to order that an unfair dismissal application made by a small business employee ...So in its haste to be Orwellian and to say that it is something that it is not, it could not even get that right.It reminds me of a comment I made on an earlier occasion when a similar tactic was applied by the former minister in respect of industrial relations legislation on the second wave when the government called that `More jobs, better pay'. On that occasion, I was moved to comment about a skit from Yes, Minister, a show that pretty well everyone in this place and in Canberra I am sure watches because it cuts close to the bone in the way in which bureaucracies and governments operate. In what I think was the first episode of Yes, Minister, there is a very illuminating exchange where Sir Humphrey is sitting down having a discussion with Sir Arnold who, you may recall, was the head of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Office. They were educating Bernard about what open government was all about. Bernard commented in some amazement:But the title of the publication is `open government.'Sir Humphrey said:Always dispose of the difficult bit in the title. It does less harm than in the text.That is what the government has picked up again here. It has taken Sir Humphrey's advice and no longer calls it `unfair dismissal'; it is now fair dismissal so we should all be pleased about that. It has fooled nobody, least of all people outside this place who look on what we do.On 14 February, the Canberra Times—and I do not imagine even the most rabid government supporter would allege that they are a tool of the ACTU—had this to say:The Federal Government has launched yet another attempt to change the unfair dismissal laws. Once again it is going about it the wrong way. It wishes to exempt small businesses—those employing under 20 people—from the provisions. The change offends normal principles of equality before the law. Why should one employee get a different set of rights from another just because their employer happens to employ a higher number of other employees?The Canberra Times, of course, stated the obvious. There is no moral underpinning whatsoever to the government's argument. The government would have it that the underpinning of this is economic: it is about creating jobs and the basis of that assertion, which is mentioned every time this debate comes up and it has been mentioned during this debate, is the speculation that we might get an extra 50,000 jobs if only this law could pass. That 50,000 jobs is attributed to the then senior officer of COSBOA, Rob Bastian. I have mentioned this many times over the years in debates on this, but it seems necessary to repeat it each time government members persist with peddling that nonsense.I actually had the opportunity to sit down for some hours in my office with Rob Bastian because I said some unkind things about what I thought of his estimates. What became clear then, and has been confirmed subsequently to a number of people on both sides of the parliament, is that the figure of 50,000 was not even an estimate that Rob Bastian made; it was purely and simply a guess. He did not sit down with an A5 piece of paper and make a note on it. He did not sit down with a postage stamp sized piece of paper and make a note on it. There are no calculations to this. It was a wild guess without any research—none at all. He simply said one day, `I reckon we could get 50,000 jobs,' and ever since then it has been quoted by successive government ministers, including the Prime Minister, and rabbited off by the parrots on the backbench as if it were factual. There is not a shred of credibility in that. We know that something like 0.3 per cent of small businesses in Australia actually have an unfair dismissal case under federal law each year. We are talking here about less than one half of one per cent of small businesses even having an application. I am sure there are cases where employees have done the wrong thing as there are cases where employers have done the wrong thing. Let us say that for every single one of them the boss was right and they were being victimised by terrible employees, you would have less than half of one per cent of small business employers confronted with that each year. But the government maintains that this is a major job provider.Who do they rely on for that? In recent times they have relied on a survey that ACCI put out. ACCI are the closest thing to an industrial mouthpiece that the Liberal Party has in this country and some of its former senior people get rewarded from time to time by appointments to various bodies both here and overseas—and that is something within the government's gift to give. We should not misunderstand what the ACCI surveys say and do not say. The ACCI survey for small business—this is the Chamber of Commerce and Industry—rates unfair dismissals as the fifth item in priority. But the ACCI public survey—at least the material that has been made available to me—does not give you the details on the actual responses. It simply gives you a rank order. It may be fifth but it may be supported by only 10 per cent of respondents. It may be supported by less than one per cent of respondents. It happens to rank fifth.But even under ACCI's survey what are the big ticket items? What is ranked No. 1? The frequency and complexity of changes to tax laws—the GST. This is something the government could address if it wanted to actually help small business in this country—that is, businesses with fewer than 20 employees. Even their best mates in the business community say, `The No. 1 issue is your tax, the government's tax.' There is not a word of that from them in this debate but it is the biggest issue. There are some authoritative surveys and I just quickly want to mention a couple of them. A recent survey—it was done last year—asked small businesses in Victoria to rank 11 issues in order of priority. Not only did they rank those issues; the published documentation gave the percentage response. The percentages do not add up because people were able to identify more than one thing they thought was important. What was the No. 1 ranked issue? The GST. That jells with the response from ACCI. And what was the response rate on that? Eighty-three per cent. What was No. 2? Government regulations, and it got a 78 per cent response rate. Down at the bottom, stone-cold last, 11th out of 11 options, was unfair dismissal laws—stone-cold last. And it was one of the options they had. So a survey that was conducted last year in Victoria where there are no state laws, only the federal government laws operate, unfair dismissal came in at 11th out of 11. And if you want to look at the details of it, you will see that it was a long way last.There is in fact only one authoritative national survey—sadly, it is now out of date—and that is the 1995 Australian workplace industrial relations survey. It was extremely comprehensive. It was not published until 1997. At the time it was done the law on unfair dismissal was actually Labor's law. So these are the laws the government members would pillory as being evil and harsh and so repressive that they had to make lots of changes to them. Do you know what the response was then? This was a sampling where there were over 78,000 workplaces involved, a huge sampling. Out of 78,000 workplaces, when asked reasons for not recruiting employees during the previous 12 months, unfair dismissal managed to get a response from 0.9 per cent of the workplaces—less than one per cent of the workplaces. They are the facts about the support this government truly has on this bill. The simple fact of life is the empirical evidence does not support in any way, shape or form the government's bill before us.This bill is a political initiative. It does not in fact create jobs, and the evidence on that is clear. The Federal Court has also rejected that argument quite recently, and that has been put on the transcript by other people. The evidence is not there for this; it is a political game; it is the same game that they played before in relation to this issue. I have no doubt this bill will be rejected by the parliament as it has on many occasions before. But it would be enlightening if, for once in this debate, government members decided to actually use some of the evidence and some of the facts rather than some of the twisted logic and the approach they have adopted so far in this debate, and I might say on every other occasion that this matter has been before the House. 17:21:00597Moylan, Judi, MPMrs MOYLAN4V5PearceLP10— Members on the other side are quite right: there have been numerous attempts to modify the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 to make changes that are important to ensure that it is fair to both employees and employers. The legislation passed originally by Labor in government has been over the last several years quite seriously prejudicial to employers. Instead of being fair, it has certainly been unfair to employers in particular. There was not any balance in the legislation that was passed and supported by Labor during the years that Prime Minister Keating was Prime Minister. In fact I have spoken on a number of occasions in this House about the debates that we had when I was shadow minister and the then Labor Prime Minister acknowledged that this was a very significant issue for small business and he also made commitments to make changes to the legislation.It is one of a number of important reforms in industrial relations that could unshackle small businesses from administrative regimes that bog them down and make it very costly for them both in terms of the time it takes to comply and to defend actions and also in lost opportunity and, therefore, income. As I said, it is an issue that in the lead-up to the 1996 election captured the concern of the public. Do not forget that we have a vast number of small businesses, and those businesses largely are run by mums and dads and families. So it is something that did concern the public, as accounts of blatant attempts by some employees to obtain settlements that were difficult to justify came to our notice. I know about those because I travelled the length and breadth of Australia talking to small business people face to face. Certainly anecdotal evidence was that it was inhibiting employment opportunities. Small businesses were reluctant to take on new employees and to expand their businesses because they were shackled by law, which meant that once they employed someone they had great difficulty in asking them to leave where they were not meeting their obligations as employees. In some cases there were mischievous attempts to get lump sum settlements out of employers who did not want to take the time, sometimes amounting to several days, and pay the costs of having to go to a tribunal to defend their actions. They also did not want to face the emotional trauma that that brought about. I do not think anyone can argue against the need for legislation that ensures that employees and employers are treated fairly in such legislation, and employees do have rights and expectations that should be met, but this legislation was certainly weighted against employers. As I said, it became an issue that caught the attention of the public.In the years that I have been in this place there seems to have been a lack of understanding of the very fine margins that small business proprietors work on. The claims, which could not be really justified in many cases, had a devastating impact on employers in some cases. I certainly know of several cases, one in particular in my electorate. Business proprietors should not have to defend themselves against claims from employees who are clearly judged unsuitable and who, in some cases, have acted dishonestly, or whose work practices and commitment to the job are less than satisfactory. An employer should have the right to determine who works for them and who does not, and who is suitable and who is not.Industrial relations and the impact of poor legislation on small businesses is still capturing the concern of businesses and the public because they know how important job creation and job opportunities are. This was highlighted just recently, in a general sense to do with industrial relations matters, by a recent survey in Western Australia. We know that industrial relations reform legislation to remove the shackles from the back of business in Western Australia, which has taken years to get through, is now about to be unpicked by the Gallop Labor government. I will quote from an advertisement entitled `What the public thinks' that appeared in yesterday's West Australian newspaper. It says: Independent market researchers found that the majority of Western Australians do not want the previous government's workplace agreements legislation repealed, nor a return to a tightly regulated industrial relations regime. Public opinion surveys carried out by leading researchers Market Equity show 57 per cent are opposed to a repeal of the legislation and only 26 per cent are in favour. More than six out of 10, or 62 per cent, say a workplace agreement is the employment arrangement they prefer for themselves. Four hundred people were interviewed at random and in surveys in November 2000 and again last month, and analysis of the data shows 85 per cent of survey participants employed on individually negotiated arrangements said a workplace agreement was their first preference. Asked about the industrial relations system, no less than 75 per cent said pay and conditions should be less regulated, with details set out at the workplace, while only 21 per cent favoured strong regulation by industrial courts.I know this goes beyond the bill that we are talking about today but I think it highlights the fact that this is not just an issue that is of concern and is debated in this place, but it is an issue that concerns the general public and it concerns employers. It inhibits employment growth and it is important that we pass this bill and allow businesses to get on with running their business.It is certainly clear that people do not want the present Gallop government in Western Australia to overturn important reforms implemented by the Court coalition government. I have listened to the arguments of many of my colleagues on the other side, particularly just now to the member for Brisbane and earlier this afternoon to the member for Watson, and there is still a lot of discussion about the possible job losses due to unfair provisions of the original bill. It has always been an issue that has been debated quite a bit. In a speech that I gave in the House last year I made the point that there were a number of different surveys done over the years that did indicate there is loss of job opportunities. I am going to quickly read that again because I think it is relevant, although the figures go back to 1996, when we first started debating the impact of this bill—the bill that was originally passed and was creating problems for the small business community:The 1996 Morgan and Banks survey indicated that 16 per cent of businesses with fewer than 30 employees had been adversely affected in their hiring intentions by the previous federal unfair dismissal laws. The Recruitment Solutions survey released in April 1997 indicated that 32 per cent of businesses in metropolitan Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane had been the subject of some sort of unfair dismissal claim in the 12 months covered by that survey. In May 1997, there was a survey by the New South Wales Chamber of Commerce and the St George Bank where 56 per cent of businesses surveyed said that the prospect of unfair dismissal claims had discouraged them from recruiting additional staff. These are all fairly similar outcomes, so I do not think that they can be so lightly dismissed. Trends in staff selection and recruitment, a report by the National Institute of Labour Studies in May 1997, commissioned by the then Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, found that unfair dismissal laws strongly influenced hiring decisions. Then there was the Yellow Page Small Business Index survey conducted in October and November of 1997 covering 1,200 randomly selected proprietors of small businesses. In this survey, 79 per cent of proprietors thought small businesses would be better off if they were exempted from unfair dismissal laws, 33 per cent of small businesses reported that they would have been more likely to recruit new employees if they had been exempted from unfair dismissal laws in 1996 and 1997 and 38 per cent of small businesses reported that they would be more likely to recruit new employees if they were exempted from the current unfair dismissal laws.In March 1998, the New South Wales Chamber of Commerce revealed that 85 per cent of small businesses nominated unfair dismissals as a key issue for businesses with 15 or more employees. In July 1998, the South Australian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry revealed that 52 per cent of respondents who had been subject to unfair dismissal claims had not hired replacement employees and 77 per cent of respondents with fewer than 15 employees indicated that they would hire more employees if exempted from unfair dismissal legislation. In Queensland, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry pre-federal election survey conducted in July 1998 said that unfair dismissal legislation was ranked as the third most important issue, only five points behind the top rating issue of taxation changes. It goes on, and it is recorded in Hansard, but I thought that I should once again draw this to the attention of the House. I hope this bill does go through. As I have said, I have spoken on the bill and on the issue of fairness of the original legislation, and I sincerely hope that the legislation will be passed and that we will remove the burden from the backs of small business proprietors whose contribution to both economic and social cohesion within our community is immense.17:32:00599Emerson, Craig, MPDr EMERSON83VRankinALP00—The unfairness of this bill is well illustrated in its title, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. It is a very Orwellian title, and its nature is clear from the explanatory memorandum, which says that the bill proposes to `prevent small business employees other than apprentices and trainees from applying under the Workplace Relations Act for a remedy in respect of harsh, unjust or unreasonable termination of employment'. So the purpose of the bill is to prevent employees in small businesses from seeking remedies for unfair dismissals—that is explained quite clearly in the explanatory memorandum. It is a fact that the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations has been quite lazy in allowing the truth to become so well told in that particular explanatory memorandum, because he has given it this Orwellian title—that it is fair, somehow, for small businesses to be able to summarily dismiss employees and for those employees to have no legal remedies. It is in the pattern of this government saying one thing and meaning precisely another.The motivation behind the proposal to exempt from the unfair dismissal laws small businesses with 20 or less employees is quite clear. It was made clear by the minister for workplace relations and by the Prime Minister very soon after the election when they said, `Our objective here is to in some way seek to link the newly elected Leader of the Opposition so closely with the union movement, so we'll use this wedge to do that.' This is yet another example of their cynical approach to policy making in this country.That is the political motivation, and the question that I pose for the minister for workplace relations, as an aspirant to the leadership of the Liberal Party in the soon to be played out leadership struggle, is this: is he going to present himself as an alternative leader of the Liberal Party or is he just going to continue ranting like a mad monk, putting forward proposals that seek to divide the community? That is what he seeks to do, and in fact most recent leaders of the Liberal Party have sought to do exactly that. So the challenge for the minister for workplace relations is to seek for small business constructive solutions to the issue of unfair dismissals. We will see whether he rises to that challenge or continues in his more traditional role.The government has claimed that 53,000 jobs would be created as a result of the passage of this bill. I started working for Senator Peter Walsh, then the resources and energy minister, in 1984. Peter gave me an early lesson in politics when he said, `If you want to create a figure that is hard to refute, give it a spurious degree of accuracy. Don't say 100,000 or 50,000. Give it as 50,215, that sort of number, so that people say, “Well, they must know what they're talking about.”' So Peter taught me that, and apparently that is covered in his book. Of course, I would never practise that myself.WU5O'Connor, Gavan, MPMr Gavan O'Connor—Of course not!83VEmerson, Craig, MPDr EMERSON—But I must say it is pretty evident that the minister for workplace relations has done that.WU5O'Connor, Gavan, MPMr Gavan O'Connor—He's read the book.83VEmerson, Craig, MPDr EMERSON—Yes, and I know where the figure of 50,000 came from: it came from the then head of COSBOA, Rob Bastian, who was rung up one day, asked to give a figure and said, `Well, a nice round figure is 50,000.' The minister for workplace relations has read Senator Peter Walsh's book and has said, `Well, if I say 50,000, people will say, “That can't be right. Isn't it a coincidence that it's such a round number?”' So he indexed it up to 53,000 in a very irresponsible way. I would have hoped that he would have been more mature than to do that, but it is pretty evident that he is not. It is important that we have a bit of a look at how the changes to unfair dismissal laws that were enacted in September 2001 are impacting on the small business community and on the procedures that are being applied to unfair dismissals, because they were in fact a relaxation of procedures that should have benefited small business. The government does not seem to acknowledge that that legislation did in fact pass the Senate. But there is an issue for small business in relation to unfair dismissals, and it is created overwhelmingly by a perception; nevertheless, it remains an issue. The perception within the small business community is that, if you put on a worker full time, it may be difficult to terminate the employment of that worker. I understand that; I was in small business. It is essentially a perception that is not based on fact. Nevertheless, because it is a commonly held belief it does affect the hiring behaviour of small businesses. The extent to which it affects small business is unknown, but it is the case that it can affect the hiring behaviour of a small business. Therefore, I am concerned about that impact.There are two ways of dealing with that. The primary way is to remove the perception as far as possible and to educate the small business community that these problems are much more apparent than real. Another may be to make further legislative amendments. I accept that the compliance costs of these unfair dismissal laws could be greater in relation to small businesses than for larger businesses. That is certainly the case in relation to the GST, and that is why Labor put forward the ratio method of the GST, which is a very simplified way of applying and calculating GST liabilities. I hasten to add, of course, that the government has seen no merit in that proposal whatsoever. So while it says on the one hand that it is the champion of small business, on the other, when very viable, sensible and realistic proposals are put in front of it and in front of the Australian community—welcomed by the small business sector—the government says that it is not interested in reducing compliance costs for small business in that very important area.But I accept that the compliance costs of unfair dismissal laws can be greater for small businesses. Small businesses may lack the human resource management capacity of large businesses. I think that stands to reason. Small businesses may find it more difficult to carry an employee whom they may otherwise prefer to terminate. Small businesses, too, to the extent that they perceive that there might be real problems in terminating an employee, could say such things as, `I can't afford either the time or the financial cost of that so I may well make a decision not to hire someone in the first place.' I do not think that is in anyone's interests. I do not want to see the ongoing, unnecessary casualisation of the work force. I would like to see small businesses hire people on a full-time and permanent basis. If there are issues in relation to the unfair dismissal laws that would increase the prospects of that happening, then let us have a look at it.Labor is prepared to work constructively with small business, employees and the relevant peak bodies to make unfair dismissal laws more effective by streamlining procedures and reducing costs. But that can be done without actually reducing rights. What is fairer than the concept of a fair go all round? In this country there is a growing community of self-employed people; we recognise that. We need as a parliament to ensure that that growing force of self-employed people make decisions to hire people. The problem is that the remedy is wrong. It is not a fair go all round to exempt from unfair dismissal laws all employees in businesses with 20 or fewer employees. That is completely unfair. Employees who work for large businesses should have particular rights, and for small businesses they should have the same rights. That is perfectly consistent with the concept of a fair go all round. The government is proposing to remove those rights completely, but it seems unconcerned at the impact that would have on small businesses—namely, it would open up far more dramatic legal actions that are available under other laws that could have a much greater impact on small businesses. So what the government is really trying to do is to portray itself as the champion of small business, to jam the legislation through the House of Representatives and to jam the legislation through the Senate and then go to the small business community and say, ` See, we failed but we did our best.' This is exactly what they are trying to do on the media ownership rules, incidentally. A far more constructive approach, an approach that we have discussed with the small business community and with the relevant trade union representatives, is to have a more open process, to get both sides together and to have a Senate inquiry where both sides in this argument can put their case in an open inquiry. The point is that Australia would be a far better place if the government sought to bring people together, to bring the small business community and the trade unions together, rather than dividing Australia. That is the hallmark of this government: to set Australians against Australians. They want to do it, and have been doing it, in relation to asylum seekers. They want to do it, and have been doing it, in relation to small business.So let us do this: let us have a look at the procedural problems. Let us have a look at ambulance chasers who run around on contingency fee arrangements and who, in the end, absorb a very substantial proportion of any settlement that is actually headed towards the employee who was adversely affected. So let us see whether we can be fair dinkum about this. Let us see if the government can be fair dinkum about it and get both sides together, start uniting Australians, and have an open Senate inquiry and get some constructive outcomes that deal with any procedural weaknesses that we have, so that the small business community in this country can continue to thrive and expand while at the same time not prejudice the rights of workers to be protected against unfair dismissals.17:44:00601Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLYFK6DawsonNP10—They were going to turn over a new leaf. The leaf seems to have withered on the vine. Once the blowtorch of the ACTU was applied to the Labor Party, the leaf withered. We saw it in the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 2002. As soon as the QTU and the Australian Education Union had their say, the poor old bull that is the ALP had the nose ring on again and away they went. The nose ring is on and you will be led everywhere that the ACTU, the QTU and the AEU want you to go. The reality of that is that they will lead you to another defeat.I rise today to speak about the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. The government's small business election policy stated quite clearly: a re-elected coalition government will pursue a full exemption from unfair dismissal claims for small business employers. This bill honours that commitment. I am delighted to support the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Small Business and Tourism here at the table for the early reintroduction of this important legislation.Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Hawker, you come from a rural and regional area, as I do. While the major companies provide considerable employment, in rural and regional Australia, as you would well know, we are not the big end of town. It is the small businesses, it is even the microbusinesses—the mum and dad businesses—that drive the economies in our small towns and cities.I have seen thousands of businesses in my electorate of Dawson and, therefore, I have a great interest in this bill. This is because of the huge difference it would make. I notice that those on the other side are busy now trying to debunk the figures. `It's not 50,000 or 53,000—oh goodness me, it's a lot less than that. The figure was plucked out of the air.' The reality is that the figure came quite simply from a little mathematics. If only one in 20 of Australia's small businesses took on another employee, you would have an additional 53,000 people employed. Obviously the ALP believe it is less than that. One in 10, one in five, one in 50? WU5O'Connor, Gavan, MPMr Gavan O'Connor—You're using mathematics and you can't even use them properly.FK6Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLY—One in a hundred? Let us assume one in a hundred. You name the figure. They cannot name a figure but they say it will be less. It is inaccurate. WU5O'Connor, Gavan, MPMr Gavan O'Connor—Pluck it out of the air, like you?FK6Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLY—They say it is less. Let us assume that it is absolutely zero. Let us go right down to zero. If that is the case and this will not affect a single small business in Australia, why won't you damn well pass it?DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—Yeah!FK6Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLY—Yeah! If it will not affect anybody, why not pass it? The reality is that you know it will make a significant difference. It may not be exactly 53,000—it may be 100,000, it may be only 20,000. The reality is that there are jobs attached to this, particularly for young people. The Labor Party is back to their good old tricks, which did not work in the last election and will not work in the next one—streamline and reduce costs. On the surface of it, that sounds quite reasonable. The reality is that you have never worked in a small business.Certainly it is the cost—that is true; that is a significant factor. Certainly the process is complicated and time consuming and, again, streamlining that would be helpful, but you do not understand a small business. The reality is, if you have one or two employees and mum is doing the books and your kids work in the business on a weekend, you do not have the time to have your consistency of supply interrupted. You just do not have the time. WU5O'Connor, Gavan, MPMr Gavan O'Connor—They're too busy filling out GST forms. That's why they don't have the time.FK6Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLY—Oh, my—aren't we going off on a tangent now? The reality is that you cannot have it both ways—there are either a lot of small businesses that will benefit from this or none. If none will, if the relations and the employees are so sound in small businesses around Australia, there is absolutely nothing from your point of view to fear from the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. But again, of course, the Labor Party tries to have it on both sides.DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—Exactly. That's why we won two elections on the GST.FK6Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLY—Yes, and we will win two more, and a lot more after that. The reality is that small businesses simply cannot afford the time, the interruption to supply and the inconsistency of production, regardless of what they may produce.This bill is both a test and an opportunity for the opposition. It is a test of their ability to stand up to the ACTU, who are opposed to the bill, describing it as a watering down of the rights of workers. Nothing is said about the rights of employers and small businesses, who generate jobs.It will be interesting to see exactly what happens in the Senate when this bill reaches the Senate. Today's Financial Review I note reveals that the opposition's amendments will not be moved until after a new Senate inquiry—more delaying tactics. But perhaps we should not be cynical; something worth while may well come out of that. However, if one were cynical, you could say that the Democrats, the ALP and the ACTU—the old axis of obstruction—will be at it again. It has happened in the past; it will happen again.WU5O'Connor, Gavan, MPMr Gavan O'Connor—That's a good one. Pauline Hanson and the Liberal Party—the axis of deceit.FK6Kelly, De-Anne, MPMrs DE-ANNE KELLY—Trying to help small business? Come on. The axis of obstruction—the Democrats, the ALP and the ACTU again. They will try to dismember and block this progressive legislation. However, we will see what will happen.I would like to turn to some good news, rather than the poor old ALP bull being led around by its nose ring again. I would like to talk about area consultative committees. They were originally reinvigorated by the then Minister for Small Business, Mr Reith. They were championed and supported by the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, Mr Abbott, when they were part of his portfolio. They have now gone to the Department of Transport and Regional Services. I am sure that the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, will continue to support and strengthen them.However, it is fair to say that this was not always the case. I can well remember when we came to office in 1996, the most important task for ACCs, certainly in my area, was trying to decide what sort of car the CEO should have. However, we have moved on under strong ministers and I can say to the House that our area consultative committee in Mackay now is taking a significant leadership role in the community—looking at real outcomes, real jobs and real projects that will grow the community for everyone. I am tremendously proud of what they are doing. Under the chairmanship of a local businessman, Colin Meng, and with Greg Sutherland as CEO, they really are a dynamic and progressive organisation. It shows what happens when you allow the community to work in partnership with government—not having rule from Canberra, as we had under the Labor Party, but to genuinely work in partnership with local communities. I will give you an example of the type of project that they are now fostering. Over the next 12 months, they are looking at pre-employment training for 150 young indigenous job seekers. This project is run by Mackay Region Apprentice Employment Ltd, MRAEL, under the guidance of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations in Townsville. I would like to mention Dwayn Fischer from DEWR in Townsville, who is doing a tremendous job with this, and our indigenous job officers, Graeme Budby and Skye Hope, who have put an enormous amount of work into seeing this project come to fruition.Imagine the effect of getting young people into jobs. As MRAEL say in their brochure, `It is your trade, your job, your life.' That is right; it affects the whole of your life. If we can get 150 young indigenous people into work between Sarina and Townsville, that does not affect just one young person. They will go back to their communities, their households, their families; younger brothers, sisters and cousins will be excited and see the role model that their older relative is delivering. It will have tremendous benefits throughout our indigenous communities. I am incredibly delighted and surprised at the effort that our local people have put into this, and I hope to be there with them in 12 months time celebrating 150 new jobs for young indigenous people. They are so keen to get the skills, the jobs and the opportunity to build their careers and their lives. It shows what opportunities there are when you go into partnership with the community, rather than ruling from Canberra, and I hope and trust that the new minister will continue the work of the previous ministers in ensuring that it is a partnership between the local communities, the leaders in those communities, and government.I would like to tell the House what the opposition's plans were for the ACCs. Where would those in Mackay be, had the Labor Party won government? Of course, the Labor Party did not win government—and we know they will not win next time, because they are still being led round by the nose ring—but what would have happened had they achieved government? During the 2001 election campaign, the opposition spokesman on transport and regional services, the member for Batman, announced that he would close them down. The Mackay area consultative committee would be gone now, had Labor won the election. The volunteers from the community, the business people and leaders in the community who give a great deal of their time freely to work within the community and to look at projects and opportunities, would have been disbanded, and the indigenous youth pre-employment program would not have continued. All of it would have gone, because there would be no Mackay area consultative committee to carry it forward in the community. Such was the member for Batman's understanding of and commitment to rural and regional Australia that he was going to close them all down and rule from Canberra. That is where we would have been under the opposition. I conclude by repeating how delighted I am with the progress of the Mackay area consultative committee.17:56:00603McFarlane, Jann, MPMs JANN McFARLANE83CStirlingALP00—I rise tonight to speak against the government's somewhat curiously named Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. You are no doubt well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, that standing orders prevent members using irony when seeking to amend the title of a bill during debate. Yet it seems that the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations is free to use irony in the title of this bill. Unfair dismissal laws attempt to balance the need of bosses to run their businesses in an efficient and productive way with the needs of workers who rely on jobs for their standard of living. Getting sacked from a job has both economic and social effects, as people who are sacked lose not only their pay but also their self-worth and their place in a community of fellow workers. The unfair dismissal laws allow bosses to sack workers over concerns about capacity or conduct or if supported by legitimate operational requirements, provided that procedural fairness is followed. What the current laws do not allow is bosses sacking workers in a harsh, unjust or unreasonable way.Labor supports genuine attempts to reduce the administrative burdens faced by small businesses, and Labor is committed to addressing issues such as procedural complexity and cost which small business might face in complying with unfair dismissal legislation, but this bill does nothing to address these issues. This bill seeks the wholesale removal of rights from Australian workers based solely on the number of coworkers they have. With this bill, the Howard government shows that it is beholden to the vested interests of its masters in the bosses' union, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and that it is more concerned with protecting harsh, unjust and unreasonable bosses who want to sack people, or, even worse, who want to use the threat of sacking people to their own advantage, than it is in protecting the right of Australian workers to a decent job.If enacted, this bill would exempt small business from the unfair dismissal provisions in the Workplace Relations Act 1996 by requiring the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to order that an unfair dismissal application is not valid if it relates to a small business employing 20 workers or less. Enacted, this bill would have the effect of creating two classes of worker: one class with the right to be treated fairly and justly and another class without that right. We on this side of the House will never condone such an approach. Labor believe that, regardless of the number of people their bosses employ, all workers should have the right to be treated fairly when it comes to the prospect of losing their jobs. The minister has given no good reason why a person with 19 coworkers should have fewer rights than a person with 20 coworkers, and until he does I have no good reason to vote for this bill.The explanatory memorandum accompanying this bill contains a telling admission. In it the minister claims that this bill would protect small business from unfair dismissal claims. I would have thought that small businesses did not need a bill to protect themselves from unfair dismissal claims; they need only to be procedurally fair, just and reasonable in their dealings with their staff. If bosses behaved in a fair and just manner, they would not need to be protected by this bill. But this sort of denial of the truth comes as no surprise to those of us who understand the contempt this government has for working Australians. Greg Hunt, the new member for Flinders, takes up where the previous member for Flinders left off. According to the new member for Flinders, workers who have been sacked harshly, unjustly and unreasonably by their bosses are laggards who abuse the system by being paid—and I quote—`unfair dismissal bribes.' This contemptuous characterisation of the measured decisions of the Industrial Relations Commission and demonisation of unjustly sacked workers does no credit to the member for Flinders or the constituents he represents.1 would like to refute a claim the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations made in his second reading speech. The minister claimed this bill would create 53,000 jobs. The minister did not see fit to provide any empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. I suggest that is because it does not exist. This is a case of the government trying to justify its acquiescence to the bosses union, the ACCI, by picking a number and repeating it over and over again until it gains legitimacy. As we all know, a lie is still a lie no matter how many times it is repeated. Mark Patterson, the CEO of the bosses union, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, claims that a survey conducted by the chamber found that 55.6 per cent of small businesses, with 19 employees or less, had employed fewer people because of their concerns with unfair dismissal legislation. As no effort was made to ascertain what these concerns were, it would be impossible to assume that they all wanted the legislation repealed. Maybe they, like the Labor Party, believed that more could be done to reduce the cost and procedural complexity of the system. We do not know if the concerns of all 55.6 per cent of these bosses extended to wanting the unfair dismissal legislation repealed. If that is the case, they should only be concerned about themselves. It would be a shame if 55.6 per cent of Australian small business bosses did not trust themselves to treat their workers fairly and justly.In my electorate of Stirling, there are many small businesses and I recognise and support them in a number of ways: first, by my membership of Stirling Business Association and regular attendance of their monthly meetings. This enables me to hear their concerns and bring them into this place. Secondly, I support the Stirling Business Enterprise Centre in Balcatta by promoting their seminars and courses and by referring to them small businesses which require assistance with developing their business or trade prospects. Thirdly, I hold forums for small business on the issues of tax and the complexity of government regulations so I can bring their concerns to the attention of the government and to this place.As a member of the Stirling Business Association, I am always interested to read the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's reviews. The September 2001 edition contained the results of the ACCI's pre-election survey which asked what business wanted from the next government of Australia. The top five areas of concern raised by businesses were, first, the frequency and complexity of changes to tax laws and rules; second, the level of taxation; third, the complexity of government regulations; fourth, the costs of compliance with government regulations; and fifth, telecommunications costs. Unfair dismissal legislation was a distant sixth. I hope that the minister is not trying to deflect away from the government's failings in the first five areas by introducing this bill. The Howard government has ensnared Australian small business in a tangle of red tape. Business knows this and is clearly concerned about it, as the ACCI survey shows.An alternative survey to the one that the government and its cronies in the bosses union, the ACCI, rely on to support their assertions is the Telstra Yellow Pages small business survey. The August 1998 report showed some interesting results that refute the government's claim that business considers this bill necessary. Telstra found that 41 per cent of business saw no barriers to employment growth. Of those 59 per cent of businesses that thought there were barriers to employment growth, the top four factors identified were: firstly, lack of work; secondly, cost of employing; thirdly, employment conditions; and fourthly, superannuation costs. Unfair dismissal laws did not even rate a specific mention. This suggests that small businesses, at least those surveyed by the Yellow Pages, do not consider unfair dismissal laws to be a significant constraint on employment growth. Lack of work was seen as the major barrier to taking on employees, and this bill will do nothing to address this concern.We on this side of the House all know that this bill has nothing to do with the unfounded claim of creating 53,000 new jobs. This bill is really about tipping the balance of bargaining power in the boss's favour. By exempting small business bosses from scrutiny for unfair dismissal, there will be nothing to stop them from using the threat of being sacked, no matter how harsh, unjust or unreasonable the threat might be. This bill would add to the inequality of bargaining power between bosses and workers. Workers who are afraid of losing their jobs at any moment for no good reason will be afraid to speak up for themselves and seek fair increases in their conditions. Though the minister did not mention this in his second reading speech, I cannot help but think that this is the real reason for this bill. Unfair dismissal law is not an illegitimate burden on small business. If small business has concerns with unfair dismissal law, then the answer is not to remove the law; the answer is to address the cost and procedural complexity of a system and provide training and advice in industrial relations processes and conduct staff appraisals so small business can learn to comply with the system. I suggest that both the government and the bosses union, the ACCI, could be doing a lot more to provide this training and advice rather than wasting its time and resources denigrating workers unions. The answer is not, and nor will it ever be, to remove rights from workers. That this government should be promoting harsh, unjust and unreasonable workplace practices at a time when job insecurity is rife is a sign of just how heartless this government has become. Passage of this bill would, for an arbitrarily defined category of workers, result in a loss of rights and increase job insecurity. That is why I will vote against it.DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, I rise on a point of order. If the member for Stirling just wants to read the speech, I am prepared to give her leave to table it.10000Adams, Dick (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. DGH Adams)—Order!WU5O'Connor, Gavan, MPMr Gavan O'Connor—That is a vexacious point of order. The minister should sit down and give everybody a fair go.10000DEPUTY SPEAKER, TheThe DEPUTY SPEAKER—There is no point of order. Every member elected to this House has a right to speak on any bill.DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—She is reading it.10000DEPUTY SPEAKER, TheThe DEPUTY SPEAKER—I ask the minister to show some courtesy to the House.18:06:00606Nairn, Gary, MPMr NAIRNOK6Eden-MonaroLP10—It is fascinating to listen to members opposite talk about small business, almost with their hands on their hearts, and say how tough it has been for small business. But we really would be pushing to find anybody over there who really does understand the situation. Let us get to the genesis of this whole issue of unfair dismissal. Its genesis basically was back in 1993. I think this is an aspect about which we should remind everybody. I have not heard all the speeches from the other side, but I have not heard anybody from the Labor Party explain why the unfair dismissal laws were introduced in the first place under the Keating government back in 1994. I have not heard them say: `We had this dreadful situation where people were being thrown out of employment unfairly and unlawfully and all sorts of things like that. We had to do something desperate.' Labor did do something desperate; they did something so desperate that in 1993, just weeks before the federal election, they broke all domestic precedent—so they must have thought it was a very desperate situation occurring out there in small business—by secretly ratifying International Labour Organisation Convention 158 without any support from state governments. That ratification allowed Labor to then use the external power in the Constitution to enact a national unfair dismissal law in Australia. Nobody from the other side has mentioned that. The only reason they would go that way is because they must have felt there was a really desperate situation occurring—that people were being unfairly dismissed.It is pretty right that, in the years leading up to 1993, a lot of people lost their job. Did they lose their job because of employers being unscrupulous and unfairly dismissing them? Not on your life! Between 1989 and 1993 we had a desperate situation in our economy. Interest rates were through the roof. I can talk from some experience on this. I think interest rates got to 21.75 per cent at the time I was running a business. It was a huge interest rate. Plus we were having the recession we had to have. Unemployment went to levels we had not seen since the Great Depression, so there were a lot of people out of work. But there was no evidence at all that people were being unfairly dismissed. There must have been some critical reason—but nobody in the Labor Party can put it up—as to why they had to secretly ratify an International Labour Organisation convention to use external powers to bring in the unfair dismissal laws. That is the genesis, and you should never forget it. Certainly the introduction of these laws saw an incredible burden on small business, on top of the recession that we had to have and the skyrocketing interest rates at the time. The government managed to make some changes to those unfair dismissal laws, which is good, but we have not been able to go far enough to make them fair so as to give small businesses a real go. I feel the problem is that the people opposite really do not understand the psychology of small business. People in small business have since 1993 had a great fear of the unfair dismissal laws, and for good reason. There are plenty of examples of businesses getting hurt through these particular laws. There is a great fear out there that if you employ somebody and it does not work out or if things change within your business and you are not able to keep people on you will be hit with an unfair dismissal claim. Therefore, what is the easiest thing to do? You do not employ people or you put them on contract or on casual for a period. These laws have changed the whole psychology of the way small business runs. You do not have to visit too many small businesses to find some real-life examples of small businesses being hurt.Some people in the Labor Party understand that there is a problem. The current Labor opposition do, to some extent, acknowledge that there is a problem, even in this dodgy amendment that they have put forward. In one part of it they say they are:committed to working with small business, employees and peak bodies to make unfair dismissal laws more effective by addressing procedural complexities and costs ...I guess it is a token acknowledgment that there are problems, but it is about the only positive thing that they have put into this debate. There are other people in the ALP who acknowledge that there is a problem. Bob Carr, who is looked upon as a great white hope within the Labor Party, said:There are kids going without jobs because of the way the unfair dismissal provision works in the Federal law.Bob Carr said that. John Howard probably said that as well. Bob Carr is from the same faction as that of the member for Prospect over there on the other side of the chamber. He said these kids are going without jobs because of the way the unfair dismissal provision works in the federal law. The member for Hunter did an interview on the Small Business Show. The journalist, Janine Perrett, apparently said:But would you agree, you've said yourself there is a perception problem. The fact is that over and over again on this program and other people will tell you that small business claim they would hire more if the laws went. Why shouldn't they go then?The member for Hunter replied:Oh, my wife consistently tells me that she could afford to put on one person or would like to put on one person, but is fearful of unfair dismissals, she's fearful of going through the barrier to another level of red tape and regulations. All those perceptions are out there, all of them are founded.The member for Hunter made that comment. So there is a little bit of acknowledgment over on the other side that there is a problem. But let me get back to this understanding of how small business works and the psychology of small business. As I said, there are very few on the other side who really understand how small business works, and I think that is part of the problem. That is a bit different from the situation on this side. If you have been through some of these exercises you would understand. I can talk about a particular example. There are heaps of examples. I cannot name names but I can tell you that this example is a real example. I know of a business which employed somebody on a permanent casual basis for about 10 years. Increasingly in the last couple of years things were not travelling very well at all. Finally the employer, after going through all the right criteria to explain why the employee was not performing et cetera, terminated the person. The employee went immediately into an unfair dismissal claim.The firm in question, to their credit, held their ground. They said, `This is unfair to us as an employer because we have done everything correctly.' They went through the legal processes—and it was costing them money—time and time again. Most small businesses that you talk to say, `We can't afford this,' and so what they do is just pay it out. You do not see these as statistics. They say, `Let's give `em a couple of grand or whatever and get rid of them. It is quicker; we do not have to line the lawyers' pockets.' But in this particular case that I am very aware of, the business held out and they finally won, but at a huge cost in the process. That is the problem that we have with it. In Eden-Monaro, currently we have unemployment across the whole electorate of about seven per cent. I might say that it is down from about 10 per cent in the last year or so. According to the small labour market figures in September 2001, the most recent quarterly figures we have, there were something in the order of 3,819 people unemployed. A year earlier, in September 2000, there were 5,447; so we have made some significant inroads into unemployment.But there are still nearly 4,000 people without a job. On the conservative figure that something in the order of one in 20 small businesses would be likely to employ another person if these laws go, if you look at there being something in the order of 7,000 to 7,500 small businesses in Eden-Monaro, you are talking about an extra 350 jobs or more. Another 350 people of that 3,819 is a significant amount to take off unemployment. You are really knocking the unemployment figure down by something in the order of 10 per cent. That is the sort of effect it would have on an electorate like Eden-Monaro. You could put that right across Australia, certainly in those electorates where unemployment is still higher than the national average. The small businesses would do their bit to improve things by employing.I know many on this side are getting sick and tired of this bill coming back. Labor keeps voting against it because their union mates tell them that they have got to do that. I wish they would just acknowledge the advantage that we would gain out of this and pass this excellent legislation.18:18:00608Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO7T4ProspectALP00—I, like many on our side of the House, rise to speak on and condemn this bill, again before the House. It is a bill that was introduced by this government in 1996, 1998 and 2001. Thank goodness justice prevailed and it was defeated each one of those times. I believe that in the way that it has been presented again by this new minister trying to get his stripes it will be again defeated.Why do we say on this side of the House that we believe so fervently that the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 should be defeated? May I say to not only the Minister for Small Business and Tourism, who is at the table, but also the member of Eden-Monaro that I ran a very successful business with my husband for 27 years and employed up to seven people. I do know what small business is all about, I do know what it is about employing people and I do understand and appreciate what this bill is all about.What we require is a very fair, safe and productive workplace because it is central to the prosperity and development of the Australian economy and our society. It is also central to the wellbeing and the security of every working Australian. These are basic principles and they have governed the Australian workplace since Federation. However, they do not seem to be the principles that are governing the Australian workplace today under this government.The unfair dismissal provisions that this bill aims to repeal were first introduced by a Labor government. But it was introduced to guarantee to the workers of Australia fairness and protection from unfair, unreasonable and unjust dismissal. Fairness and justice for employees have been underlying principles of many of Australia's workplace reforms throughout the past 100 years, regardless of which government held office. The Howard government came to office and this all changed. This government has repeatedly since 1996 systematically introduced legislation hoping to destroy the notions of job security, job satisfaction and fairness in the workplace. These were previously great achievements of which Australia was justly proud.Across all aspects of workplace relations this Howard government has mismanaged not only the reforms but also the legislation. It is a gross understatement to say that the government scheme is inadequate. Its employee entitlement, for example, does not even guarantee anywhere near 100 per cent of entitlements for employees who have lost their jobs. In the past four years I have repeatedly introduced a bill into this House so that this parliament could debate the issue and bring in legislation to guarantee workers' entitlements so that their legally accrued entitlements could be protected when a company becomes insolvent. What has this government done? Absolutely nothing. Instead, they persisted with a long-lasting aim to repeal the unfair dismissal provisions of the previous Labor government. They have sought time and again to amend workplace relations acts in regard to unfair dismissal legislation. We are opposed to the bill, not only because we believe it is detrimental to thousands of working Australians and their job security but because we believe on this side of the House that it is a very mean spirited piece of legislation which would ensure that the workers of Australia, especially in small business, have less protection and fewer rights in circumstances where they feel they have been unfairly dismissed.Under the unfair dismissal legislation, I might remind those in this House that an employee, if they felt they had been unfairly terminated from their employment, had the right to argue that they had been unfairly dismissed and to have their case heard by the commission. But this bill, like so many other of the government bills in this portfolio, is a complete misnomer. It is called the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. However, it is anything but fair and this legislation would allow the commission to rule unfair dismissal claims against small businesses invalid. The government has always argued that employers do not have enough protection in that area. However, the facts are that employers have plenty of protection from hiring dishonest or incompetent employees.In many cases there is already in place a period of probationary employment where employers can take the time to see if their new employees are up to the job or not. During this time it is acceptable that employees can be dismissed without notice. It is up to the employer to check the references of a new employee, as they could also serve as a way of finding out whether their future employee is suitable for the position. It is also the employer's responsibility to provide adequate training procedures during this period of employment so that the new employee can adjust to their working environment. Any reasonable employer looking for long-term employees will have exhausted all these options before they even start to consider a dismissal.Workers in Australia deserve nothing less than to have protection from being dismissed unfairly by their employers. When in government, we on the Labor side delivered a workable system for dealing with unfair dismissal on the basis of a fair go all round. However, `a fair go all round' was one of this government's catchcries when they previously tried to amend the unfair dismissal legislation. They now propose to change the system to tilt the playing field more heavily in favour of employers and to provide fewer protections to employees. Various case studies show that, if this bill were legislated, employees will have no protection against unreasonable summary dismissal by their employers. If these laws are repealed, what protection will an employee have from being dismissed in this fashion? There are many case studies that come to mind. I can give a number of examples.An apprentice pastry chef worked for a bakery for near on 12 months. One day he got a call from his employer asking him whether he would like to sign his termination papers now or stay on for another week. When he asked why he was being sacked, he was told, `I don't have to tell you; I'm the boss.' Or there is the case of a retail assistant who had worked on a permanent part-time basis for more than 12 months. One day she went to work and said to her employer that she was entitled to annual leave, was she not, and it had not been offered to her. The next day she was dismissed. These stories are the reality of today's workplace. Without unfair dismissal laws, these employers would have been able to get away with treating their employees in a manner which I and everyone else on this side find completely reprehensible.The Labor Party has never claimed that unfair dismissal laws cannot be changed if there is a problem. However, amending the unfair dismissal legislation in such a broad sweep as this bill proposes will take away the last piece of protection employees have against unfair dismissal. I find it hard to believe how this can be seen as fair. The government and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, have continued with their ill-informed and misconceived myths about small business and the so-called hindrance that unfair dismissals represent for small business in Australia. One of our main concerns is that the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, who introduced this bill, repeatedly claims—and it is being propagated by members on the government side—that, if it were passed, it will create about 50,000 jobs in the small business sector. That claim does not stand up to detailed scrutiny. DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—It is 53,000.7T4Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO—I am glad that the Minister for Small Business and Tourism, the member for North Sydney, has said it again, but he added another 3,000 to it. The government have used this argument every time they have tried to introduce this legislation. It did not stand up to scrutiny then and it does not stand up to scrutiny now. I make it clear: the government's claims regarding small business have been overwhelmingly misleading. Let us consider the absolutely outrageous claim about the 50,000 jobs. The government use several surveys and reports to back up this claim. The former minister for workplace relations—we know how he tells the truth—who attempted several times, but unsuccessfully, I might add, to bring forward legislation to repeal unfair dismissal, frequently referred to Yellow Pages Small Business Index surveys conducted in October and November 1997 and in July 1998. I remind the House and the minister that I too have looked at the Yellow Pages Small Business Index which surveyed 1,200 businesses with 19 or fewer employees in 1997 and 1998. I have read some of it before in the House, but I believe that it is worth repeating: the survey found that 64 per cent of small business respondents stated that an exemption from unfair dismissal laws would not have affected the number of employees they would have recruited. They are statistics which come from small business owners themselves.DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—But 64 per cent said no.7T4Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO—They are not our statistics and they are not the government's statistics, they are actually a survey of small businesses. They are undeniable facts based on quality research on small businesses. Further to this point, later surveys by the Yellow Pages Small Business Index are very detrimental to the government's case. In the May 1998 index survey, respondents were asked to nominate which of 12 policy initiatives was the most important to their business prospects. The result was that only six per cent of the 1,200 mentioned unfair dismissal laws. This government have never bothered to look at detailed, extensive research about unfair dismissal. If the minister cares to read this morning's Financial Review, he will see that again they surveyed the Treasurer's electorate and found that the GST is the biggest problem, not unfair dismissal, that is affecting small business in that electorate. If they have the facts, they disguise the facts; if they have the truth, they disguise the truth. If they looked at some of the surveys, they would know that unfair dismissal legislation is not a barrier to employment growth, they would know that employers have a wide range of options available to them to avoid hiring unsuitable or unreliable staff members, and they would know that this is one of the pieces of legislation that do not protect employees against harsh or unreasonable dismissal. This bill is designed to do nothing more than strip away the rights of Australian workers, as so many of the government's industrial relations bills have attempted to do. This bill, if it gets through, will strip away the rights that Australian workers currently have.DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—What about the right to a job?7T4Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO—As I have said, this government tried it in 1996, they tried it in 1998, they tried it in 2001, but they have been defeated. I believe that they should rightly again be defeated in 2002. It is our right to speak out in the protection of the workers whom we represent. It is our right as parliamentarians and elected representatives in the Australian parliament to make sure that workers' voices are given voice in this parliament. It is not right to have idiots of ministers sitting in this parliament, thinking that they are going to put me off track. That will never occur as far as the member for North Sydney is concerned. It has never occurred in the past, and it will never occur today or in the future. DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—What about the right to a job?7T4Crosio, Janice, MPMrs CROSIO—I believe that when you are not sure of your facts, like you are in this House now, you try to play the man. This is one woman you are not going to play, Minister, because I know my facts. I will repeat the facts in this House and I will stand up to be counted to protect the workers of this nation.10000Adams, Dick (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. DGH Adams)—Before I call the honourable member for Canning, I ask the Minister for Small Business and Tourism to treat the House in a better fashion than he has been doing.DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—I am just making a point—10000DEPUTY SPEAKER, TheThe DEPUTY SPEAKER—Order! There is no point of order. Please resume your seat.18:29:00611Randall, Don, MPMr RANDALLPK6CanningLP10—I do not know how you follow an act like that, but I will endeavour to do my best on the issues and the facts.7T4Crosio, Janice, MPMrs Crosio—You remove the thug from the chair.PK6Randall, Don, MPMr RANDALL—Thank you, member for Prospect. I would liken this debate on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 this evening to the crime debate. In the debate on crime everyone says, `What are you going to do for the person committing the crime—are we going to rehabilitate them, get to understand them, meditate with them, whatever?' They forget about the victim. The victim in this case is small business. The small businessperson is being victimised by very harsh laws that are affecting their livelihood and their wellbeing. The popular myth in Australia at the moment is that the Labor Party is for the worker. That is the biggest load of twaddle you have ever come across. The Labor Party is not for the worker; if the Labor Party was for the worker, the Labor Party would find them a job, and we know that their history on jobs is a sorry tale indeed. When the former Leader of the Opposition, now the member for Brand, was the employment minister, unemployment in this country was up to 11 per cent. What did they do for the workers? They took jobs off them. What has happened with this current government? Unemployment is right down and bubbles around in the high sixes and seven per cents. This government has done a lot for workers and it has largely been done through small business. Small business, as we know, is the engine room of this country in terms of jobs, productivity and economic wellbeing.Getting back to this debate, this morning I heard the member for Barton speaking first on behalf of the Labor Party and he said, `This bill is about a fair go.' I have got a lot of time for the member for Barton, because I think he is one of the most honest and genuine people on the other side and I am sure he believes what he says, but I also understand that he has got a fair bit of credibility in this and he feels uncomfortable with not passing this legislation. He knows—like many on the other side know but cannot do anything about—that if they pass this legislation they have got a blue with Sharan Burrow, and we know how much influence the ACTU has on the Labor Party in this country. It is my understanding that the member for Batman, the former ACTU President, used to be an invited guest to cabinet meetings with the Keating government. That is the sort of influence that the Labor Party has thrust upon it from the ACTU. We can see now that this is the retirement home for ACTU presidents—we have got three of them here, for goodness sake. So the Labor Party is hostage to the union movement.I put out a press release to my electorate saying that I would be speaking on this bill and that I wanted some feedback. I want to give you four case studies from my electorate, because I think they typify the hardship small business is going through. One of the things that they need is some relief from hardship and economic pressure that these laws bring. The first case study concerns a Supa Valu store owner. He employs a lot of girls— mainly girls doing checkout operations, stacking the shelves et cetera. He said to me, `On the quiet, I've actually got a sneaky little deal with the union.' He is good mates with the union organiser in the area. He said that they know that, while they are on three months probation, it is not so hard to deal with recalcitrant workers. He said, `What we do is we never ever get them on permanent staff, because what happens is, if you put them on permanent staff, then you are subject to far more dire dismissal laws than if they are on casual staff.' After three months when they are entitled to be on permanent staff he then cuts their hours down and makes them part-time so they cannot become permanent. That is the effect of this bill. It is actually taking work away from young kids out of school who are not well educated, who are looking for work, while he is playing games in cahoots with the local union organiser to make sure he does not get caught up in this unfair dismissal law. He said he would employ— and his words were—`heaps more kids' if he did not have to face this unfair dismissal legislation. His words were: `A lot of them are professional bludgers who are trying on.'When the member for Barton said that he wants this legislation to be fairer—and, as I said, I believe him—what is unfair about three warnings? Workers have got the opportunity to go through a warning process. It does not happen, like some people on the other side would suggest, that somebody just gets chopped off—it does not happen like that. They go through a warning process, so it is fair, but it needs to be made even fairer on behalf of the victim in this case, which is the employer. The Supa Valu owner also told me about a case where he had not even employed a person—his fruit and veg manager had asked somebody who he knew to start. The bloke did not even start and he has now got the Supa Valu manager before the commission for unfair dismissal. He had not even started the job! That is the sort of thing that employers do.The second case concerns a small suburban newspaper. On the first day they employed this young girl as a junior reporter, she did not even turn up—she had a sickie on the first day. After she arrived, several times she spent most of the time on the phone to her boyfriend. She had her series of warnings and the farcical thing was that, when they finally got to the point where she was to be dismissed, her boyfriend decided that he would represent her in the commission. It cost this business $5,000 to defend itself, with the boyfriend playing games on her behalf as the quasi-lawyer in this case. Another case from this paper was that, out of the goodness of its heart, the paper lent one of its employees a car for about 10 weeks. When he was dismissed eventually in the proper process, one of his claims was that he wanted to be compensated for not having a car. This is the sort of garbage a small business goes through when it endeavours to employ people and is then dragged through the rather rotten current set of circumstances with unfair dismissal. That is why it needs to be tidied up.The third example involves a printer who related to me what he described as a vexatious and mischievous case. They were going through a merger and they went through the proper process to shed some workers. However, the union came in, naturally, and supported this person's claim for unfair dismissal. It really did not even have legs, but he still got paid and it cost them $1,500 for the day just to turn up to be represented. This is the cost to small business. You hear the Labor Party on the other side; they think that small business is the enemy—they are the ones with all the money. Who is going to pay? Small business can pay. A lot of these people sometimes pay their employees off their own Bankcard or Visa because they have not had a cash flow for the week. They are using their own money out of their pockets to fix up these workers who should be paid, if they are working. They are the ones who take all the risks, and the risks include these savage, unfair dismissal laws that need to be tidied up.The fourth case is from a suburban plumber who spoke to me today. He said that the unfair part about this is that the onus of proof is on the employer. The employer is the guilty party before the courts. It is basically stacked against the employer when you get into the commission. One of their plumbers had a claim against them for $20,000, mainly because he said that he could not get another job if he left there. That was his initial ambit claim. After the proper warning process, they were in the process of dismissing him because his work was not up to scratch. It cost them $7,000 to $8,000 to defend it and, in the end, he got $3,000. They were probably better off defending it because they did not have to cop the $20,000 ambit claim, but see what the business had to go through: hiring legal representatives and days off work putting the case together. This is a disincentive to small business. It is the sort of thing that drives people not to employ anyone but their family members. They employ family members because they know at least they will not go through this torrid process. At the end of the day, they know that they are probably safer. However, that does not help the young kids in the electorate of Canning where there is a very high unemployment level. It is an outer-metropolitan area with a low socioeconomic base in the outer suburbs. It has a lot of youth unemployment. From proper surveys, we know that if one small business employed one person in Australia—and we are talking about 50,000-odd jobs—if you did that in Canning, we are looking at more than 500 jobs, largely for young kids out of school who are having trouble being employed.The member for Prospect said that, if there was anything wrong with it, it would need to be changed. There is something wrong with it. It does need to be changed to make it fairer. The title of the bill is correct. It is fair dismissal laws and it needs to be supported. I recommend the bill.18:40:00613Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TANNERYU5MelbourneALP00—I rise to speak on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. There is a core philosophical difference between the government parties and the Labor Party which is at the very heart of this debate this evening which cannot be ignored, and that is the question of respective attitudes to the contract of employment and its role in our society. The Liberal and the National parties essentially regard the contract of employment as basically being no different to any other contract. It is a contract between two notionally equal parties that should be treated in the same way legally as a contract to buy a sack of potatoes, a bus ticket or a night out at the movies. The Labor Party regards the contract of employment very differently. We see the contract of employment as being the cornerstone of our society, as a fundamental building block on which our economy and society are primarily built. That is because it is not only the primary input into the production process, which by definition it obviously is, it is also the overwhelmingly dominant means by which the rewards of that production process are distributed through the society. Most people get their share of the rewards of the production process via their employment contract, and it is still and will continue to be the primary means by which people get their sense of dignity, wellbeing, purpose, and of contributing to society and of being a person of value. That is why people on both sides of this House say to people that it is always better to have a job. It is better to have a job even if it is on the same income that you could get for doing nothing. It is better to have a job because it provides people with a sense of wellbeing, of commitment to the society, of contributing and of value. That is why people identify themselves by what they do in their work. When asked, `Who are you?' they say, `I'm a railway worker,' or `I'm a teacher,' or `I'm a doctor.' We are not just talking about something that is equivalent to the contract to buy a sack of potatoes or a night out at the movies. We are talking about a very special kind of contract which is at the very core of the organisation of our society.Throughout the history of this country, it has been Labor governments which have sought to regulate that contract in order to ensure that there is inherent fairness in how that contract functions in the broader economic context of our society because there is an inherent imbalance in bargaining power which applies to most contracts of employment—not all, but most. Most workers and most employees have a substantially inferior bargaining power to their actual or prospective employers and therefore there is a need for regulatory intervention to ensure that that is not exploited. Having laws which protect those employees from arbitrary or unfair dismissal and which provide them with some recourse against that occurring is fundamental. Those laws have always been introduced by Labor governments. They are always opposed by Liberal governments and the only reason you are seeing in this legislation an attempt to remove those laws with respect to certain kinds of workers is they do not believe that they can get away with taking them away for everybody. If they thought they could take them away for everybody, they would do it because they oppose unfair dismissal laws for anybody. We need to keep in mind that for people who lose their jobs and who are dismissed, in many circumstances that is a very serious and often disastrous event in their lives. It involves not only the obvious loss of income but the loss of opportunity and the black mark on their record. All those kinds of things can be very devastating for people, particularly for people who do not have a lot of market power and who do not necessarily have great employment prospects who may, for example, be less skilled or older. To lose your job can be devastating. To lose it unfairly when you are wrongly accused of doing something wrong or when you are arbitrarily or capriciously dismissed through no fault of your own makes it worse. That is why it is only just and fair that employees in that situation should have recourse to some umpire or means of redress to ensure that there is an element of balance and so they cannot be arbitrarily deprived of their livelihood—of their employment—by a capricious or unfair act by their employer.The attempts by the government to change the legislation to restrict its application have focused on small business and casual employment, the very areas where some of the worst problems can be found. I have probably handled more unfair dismissal cases as a union official than most people in this parliament. There are probably one or two who may have done more but I have done hundreds in the past, a lot of them involving small businesses and, I might add, most of them involving non-union members because of the way the system I was part of worked. Some of the practices I experienced—some of the situations, some of the appalling behaviour—were something people on the other side really fail to appreciate. It is important for people subjected to that kind of behaviour to have some kind of redress, some vehicle for pursuing their claims. To arbitrarily draw a line and say, `We will allow only this kind of worker justice. We will allow only this particular category of workers the opportunity to take action to get some sort of redress if they are treated unfairly,' I think is completely intellectually bankrupt. There is no underlying concept which says it is okay for this kind of business to mistreat people with impunity but it is not okay for that kind of business. If you have 20 employees you are not allowed to do it but if you have 12 you are. There is an inherent illogicality which cannot be explained away.Being deprived of your livelihood, being deprived of a clean employment record or losing the opportunity for further employment are serious things. There are circumstances day in, day out where that is appropriate to occur, where an employer does dismiss somebody for perfectly valid reasons. But that power should not be exercised capriciously, arbitrarily or vindictively; it should be exercised correctly. The notion that we should have one system for one group of organisations, for one kind of employers, and another system—or a complete absence of a system—for another kind, I think is totally abhorrent.We have heard a plethora of claims over the years about how many jobs are destroyed by the existence of unfair dismissal laws, about how many jobs would be created were we to abrogate or diminish the impact of those unfair dismissal laws. I have yet to see any serious evidence, any objective empirical evidence, to support those claims. We have seen surveys. What do you expect to get out of a survey of people who, mostly, would be happy to get rid of a regulatory arrangement that impacts on them? What do you expect people in small businesses to say when you ask them, `Would you like to get rid of the unfair dismissal laws?' They are going to say yes—hardly surprising. They are going to say, `Yes, I will probably put on some more people.' That tells you nothing. That is hardly substantive research that tells you that if the laws are changed you will see, as a direct consequence of that change, X number of people getting new jobs. Why? Because employment is primarily driven by demand. People put workers on because they have work for them to do—enough people are buying their goods and services and they have work to do which cannot be done by the existing people in the business. That is why people employ people. At the margins regulation can have an effect—there is no question about that. But to float figures like 50,000 jobs, to pluck them out of the air and suggest that if we legislate then magically you are going to see 50,000 new jobs is just ludicrous. It is absolutely ludicrous. So before we treat these claims seriously let us actually see some hard, empirical, objective data which show that there is a negative impact and that if change occurs we will see a substantial number of new jobs. I have not yet seen any evidence that even vaguely corresponds to that sort of claim. But people such as the minister for workplace relations continually come into the chamber and tell us that 50,000 jobs are at stake here.83LGillard, Julia, MPMs Gillard—And the former minister whose word is worth so much.YU5Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TANNER—And the former minister, as the member for Lalor points out, whose veracity is sinking like the asylum seeker boats almost by the hour as we speak. These claims are worth nothing. It is absurd to suggest that we should be legislating on the basis of self-seeking, unsubstantiated claims about the number of jobs that will be created by changes to the legislation.I wish to conclude with a couple of points. Firstly, if there is a problem in the unfair dismissal system, it is not about which workers are covered; it is about who is allowed to represent. The real problem that we have to address is the fact that you have got lawyers in the system charging substantial sums of money and putting small businesses in a position where, even if they have got a totally meritorious position, they still have to pay large sums of money in order to protect themselves. That is the issue we should be focusing on, not trying to take certain categories of workers out of the system. In the old Victorian system which I worked in for several years, no paid agents or lawyers were permitted to appear. Small businesses did not really complain very much about that system because they did not face the threat of thousands of dollars of legal costs even if they were totally in the right. That is the issue, in my judgment. That is the thing that we should be trying to constructively work on to improve in the current system, not arbitrarily removing particular categories of workers from having any rights at all. The rights are important. The way that they are exercised is a separate matter. The way that people are represented and the costs that flow from that are things that we should be looking at very seriously.The final observation I would make is the rhetorical connection between this issue and the Labor Party and its organisational structure, which is made by the minister and by other people in the conservative parties. I believe one of the fundamental things for us to do in this parliament, and for the Labor Party to do, is not to get distracted from the merits of very important issues of this nature on the basis of spurious claims that the Labor Party should be distancing itself from the trade union movement, or it should be agreeing with the trade union movement, or it should be cuddling up to the trade union movement. We should be treating these issues on their merits. We should be determining our approach—and we are determining our approach to the question of unfair dismissal legislation—based on the merits of the issue, the rights of individual workers and the needs of Australian society. I reject absolutely the approach put forward by the minister which suggests that the Labor Party should take a different view because of its relationship with the trade union movement. These are unrelated questions and, irrespective of what the Labor Party decides in terms of its future structural relationship with the trade union movement—be it 60-40, 50-50, or whatever—it is ridiculous to suggest that those matters should determine how we approach matters of the rights, ultimately, of large numbers of workers in this country. We should stand up for them and we should take a strong stand on the issues inherent in this debate irrespective of what view we adopt ultimately on the relationship between the trade union movement and the Labor Party. 18:52:00616Tollner, David, MPMr TOLLNER00AN4SolomonLP10—I rise to support the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 and congratulate the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations for bringing this legislation before the House promptly following the coalition government's triumphant return to office in November. This legislation is of particular interest to my constituency, not the least because, as a territory, our industrial relations regime is controlled by the Commonwealth. The Northern Territory government does not have industrial relations powers, and I suppose in the context of the new Labor government in the Territory it is probably just as well, because employers there could be staring down the barrel of draconian laws such as are being experienced by the constituents of my colleague the member for Canning, as he just explained. But I also make the observation that the Territory government has not established a reputation for doing anything.The minister, quite appropriately, puts the focus of this reform on the creation of jobs. As he has said, if each small business were to take on one additional employee as a result of this legislation then there would be created more than 50,000 jobs across the country.But in speaking in support of the bill it is my intent to focus less on the positives of the amendments and more on the negatives for small business that the current laws regarding unfair dismissal create. In the Northern Territory, and indeed across most of Australia, the great majority of small businesses employ around five people. While small business is the great employment generator in the Australian economy, it is generally the presence of a few jobs in many thousands of small businesses that provides that statistic. I mention this because it emphasises the difficulties that small businesses face in contemplating the issue of unfair dismissal. To paraphrase the words of one person working in the field of industrial relations, small business employers are `scared to the point of incontinence' by the unfair dismissal provisions of the Workplace Relations Act. His choice of words was more graphic, but his exact phraseology, I think, would be inappropriate to the dignity of this chamber.I believe it is extraordinary that there have been more than 8,000 unfair dismissal claims or, to use the commission's terminology, `applications for relief in respect of termination' put before the AIRC annually in recent years, and that the number of cases grew by more than eight per cent from 1999-2000 to 2000-01. Those statistics suggest that either Australian employers are a heartless group who sack their employees on a whim or just because they have got out of bed on the wrong side, or, more credibly, that the numbers are boosted by at least some in the Australian work force who have worked out that the provisions in the act are a soft touch.I am aware that some of the worst provisions of the original act have been tempered by sensible amendment by the previous government; for instance, by making the provisions unavailable to casual workers. However, I am informed that in the Northern Territory at least, where tourism generates up to 10,000 seasonal jobs each year, there have been unfair dismissal applications launched by transient workers and backpackers who have seen the system merely as a means of extracting a few thousand extra dollars from their employers in their final pay packet.It is, I believe, common knowledge that lawyers, asked for guidance by small business managers facing unfair dismissal claims, advise their clients to reach a settlement of a few thousand dollars with their ex-employees rather than face the exorbitant cost of arbitration. I recognise that there will be genuine grievances of course amongst the applications, but we should be realistic about human nature and recognise that there will also be those who see a few extra thousand dollars in their final pay packet as a good rate of return on the $50 application fee. That belief is supported by the statistics which show that, of the 8,000 applications, around 6,000 are settled prior to conciliation— mostly, I am told, by employers following legal advice to provide a `nick off' payment to their ex-employees rather than face the much higher costs of allowing an application to run its full course to arbitration. This belief is further supported by statistics that show that the number of cases where costs of arbitration have been awarded to the employer are minimal—less than one per cent. It is little wonder then that employers would rather provide even a substantial settlement rather than face the daunting costs and stress of fighting even the flimsiest of applications. The proposed amendments are extremely relevant to the Northern Territory, where they will impact on the some 98 per cent of businesses which employ less than 20 people, and where most businesses, as I have said, employ around five people. The national figures are reflected in the Territory, with 257 applications in 2000-01, of which 209 were settled out of court—that is, before arbitration—while just eight went through to substantial arbitration. I am told that there is one fairly substantial business in Central Australia—one with less than 20 employees—that budgeted for a $10,000 additional payment to departing employees merely in order to insure itself against the possibility of applications under the act.This bill has my enthusiastic support and I know that there are many small businesspeople in the Territory who will be equally enthusiastic. In my previous occupation in the superannuation industry, I was required to visit employers in the Northern Territory and, over the years, I have seen more than 1,500 of them—a thoroughly representative sample of the Territory's private sector. Whilst industrial relations was not in my scope of service at the time, `unfair dismissal' laws were a constant gripe of Northern Territory employers. I know they will be watching the passage of these amendments through this House and in the other place with great interest, hoping against hope that the Labor Party will, for once, put aside the vested and controlling interests that set its industrial relations agenda and see reason and its responsibility to the small business sector.19:00:00617Gillard, Julia, MPMs GILLARD83LLalorALP00—Obviously, the bill before the House, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002, raises propositions which have been considered by this place before, propositions which were considered during the last parliamentary term. I endorse the remarks of the previous contributor from the Labor opposition, namely the member for Melbourne, that clearly it is Labor's view that the contract of employment has some very different features from any other contract. That has been historically recognised on the Australian scene, indeed since almost Federation.After this parliament was created, one of the first things that it did was deal with the then conciliation and arbitration act, which created the then commission, which issued the very famous Harvester decision. The commission actually found that a contract of employment was a very different animal from an ordinary contract and that wages were both a cost to employers and, most importantly, the thing on which families lived. In that circumstance the commission recognised that employees were entitled to live in what was then determined to be `frugal comfort' and the amount that was necessary for that was provided for as a minimum wage. From that time forth we have really recognised that the contract of employment is quite a different animal from any other contract, and the position being put simply by this side is that, when one seeks to terminate a contract of that nature, there should be some special consideration to ensuring that is done fairly. With those brief remarks I will conclude my contribution on this bill.19:02:00617Gambaro, Teresa, MPMs GAMBARO9K6PetrieLP10—I have much pleasure in speaking to the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. This bill is about job creation. It is about increasing employment opportunities in the small business sector. The bill seeks to amend the Workplace Relations Act 1996 to protect small business from the costs and administrative burdens associated with unfair dismissal claims. The amendment will effectively exempt small business from the unfair dismissal provisions in that act, and in effect it will require the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to order as invalid an unfair dismissal application if it relates to small business. A small business is defined as any business with less than 20 employees. Under the current system, the unfair dismissal laws allow dismissed employees to sue their employers on the basis that their dismissal was harsh, unjust or unreasonable. Their claims are usually heard by the Industrial Relations Tribunal, which has the power to order the reinstatement of an employee, along with back-pay or paid compensation. Under changes to the unfair dismissal laws announced last year, penalties can be imposed on lawyers and advisers who encourage parties to make or defend an unfair dismissal claim where there is no reasonable prospect of the claim being successful. Since 1996 the number of Commonwealth unfair dismissal claims has been reduced from some 14,000 per year to approximately 7,000.The laws introduced last year were designed to put more emphasis on the real reasons for dismissal, rather than focusing on the procedures and the red tape that is usually associated with small business claims. Under the current arrangements, once a claim is lodged the Australian Industrial Relations Commission has no power to reject it. It must hold at least one hearing, which the employer or the employer's representative is required to attend. The bill will change these arrangements so that, once an unfair dismissal claim against a small business is lodged with the commission, the claim will be deemed invalid if the commission is satisfied that the business is a small business according to the definition. The commission would therefore have the power to make this order without holding a hearing.If, however, the commission seeks more information to satisfy its concerns, it has the power to seek further information from the applicant or a response from the small business employer in writing rather than their having to appear in person. This bill aims to free small business from the costly and often unnecessary burden of having to attend a commission hearing to defend an unfair dismissal application. Under the proposed new section 170CEB(2) the commission is not required to hold a hearing, but if it chooses to do so it must take into account the cost to the employer.When the unfair dismissal law came into effect on 30 August 2001, it signalled a significant change in the way that unfair dismissal cases were progressed. The new law aimed to deter, or at least penalise, baseless claims that may have been encouraged by lawyers and advisers even when there was no reasonable prospect of success. The new changes were intended to ensure that representatives acted responsibly and ethically. The law required that they disclose if they were in a `no win-no pay' situation or on contingency fees. Unfair dismissal cases can cost a small business employer, at the very minimum, $10,000 for each claim. The financial burden can seriously inhibit small businesses from taking on new staff or expanding their business.Small business currently produces one-third of Australia's GDP and produces some 15 per cent of Australia's exports. Over 40 per cent of Australian workers are employed in the small business sector. With 1 million private sector, non-agricultural, small businesses in Australia, this legislation will assist in creating job opportunities for thousands of Australians while making a significant contribution to the Australian economy. If one business in 20 were to employ just one more person, then an extra 50,000 jobs would be created. Increased employment produces more output and places more money in the pockets of consumers. Consumers spend, and the result is a healthy, thriving economy.We should not lose sight of the principal objective of this bill: it is designed to create jobs by exempting small businesses with fewer than 20 people from unfair dismissal laws. The bill provides a simple and appropriate method for dealing with invalid applications, which can clearly be determined on the basis of documents provided to the commission to be outside its jurisdiction because of the small business exemption. This bill does not change the legislation relating to employees who believe they have been unlawfully terminated because of discriminatory reasons such as sex, age or religion. It does not affect existing employees. For the most part, trainees or apprentices will not be affected. However, they may be excluded from seeking an unfair dismissal remedy if they are engaged under a contract of employment for a specified period of time, within the meaning as defined under the Workplace Relations Regulations 1996. This, of course, would depend on the terms of the particular contract or the indenture of the apprenticeship. For the opposition to oppose this legislation indicates their unwillingness to promote opportunities for a sector that contributes greatly to the Australian economy. If they oppose this legislation, then the words of their past leader, the Hon. Kim Beazley, during an interview on Perth radio in 2000 will come back to haunt them. In an interview on Perth radio station 6PR on 7 August 2000, Mr Beazley told his audience that his party had `never pretended to be a small business party'.If they oppose this bill they oppose growth and domestic expansion, they oppose opportunity for the unemployed and they oppose opportunity for the small business sector. But, then again, the opposition have never pretended to be a small business party. When Labor were in office, their unfair dismissal laws hampered job growth in the small business sector, according to the Council of Small Business Associations. Their industrial relations system was dominated by deals between big unions and big bureaucracy, and their centralised award system severely restricted flexibility. They introduced new and higher taxes, including a capital gains tax; they increased company tax and automatically indexed fuel excise tax; and, they increased charges and had higher costs of compliance, with red tape.In comparison, the Howard government have cut the company tax rate, from 36 per cent to 30 per cent. We have introduced new capital gains tax concessions for small business and ceased to automatically index fuel excise. Today, more than 80 per cent of taxpayers have a marginal tax rate of 30 per cent or less, compared with around 30 per cent of taxpayers before the start of the new tax system. Under the Howard government we have produced the greatest reform of the tax system. We have fought to keep the youth wage and, as a result of strong economic management, small business overdraft rates have fallen to eight per cent. Our economy is prospering, despite a slowdown globally.When Labor introduced their national unfair dismissal laws, that policy had a direct effect on both the confidence of employers and the casualisation of the Australian work force. Employers felt constrained—I hear it every day when I speak to employers—and any thought of job creation was hindered by the threat of the expensive claims of an unfair dismissal case. Members opposite may well scoff at this, but job security suffered because a large portion of the labour market, small business, was no longer so willing to create jobs. The possible financial implications of unfair dismissal cases figured in many a debate on employment expansion.In an article in the Courier-Mail of 12 February, ACTU President Sharan Burrow claimed that this bill would remove the job security and the legal rights of more than 2 million Australians. I have news for Ms Burrow: job security will be created as a result of this bill, because it allows small businesses, which account for 96 per cent of all businesses, to create opportunities without the threat of the high cost of an unfair dismissal case.Let me reiterate that employees will not be exempted from prosecuting if they consider that they have been unlawfully terminated, based on discrimination—that has not changed. The very fact that the number of unfair dismissals has literally halved since 1996 gives credence to the fact that, under the Labor Government, the unfair dismissal laws incurred higher costs to small business, to the detriment of jobs growth and business confidence. Unemployment was high and the average number of jobs per month was only 5,900. Under the Howard government, jobs growth has grown to an average of 13,600 per month and the labour force participation rate is the highest ever, with around 9.3 million Australians in employment. The youth unemployment rate has been reduced by approximately 10 per cent; although, it is still higher than the national rate, around one in 20 teenagers are unemployed compared with around one in 10 under Labor, and we still have to work on that. Small business, which accounts for over 40 per cent of the Australian work force, is feeling confident. In my electorate of Petrie there are over 3,000 local small businesses. Many of these businesses employ 20 people or fewer and they will subsequently be affected by this bill. In the northern end of my electorate is the Redcliffe Peninsula. The unemployment rate on the peninsula is often several percentage points above the national and state average. But last year, after a concerted effort by the local council and small businesses across the peninsula, the number of job seekers across the electorate dropped by 2.2 per cent in the first quarter of the year, while the remainder of Queensland experienced an increase. This is as a result of the Redcliffe Smiles campaign, organised through the cooperation of the small business sector and the Redcliffe City Council, under the umbrella of the Redcliffe Visionary Advisory Group; there was an increase in local employment opportunities and increases in the number of opportunities for young people.As a result of a concerted local effort to support local small businesses, many new business ventures have been attracted to the peninsula. In August last year, the OECD released their economic report on Australia. The report focused on the strong recovery in the Australian economy in this year, despite significant risks in the world outlook. But of increasing interest to the current debate on this bill is the fact that the OECD attributed the marked reduction in Australia's structural unemployment rate to the progress we are making on structural reform, and in particular the steps we have taken to improve the operation of the Australian labour market. The Workplace Relations Act 1996 stands as a beacon in the redirection of Australia away from a prescriptive and complex set of awards and towards a more flexible industrial relations system. According to the OECD our unemployment rate remains too high. However, the report cautioned against a reversion to past policies that do little to improve job growth opportunities for the Australian labour market. The OECD report also points to the existence of continuing impediments to the effective operation of the labour market, affecting industrial relations, labour market assistance and welfare to work and school to work transitions.The bill before us today is about job creation and removing that terrible impediment to job growth. The OECD report is a strong endorsement of the breadth of the workplace relations reforms, of which this bill is one. During the 2001 election campaign, the government pledged to continue its workplace relations reform—in particular, the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002. The life of the Howard government has been characterised by a series of workplace relations reforms. We have reduced the power of trade unions and third parties to interfere with workplace relations in small business where they do not speak for local employees. These reforms have restored the right of employees to choose voluntary union membership and have abolished discriminatory preference for unionists. We know that what is good for Australian business is good for Australian jobs. The opposition is not concerned about job creation; they are concerned that workplace reforms may erode their union based power.Last year I spoke to a motion introduced by the opposition about the introduction of a 35-hour working week, similar to the French legislation. I feel that that would be to the detriment of the Australian work force if it were introduced. The bill that we have before us today creates job opportunities in the small business sector. It reduces red tape, it encourages growth and it leads to job security. If we want Australia to experience positive growth rates while the rest of the world slows, we need to support workplace reforms.19:16:00620Martin, Stephen, MPDr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—In listening to the member for Petrie, I got the distinct impression from her contribution that she was actually arguing against the need to have the Workplace Relations Amendment (Fair Dismissal) Bill 2002 before this place this afternoon, and I could not agree with her more. She is arguing that the number of claims for unfair dismissal have fallen and, therefore, we need to change the laws to do with unfair dismissal. If under existing legislation it is not a problem, why are we tampering with it? I think we know why we are tampering with it. This has to rate as one of the greatest comeback pieces of legislation that this parliament has ever seen. I have just about lost count of the number of times the government has bowled this up as part of a broader strategy to drive the wedge in the Australian community once again on a different issue. The wedge was driven last year, as we saw, on immigration, and they got a result out of that. The next item on the agenda was signalled before the parliament even came back: to drive the wedge in the Australian community, and hopefully within the Australian Labor Party, on the issue of industrial relations. So what is the first bill that we see bowled up again? Unfair dismissal.In a former parliament, I was the Labor Party spokesman on small business and tourism. I can recall well, between 1996 and 1998, the first time that the then Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business tried to bowl this thing up. Again, it was all about job creation, it was all about reducing complexity, it was all about looking after the workers. It was none of that. What it was about was this philosophical, ideological bent that said that in some way we had to do whatever was possible, from a Liberal government's perspective, to smash the trade union movement—this insidious trade union movement that seemed to be everywhere.I find it extraordinary, when you look at the real facts and figures in a debate like this, that that argument is continuing to find some credence in the broad community. The fact is this: less than 20 per cent of the private sector work force is unionised. So this demonisation that we see from the Prime Minister's latest bovver boy, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, is just nonsense. Suggesting that in some way the bogeyman that they continue to create—supposedly the trade union movement—has no relevance here when you get down to the real facts. But as far as this government is concerned, the facts never get in the way of a good story. We have seen revelation after revelation coming out about the `children overboard' issue to put into doubt in the minds of every Australian the bona fides and the credibility of any claim being made by this government.I have to say, in defence of the minister for workplace relations, he had a great teacher. If there was one bloke that could obfuscate and get around the truth, it was Peter Reith. As to this 50,000 job creation figure that has been plucked out of the air and keeps being talked about by the government as what will happen for small business if these unfair dismissal laws get through—guess what? It is another Peter Reith plucked-out-of-the-air conversation, possibly in a tearoom type of example, because it came from Rob Bastian at COSBOA.VH4McArthur, Stewart, MP8I4Martin, Stephen, MPDr MARTIN—Rob Bastian and I, we had the opportunity when I was the shadow minister for small business—as my good friend, the Deputy Whip on the government side reminds me—to talk about these issues. It was not in a tearoom; we talked about them at different forums where we got together and spoke about the need for reforms in small business and what was required. Rob Bastian used to say to me: `I'll tell you what, what governments need to do is reduce red tape. What governments need to do is to take away the complexity of existing laws when it comes to dealing with the taxation regime.' He used to talk to me about the fact that small businesses were creators of employment. But what he also said, in an unguarded moment—maybe with a cup of tea in his hand—was that that 50,000 figure was actually plucked out of the air by him.A journalist asked him one day, `Listen Rob, what do you reckon—how many jobs would be created with this government's unfair dismissal laws?' He said, `Oh, 50,000 is a good enough figure—it's fairly round and it's fairly large.' And that was the figure that the ex-Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, the now discredited Telecard Pete, used to use at every opportunity. It has become folklore. People everywhere are running around saying `50,000 jobs'. Another one of the claims that was made by the honourable member for Petrie in her contribution involved what happened after these unfair dismissal laws came into play in the days of the Keating government. The fact of the matter is that, in the period from March 1994 to December 1996, during which the more comprehensive unfair dismissal protections of the 1993 act were in place, employment growth was stronger than in the following three years, during which less comprehensive protections applied. So let us not have this rubbish again, this urban myth, that in some way the enactment of these laws will create an additional 50,000 jobs, and let us not think that for some reason when these unfair dismissal laws were put in place—a tougher regime than now—there was not job growth and job creation in the two to three years after the event. It did happen: jobs were created.Like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I get around to the small businesses in my electorate. I get around there, I talk to them, I send surveys out to them and I say, `You tell me what you reckon are the features that affect you most.' I talk to my two brothers who have small businesses up on the North Coast—not exactly in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley: one is in the electorate of the honourable member for Richmond and the other is across the border in Queensland. They have two small businesses, and I say to them, `What are the issues that affect you?' And they keep telling me, `GST compliance.' They keep saying to me, `We were promised a reduction in paperwork.' They tell me, `We were promised that we would spend fewer hours putting together returns to send to the tax man.' And they used to say to me, `We were promised that we wouldn't be a tax collector for Peter Costello, the Treasurer, but that is exactly what has happened.' They are working longer hours and they have had to spend money to put computer equipment in—or at least one of them has. The other has not; he is still an old bookkeeping man.Nevertheless, it is an issue which small businesses think is important. If you ask them to rate the issues of concern to them, unprompted, you will find that this issue of unfair dismissal continues to fall down the list. In fact, if you asked a lot of small businesses today what was one of the burning issues, they would tell you that it was public liability insurance. They understand that there are some real issues that will confront Australia—and are confronting Australia now—as a result of rising premiums and the difficulties small businesses and other entities have in getting public liability insurance.What are we seeing in terms of the government's response to this and the assistance that it is going to give to small business? In the break before we came back to parliament, we saw the unedifying spectacle of this issue being played out in the broad community between the new minister dealing with this regulatory area, Senator Coonan, and the Minister for Small Business and Tourism in this place, Joe Hockey. We saw `Jovial Joe' go out and argue the point that stronger work needed to be done and protection needed to be at the national level; he had a plan. We then saw Senator Coonan come in and pull the rug right out from underneath the minister—not an easy thing to do; nevertheless, she did so. As a consequence, we have seen him come in this place and change his tune in the answers that he has given to questions that have been put to him about what should happen. He passes the buck to the states and says that this is all a state issue.I know that the government is calling together the state ministers responsible for this, and on this side of the parliament we know and understand that there should be some good intent to arrive at a decent outcome in this. Small businesses want to know that they have governments that really do take them seriously. Small businesses want to know that they have governments that are not simply mouthing rhetoric but is actually achieving things. When you look at the difference between the present government and the opposition on this question, you see a stark difference. On the government side, the Minister for Small Business and Tourism is in the Second XI, not the cabinet. Unfortunately, Mr Hockey is not in the cabinet. He did not do the right thing on HIH—he was a bad boy there; he did not see it coming. He is not necessarily a great friend of the Prime Minister's: he backs the Treasurer. As a consequence, he was moved sideways. On our side, on the other hand, we have always recognised the importance of small business—despite some of the comments that were made by, again, the member for Petrie as to what the former Leader of the Opposition may have said, and it was taken out of context anyway. Small business is in our shadow cabinet. Indeed, two senior members of the Labor opposition have responsibility for working policy around it: Bob McMullan, our shadow Treasurer, and Senator Stephen Conroy, our shadow minister for finance, small business and financial services. I think that that is recognition that we are serious about this.Having done that job for the opposition between 1996 and 1998 and having witnessed the work that my colleague Joel Fitzgibbon, the member for Hunter, has done in the last parliament on this, I can say with some experience that there is a serious attempt by the Labor Party to address the sorts of issues that small businesses raise with us as a concern. I can remember going around Australia during that 1996-98 period and talking to a number of folk in small business, associations and tourism organisations about the looming difficulties of the implementation of the GST. I told them about red tape. I told them about complexity. I told them that compliance was not going to be made any easier, as had been promised by the government. Guess what? I was certainly proved right. The Prime Minister went and changed the whole thing after he was forced to do so over the GST forms. He was forced there on the BAS forms. The Treasurer said back in 1999, `There are no problems; we don't need to change any of these forms—not one little bit. It is all perfectly simple for every small businessman to fill out.' Rubbish. So we saw yet another backflip by this Prime Minister when it got a bit too difficult for him at the start of 2001, and, as a consequence, those changes were put in place.My first point is that the Labor Party believe that this unfair dismissal legislation is nothing but a political stunt. It is not needed. It is part of the wedge politics of this government. My second point is that we are committed, both in opposition and as a future government, to working with small business, employees and their peak bodies to make unfair dismissal laws more effective by addressing issues of procedural complexity and costs. That is what the answer is here—not this mishmash of nonsense, of recycled garbage, coming forward under the latest government bovver boy dealing with small business and trying to suggest to Australian small businesses that it has their best interests at heart.Debate interrupted.Adjournment62310000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—Order! It being 7.30 p.m., I propose the question:That the House do now adjourn.62319:30:00623Crean, Simon, MPMr CREANDT4HothamALPLeader of the Opposition00—I indicated last week in a general condolence motion that I wanted to have the opportunity to say something about Ralph Jacobi, a former member of the House, but the time did not permit in the context of last Tuesday's condolences. I now want to take that opportunity. Ralph represented the Labor Party in this place as the member for Hawker between 1969 and 1987. Upon his retirement, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia in June 1987 after a petition signed by many members of the parliament was presented to the government. Before entering parliament, he had worked as an abattoir worker, a painter and hospital orderly. He had also served briefly in the Royal Australian Navy. He was a proud unionist and he was Executive Officer of the South Australian Trades and Labour Council and General Secretary of the Australian Government Workers Association. Ralph was an enthusiastic and hardworking member and was second to none in looking after the interests of his constituents and as a local campaigner. He also was an extremely brave person. On 26 February 1971, a man held police at bay with a gun from a home at Morphettville and demanded to speak to his MP. Ralph, who had helped the man, who was a war veteran with a repatriation problem, risked his life by entering the house and came out with the then unarmed man 10 minutes later. He was also very conscientious in his parliamentary duties. He served on the Foreign Affairs and Defence and Trade Committee, the Library Committee and the Privileges Committee. He was a federal delegate to the Australian constitutional conventions in 1973, 1975 and 1976. After his retirement, he continued his public duties as chair of the Advisory Council of the National Archives of Australia from 1988 to 1991. Ralph was also very fiercely independent in his views. He refused to be associated with any faction of the Labor Party and it meant that his support in the Labor caucus could never be taken for granted. Ralph had many policy interests and some, such as the ongoing tragedy of the Middle East, have always been with us. On other issues, he was ahead of his time. For instance, Ralph saw the need for more effective management of the Murray-Darling system and called for the establishment of an institute of fresh water studies to conduct research into waterways. One of his most prescient concerns was the proper regulation of insurance companies. He was stung into action by the collapse of a number of insurance companies in the early 1970s and succeeded in having the Whitlam government carry out an inquiry into the industry. Ralph thought that the resulting legislation did not go far enough but he succeeded in getting what he believed to be respectable legislation onto the statute books in 1986. But he was concerned that solvency margins were too low—as he pointed out to me in a recent letter:Reflecting on the causes behind the collapse of GIO and HIH, I firmly believe that the community would be saved a vast expense in the supervision of general insurers if the entry point was raised ... to keep the rogues out.The former Minister for Financial Services and Regulations, in fact, announced measures to increase solvency guarantees when outlining the government's response to the HIH collapse and establishing the current royal commission. Ralph went on in that same letter to point out that we need to create funds to assist out-of-pocket clients of failed insurers and more thorough provisions for determining fit and proper persons for insurance identity. He ended with a question, which we should all keep in mind, in many areas of public regulation. Why is it that we are always shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? Ralph and his wife, Stella, were much liked. My mother, and also father—who was Treasurer when Ralph was agitating for reform in the insurance industry—remember him as a man who was liked by his constituents but who continued to be helpful to his neighbours even after his retirement. There is a great story told about Ralph and the extent to which some MPs will go to get service to their constituents. He was great mates with Gil Langley, former test wicket keeper and South Australian MP. They used to doorknock together starting at opposite ends of the street. One day they met in the middle of the street. He had knocked on a few doors but could not find him. He found Gil on the roof of a constituent's house. It could easily have been Ralph. Ralph and Gil both died recently. They reflect the passing of an era but there is a lot that we can learn from them. Ralph is survived by his wife, Stella, and sons Malcolm, Andrew and Colin. Our thoughts go out to them in memory of their father. He lived a good life and he will be missed.62419:35:00624Billson, Bruce, MPMr BILLSON1K6DunkleyLP10—Last Saturday, 16 February was the Frankston and District Netball Association's Netball Expo and Family Fun Day. It was a great day. Netball is a very important sport in the community I represent. The FDNA have really got their act together and are doing an extremely good job presenting their sport to the local community. The facilities at Jubilee Park are excellent, with a number of asphalt outdoor surfaces and a two-court indoor stadium where the FDNA holds training sessions. Some of the higher league teams and also a lot of the local competitions play there. In conjunction with Netball Victoria and the Melbourne Kestrels Netball Club, the FDNA put on the Netball Expo and the Family Fun Day as the first of what we hope will be an annual event. It is about promoting netball as a fun sport which is community orientated in a friendly family environment. It was a sign-up day where they were presenting their sport to anyone who is interested in netball, hoping to encourage them to become more actively involved in sport generally, but in netball in particular. Throughout the day there were a number of free activities. I was happy to be a part of promoting those and encouraging people to get involved. Some of the activities involved coaching clinics, some super clinics for those with a bit more talent and a bit more skill. There were some clinics for people who were thinking of returning to the sport, perhaps after some time away. A number of mums in particular were involved and they were getting plenty of encouragement to participate in mid-week competition, both for the social interaction and the health benefits of being involved in some sort of sport. The clinics were also for the netters and beginners. Nettas, I found out, are the real little netball players. They play modified rules where they can take some additional steps, they play with a slightly smaller ball and the netball ring is lowered. They can get a taste of the sport by getting involved. They can enjoy netball not only for its individual benefits but also for the benefits it brings in learning a bit about life, working with other people, participating in a team sport and getting involved with their friends and their mates in doing something that is a bit of fun.We had quite an amount of talent there on the day. Former Australian and Melbourne Kestrels player Shelley O'Donnell was there. Shelley, for those people who do not know, is a bit of a netballing legend! Shelley was captain of the Australian team for the three years up to 1999. She also has Victorian and Australian honours. She is a very talented and highly regarded person. Shelley made the time to come down and work and talk with the many people who aspire to achieve what she has achieved in her netballing life. She is back playing state league now and is finding the pre-season a bit challenging. We also had former Melbourne Kestrels player Narelle Garbutt there. Narelle currently is employed by the Gandell group. For those people who are not aware, the Gandell group owns a vast chunk of the retail space in Frankston. We are trying to persuade Narelle that Frankston Bayside, as it is now called, should sponsor this event in the future, given Narelle's link with that organisation and the importance of netball in our area. Melissa Rossoukas was there. Melissa is Michelle Rossoukas's sister. For those who do not know, Michelle is a regular with the Melbourne Kestrels. Her sister, Melissa, was in the Kestrels squad but is now, I think, a PE teacher at Lilydale Secondary College. Melissa spoke about how the Lilydale Secondary College is promoting its involvement in competition netball.It was a great day. There were many special things on: obstacle courses, a gladiator challenge—I am sure that would be of interest to members of the House—a goal shooting competition and face painting. There was coloured hair spray, which was popular with some. Fairy nails were on display as well. There were raffle draws and giveaways. But these things do not just happen; they happen because of the work of Shelley Haynes at the Frankston District Netball Association, with Sharni Freeman being the horsepower behind this event.There was sponsorship by Netball Victoria, the Kestrels, Langwarrin Sports Medicine Centre, Frankston Tyrepower and a whole bunch of others who put their hands up to make this family day a fun day and to get people involved in netball as a healthy, popular and family-friendly recreational opportunity. My congratulations to the FDNA for another successful year, and well done on this event. I hope everyone gets involved.62519:40:00625Snowdon, Warren, MPMr SNOWDONIJ4LingiariALP00—Tonight I would like to celebrate the life of Kumatjayi Lechleitner, a Central Australian who passed away recently and whose funeral is on Friday. It is my privilege to be the member for Lingiari, a seat named after a great Territorian and indeed a great Australian, Vincent Lingiari, who led the famous walk-off from the Wave Hill Cattle Station that led to the land rights movement for indigenous Australians. Like Vincent Lingiari, Kumatjayi Lechleitner was a leader. Kumatjayi Lechleitner was a witness to change, he represented his community over many years and he was a great leader. Born just prior to the Second World War, as a boy Kumatjayi Lechleitner lived at Coniston, a name which is familiar to many in Central Australia. It should be familiar to all Australians because of its historical significance. It is a cattle station approximately 300 kilometres north of Alice Springs. Coniston is infamous in Australian history as the site of a huge massacre of indigenous Australians in August 1928. Like many of his generation Kumatjayi grew up learning the ways of the cattle industry. He learnt about digging wells, putting up fences, erecting yards and riding horses—long, hard days with little in return. He learnt the ways of station managers and European stockmen. He also learnt many Aboriginal languages and became a person of influence and recognition within the Aboriginal community. He became a man of standing in relation to ceremonial matters in Aboriginal law. He was also a talented artist in the area of traditional Aboriginal painting. These experiences gave him an insight into what was needed for indigenous Australians in Central Australia. He understood the changes brought about by European settlement and the need for Aboriginal Australians to know their land and law and to take responsibility for their future.As Aboriginal self-determination developed, Kumatjayi Lechleitner, through his knowledge and respected position, was able to play a leading role in a number of Aboriginal organisations important to the people of Central Australia. In the 1970s he began working at the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, an Aboriginal health organisation in Alice Springs. He initially worked as a driver and later as an interpreter. It was during this time that he worked on health projects that were groundbreaking. With researcher Pam Nathan he was co-author of two books that laid the groundwork for later developments in Aboriginal health across Australia. The books Settle Down Country and Health Business recognised the importance of community control and the need for comprehensive primary health care in Aboriginal communities.Kumatjayi Lechleitner was an executive member of the Tangentyere Council, an Aboriginal council based in Alice Springs set up to service the camps located around the town. This organisation continues to grow, and it owes a great debt to pioneers like Kumatjayi Lechleitner who made the effort to take up the fight for the dispossessed of Central Australia. In later years he lived on an outstation near Papunya, west of Alice Springs, and served on the ATSIC Papunya Regional Council. He also worked for the Central Land Council as a field officer and was a member of that organisation. In these roles he was a facilitator, and meetings and discussions were streamlined and fruitful as a result of his skills in cross-cultural interaction and his knowledge of the needs of the different communities. Kumatjayi Lechleitner knew that Aboriginal people had to struggle to control their future.Kumatjayi was a friend and a mentor to me. He was someone who understood the importance of political involvement. He was someone who was a very strong supporter of and advocate for me. I can recall on one particular occasion at a Land Council meeting at which I was a guest he got up and said, `You'—pointing to me across this meeting in the dust—I walk around with your head on my chest. I walk around with your head all the time. You're working for us.' It was a great privilege for me to know that this man thought so much of me.Kumatjayi Lechleitner worked hard for his people and he worked hard for his family. He devoted his life to his people's struggle and he never gave up. His son, Ken, works in Central Australia, continuing the legacy of his father—a legacy that will last through the years. I know that Ken and his family believe that Kumatjayi Lechleitner's legacy is one which has been of significance to the people of Central Australia. In my view it will in the longer term be realised that it made a great contribution to the people of Australia. 62719:44:00627Haase, Barry, MPMr HAASE84TKalgoorlieLP10—I rise this evening with mixed emotions. I wish to bring to the attention of the House the outstanding acknowledgment that has been given to people of my electorate from the Jigalong community in the first screening today of the popular movie Rabbit-Proof Fence. I was unable to be in attendance at the movie at Jigalong but hundreds of guests were there, plus the local community. It was a night of great celebration.The reason I say I rise with mixed emotions is that I have read some of the detailed accounts and criticisms of the movie. I have read also an article published in the Sunday Mail on 17 February this year written by Andrew Bolt and I am disturbed by what I read. I have had an extensive experience in and around Aboriginal people of my electorate over my lifetime.DK6Hockey, Joe, MPMr Hockey—They vote for you as well.84THaase, Barry, MPMr HAASE—Indeed they do—in high proportions. When I read the storyline of this movie and hear reports about the manner in which the Aboriginal situation is portrayed, I am disturbed because many of the thousands of Australians who will watch this movie with great interest, displaying great emotion, will take it to be the truth. They will take it to be the truth because it purports to be the truth on many levels. Unfortunately, it will only be tonight here in the House that I will see this movie with my own eyes for the first time. But I have it on good authority that the scenes depict a situation that is far from the truth and is greatly removed from what was the truth in 1931. The set of circumstances that saw the removal of these young girls from Jigalong to Moore River was a disturbing set of circumstances. It was a set of circumstances that governments of the day tried to mitigate as much as possible.The movie, I believe, depicts the children in question living an idyllic life with their parents in the Jigalong community. The daughter of the main character the story is written about writes in her own words that their situation in Jigalong was horrendous. Because they were the first in their tribe of mixed blood, they were ostracised and put upon frequently. They were removed for their own safety, in the main, to the Moore River settlement.They escaped, certainly, and it disappoints me that the movie is not purely about the act of courage and determination that saw those children walk that 1,600 kilometres through very harsh country back to Jigalong, back to their tribal lands. But the movie does not settle at just telling that story of courage. The movie attempts to paint a picture of a horrendous situation perpetrated by the government of the day: dragging these people away, putting them in iron cages and transporting them some 1,600 kilometres to a place that was bureaucratic and difficult. Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, these children in particular were transported by sea and then by car, and they stopped off for cakes and lemonade on the way. The daughter makes this point in her book: that her mother reported having a thoroughly good time on her transit to Moore River.The movie disturbs me because there have been so many unfortunate circumstances in our relationship with our indigenous people over the last 200-odd years. So much truth needs to be told and it disappoints me that an opportunity to tell the truth and inform mostly urban Australians has not been taken, and that the reality has been clouded by moviemaker productive licence. I urge all people certainly to see the movie but to do so with an open mind and perhaps refer to some further information before taking it all in.62719:49:00627Adams, Dick, MPMr ADAMSBV5LyonsALP00—The insurance industry is at a crisis point. The sector is in turmoil. Policyholders are now facing the prospect of big increases in premiums and public liability insurance has gone through the roof. We have to keep insurance in the realms of possibility; otherwise no-one will be able to afford to insure anything and we will be at the mercy of legal excesses and the inability to insure at all.Insurance is an old business, traced back to Babylonia where traders were encouraged to assume the risks of the caravan trade through loans. These were repaid with interest only after the goods had arrived safely. Later, marine insurance became widespread and many will know the beginnings of Lloyds of London from a coffee shop where merchants, shipowners and underwriters met to transact business by negotiating to insure their goods and ships from loss or damage, usually pledging the means of transport—the ship—as security. Originally, the purpose was to ensure that goods arrived where and when they were supposed to rather than as a business to make money. Nowadays, insurance has taken on a very different role, where the mainstream of the business is the investment of the funds that are presented in premiums. Profits from these are seen as part of the reserves from which claims can be paid. However, in recent years, the inadequacy of the legislative framework underpinning general insurance, the ability of managers to manage and the diminished role of those people who actually calculate risks and set premiums have sown the seeds for a disaster such as the collapse of HIH. Decades ago, well before the tragic disaster of September 11 and certainly before the collapse of HIH, the industry was in trouble. Insurance was becoming a gamble. Insufficient premiums were being collected to cover the risks which had been inadequately assessed because of the pressures to reduce the levels of outstanding claims liabilities. A downturn in investments and losses on the Stock Exchange made this worse by diminishing the amount of funds available for payouts.Where a disaster happens, whether it be global, such as the destruction of the World Trade Centre, or whether it be a local bushfire or flood, suddenly the ordinary person becomes exposed to paying for their own misfortune as insurance companies fail because of the lack of funds. Many smaller companies send their risks for reinsurance to one of the bigger companies and to build their capital base again these bigger companies are charging these small companies greater premiums, which in turn are passed back to the consumer.But to an extent we have ourselves to blame for the hike in premiums now. Australians are more willing than ever to take legal action if something happens in a public place. An example given recently was `if you fall off your chair at home, it is an accident, but if you fall off a chair in a shopping mall, it is an opportunity to sue somebody'. It appears from the statistics that we use insurance claims as a `cash cow' if we think we can benefit from it and the claim can be deemed legitimate. Gone are the days when people took a certain amount of responsibility for their wellbeing. Not everyone is like that, but there is every possibility that claims in the professional indemnity and public liability areas of general insurance will end up in the courts. This automatically puts pressure on the price of premiums, even if there have been no claims in one particular geographic area.So what is to be done if we are to try to keep the costs of insurance in some controllable limits? In cases of public liability, it would be better if payouts were levelled at the cost of repairing the injury for small claims than trying to compensate someone for their damages. I believe that any national scheme should have some ability to heal within its ambit. But it is possible to have a scheme that will cover uniformly across states. In fact, if we go back to 1975, a national compensation bill was ready to go to parliament, but it was defeated.New Zealand has been developing a mutual liability fund called Riskpool. The scheme has been aimed primarily at local government. The purpose is to provide an industry-owned method of funding liability insurance that will ensure that adequate cover is always available on a reasonable basis irrespective of the vagaries of the cyclical insurance market. These sorts of funds are owned by the participants, and any profits will be retained for the benefit of the members. There are a number of advantages if the scheme is run by a trust with a board that reflects the likely users of the insurance scheme. It should not be made up entirely of local government people, but it could include community representatives who can have a say in setting risk guidelines and be able to advise those who seek insurance on how to minimise their risks— 10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—Order!0V5Slipper, Peter, MPMr Slipper—Time's up!10000DEPUTY SPEAKER, TheThe DEPUTY SPEAKER—The parliamentary secretary will wait for the chair to determine whether time is up.0V5Slipper, Peter, MPMr Slipper—I would have liked it to go on, Mr Deputy Speaker.10000DEPUTY SPEAKER, TheThe DEPUTY SPEAKER—The chair will determine that.62919:54:00629Hartsuyker, Luke, MPMr HARTSUYKER00AMMCowperNP10—I would like to address the issue of public liability insurance, an issue which the member for Lyons has touched on. I must say that I agree with quite a number of the things that the good member raised. Public liability is an issue which touches the very heart of our community. It is very important to the National Party, being a party who represent regional Australia, because we are very much based in our community and we have a very strong community spirit. Many of the activities that we wish to participate in and love very much are being severely restricted by the rising cost of public liability insurance. Functions that were held in the country hall or on the village green are no longer taking place because society has become much more litigious. It is no longer possible to hold a sports day, for instance. I mentioned in my maiden speech the Coutts Crossing Sports Day which, after over 100 years, was cancelled due to an inability to lodge public liability insurance cover.We need to protect ourselves from the negligence of others, but we also need to protect our way of life. We need to protect the institutions which we hold dear. The problem that is arising is that as we have become much more litigious we have focused on the potential benefits of claims which can accrue through a public liability case. The member for Lyons raised the issue of falling off a chair at home as opposed to falling off a chair in a public place. One is a simple accident and the other becomes, perhaps, a claim for compensation. We need to reverse that mentality and become very focused on looking after ourselves and taking some reasonable care—taking responsibility for our own actions and not seeking to blame others for our misfortunes when, perhaps, in many cases it is our own responsibility to take a reasonable level of care when we go about our duties, whether at home or in a public place. It seems that the duty of care which is being loaded upon community groups and businesses alike is not just to take reasonable care and not to be negligent, but it appears that various community groups and businesses seem almost to need to guarantee the safety of people when they are in their premises. It is a very high standard of care which is being hoisted upon various elements of community and it is one that we need to look at very seriously.The issue of public liability in my electorate is incredibly important from the point of view that many of our activities are adventure tourism activities such as whitewater rafting, rock climbing, and go-cart racing. Many of those types of activities, by their nature, are very risky.0V5Slipper, Peter, MPMr Slipper—What about country halls?00AMMHartsuyker, Luke, MPMr HARTSUYKER—Country halls are of a community nature. Country halls run very safe activities, but, by virtue of the litigious nature of our society, the premiums for them are going up and functions in country halls are ceasing. Getting back to tourism, tourism is the lifeblood of many areas these days. In many places where traditional industries are in decline, tourism is filling the void, so it is absolutely vital that we support our tourism industry. It is absolutely vital that tourism businesses are able to obtain public liability insurance cover. That would flow on right through the community. It would flow on to the accommodation sector. Nobody goes to a tourist location merely to sleep in the beds. They go to that tourist location to enjoy the mix of products and the mix of activities there. It has an impact on the activities that are available, the economy and employment. It is a very important issue indeed in the electorate of Cowper. As the member for Cowper, I receive phone calls from constituents almost on a daily basis complaining about the inability to source public liability insurance, particularly for adventure tourism but also for local community groups. It is a very difficult problem. Our approach needs to concentrate more on the provision of care for those who are unfortunate enough to be injured rather than provide very large payouts. We need to focus on the provision of annuities for those who are unfortunate enough to be injured rather than large lump sums. It is often the case that when someone is injured and they receive a large lump sum, the money is not used as effectively as it might be—the money is squandered—then two, three or five years down the track the recipient of a large payout is left penniless and then becomes a burden on our social security system. We need to look at the structure of our payments, the duty of care which businesses and community groups have, and the circumstances in which people are entitled to take action. (Time expired)10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—Order! It being 8 p.m., the debate is interrupted.House adjourned at 8.00 p.m.Notices630The following notices were given:7V5Williams, Daryl, MPMr Williams to present a bill for an act to amend the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986, and for related purposes.VK6Vale, Danna, MPMrs Vale to present a bill for an act to amend the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986, and for related purposes.0V5Slipper, Peter, MPMr Slipper to present a bill for an act to amend certain Acts relating to superannuation, and for related purposes.BV5Adams, Dick, MPMr Adams to move:That this House:(1) acknowledges that there is enormous concern in the community about the rising cost of all insurances, but in particular public liability insurance;(2) recognises that this is of particular significance where community groups are being asked to cover community events for public liability and is causing the events to be cancelled because the costs are impossible to cover;(3) understands that this is the responsibility of Federal and State governments to provide a solution to public liability costs; and(4) asks the Federal Government to amend the Insurance Act 1973 and the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 to;(a) provide an ability for groups to provide risk assessment on events and recommend schedules of premiums based on real risk under a set of standardised guidelines;(b) undertake capping of public liability payouts and relate them to cost of medical and rehabilitation payments; and(c) have an independent Government-backed board to assess claims so that they may be based on foundation principles of insurance rather than market values.84SO'Byrne, Michelle, MPMs O'Byrne to move:That this House:(1) condemns the Howard Government for its policies that have and continue to undermine the Australian shipping industry;(2) recognises that this neglect puts at great risk our environment, our security and our ability to compete in the shipping industry and is therefore against Australia's national interest; and(3) calls upon the Minister to support the Australian shipping industry before our coastline is ravaged and our industry and merchant employment opportunities destroyed.LL6Baldwin, Robert, MPMr Baldwin to move:That this House:(1) recognises hundreds of people from the electorate of Paterson who took part in the Christmas 2001 bushfires;(2) congratulates fire fighters and other members of emergency services in Paterson who not only volunteered their services to fight fires in the local area such as Swan Bay, Fullerton Cove, Booral, Stroud, Gloucester and Nabiac but who also travelled across the state of NSW to fight fires where homes and property were threatened;(3) acknowledges the following Fire Control Centres and their members within Paterson, for their contribution to the bushfire effort:(a) the Great Lakes Fire Control Centre and the Fire Control Officer Ian Lewis;(b) the Dungog Fire Control Centre and the Acting Fire Control Officer Allan Gillespie; (c) the Port Stephens Fire Control Centre and the Fire Control Officer Mark Lewis; and(d) the Maitland Fire Control Centre and the Fire Control Officer Barry Pont; and(4) calls on the NSW Government to implement its recently announced changes to fire management policies as soon as possible and put efficient and effective hazard reduction plans into place before the next fire season. 2002-02-20—————The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley) took the chair at 9.40 a.m.Statements by Members63263209:40:00632McFarlane, Jann, MPMs JANN McFARLANE83CStirlingALP00—Congratulations, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, on your appointment. I would like to bring to the attention of the House an issue that concerns me greatly—the security of our ports. Our country has experienced a very public and emotional debate about border protection. The Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs has regularly been on his feet in the House in the last two weeks extolling the virtues of the government's actions on border protection. And yet the government, for all its rhetoric, is ignoring a problem which is very real.On the morning of 8 February, two officials from the International Transport Federation, Dean Summers and Matt Purcell, visited the Greek owned, Panamanian flagged and Chinese crewed vessel Axion 1 in Melbourne. The two officials were investigating allegations that the crew had not been paid for seven months. Upon investigation it was discovered that the captain did not have or would not provide any documents relating to the ship or the crew. These documents are commonly known as the ship's articles and have been used for hundreds of years to identify ships' crews for immigration and other purposes. The articles are usually checked by Immigration and are often the crews' only form of identification.The ITF inspectors then contacted AMSA, and the immigration department subsequently visited the ship to check the ship's articles. I have since received information that no documents identifying the crew were found. The incident was reported in the Australian newspaper on 12 February 2002 in an article by Barclay Crawford. Some key points made in that article are factually incorrect. The first error was a report that the ship had been blocked from docking by the immigration department. That is totally false. The ship docked in Melbourne on 6 February, two whole days before the ITF visit and their call to the authorities. During those two days, the crew were free to come and go as they pleased without any scrutiny. A number of questions remain unanswered. Who were these crew members? They could have been anyone. How many crew members arrived on the boat and how many left on it? What could crew members have brought into Australia illegally had they wished to? These are fundamental questions. For example, we would not have known if illegal immigrants were on the boat. They could have just walked off the boat onto the dock and into the community and we would have been none the wiser. Drugs or other illegal substances could also have been carried off the boat and distributed into the community—all completely without our knowledge. The ship could have carried terrorists for all we know. We have a real problem with this issue in our ports. In its annual report, AMSA stated that in the period January to December 2000, 2,926 ships were inspected. A study of the Lloyd's web site showed that almost 14,000 ships visited our ports in the corresponding period. To put this into perspective, just over two in every 10 ships that dock in our ports are inspected. This is not a very good strike rate by anyone's count. If you wanted to enter the people smuggling business or be a drug runner, why bother going to all the trouble of smuggling onto our northern coast when it would be a lot easier just to use a flag of convenience ship and dump your illegal cargo directly into one of our capital cities. It seems ludicrous to me that the government has spent over half a million dollars on border protection and yet reduced funding to an area of real need—our ports. It should see past its rhetoric and start to implement a real solution. The Australian newspaper article also stated that a Wheat Board spokesperson said that the ship would not be allowed to leave until proper identification could be provided for the crew. (Time expired)63309:43:00633Nairn, Gary, MPMr NAIRNOK6Eden-MonaroLP10—Last year the news of a proposed charcoal plant near the small hamlet of Mogo, between Batemans Bay and Moruya, rocked the town and the greater Eurobodalla. I rise in the Main Committee today to raise awareness of my submission to the New South Wales Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, DUAP, concerning this application. I would like to add at this point that, since 1979, the department has kept records of the number of submissions each proposal receives and this project has broken all records.Since the original announcement, I have met with many residents who hold fears that this project is not consistent with the nature coast image that the Eurobodalla has successfully marketed. I understand that fear, yet it is in many ways disappointing for me as their federal member and with my great passion for job creation projects to have to pass these sentiments along to the department, for I can only imagine the benefit the community could derive from this project.In my submission to DUAP, I encouraged the proponents and the New South Wales government to search for an alternative site—a site that would be acceptable to locals and therefore still provide new investment and jobs for the region. In my submission I said:The question has been asked with respect to other possible sites. The EIS mentions that ten sites in the Batemans Bay-Moruya region were considered but all the other sites were not as suitable as the proposed one. I understand that sites which are currently Crown Land were not deemed suitable due to the possibility of native title complications. I would assume that any Crown Land sites worth consideration would be within the Southern Forests RFA region as that land has at least had significant environmental studies carried out on it. Therefore I would suggest that the New South Wales Government should give consideration as to whether the native title “complications” can be overcome if an alternative acceptable site is available with in the Southern Forest region.There are other towns in Eden-Monaro that would jump at the opportunity to have this project in their town. As I discussed in the House on Monday night, the town of Bombala is reeling from the possible closure of its timber mill, and the town has already spoken in support of the charcoal project moving to Bombala. Unfortunately, the proponents, Australian Silicon, claimed that Bombala is too far away from the resources they intend to utilise.The point I would like to make today, however, is that the New South Wales government has an obligation to listen to the people of the Eurobodalla. With a record 1,528 submissions lodged, the council requested a meeting with the Premier, but he refused to listen to the elected representatives of the region, representatives who are doing their job by voicing the community's concerns to the Premier of the state. The community has spoken loudly, yet Mr Carr sits in his Sydney office and refuses to meet them. As the leader of the New South Wales government, he should fulfil his duty to the people of New South Wales and meet with the councillors of the shire in an effort to discuss an outcome that will suit all parties.63309:46:00633Gibbons, Steve, MPMr GIBBONS83XBendigoALP00—Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, please accept my congratulations on your election to that position. I rise to inform the House of the problems that the Dunolly community are experiencing in gaining much needed Commonwealth funding to ensure that their hospital is able to survive. Over the past four years, they have applied to the Commonwealth for funding for nine low-care hospital beds and a $60,000 capital grant, and have been refused on both occasions. The local community have raised over $350,000 towards this project, which is a magnificent achievement, given that this small community have a huge unemployment problem and a higher than average aged or age pension population.The Bracks state government has recognised that this community is deadly serious about this facility, and has made available $1.2 million towards the project. The Howard government has continued to ignore the fact that the Dunolly community are prepared to contribute $350,000 of their own money towards this much needed project—in spite of its pre-election commitment of $416 million for aged care services. We now know that this commitment was not worth the paper it was written on. The people of the Dunolly district have a proud and successful history of fighting governments that refuse to acknowledge the wishes of their community in matters relating to their hospital. I vividly remember their great struggle against the former Kennett government, which planned to close the hospital in the early 1990s. The people rallied in a way the Kennett government had never experienced, and it soon buckled under the weight of community pressure—something that had never happened before in Victoria during the Kennett years. In fact, I think there had been nine hospitals closed by the Kennett government prior to the Dunolly incident, and the Dunolly hospital campaign was able to be waged and won, which stopped the rot—stopped Kennett closing any more country hospitals.They are not asking for much. They are prepared to put $350,000 of their own hard earned dollars into the project. All they ask for is a fair go. I urge the new minister, whom I have a high regard for, to visit Dunolly and learn at first hand of the determination of these people in ensuring that their much valued senior Australians have the opportunity to remain in their local area in their twilight years. It is not a big ask, and this government should take this request seriously or accept the consequences—the consequences being a major campaign by the Dunolly community, similar to that waged against the Kennett government, to ensure that they get the appropriate funding for this much needed facility.63409:48:00634Slipper, Peter, MPMr SLIPPER0V5FisherLPParliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration10—Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, I again congratulate you on your elevation to this august position. I wish today to outline the plight of a number of constituents of mine who are members of the British Australian Pensioners Association who have been fighting for many years for appropriate pension entitlements from the United Kingdom. We have the bizarre situation where British retirement pensioners who choose to live in one of 48 Commonwealth countries have their pensions frozen either at the date they arrived in their new country of residence or at the date they first became entitled to the pension. However, British pensioners living in six other Commonwealth countries or in any part of the European Union, the United States or certain other countries have their pensions upgraded to take account of inflation every year. So we have a situation where Britain pays a fully index linked pension to some 12 million of her contributory pensioners but denies it to the remaining 460,000, of whom 220,000 live in this country. Successive Australian governments, both conservative and Labor, have approached successive United Kingdom governments, both Conservative and Labour, to seek justice for British pensioners living in Australia. Britain recently entered into a human rights agreement, I understand, with the European Union which now provides a very real chance for those pensioners who are discriminated against to seek redress through the British courts. I have written to the minister to seek funding for a test case so that British Australian pensioners will be able to test their rights in the United Kingdom courts, with a view to seeing whether the changed legal environment in the United Kingdom will indeed allow these 220,000 British pensioners resident in Australia to receive appropriate pension upgrades.I am quite certain that all honourable members, regardless of the party that he or she is privileged to represent in this place, would support pension justice for British pensioners. Legal action is the only option currently left available to British pensioners. If their pensions could be upgraded, there would be a boost to the Australian economy of at least $450 million per year in increased pension entitlements. Of course, it is important that these pensioners are able to be funded. They do not at this stage in their lives have the ability to fund an expensive test case through the British court system. I am, therefore, calling on the Australian federal government and on the minister to fund a test case so that these 220,000 British pensioners, many of whom are now Australian citizens, will receive pension justice in the way that most other expatriate pensioners do. 63509:51:00635Grierson, Sharon, MPMs GRIERSON00AMPNewcastleALP00—This week in the House recognition and respect have been duly and properly paid to those Australians involved 60 years ago in the fall of Singapore on 15 February, 1942. Stories of the defence of Australia in that year have also been documented and commemorated by this parliament. Those stories of courage and service detail the contribution of thousands of young Australians to the defence of our country. They include the attack on Darwin on 19 February, 1942—the first enemy raid on mainland Australia. On behalf of the people of Newcastle I register both our respect for and recognition of the efforts of the service men and women who selflessly and bravely protected Australia from hostile incursions and attack. I also wish to share the story of an incident that happened on 8 June, 1942 in the city of Newcastle. On that evening Newcastle came under attack from the Japanese submarine 121. There were a number of rounds fired on Newcastle about which discrepancies exist in the records. The Japanese records insist that 35 to 37 rounds were fired on Newcastle. Historic records in Newcastle estimate that 23 to 25 rounds were fired. Fortunately, only two of those rounds exploded, resulting in minor damage. The guns at Fort Scratchley, our historic fort on the harbour headland, commenced firing within 12 minutes on the submarine. They were only able to lay on target, or aim, by visually looking for where the gun flashes were coming from. The fort successfully bracketed the Japanese submarine and caused it to take immediate evasive action, resulting in the submarine having to submerge, cease operations and leave the territory. In that way, our historic fort is unique in Australian history, being the only fort in Australia to engage an enemy surface target in action during wartime. Because of the significance of Fort Scratchley to Australian wartime and military history, it is intended that, on the 60th anniversary of the shelling, the fort will be dedicated by this parliament to the service men and women of Newcastle at a very special commemorative ceremony. Military parades, Defence Force demonstrations, an ecumenical service enriched by local music performances, a formal dinner and the unveiling of a plaque at Fort Scratchley are all planned to make this ceremony another occasion to remember. It is hoped that this tribute to an event of national significance will be supported by the attendance of the Prime Minister of Australia, his Minister for Defence and respective leaders of our defence forces. On behalf of the City of Newcastle and on behalf of the Fort Scratchley Historical Society, I extend a warm invitation to the Prime Minister. We hope he will be there to share with us the commemoration of this historical and important event and to be part of the dedication of our historical fort to the service men and women of Newcastle.63509:54:00635Kelly, Jackie, MPMiss JACKIE KELLYGK6LindsayLPParliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister10—Labor's carping that somehow John Howard `stole' the 2001 election victory from them because of racism is beginning to irritate the people who deserted Labor in favour of alternative candidates or even Liberal candidates. What the current crop of ex-union officials at the top of the ALP parliamentary party have failed to register is that there were many compelling reasons for voters to vote for anyone but Labor on 10 November last year. Across Western Sydney there was a collapse in the ALP's primary vote. What has Simon Crean attributed this to? `Howard playing the race card.'The history of the 2001 election is still being written, and I doubt that the final version will be that `race' politics won the day. To ascribe racism to 80 per cent of the Australians who agreed with John Howard's handling of the border protection issues is ludicrous. Any historian with any understanding of how elections are run will not put the 2001 Howard election victory down to racism, as Simon Crean hopes. In fact, the ALP's constant bleating, `We was robbed,' since the election shows that there is still no understanding in Simon Crean's `reformed' ALP of what really matters to voters in Western Sydney or of the basic mechanics of a national election campaign. The Leader of the Opposition fails to acknowledge that the Howard government had more policies for Western Sydney than what was on offer by a fairly ordinary opposition hoping to step into government with only one policy—opposition to the GST. Members of the ALP in my electorate of Lindsay have some understanding of the issues and, at a recent meeting chaired by a former Labor Premier Neville Wran, held at the Penrith RSL, they gave their frank assessment of Labor's election loss. There was a mention of border protection issues, but branch stacking and disenfranchising local members by installing outside candidates over local ones dominated proceedings. Simon Crean—or any other ALP leader—has failed to comment publicly on this meeting. This was left to a disenfranchised local member, who leaked the unofficial minutes of the meeting. There is clearly frustration within the grassroots membership that they have no say on policy.Immediately after the loss, Simon Crean made a lot of noise about the need for party reform. The people at the Wran committee meeting at the Penrith RSL also believed this was a major reason for the devastating loss in Western Sydney, and yet their leader has gone strangely quiet on this. It was interesting to note that, on his visit to Western Sydney to determine the reasons for `the ALP's loss in the heartland', Simon Crean chose Mark Latham, the member for Werriwa; David Bradbury, the ALP candidate for Lindsay; and Steve Hutchins, a New South Wales senator, to accompany him.Mark Latham is the ALP's new shadow minister for economic ownership, housing and urban development. Mark's concept of urban development is an airport at Badgerys Creek—something the people of Western Sydney clearly do not want. It appears he has just discovered ownership, especially home ownership, which has been at the epicentre of Liberal policies since Menzies. As for his ideas on housing, Mark appears to be endorsing New South Wales Labor's plans for mass housing in Western Sydney without the infrastructure to support it.David Bradbury was `parachuted' in as the candidate for Lindsay over the top of rank and file members. Given that there are more mature local Penrith candidates with family and life experience, it is little wonder that the local rank and file Labor members deserted him during the campaign. These people now see branch stacking as the only way of reversing the trend of elite careerists, endorsed by ALP head office, hijacking `safe' seats. The stacking will continue until Simon Crean reforms the party.Senator Hutchins is the ex-president of the Transport Workers Union. There is a thriving transport industry in Western Sydney with many owner-operators and employees living in the area. Senator Hutchins has crafted a successful career on representing these people, yet when Senator Hutchins had the opportunity to give the biggest tax break to the transport industry, he voted against the diesel fuel rebate. Not surprisingly, he has never denied numerous allegations that he never had a truck driving licence nor had any real experience in truck operations. Being advised by such a team, it is little wonder that Simon Crean is focusing on what John Howard should or should not have known during the election campaign rather than what the ALP has to offer as an alternative for voters in Western Sydney. In stark contrast, the Howard government's track record of low interest rates, the first-home buyers $14,000 incentive and family incentives like the baby bonus was designed for Western Sydney families. The Liberal Party has a track record on urban development that favours protection of the value of existing homes in the area. These values are yet to surface in ALP policies. 10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. I.R. Causley)—Order! In accordance with standing order 275A, the time for members' statements has concluded.Bills637R1437637Debate resumed from 14 February, on motion by Mr Slipper:That this bill be now read a second time.09:58:00637Latham, Mark, MPMr LATHAMK26WerriwaALP00—I can barely understand the member for Lindsay at the best of times, but when they press the fast-forward button she truly is incomprehensible. I am going to have to send for a New Zealand dictionary to get that speech deciphered. I wish Hansard all the very best in working out what she said.The opposition supports the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Amendment Bill 2002. This bill will create a legal framework for the electronic transfer of Commonwealth government securities. It will enable the Commonwealth to create equitable interests in Commonwealth government securities and also will enable a body corporate to be appointed as a registrar under the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Amendment Bill instead of, or in addition to, the Reserve Bank of Australia.A bill in the same terms as this legislation was introduced last year but lapsed with the proroguing of the parliament prior to the general election. At that time the ALP had a number of questions which were not answered either in the explanatory memorandum or by the minister. As a result, the bill was referred to the Senate economics committee. The committee reported on 13 December 2001. It is great to know that our Senate colleagues work so hard in the break between the election and the resumption of parliament. It might go some way to restoring my faith in the Senate. All of the submissions to that inquiry supported the bill and the parliament is now much more informed on this particular legislation. Some of the initiatives in the bill stem from CLERP paper No. 5, which deals with electronic commerce. That paper was circulated in 1997 and a number of the initiatives in the paper have already been implemented. So the origins of this bill very much lie in part 6 of the CLERP paper. The Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911—you can tell why they need to update it—and the regulations under that act currently require the transactions and transfers of legal title in Commonwealth government securities to be settled through a paper based system. That is all they had in 1911—paper. The Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act, therefore, does not allow transactions to be settled electronically. Proposal No. 6 in the CLERP paper No. 5 is as follows:The Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911 and Regulations will be amended to enable the electronic transfer of the direct beneficial and legal interests in Commonwealth Government securities (CGS). This will enable transactions in CGS to be settled electronically, as well as through existing paper based means.In effect, this is a sensible updating of the law to allow for the electronic settlement of these transactions, not just a continuation of the old, archaic paper based system. The proposal set out in CLERP paper No. 5 is implemented in this piece of legislation. The Senate economics committee found that these changes are seen as addressing outmoded and cumbersome elements of the current CGS system—in particular, the paper based regime. In reference to the new provision for electronic CGS transfers, the ASX stated:This legislative amendment brings the trading and settlement of CGS into accord with similar securities in the world's most active markets. While Australia is regarded as one of the most sophisticated markets in the world the manner in which the transfer of CGS has been conducted is seriously out of step with comparable markets throughout the world. ASX believes that together with Financial Services Reform Act 2001, the amendments to the CIS Act will promote efficiency and confidence in the broader operation of the financial markets. The Senate committee also noted the Stock Exchange's claims that the bill will provide retail investors with the same access to Commonwealth government securities currently enjoyed by institutional investors. The committee was also informed that the Reserve Bank has decided independently—although consistent with the bill's objectives—to transfer its role in the settlement of CGS to another entity, Austraclear. The Reserve Bank claimed that such a transfer had `the strong support of market participants, as it will allow them to lower their costs; in future they will need to maintain access to only one system to settle trades on all their debt securities'. The committee was informed that in agreeing to the transfer to Austraclear the RBA has assured itself that Austraclear will offer a level of service and security that is comparable to that offered by RITS—the current settlement system operated by the Reserve Bank of Australia. The Reserve Bank advised the committee that the amendments contained in the bill would facilitate greater market competition in registry and settlement services.In relation to the other important issue in the legislation—that is, the appointment of registrars under the CIS Act—the Senate economics committee received evidence from both the RBA and AOFM. The Reserve Bank stated:Given the importance of CGS to the financial system, it would be essential that any other provider of registry services for these securities meets the very highest standards of integrity and efficiency. As well as ensuring very high standards of service, any such registry would need to be able to offer an efficient interface to potential suppliers of settlement systems.The AOFM noted that it plans to seek the application of competitive tendering principles to the registry function—a service currently provided by the Reserve Bank. In its submission to the committee, the AOFM stated:An external Registrar would be recommended only if it was demonstrated that the registry function could be undertaken more efficiently (ie at a lower overall cost, without sacrifice of quality of service) and that no additional risks impacted in relation to the payments of interest/redemption, or that no other systemic risks arose with regard to CGS payments.It is with the knowledge of these assurances that the Labor Party can support this legislation, and these assurances, in effect, answer the full list of doubts and queries that we had in the last term of parliament. We can now rest assured that this is sensible legislation and we are pleased to vote for its passage through the parliament.10:05:00638Slipper, Peter, MPMr SLIPPER0V5FisherLPParliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration10—in reply—I am particularly pleased to sum up the short debate on the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Amendment Bill 2002. I welcome the member for Werriwa back to the front bench. It is good to see some of the better performers of the Labor Party being given recognition. I wonder whether over the next three years we will hear as much philosophy from the honourable member. But it would also be remiss of me if I did not thank the member for Werriwa for his very strong support of the government's stand on illegal immigrants.The bill I am summing up will remove regulatory barriers to the electronic issue and transfer of Commonwealth government securities, including Treasury bonds and Treasury notes. The key changes to the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911—and, as the member for Werriwa pointed out, it is quite an old act—to be made by the bill will provide for the electronic transfer of Commonwealth government securities, for the Commonwealth to create equitable interests in Commonwealth government securities and for explicit recognition of the Commonwealth's ability to appoint non-government registrars.Honourable members will be interested to know that the amendments contained in this bill will provide a legal framework for the electronic transfer of Commonwealth government securities, that is flexible and that promotes an efficient and innovative market. The bill will create a more efficient business environment for market participants by opening up the conduct of the Commonwealth government securities market to clearing and settlement facilities involved in the broader operation of the financial markets. The changes contained in the bill are intended to foster competition in registry and settlement services and to ensure that the financial markets in Australia continue to be served by settlement services that represent the world's best practice. I commend the bill to the chamber. Question agreed to.Bill read a second time.Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.Bills639R1444639Debate resumed from 14 February, on motion by Mr McGauran:That this bill be now read a second time.10:08:00639Tanner, Lindsay, MPMr TANNERYU5MelbourneALP00—This legislation is very straightforward, and the opposition supports the Radiocommunications (Transmitter Licence Tax) Amendment Bill 2002. The legislation is designed to correct a drafting anomaly which has arisen as a result of amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act which provide that, where spectrum is made available to a broadcasting licensee in television or radio, automatically the person or persons acquiring that spectrum acquire a transmitter licence. The problem that that has created is that, under the Radiocommunications Act 1983, the transmitter tax provided is deemed to apply upon the application for a transmitter licence. The difficulty is that the Broadcasting Services Act amendments, by making an automatic acquisition of a licence to transmit, mean that technically no application occurs by the person engaged in transmission. Therefore, theoretically they are not subject to the tax.The legislation is retrospective but, in one of the more remarkable instances of people paying tax voluntarily—in fact, I have not come across any others in my nine years in parliament, so I am very pleased to see that these people have been paying their taxes voluntarily—the various licensees have in fact been paying tax in accordance with the legislation, even though technically they could have avoided it because of this drafting anomaly. So the legislation is designed to correct this anomaly, and the opposition supports the bill.10:10:00639Slipper, Peter, MPMr SLIPPER0V5FisherLPParliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration10—I was expecting the minister for this particular area of governmental responsibility to be here to sum up the Radiocommunications (Transmitter Licence Tax) Amendment Bill 2002. I wish to thank the honourable member for Melbourne for his contribution to the debate in this bill.The bill seeks to amend the Radiocommunications (Transmitter Licence Tax) Act 1983 to correct an anomaly in that act. The Radiocommunications (Transmitter Licence Tax) Act 1983 imposes a tax on persons making an application for a transmitter licence which authorises the use of the radiofrequency spectrum. The spectrum access tax is levied to encourage efficiency in the use of the spectrum and to provide a return to the community for the use of a scarce community resource. As was pointed out in the second reading speech, not all transmitter users are required to apply for a transmitter licence, and commercial television and radio broadcasters, community broadcasters and the national broadcasters are automatically entitled to transmitter licences under the licensing and digital conversion provisions of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.As the minister pointed out in his second reading speech, this particular bill is a technical measure which seeks to clarify the power to impose a tax on the issue of a transmitter licence regardless of whether it was necessary with respect to that licence to make an application. The bill will validate the imposition of the tax on licences that have been affected by the anomaly. Retrospectivity is often a concern in the parliament but I am advised that, as all of those broadcasting licensees affected have paid the tax, there will not be, as a result of this bill, any requirement for any retrospective payment. I am very happy to commend this bill to the chamber. Question agreed to.Bill read a second time.Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.Miscellaneous640Debate resumed from 13 February, on motion by Mr Howard:That the House:(1) extends its sympathies to those Australians who suffered personal losses during the Christmas 2001 bushfires that raged across New South Wales;(2) acknowledges the tireless commitment of the thousands of individuals from rural and metropolitan fire brigades, emergency and rescue services, ambulance services, the defence force, police, welfare groups, government agencies, councils and businesses from across the country who were involved in fighting these fires; (3) expresses its enduring gratitude and admiration to these Australians, many of whom were volunteers, for their efforts and sacrifices and in particular acknowledges the bravery of those who risked their lives in fighting the fires; and(4) recognises that the way that the community heroically pulled together in a time of crisis truly demonstrates the strength of the Australian spirit.10:13:00640Ellis, Annette, MPMs ELLIS5K6CanberraALP00—It gives me great pleasure to speak on this motion. I speak on behalf of not only the community of the electorate of Canberra but the community of the ACT as a whole. I note that my colleague the member for Fraser will also be addressing this motion later in this debate. Given the nature of the ACT, sometimes it is impossible to draw electorate boundaries when we address an issue such as this.The motion moved by the Prime Minister addresses the bushfires that raged across New South Wales over the recent Christmas period. I am sure the House would not concern itself with the fact that this extraordinary bushfire crisis actually began here in the ACT on Christmas Eve and, whilst they are not exactly mentioned in the Prime Minister's motion, I feel it is imperative for me to stand up and speak on behalf of the ACT and the region in relation to what actually happened here on Christmas Eve and the days following.Over Christmas Eve, from that afternoon, we saw and experienced an incredible threat to our community. Over the next few days we experienced six major fires, four of which started on Christmas Eve on the Huntly property, Uriarra Road, Coppins Crossing Road, through to near the Royal Australian Mint, on Red Hill and on the Bruce Ridge. On Christmas Day the other two major fires were in the Wanniassa hills and at Oaks Estate. In total, in excess of 1,600 hectares were burned.It was shocking to hear announcements on the local ABC radio station during the afternoon of Christmas Eve, broadcasting fire warnings for the suburbs, the very urban areas of Canberra. We had several evacuations, including the youth hostel at O'Connor, the Two Sisters Motel at Curtin, and the National Zoo and Aquarium near Scrivener Dam, which many members may be aware of. I also believe that the RSPCA facility at Weston needed to be evacuated. The poor animals had to be left behind, as was the case with the Zoo and Aquarium, but the staff at both those facilities were evacuated. Fire trucks were on alert right around the perimeter of Government House at Yarralumla. The fire jumped both the Tuggeranong Parkway, which is the major feeder road on the western side of the ACT from the south to the central part of the Territory, and Yamba Drive, just south of the Lodge, taking the fire across the paddocks, across the median strip and trees in the centre of Yamba Drive and burning right up to the barrier of the Royal Australian Mint. I do not think that I or anybody else in Canberra has seen a red sky and smoke quite like what we experienced on that terrible Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve, people expect to finish their last-minute Christmas shopping, head home to begin the Christmas season and celebrations with their families and friends, and await the arrival of the dear old man in the red suit. For many in our community, and particularly for our fire and emergency people, that did not happen this Christmas Eve. All the brigades in the ACT were involved with these fires, and I also want to pay due tribute to the dedicated volunteer brigades involved. They included the Gungahlin, Guises Creek, Hall, Jerrabomberra, Molonglo, headquarters, rivers, southern districts and Tidbinbilla crews. The departmental brigades included the parks and the forests brigades. The ACT Fire Brigade also attended, and members from the Emergency Services Bureau were involved with incident management, planning and logistics. Volunteers from the NSW Rural Fire Service, Queanbeyan and Yarrowluma shires, and Victoria's country fire service were also called in to assist with this emergency. Additional support was provided by a number of agencies, including the ACT Emergency Service, the NSW State Emergency Service, the Salvation Army, the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Urban Services. And, of course, the land-holders were very much involved as well. Helicopters from Southcare, Jayrow, Venture and HeliAust provided water bombing and air observation services. We had, in total, over 650 personnel during this emergency, with up to 200 to 250 at one time during the day and up to 100 at night while the emergency persisted.The very nature of this national capital, often called the bush capital, means that many suburbs are adjacent to open areas, with horse agistment paddocks close by. This severe fire emergency threatened homes, livestock and horses, and had an enormous impact on our environment, very sadly. Wildlife suffered, and without the dedicated and selfless actions of the emergency workers and firefighters, we would have seen a far more devastating result than was experienced. For anybody in the House who has not taken the opportunity, I suggest you take a drive near Red Hill or on the western side of Lake Burley Griffin, and see exactly what happened in this town over those few days.Our community owes a great deal to the wonderful people who gave their time and put their lives on the line in their jobs caring for our community. My intention is not to remove any impact on the services supplied during the New South Wales crisis, something that I think we all realise was just the most unbelievable set of circumstances that one could ever wish to see happen to a community. However, it is terribly important that we take the opportunity to acknowledge very strongly that, over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the ensuing days particularly, we were on absolute emergency stand-by in the ACT, with fires that we have not seen before in terms of their enormity, intensity and the threat being posed. I still do not think I will ever get over hearing ABC radio say that there were fire warning alerts at 4.30 on Christmas Eve for the suburbs of Duffy, Garran, Deakin and Red Hill—places you would never imagine an impact like this would occur.Very recently, I had the pleasure of running into representatives from the Guises Creek service who were out at a local hardware store on a Saturday morning doing the normal sausage sizzle to raise funds for the valuable work they do. I asked them how they were involved during this emergency. In their normal Australian ocker spirit of volunteerism, they made light of the fact that they were one of the crews sent down to stop the fire jumping the Tuggeranong Parkway, which is an enormously wide road. They said to me, `We went down there full of gusto, ready to stop the fire from jumping the Tuggeranong Parkway, saw exactly what we were dealing with, and the enormity and intensity of the fire, and realised we had absolutely no hope, because of the strength and the nature of this bushfire.' I am just pleased that they are all there to tell the story. I want to finish by referring to a quote that was in the Canberra Times this morning, which is a report following a civic reception that was held by the ACT government yesterday as the beginning of a process to thank the people concerned. I want to refer to comments that were made yesterday by a captain of Hall Bushfire Emergency Service Brigade, Tony Greep, who was responding to the represented agencies at the civic reception yesterday. He is reported as saying:The Christmas bushfires of 2001 were the worst that most members of the bushfire service have ever seen or experienced in the ACT. I'd like to highlight and emphasise the teamwork, the professionalism and the cooperation between all members of the bushfire service. He went on to say that, as was the case in New South Wales, I know:There were a lot of tired bush firefighters who fronted up continually for another shift with no complaints, ready for their next task.And that was despite the fact that they found themselves in the middle of the Christmas season. It is a pleasure for me to speak on their behalf today here.10:22:00642Gash, Joanna, MPMrs GASHAK6GilmoreLP10—It is with both sadness and pride that I rise to speak in support of this motion. I am saddened that in the Shoalhaven towns and villages of Falls Creek, Tomerong, Huskisson, Woollamia, Wandandian, Sussex Inlet, Cudmirrah, Berrara, Bendalong and Manyana we lost 52 homes, with a further 18 damaged, five industrial units, 21 businesses, 109 sheds, one scout hall, 53 vehicles, 11 tractors, 23 other items of farm equipment, 25 trailers, 21 boats, 16 outboard motors, 22 goats, 1,500 chickens, 580 beehives and 77 separate lots of fencing, covering hundreds of kilometres. I am proud because, in the words of professional bushfire personnel who have examined the scenes since, `the untold story is just how many thousands of people, homes, businesses, pieces of equipment and animals were actually saved.' Some 9,500 people were evacuated during 29 days of the most massive single fire we have ever experienced in the Shoalhaven. Over 100,000 hectares were burnt out, almost 25 per cent of the Shoalhaven's geographical area. Another 700 hectares burned in Booderee National Park. The fire's perimeter was 233 kilometres, stretching 42 kilometres from north to south and 45 kilometres from east to west. That is the same as the whole of the greater metropolitan area of Sydney, extending to Penrith in the west and Stanwell Park in the south, or the greater metropolitan area of Melbourne, extending to Mornington and Healesville. Some 256 power poles were burnt and replaced, with Integral Energy patrolling a further 350 poles and replacing some 63 kilometres of power lines. And, with extensive and prolonged blackouts, millions of dollars worth of food, consumables and other stock were lost. More than 40,000 calls were received by headquarters during the fire. The catering unit dished out up to 5,000 meals each day.But I speak also with pride of the many men and women who volunteered, and in some cases put their own lives at risk. The men and women of the RFS were without question the bravest during that period. It is hard to find words that would typify what they went through. As our fire control officer, Brian Parry, said, the team effort that was evident during the fire demonstrated the Australian qualities of old that are frequently spoken about but not always seen. This became a wonderful display of what Australians admire.All of the Shoalhaven's 31 firefighting brigades participated in this event: Basin View, Bawley Point, Beaumont, Bendalong, Broughton Vale/Berry, Callala Bay, Callala Beach, Cambewarra, Cudmirrah/Berrara, Culburra, Cunjurong Point, Currarong, Depot Beach, Erowal Bay, Falls Creek, Fishermans Paradise, Greenwell Point, Huskisson, Hyams Beach, Illaroo Road, Kangaroo Valley, Kioloa, Lake Conjola, Milton, Sanctuary Point, Shoalhaven Heads, St Georges Basin, Sussex Inlet, Tabourie, Tomerong and Wandandian. Our group captains, deputy group captains and fire control staff worked themselves to the point of exhaustion and beyond. It is a real credit to the training, discipline and safety control measures that there were very few injuries on the fire ground. Additionally, we had the services of the headquarters brigade, communications, the incident management team, logistics, planning, operations and air support and of course, by now, our world famous catering brigade. The Jervis Bay territory is part of the ACT and the local brigades from the Jervis Bay Territory assisted, including one from Wreck Bay, the only Aboriginal Rural Fire Service brigade, and Jervis Bay. Over 30 outside agencies also assisted the fire efforts and they are to be commended for their hard work, cooperation and wonderful sense of humour in tough times. These were: the New South Wales fire brigades, National Parks and Wildlife, Booderee National Park, State Forests, the State Emergency Service, the Tasmanian Fire Service, Tasmanian Forestry, the Queensland Fire and Ambulance Service, the Western Australia Fire Service, the Western Australian SES, the New Zealand Fire Service, HMAS Albatross, HMAS Creswell, The Ambulance Service of New South Wales, Integral Energy, the New South Wales Police, the Shoalhaven Hospital, the Surf Life Saving Association, the Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol, the Shoalhaven Marine Rescue Service, Lions Clubs, Apex clubs, Rotary clubs, the Ex-Servicemen's Club, RSL clubs, the CWA, the Department of Transport and Regional Services, the Federal Police, DOCS, Anglicare, St Vincent de Paul, local scouting and guiding groups, the Roads and Traffic Authority, the Department of Agriculture, the Australian Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the ones that everyone has heard about—Elvis, his partners and the respective crews from the United States. May I thank my federal colleagues: Mr John Anderson who, at the time, was Acting Prime Minister and visited Gilmore during the fire, and Joe Hockey, the Minister for Tourism and Small Business, who contacted me to see what could be done and then visited the area at the time of crisis. I would also like to thank the former Minister for Veterans' Affairs, the Hon. Bruce Scott, for his continual phone calls and real concern. He has made many visits to Gilmore and knows the area well. Shoalhaven City Councillor John Anderson coordinated the giving and placing of many things and is still running benefit concerts and the like for people. Shoalhaven City Mayor Greg Watson launched the Mayor's Bushfire Appeal, which has to date been supported by the local community to the tune of over $200,000, to help people who have been badly affected by the bushfires. Police commander Geoff Loy had a tough job managing all of the extra police from all the other regions who were brought in to assist with road closures, traffic control and evacuations in trying circumstances. Commanding officer of HMAS Albatross, Captain Tim Barrett, saw to it that the hundreds of visiting volunteer firefighters were fed and quartered on the base, alleviating pressure on the local accommodation. Local moteliers went to great pains to help firefighters sleep, especially in the daytime. They stopped mowing or sweeping and insisted that staff and other guests whisper and move quietly to and from their rooms and park their cars out on the street. Barry Mac and Graeme French of 2ST in Nowra, Graham Day and Rick Machin of 2ST in the Southern Highlands, and Peter Riley and Nick McLaren of ABC Illawarra gave us constant information about the progress of the fires but did not sensationalise their stories, thereby contributing to the calm confidence displayed in the region by locals and visitors alike. To Debbie Rayner, who is one of our local scout mums, and her team of helpers, who coped with organising the collection and distribution of donated clothing and food and bedding, you gave 110 per cent. To Mary Reeves and her catering group, I lost count of the many thousands of meals and just wonder how many meals your team actually did produce. Thank you also to members of my staff, who also worked in the fires in varying capacities during their break. The community is still holding benefit nights and concerts every week. Kerry Chikarovski, the state Leader of the Opposition, was in Nowra and she stayed on in town for the rest of that day so she could attend to say thank you. At most of these fundraisers the staff have donated their time, and the clubs have donated the food and then chipped in with a percentage of the bar and pokies. Everyone is doing or giving something. In Sussex Inlet last week the Harleys for Helicopters Ride came to town. These bikies were just blown away by the people standing out at the gates of their blackened and denuded properties to clap and cheer a welcome for them. They have resolved to come to Sussex Inlet every year because they just liked the people so much. Last Saturday a big thankyou concert was hold to provide free entertainment for volunteers and to raise some more money. The acts who donated their services included Jimmy Barnes, Wendy Matthews, Yothu Yindi, Invertigo, and the Bunyips for the children early in the day. There is still more to come. It would not be a weekend for me without going to some form of bushfire fundraiser and they extend right through to the end of March. Yesterday, the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, Joe Hockey, announced $1 million to be shared between the Blue Mountains, in my colleague Kerry Bartlett's Macquarie electorate, and the Shoalhaven in the Gilmore electorate. Thanks to the coordinated approach by the chambers of commerce, local businesses, councils and tourism operators. Through their tourism board manager, Tom Phillips, they were able to put to the minister some constructive proposals for a federal government assisted recovery.Milton Lay, the CEO of the Shoalhaven Area Consultative Committee, and Greg Pullen, the Economic Development Manager of the Shoalhaven City Council, have both played significant roles in assisting businesses to regain their feet. I thank the ministers, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister for showing such concern in recognising what our community had to bear in lost revenue. However, the Shoalhaven is alive and well. The beauty of the regrowth set against a blackened backdrop with shining silver trees is a sight to behold. Our beaches are as white as ever and the waters are a dazzling blue. Don't just believe me, a pollie, come and see for yourself—you will not be disappointed.To the west of the Shoalhaven, up in the Southern Highlands, lies the Wingecarribee Shire, much of which is also in my electorate of Gilmore. While the Shoalhaven was battling one enormous fire, the Wingecarribee was battling two large fires and one smaller fire. Over 52,000 hectares were burnt out—the biggest ever fire in the Wingecarribee. There was a smaller 150-hectare fire at Belmore Falls and another large one at Balloon Pass, which took out another 46,000 hectares.A 72-kilometre back-burn was put in, mainly utilising bulldozers and excavators, to keep the fires from impacting on local homes. The 21 Wingecarribee Rural Fire Service brigades deserve a special mention. They are: Alpine, Avoca, Balmoral, Berrima, Bundanoon, Burrawang, Canteen, Communications, Canyonleigh, Colo Vale, Exeter, Hill Top, Mandemar, Mittagong, Moss Vale, Penrose, Robertson, Wingello, Wollondilly, Woodlands and Yerrinbool. We should also thank the 40 Country Fire Authority brigades and Natural Resources staff from Victoria. This sort of cooperation does not happen that often. Towards the end of the fire period, 18 fire crews came from Lake Macquarie, Baulkham Hills and the Penrith-Blacktown area. Other assistance was provided by Wingecarribee Shire Council, the New South Wales Police Service, the Ambulance Service of New South Wales, the Volunteer Rescue Association, the SES, all service clubs and, again, the whole community.I salute our generous, hardworking, supportive community. I thank the federal government for looking after our volunteers. Up to $160 per day for firefighting may be claimed through Centrelink by those who lost income, and these payments will make a difference to many of our self-employed volunteers. Last but not least, I thank all the families—husbands, wives and children—who went without their loved ones over the Christmas period because they were volunteering. They make it so easy for me to answer when people ask why I want to be a politician; when you have a community such as this to represent it is not at all hard. It is an honour indeed. If one is allowed a wish in all of this, it would have to be that we have learnt that what we do not do ourselves nature will do with far greater force.10:32:00645McMullan, Bob, MPMr McMULLAN5I4FraserALP00—I rise to support the motion—as I know all members and, I am confident, all Australians would. It is particularly appropriate and fortuitous that I should speak after the member for Canberra and the member for Gilmore. What I have to say can be shortened because of the remarks they have made because, to the surprise of many people who think they have an understanding of geography, my electorate abuts the electorates of both the member for Canberra and the member for Gilmore. That is an interesting piece of geography because they are a few hundred kilometres apart, but an important part of my constituency is in the Jervis Bay territory. I want to speak about that as well as about my concerns, also raised by the member for Canberra, about the circumstances in the ACT over Christmas.Let me start by dealing with the issues in the ACT. Principally, I endorse the remarks made by the member for Canberra that boundaries such as those between her electorate and mine were irrelevant in the face of the challenge of the fire. Fire crews from both ends of the territory flocked to assist wherever the fire crisis was. It was predominantly to the south, but there were also serious fire problems in the northern part of Canberra—in my electorate. The issues raised by people, correctly, about the glorious firefighting activity of people fighting the New South Wales fires—which were of a greater extent and severity than those here—nevertheless should be reflected in appreciation of the work of people here in Canberra. For each of the individuals, the risk and the importance was the same as for those in New South Wales, although nowhere near as extensive in either geography or time. However, there was a crisis in Canberra and the community rallied magnificently, as it did around the country. Everybody who lives here in the ACT enjoys the benefits of the beautiful natural environment. But the Christmas bushfires showed us the risk that goes with the benefit. It should make us acutely aware of the vulnerabilities we are exposed to. The Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, made those remarks at a civic reception he held yesterday for bushfire volunteers. He also communicated to the community representatives there, the firefighters and other volunteers, and the people from the community there to support them, that the Legislative Assembly had carried a motion recording its appreciation of the dedication, professionalism and commitment of all those men and women, particularly the volunteers, who successfully protected the community from the Christmas 2001 bushfires and recording its thanks for the outstanding contribution they made to the Canberra community and the territory. I simply want to join in reinforcing that. I do not complain or express concern that the focus of people's comments has been on New South Wales. That is perfectly understandable. It is much bigger and the drama around the issues concerned was much more stark. But the human contribution was as substantial here and the intestate contribution of support was as generous. The fire in Oaks Estate, which I used to have the privilege of representing but which is now in the electorate of the member for Canberra, was substantially controlled by New South Wales resources. I want to join with the Chief Minister and my colleague the member for Canberra in thanking all those people.We have all undertaken to try to cut our time down, so I will move on to say some things about the problem in the Jervis Bay territory. It flows logically from the remarks made by the member for Gilmore. I appreciate the fact that she recognised the work of the firefighters from Jervis Bay and Wreck Bay, both in fighting the fire in Booderee National Park within the Jervis Bay territory and in crossing the border and, with the rest of the communities, fighting the fires in the Shoalhaven. When I was in Jervis Bay recently checking on how the community was after the fires, I heard Philip McLeod from the Wreck Bay volunteer fire brigade organising a truckload to go up to the march-past in Sydney. I was very pleased that they received recognition along with all the other firefighters who came from the surrounding areas. The threat to Jervis Bay territory was very substantial. It was fought with the same bravery and commitment that occurred across New South Wales. I thank those people from New South Wales and from my electorate in the Jervis Bay territory—the fire brigades, the naval staff and the support people—for the work they did. I want to raise one issue of concern which should be drawn to the attention of the minister for territories. I will make sure that I do so. There was concern in Jervis Bay and Wreck Bay with the nature not of the firefighting, which was magnificent, but of the evacuation and civil disaster plans and the way they were implemented and coordinated in the area. It is a difficult small area, with the Wreck Bay community, the Jervis Bay community and the naval base all with slightly different administrative arrangements, and the coordination was less than perfect even though the enthusiasm and commitment of all the people was first class. I hope that the administrator will already have drawn to the attention of the minister—if he has not, I hope this speech will serve to do so—that we should learn from this experience and ensure that the civil disaster plans are overhauled so that in future emergencies the residents of the Jervis Bay territory are inconvenienced as little as possible, that the dislocation is as small as possible, which I am not sure was the case on this occasion, and that people are reassured and better informed about the commitments, the obligations and the priorities from the police, the fire services and the administration.With that small caveat, on behalf of all the people of my electorate and, joined with all of my colleagues from all sides of the parliament, on behalf of the people of Australia I want to thank all those who made the great contribution in fighting the fires in New South Wales and the ACT.10:39:00646Baldwin, Robert, MPMr BALDWINLL6PatersonLP10—I support the Prime Minister's motion, and I pay tribute today to the thousands of people who made the personal commitment to help out during the recent fires. The fires did an estimated $100 million worth of damage in New South Wales alone. That figure would have been considerably higher if it were not for the courageous efforts of our firefighters, other emergency services and the thousands of volunteers. In Paterson, there were a number of outbreaks which local firefighters had to contend with in areas such as Karuah, Swan Bay, Fullerton Cove, Gloucester and Nabiac. Today I want to acknowledge the people of Paterson who worked tirelessly on the fires, not only within our electorate but also across the state of New South Wales.There were literally hundreds of people from the Rural Fire Services, state emergency services, ambulance services, police, councils and local business, just to mention a few. I would like to acknowledge the great work that firefighters within my electorate did over that fire period, which started on 25 December and finished around 16 January. For many, it meant Christmas away from their loved ones and the loss of the summer holidays. It meant unpaid work for thousands of volunteers day after day, night after night. It meant long hours at the coalface, the fires, only to return the following day to do the same all over again. This is a phenomenal commitment that firefighters make. These brave men and women put their lives on the line to ensure the protection of homes and properties of thousands of people, and they do so without riches and rewards. They embody the true spirit of Australia and they perform a job that requires bravery, courage and commitment. This work, which is done without reward, was embodied by the fire control officers of each of the control centres in my electorate. When asked to nominate an outstanding contribution to the firefighting effort, all replied they could not and would not pinpoint a single firefighter. They were adamant that it was a combined effort from each and every member and that every one of them deserves a great pat on the back. I would like to mention a firefighter, however, from Nelson Bay, who actually fell victim to the fire itself. Albert Kinman left on Christmas Eve to fight the fires, and it was at Warragamba where he experienced first-hand its destructive force. Albert and five other firefighters lost their belongings, which were stored in a ute, when their vehicle was engulfed in flames. He lost his clothes and his wallet, and all the gear that was left in the ute was completely destroyed. We thank God that no-one was injured in that particular fire, but it certainly brings home the high risks that firefighters take. Albert spent two weeks fighting fires in Warragamba, Cranbrook and Kurrajong. His story is just one from the thousands of men and women who put their lives on the line during the Christmas 2001 fires.Today I want to put on the public record the services in Paterson that were involved in fighting the recent fires. As I mentioned earlier, firefighters in Paterson travelled far and wide to fight the Christmas fires. Some of the areas they travelled to included Sydney, Penrith, Hawkesbury, the Blue Mountains and Gosford. In the case of members within the Great Lakes Fire Control, some even went as far as Parkes to join the battle. In recognition of this effort, I would like to acknowledge the Fire Control Officer of the Great Lakes Fire Control Centre, Ian Lewis, and his team. More than 185 firefighters from this area fought blazes or helped the cause in some shape or form. They worked on fires at Stroud Road, Booral, Minimbah and Port Stephens, just to name a few.I would also like to acknowledge the members of the Dungog Fire Control Centre and the Acting Fire Control Officer, Allan Gillespie. More than 80 local firefighters were involved in the mission, which covered trips to Sydney to fight the Hawkesbury blaze, Bolga near Singleton, Cessnock and, again, Port Stephens. I would also like to acknowledge the Port Stephens Fire Control Centre and the Fire Control Officer, Mark Lewis. This centre had to contend with two of the worst fires to hit Paterson which were in the Karuah-Swan Bay area and Fullerton Cove. These fires destroyed more than 4,300 hectares of land. The worst of the fires at Swan Bay saw more than 130 firefighters on the front line, and it also forced the closure of the Pacific Highway near Karuah—this on one of the busiest days of the year.I would also like to acknowledge the Maitland Rural Fire Control Centre, which encompasses parts of my electorate, and the Fire Control Officer, Barry Pont. Over 70 volunteers from this centre were involved in fighting blazes from Picton to Penrith, Gosford, Cessnock and Bolga. The services that firefighters performed in Paterson and areas around the state was simply outstanding.These men and women are the unsung heroes who Australia could not do without, and they deserve the respect and acknowledgment of all members of parliament here today. These are the unsung heroes who are embarrassed by recognition and accolades. These are the men and women who are the true spirit of Australia.At this point, I feel a need to mention the funding needs of the Rural Fire Services' branches—in particular, the Tuncurry branch. I visited the Tuncurry branch recently to present a flag, and I spoke with a number of its members about the functions and needs of the unit. One of the key services that the Tuncurry branch performs is providing a catering unit. The unit travels to areas where firefighters are working and provides fresh, hot meals. This is a vital part of the firefighting operation, and I congratulate these people for the work they perform behind the scenes so that the firefighters can just get on with the job. The Tuncurry branch is also seeking funding for another vehicle to transport firefighters to and from locations. At the moment, the service has only one truck, and when it is in use firefighters cannot be transported to other areas of need. I have written to the Prime Minister about this, and I also urge the state government to consider funding this worthy cause.The New South Wales fires also highlighted the need for properly funded fire management policies. It is just commonsense that prior to the fire season, around Christmas time, hazard reduction plans need to be put in place to reduce the incidence of fires of the magnitude we recently saw. For too long now, the New South Wales government has been beholden to the green vote, instead of listening to the people on the ground. It has made fire management a tangled mess of bureaucratic red tape that has done little to offset the threat of fires. Decision making was taken away from local experts and given to bureaucrats, just so that the New South Wales Labor government could win the green vote. In an admission that its fire management policies were not working during the fire crisis, the state government announced changes to those policies. This was yet another example of Labor policy being made on the run. Those changes will give the decision making back to local fire services, who will be able to force the removal of hazards from residential properties, council parks and reserves, national parks and state forests. My message to the state government is that we need to see these measures put in place now and not next Christmas. As one of the most fire-prone locations on earth, the east coast of New South Wales must have efficient fire reduction policies in place sooner rather than later.In closing, I would again like to commend the work done by the firefighters within my electorate of Paterson and, indeed, across the nation. We are indebted to you for your efforts, and I certainly hope that you are able to enjoy a quieter Christmas with your families and friends this year.10:47:00648Gibbons, Steve, MPMr GIBBONS83XBendigoALP00—I rise to support the motion and, on behalf of the people of central Victoria, to express appreciation to all the crews, volunteers and professionals who fought so valiantly in the devastating fires in New South Wales. In particular, I noticed that the commitment from central Victoria consisted of a series of task forces, which each consisted of four strike teams. A strike team consisted of five units, and a unit consisted of one tanker and a crew of six for day duty and another personnel complement of six for night duty. Overall, Victoria committed four task forces, Bendigo being part of task force No. 4, which included strike teams from Shepparton, Seymour and Wodonga. Of course, everybody knows that the firefighting aircraft, Elvis, was also loaned to the New South Wales government by the Victorian government, and it is good to see the Victorian government having the foresight to have such an aircraft on hand to assist in these devastating fires.The Bendigo commitment consisted of one strike team consisting of five units. In all, a total of 60 personnel and five tankers were sent to West Pymble in Sydney, and they fought fires at Lane Cove. Of the personnel, six were full-time firefighters, and 54 were CFA volunteers. The senior management personnel were all volunteers. Also, the following brigades from central Victoria provided tankers: Bendigo, Mandurang, Sedgwick, Axe Creek and Eaglehawk. The strike team leaders were Peter Downes, who headed up the day crew and Noel Honeychurch, who headed up the night crew. The units were also partly crewed by volunteer members from other brigades within the Bendigo Fire Brigade's group: for example, Huntly, Strathfieldsaye, Junortoun, Woodvale, Marong, Maiden Gully and Mosquito Creek. The local CFA like to share around the opportunity to participate, and the Bendigo tanker was crewed by both volunteer and career personnel.In addition, Golden Square, Elphinstone, Raywood and Dunolly provided two crews for a communications van located at Hill Top, just out of Mittagong, and three Critical Incident Stress Peers were provided from CFA region 2—and, of course, Peter Downes did two tours of duty heading up one of those. The region also provided an operations officer in Mr Mark Gilmore. So you can see that Bendigo and Central Victoria played their role in helping their colleagues in New South Wales fight these devastating fires. As I said before, it is great to see the state government in Victoria having an aircraft of the nature of Elvis, which proved so beneficial in fighting these fires. With the little time I have left to me, I would like to draw the attention of the Main Committee to the fact that the Australian Defence Industries company in Bendigo has manufactured a prototype firefighting appliance. This is a purpose-built from the ground up firefighting appliance designed for fighting fires and saving lives. This vehicle can actually withstand a major bushfire passing over the top of it and the crew can survive. It has injecting nozzles over each wheel which spray foam in the event of the tyres bursting because of fire. Even if that should happen, the design of the vehicle is such that the rims are set at a lower level than the actual differentials, and the vehicle can be drawn or driven out of the firefighting area on its rims.As you can see from the brochure, aesthetically it is not the most pleasing vehicle to look at. It has a face that only its mother could love. But it does what it does very effectively: it fights fires and saves lives. I will just go through some of the technical details. I understand there has been considerable interest in this vehicle from states all around Australia—and that is very encouraging, given that the ADI plant in Bendigo is under some cloud with the problems they are having with the contract for the manufacture of the Bushmaster armoured personnel vehicle, which this vehicle is based on. Some of the technical details are as follows:ADI integrated protection systemThe ADI FireKing is designed to provide improved levels of crew survivability, vehicle survivability and vehicle performance, from a purpose designed vehicle.Crew protection:The ADI FireKing's cabin is constructed using a combination of specially selected materials designed to minimise injury due to exposure to radiated heat, high temperatures and toxic fumes. This degree of protection is simply not possible in commercial cabinet-chassis based firefighting appliances. Heat resistant glass provides further safety.The protection system is designed for minimum decision making during emergencies.Vehicle protectionThe purpose built steel monocoque body is rigidly constructed to provide significantly greater durability, improved crew comfort and protection from fire or accident damage.I have actually ridden in one of these vehicles, and I have to say that it rides like a Range Rover; that is how comfortable it is. The brochure continues:The underbody is entirely enclosed creating a cabin capsule of immense strength that protects all vehicle critical systems. Consequently the design life expectancy of ADI FireKing is much higher than that of any other conventional firefighting vehicle.FireKing's purpose-built design philosophy integrates a protection system that minimises heat transfer, insulates the interior while minimising cabin interior fuel sources, protects the exterior from melting or burning and offers optimum weather and radiant heat sealing of doors and windows.I understand that it can also travel down the road at 100 kilometres an hour, which is a big asset in bushfire fighting instances, simply because a vehicle like this would not replace every other firefighting appliance in Australia—that is not the intention of it. But some of these vehicles strategically placed around hot spots, if you like, in fire-prone areas could be a big asset not only to help fight the fire but also to save lives. I would like to conclude on that note but, before I do, I seek leave to have this publication incorporated in Hansard.OT4Charles, Bob, MPMr Charles—Do you have a commercial interest?83XGibbons, Steve, MPMr GIBBONS—I do not have a commercial interest—maybe a vested interest. It was actually designed and built in my electorate of Bendigo, and I am very proud of that.Leave granted.10000Mossfield, Frank (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Mossfield)—The document will be included in Hansard subject to it meeting the guidelines for incorporation. The document did not meet the guidelines for incorporation—10:54:00650Bartlett, Kerry, MPMr BARTLETT0K6MacquarieLP10—I suspect that very few members of this House will have experienced the fear of seeing a massive wall of flame approaching their home or the sense of utter devastation at seeing their home burnt to the ground. I am very thankful that I have not experienced that. In the recent Christmas bushfires, very sadly, a number of my constituents did, and they now have memories that some of them will never forget, that will live with them for life, having suffered loss that will take many, many years to rebuild and from which to recover. During those bushfires we lost 12 homes in the Blue Mountains and 14 homes in the Hawkesbury area, starting with the fire that raced up the gullies onto Cedar Ridge Road in East Kurrajong on Christmas Day. Many other homes were damaged and much other property lost as well.To all of those people, first of all, who lost homes or property during those fires, I would like to express my sympathy and sorrow. Some people will never recover from the financial and personal loss incurred, including the loss of items of great emotional and sentimental value that will never be able to be replaced. To all of those people attempting to rebuild their properties and, in some cases their lives, after that devastation, we want to wish them well as they begin that arduous task.What is amazing about these bushfires is that the loss was not far greater than it in fact was, considering the intensity of the fires fuelled by a build-up of fuel worse than we had seen for many years, and the adverse weather conditions that came together in a way that had not been experienced for many years as well. These fires were of an intensity and duration that many of my firefighters who have been in that work for 20 or 30 years said were the worst in their memory. What is amazing, given the intensity of those fires, is that the loss of property was not greater—in the whole of my electorate we lost only 26 homes. What is perhaps even more incredible, and something for which we need to be so thankful, is that no lives were lost at all during those fires—fires that raged at their peak for over two weeks and then, some time after that with reduced intensity. No lives were lost. The answer to why there was not great loss I think we have to put down to the tremendous efforts of the firefighters, that massive team of volunteers and paid professionals who put their lives on the line day after day in order to save property and to save life.In the Blue Mountains we had 24 brigades of the Rural Fire Service and, in the Hawkesbury, 21 brigades augmented by many other organisations and help from interstate. As I understand, across New South Wales in total during those two weeks, we had some 6,000 Rural Fire Service volunteers and another 2,000 volunteers from interstate. In the Blue Mountains at any one time, 24 hours a day we had some 500 people at the fire front and another 500 people working in a support capacity. The RFS estimated during those two weeks that 132,000 hours of volunteer work were put into fighting those fires, with most of the firefighters on long shifts working tirelessly, many on 12-hour shifts on and off. In the Hawkesbury at the peak of the fires there, some 2,000 people were working at any one time—that is, at the fire front and as volunteers. It was just an outstanding effort.It needs to be said that many other volunteer services also rolled up their sleeves and helped as well. From the SES, the State Emergency Service, in the Blue Mountains we had some 95 members and an estimated 6,000 hours of volunteer effort from them; in the Hawkesbury, similar sorts of numbers of help from the SES and from many other organisations right through the community. I will mention some, but I will not be able to mention the names of all. We had the regular New South Wales Fire Brigade, the New South Wales Ambulance Service, the St John Ambulance, the New South Wales Police, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, service organisations such as Rotary and Lions, many church groups, RAAF and Army personnel, service clubs, RSL clubs, bowling clubs and many others—volunteers from all walks of life who came in to pitch in with hours of time, money and supplies to help this effort. It was a tremendous community effort, a case of the community coming together in crisis. But it was not just hours. It was the tremendous commitment as well. So many of the firefighters who were at the fire front put themselves between the fires and the properties and the lives of the people they were trying to protect. In many cases, one tanker and a small group of volunteer firefighters were the last things that stood between a raging wall of flame and peoples' homes—and, in some cases, the lives of their families. It took tremendous courage, dedication and commitment from these volunteer firefighters. We want to express our deep gratitude to those people.Another point that needs to be made is that so much of the firefighters' effectiveness is because of the time and effort that has gone into training in the years beforehand. These volunteers do not just turn up on the day, get stuck into it, hope that it will all come together, show some bravery and hopefully save the day. The reason that they are so effective in the field is that they spend hundreds of hours throughout the year training to make sure they know what to do in a crisis. We do not notice that quite so often. We need to thank them for that ongoing commitment that enables them to be so effective and to save lives and properties when the crunch comes. To all of those people, we express our deep gratitude.Another point that needs to be made—one that we often miss in terms of people who suffered—is about the effect of the fires on our small business operators and tourist operators, particularly in the Blue Mountains. I was quite appalled to see some of the exaggerated media reporting of these fires. We understand and appreciate the need for our media to convey to the public the extent of the devastation but, sadly, perhaps to sensationalise and to get the most mileage out of the issue, some of the reports were exaggerated. Our tourist operators, particularly in the Blue Mountains, were badly affected. Across the board, there was an average 60 per cent reduction in tourist visitor numbers to the Blue Mountains, which has an effect throughout the community—for example, on other businesses and employees.Yesterday, I was very pleased to hear the Minister for Tourism and Small Business announce a package of some half a million dollars to promote tourism in my electorate. The fact is that the Blue Mountains are still blue. Better still, they are still green in spite of that devastation. It is a great place to visit. People ought not let those fires stop them from coming.The last point I want to make is to remind people of the tremendous sense of celebration we had in the community when the fires were over. On 2 February, in Richmond, there was a massive street parade. On 10 February, another was held in Springwood, and there have been various other celebrations throughout our community. The spontaneous outburst of applause from those who lined the streets on those occasions really said it all. It was an emotional and overwhelming expression of the gratitude of our community for the tremendous work done by our firefighters. To all of those emergency services, to all of our volunteers and to all of the helpers, paid and unpaid, we want to say thank you for absolutely magnificent work. Thank you for taking the risks that you did. Thank you for your outstanding efforts in saving life and property.11:03:00651Martin, Stephen, MPDr MARTIN8I4CunninghamALP00—I join with each and every member of the parliament who has spoken in this debate to congratulate all those folk who were involved in fighting the dreadful fires that commenced on Christmas Day 2001 and engulfed much of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Like so many of the other speakers, I am a representative of a community that was touched in a very real sense by the fires. Our community's spirit was evident not only during the fighting of the fires but in the subsequent support systems that were put in place to look after people who had been dreadfully affected.In Wollongong and the areas I represent, there were two main fires. The first was the Appin Road fire, which commenced at 12.30 p.m. on Christmas Day. It impacted on Darkes Forrest, on Helensburgh and on Stanwell Tops. It burnt into the Sutherland Shire and also impacted on Waterfall and the surrounding areas. In total, some 15,000 hectares in Wollongong and Wollondilly were affected. That is a pretty substantial piece of ground. Many honourable members would know the area that I am referring to. It is the area of Wollongong's northern suburbs and the habitated parts of Sutherland Shire, with the Royal National Park in between. Many of us can reflect on those devastating fires in 1994 that affected the Royal National Park and can recall the impact the fires had not only on the ecology and the fauna but also on the general lives of people in the Sutherland Shire. The fires that started on Christmas Day 2001 impacted for a series of other reasons. They impacted because it was Christmas; that was the first thing. In that true spirit of volunteerism that Australians are renowned for, people literally downed their knives and forks at their Christmas meals on Christmas Day to pull on those yellow and orange suits. They joined the volunteer fire service as part of the emergency services and got down and dirty for their local communities. Many of those folk went away from their homes, from their kids and from other loved ones for considerable periods of time. They did not just go out and do one shift; some of them were away for about a week or so.83QSchultz, Alby, MP8I4Martin, Stephen, MPDr MARTIN—Many of them were out there for even longer, as my friend the member for Hume rightly pointed out. Many of them were suffering sleep deprivation because of the intensity of the fire, the circumstances in which these fires had broken out and the very unusual weather patterns that affected our part of the world over that Christmas-New Year period. All of these things contributed to extremely dangerous conditions. It is in the light of that knowledge that we can but look on in awe at the way in which ordinary people literally put their lives at risk for their communities and for others. As the intensity of the fire and the difficulties became well and truly known, we sought assistance from Elvis, a genuinely mechanised approach to fighting fires. The goodwill spread across the states. We saw firefighters from Tasmania, from South Australia, from Queensland and from Victoria.83QSchultz, Alby, MPMr Schultz—True Australian spirit!8I4Martin, Stephen, MPDr MARTIN—It was the true Australian spirit on display. The firefighters did not know each other, but they became mates as a result of what happened. The second fire in our area was the Burke River fire. It started on Christmas Eve and burnt towards Wollongong on Christmas Day. Some 46,000 hectares were burnt out. In this particular case, no property was lost but it did burn out a significant portion of the metropolitan catchment area. In the Appin Road fire, which I mentioned initially, 10 homes and numerous buildings in the Helensburgh and Stanwell Tops area were lost. The Stanwell Tops Christian Centre also suffered incredible damage.About five days after the fires had gone through, I visited many of those parts of my electorate, accompanied by Jenny Macklin, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The devastation was incredible to see, and stories of the heroics of individuals came out. Equally, the way in which fire—a part of nature—affected some areas was incredible to witness. If you drove down one street you might see a reserve that had been totally burnt out and a house that was still standing, next to that house another one burnt to the ground and right next to that house another one left standing. You marvel as to how this could happen—how the forces of nature conspired to such an extent that one particular house in a row was burnt to the ground and others were left standing.When you talk to the people from the Rural Fire Service, the police and the emergency services, you get a feeling for what it was actually like on the ground when that fire was racing through the gullies and bush areas at the back of Helensburgh and Stanwell Park and so on. You appreciate that fire is not discriminating; it can randomly select places to devastate while at other times it can just blow over other areas. What Jenny Macklin and I saw was the devastation of the Stanwell Tops Christian Centre. All around the bush had been burnt and the Christian centre had been devastated, yet at the end of the cul-de-sac there was a house owned by Bob and Clare Proudfoot—a couple of friends of mine—where the back garden shed had been singed by flames but that was it; the house was saved. At the time we were there, power had been restored and the telecommunications system was gradually coming back. Again, this highlights the way in which some of those emergency services, the energy providers, the telecommunications providers and so on equally rallied to the task after the event. Integral Energy was given support by a range of other energy providers to make sure that lines were strung up again, that energy was restored, that the quality of drinking water was restored—the pump and filtration system for Helensburgh had stopped because of the fires; health risks were considered, but fortunately everything was given the all clear.Another important thing was that in all the confusion, when all the volunteers were doing this fabulous job for their local communities, various media reports were coming through about what had happened and any piece of information was being put out as though it were gospel. I was told, for example, that Symbio animal park was burnt to the ground and all the animals there had similarly suffered that fate. In fact, because of the action of the volunteers—the Rural Fire Service at Stanwell Park and at Helensburgh, with the assistance of other brigades—that important tourist attraction in Helensburgh was saved. I think it is important that we do pay tribute to the likes of the brigades and particular individuals, and I would like to do that in the last couple of minutes. Jenny and I, as we talked to some of these people, could not help but be impressed by the spirit of the people whose houses were touched by fire but also by the spirit of the volunteers themselves—these men and women who had had little sleep over a long period of time. A high level of bravery was shown by them all on Christmas Day and in subsequent weeks. The Stanwell Park Brigade worked particularly hard. Their truck was out of the area assisting with other fires on the day, so the brigade loaded up their Land Cruiser Troop Carrier and fought the fire using hoses from the town water supply. To Gary Lake, the captain of the Stanwell Park Brigade, and his crew, we salute them. I knew a guy Sammy Blackwell, a community member, back in the good old days when I used to referee rugby league. The police came to his house and said, `Sam, my son, it's time to go. The fires are getting a bit close.' Sam said, as only Sam would, `No, I am terribly sorry, officer. I don't intend to do that.' He grabbed some hoses and with a couple of neighbours he fought back the flames from neighbours' property. That is the nature of the community spirit that we are all talking about in this debate today.It was a team effort by all the agencies and the services involved—the fire agencies, the welfare agencies, the animal rescue people, the SES, the police; they all did a terrific job. People were told to evacuate. They went into the Helensburgh town centre. They were looked after at the Helensburgh Workmans Club. Again, I take my hat off to the directors of that particular organisation. They were prepared to open their hearts and their premises to look after folks who were told to leave their homes. At that time of the year a lot of people were on holidays, and they got the message from family and friends, `The fires are coming and we don't know about your house.' As they tried to drive back they were stopped on the highways because it was too dangerous to go through. As you travel that highway between Sydney and Wollongong today and look at what was bushland everywhere, you see it blackened and you can see the old bush rock and you can make the gullies out—you probably did not know they were there. I think we can never underestimate the effect that something like this had on people's lives and their psyche.When Jenny Macklin and I were there, we went into one of the shops in Helensburgh and she was talking to a woman with her child who said, `Look, you have to understand. My daughter, who is about five or six years old, simply won't be on her own; she's not prepared to be by herself even in her own house now—and she draws pictures of the fire coming towards Helensburgh.' They are the sorts of deep-seated difficulties that we must recognise have been ingrained particularly in the minds of young people, but not necessarily just the young. It is well and good to be full of bravado and say we live in a sunburnt land and bushfires are part of the everyday scene—they are, but they are not necessarily part of that everyday scene in quasi-urban areas. But what we saw on Christmas Day clearly put lie to that particular myth. Joe Scimone, an engineer at Wollongong City Council and one of my closest mates, was dragged away from a family Christmas Day to go in because he is in charge, from the Wollongong City Council's perspective, of running their emergency services centre. He was the guy who was in with the police emergency service, Rural Fire Service and so on at their command centre, running the rescue effort, the firefighting effort et cetera. He put in a lot of time, a lot of hours. But he was one of many. He was one of many of the local police, the commanders, the people from the Rural Fire Service and so on. I think it is appropriate that a motion of this nature be moved in the parliament so that these people do understand that their work does not go unrecognised. Of course it has been recognised. In Wollongong a couple of Sundays ago, there was a street parade and a belated arrival of Santa Claus for the bushfire brigade people and the Rural Fire Service people et cetera. This was put on by Wollongong City Council just to show the appreciation to these folks.It is always nice when we come together as a parliament to consider a motion that no-one can find fault with. And I think in our broader lives, we know that on occasions like this, when there is devastation caused by natural disaster, we see the best being brought out in people. So, on behalf of my local community of Wollongong, I would like to publicly place on record my thanks and the thanks of everyone in our community for the outstanding work that all of these folk did on Christmas Day and on subsequent days. They clearly demonstrated what volunteerism is about; they clearly demonstrated what mateship is all about; they clearly demonstrated what they were prepared to forgo on behalf of our local community. I pay tribute to Phil Koperberg. I pay tribute to all of those emergency services—the Rural Fire Service, the police et cetera. They all did us proud over this very difficult period, and I think it is appropriate and right that the parliament recognises them in this way. (Time expired)11:18:00654Schultz, Alby, MPMr SCHULTZ83QHumeLP10—I rise to speak on this motion on the Christmas 2001 bushfires—bushfires, which I might add, were the worst fires in the history of New South Wales. There were 100 individual fires from Christmas Day onwards, and over 569,000 hectares were burnt out on a fire front of over 1,300 kilometres in length. Unfortunately, 27 people were charged with fire related offences, including arson. That is probably one of the most disturbing aspects of the fire, to think that individuals would deliberately light fires for whatever reason and put people's lives and property at risk.More than 20,000 volunteers and regular firefighters from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania gave their time unselfishly in the true spirit of the mateship and care of Australians by volunteering to fight these fires in New South Wales. They were instrumental, along with the emergency services organisations, in evacuating 11,000 people. During the period of the fires there were 115 homes destroyed and 20 damaged. There were also 100 vehicles, boats, caravans and campervans destroyed. Eighty-five aircraft were used to fight those fires. I am not quite sure what the percentage or what the make-up was with regard to helicopters and fixed-wing firebombing aircraft, but there was a significant contribution by the aviation industry as well following the section 44 disaster, which was declared in the area that I represent on 3 December, following earlier fires prior to the disturbing, escalating holocaust that occurred from Christmas Day on. The estimated cost to government was about $70 million to fight those fires. Whilst that pales into insignificance in terms of the personal loss and the stress and the trauma that was created by the damage that the fires caused, I just make that point for what it is worth. In the electorate of Hume, a significant number of towns were affected by the fires. Some were in danger of being consumed by the fires and others had significant fire damage to them. I talk about, as an example, the townships of Warragamba, Silverdale, Oakdale, Hilltop, Bargo, Buxton, Marool and Mittagong, just to name a few. In Warragamba alone, 30 homes and 10 businesses were completely destroyed, including the only supermarket at Warragamba. The Prime Minister in the House recently made comment about a priest, Father John Evans, who was in a situation where his presbytery was hit by a fireball whilst he was trying to save the church in the community that he had served for 32 years. When the presbytery burnt down, Father John Evans lost everything. He lost his clothing, his mother's and father's furniture, personal jewellery belonging to his mother, his chalice for his church—and, more importantly, he lost items of personal value that could never be replaced. Another resident had her house burnt down in Weir Road, and I refer to Josephine Quiggley. This lady lost her son in a car accident 12 months previous to the fires. She lost her home in this fire and she lost everything in it. They are just two individuals who were affected by the fires.I spent three days up around the Warragamba-Silverdale area at the height of the fires. On the first day I could not get in—and quite rightly so. Because of the intensity of the fire and the thick smoke that was around, the authorities stopped me from going in. But I did undertake a tour over a two-day period through those towns looking at the damage and speaking to the residents. I was prompted to write a letter to the Prime Minister on 10 January after talking to the residents and the volunteers—and, indeed, the businesspeople—in those areas. From those discussions I found that many of the volunteers, some of whom had come from interstate, had been there for so long over that four-week period of devastating reality of bushfire that they had run out of money. In the true Australian tradition, business houses and people in the community had supplied accommodation and taxis to take people to and from where they were staying—when they got the little rest that they did during their magnificent personal contribution in helping fellow Australians—because people had run out of money. That was my purpose in writing to the Prime Minister—not only from the point of view of people using up their personal funds to assist others but also in the light of the significant damage, the property loss and the personal loss of those people whose homes and property had been destroyed by the fire.I asked the Prime Minister in that letter to consider setting up some sort of a committee so that we could expedite the mechanisms that allow the relief packages to flow through when a section 44 disaster is declared. I was pleased to see, despite some minor criticisms, that the government made a payment to many of the volunteers who fought in those fires. It is not unprecedented; I understand that it has been done on two other occasions in the past. I commend the government for doing that. One of the things I have found over my years in state and federal politics, and I have been involved in a number of fires, in 1994 and 1996, is that there seems to be—and this is meant to be a constructive criticism—a mind-set within the Rural Fire Service about the use of fixed-wing firebombing aircraft. The use of aircraft as firebombers is regarded by most modern fire control authorities as an integral part of their firefighting strategy. Early suppression of fires in inaccessible and remote locations, and supporting and protecting ground crews and property with precision delivered retardants and foam is where these aircraft excel. Under Australian conditions, the more advanced fire control authorities, particularly those in Victoria and South Australia, regard suitably equipped, large capacity agricultural aircraft as the most cost-effective aircraft to deploy in fighting fires. In these two states, a veritable squadron of their bombers are under contract and are extensively and very effectively utilised each fire season. As an example of this, I refer honourable members to a small news item in the Daily Telegraph on 16 December 1999, page 25, which succinctly illustrated the Victorian approach to bushfire containment. Large capacity agricultural aircraft, when properly set up and flown by pilots experienced in these operations, are highly effective in fighting fires. During the Sydney/east coast fires in January 1994, the most devastating fires in the history of New South Wales, and with men and equipment coming in from interstate and New Zealand—as they have done on recent occasions—nine firefighting aircraft sat on the ground in Victoria because the New South Wales authorities steadfastly refused to use them. I took umbrage at that, because I have a firm personal belief that the maximum utilisation of all types of aircraft should be paramount and should not be restricted by the ideology of individuals within the Rural Fire Service or CASA. Over a two-day period I had some rather vigorous phone calls with the then fire commissioner, and current fire commissioner, Phil Koperberg, and the then Minister for Emergency Services in the New South Wales government, of which I was a member. I had to exert some considerable personal political pressure to ensure that those aircraft that were sitting on the ground in pouring rain in Victoria were called to the New South Wales fires. That happened. The point I am making here is that it should not have to happen. It should be the responsibility of all governments to institute operations which suppress fires as efficiently and as quickly as possible—also for the sake of those people on the ground who are placing their lives at risk, such as volunteers and professional firefighters. Let me make some observations about the fires in New South Wales in late 2001 and 2002. In late November 2001, fires had been burning for nearly a week. It was not until five houses were burnt down that fixed wing firebombing aircraft were sent to Cessnock. In early December 2001, fires had been burning for five days before fixed-wing firebombing aircraft were sent to Camden. Those are a couple of illustrations. Let me go on. In Dubbo, on 24 December 2001 in the Goobang National Park fire, six firebombers arrived to load retardant for Goobang National Park. There was only enough retardant for two decent loads. Both the Rural Fire Service retardant mixers had broken down and were blocked, despite two previous bombing operations on this fire using foam which began in early December. The third firebombing operation commenced on 18 December and that is when they found that they had problems with the retardant mixers. At Peak Hill in the same area on 25 December 2001, six tonnes, or 69,500 litres of retardant, was mixed, loaded and delivered to the fire on the ground four miles away using two aircraft, with no hold-ups, problems or delays, in just under five hours. This was achieved using a private retardant mixer. The point I am making here is that, if we are going to have equipment on stand-by to service these mechanical aids to assist volunteer firefighters on the ground, we have to make sure we learn from previous fires and that we have that equipment up to scratch. It is just not good enough. Why are we in that position after the coronial report following the 1994 fires in New South Wales? This needs to be looked at intensely from the state authority's point of view and, more specifically, from the community's point of view. It is the community that endures the heartache and the pain as a result of the holocaust of fire which in many instances has taken lives—sometimes, might I say, in environments where it should never, ever have happened.In New South Wales, currently, we have only seven firebombing aircraft available—despite what people might say, because some of those aircraft flying are not suitable. I am talking about aircraft that dump large amounts of water, in five and six seconds, on fires, not aircraft that take 15 to 20 seconds and longer to drop very fine misty liquid onto a fire. Those seven aircraft that I refer to are two AT-802 Air Tractors, four M8 Andromedas and one G10 Thrush. The Victorian government and the Victorian community have firebombers under contract, which were released to assist in New South Wales. They have designated airstrips for them to land on. Whilst everybody involved in these fires did a magnificent job and many people placed their lives on the line to protect the homes and lives of their fellow Australians, I think we need to make sure that if, God forbid, we ever face another fire of the magnitude that we have just gone through in this state we make sure that anything and everything that we have on the ground to support these people is up to scratch. (Time expired)11:34:00657Fitzgibbon, Joel, MPMr FITZGIBBON8K6HunterALP00—I am pleased to rise in support of the motion moved by the Prime Minister and to associate myself with the sentiments expressed by him, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and all those who have or will make a contribution to this important debate, a debate which has bipartisan support on both sides of the chamber—which of course is not unexpected.On Christmas Eve, like most parents with young children, my wife and I were busy wrapping Christmas presents—not all the presents of course; only those that did not come from Santa Claus, the additional presents. But two doors up, Sharon Close was doing something much different. She was working alone as her husband was out fighting fires until about 9 o'clock at night. As a member of the New South Wales Fire Service, for most of Christmas Day he was out doing the same. They are not atypical of what was happening right around New South Wales, where many people gave up desperately needed family time to protect the property and lives of others. The fires around my own home town, Cessnock, covering both the Cessnock local government area and the Singleton local government area, were the biggest in the state, but I am pleased to report that not only were no lives lost—which is the case for all of New South Wales—but also, importantly, no property was lost, thanks to the enormous efforts of all those volunteers and professional firefighters who were on the job throughout that period. These fires were raging mainly around the Yango state forest area and in the Singleton local government area in the Bulga district. We know now that the Yango fire was caused by lightning strike. I am not sure whether any conclusion has been arrived at in regard to the Bulga fire. But, rather devastatingly, we do know that many of the smaller but not insignificant fires around the Kurri Kurri, Kearsley, Millfield, Paxton and Sweetmans Creek areas were more than likely deliberately lit. I suppose, as has been alluded to by earlier speakers, this is a most devastating revelation: to think that there exist in our society people who deliberately light fires and in doing so put the lives and property of others at risk. To force our volunteers and professionals to spend the Christmas break and their desperately needed family time out protecting those lives and property is a very sad thing. I agree with those who say the full force of the law should be brought to bear on these people. It also serves as a reminder to us that we have some endemic problems in our society, some real problems, when people, often younger people, are prepared to go out and perpetrate such crime.One of the more interesting incidents that occurred in my own local area during the bushfire period was the apprehension of one of these offenders by the local mayor of Cessnock, John Clarence, and the New South Wales Minister Assisting the Premier on Hunter Development, Richard Face, who more out of curiosity than anything went to inspect a fire outbreak near the Kurri Kurri Hospital. They arrived in the minister's nice big white car only to see a young fellow run away very quickly on sighting their car. They disembarked and took off in hot pursuit. They apprehended the offender and found on him, I think, two or three or maybe four cigarette lighters. It was quite obvious to them and to the police that he had been up to something most disappointing.83QSchultz, Alby, MPMr Schultz—I hope Richard Face can sprint as fast as he used to.8K6Fitzgibbon, Joel, MPMr FITZGIBBON—Yes, Mayor Clarence tells me that Minister Face spent most of his time in the car circling the local geography while Mayor Clarence was in pursuit on foot. But it is a great tribute to them both that they took the law into their own hands and effected what I suppose would be known as a citizen's arrest.I want to pay tribute to the thousands of Australians who gave so much to protect the lives and property of others, including the lives of the many animals that make our bushland areas their natural habitat. In my own electorate the firefighters were led by a group of dedicated professionals, the fire control officers. For Cessnock, Maitland, Singleton and Musselbrook they were Robin Rogers, Barry Pont, Peter Kincaed and Michael Brett. These men had very large teams of both volunteers and professionals. I would love to name them all here, as I am sure most members would. I was fortunate enough to speak to many of them when I accompanied Premier Bob Carr and the acting leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party at the time, Jenny Macklin, to a briefing by the fire control officers and other associated people and an inspection of some of the areas affected. At that briefing, I was fortunate to meet and talk with a number of people—people like Cessnock Council's Glenn Byrnes, who typifies that `beyond the call of duty' attitude that so many of our paid firefighters possess and that many volunteers also possess. Amongst them was a group of people who I think both the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition mentioned in their own contributions—the Roberts family, from the Cessnock local government area. They are members of the Central Rural Fire Service in Cessnock. Mum and Dad—Debbie and Terry—and daughters Rebekah, aged 21, Sarah, aged 17, and Tyler, aged 14, are all members of that brigade, and older brother Paul, who is 25, is a professional member of the New South Wales Fire Brigade. There we have a family all of whom were involved in the battle against those fires. It is fair to say that they typify the Australian spirit and the Australian attitude of cooperation and a desire to help others when they are in need.I also want to pay tribute to the many small business employers—and business employers generally—who released their employees to enable them to participate in the effort against these sometimes devastating fires. I agree with those who say that governments should be looking at ways of assisting those businesses, particularly small businesses, in their efforts to release those people in the future. Most of us in this place know that most small businesses are marginal at best—they provide only an average wage, if that, to most of those employers. I am sure it is most distressing for some of those small business employers to want to help and make their contribution by allowing their employees to contribute, while at the same time knowing that to release them could be the end of that business—to find themselves not in a position to release those people when they have contractual obligations to meet, for example, or because they simply cannot afford the drop-off in, say, retail sales that would be a consequence of that release. I am not going to put forward specific solutions—maybe tax breaks on the wages for those people or something to that effect—but I believe our award process should make provision, even if it is associated with some form of compensation to the employer, for those people to be able to participate in those processes. We would be nowhere in this situation without our volunteers—not only our volunteer firefighters in all the services but also people in the SES and others who contributed to the effort during both December and January. That is a serious issue for government to take account of and to respond to.Finally, I want to quickly pay tribute to those who stayed at home—the spouses. I choose the word `spouses' deliberately: it is not always the female spouse at home; it is often the male spouse at home while the female spouse is out fighting fires. I have seen many examples of that. I am referring to those people who give their blessing to their partner to be out there protecting the lives and properties of others, instead of being home on Christmas Day with the children, where they really should be. It is a great tribute to them as well. It must be very difficult to be at home alone on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning when the kids are unwrapping the presents et cetera and at the same time have your spouse absent for a period of time. My thanks go to all those people who stayed at home and—I will not say `kept the home fires burning'; that might not be an appropriate term in this debate—held the fort and gave their blessing to those who were out there risking their lives to save the lives and property of others.11:44:00659Neville, Paul, MPMr NEVILLEKV5HinklerNP10—I would like to associate myself in this debate with the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and, indeed, my colleagues, especially those from New South Wales who endured the rigours of the Christmas fires. It must have been a very difficult time for all the local members, as the member for Hunter said, going to briefings and the like and knowing that people were at risk the whole time. I would like to also add my voice to what the member for Hunter said about small business. I think there is a case for some form of reimbursement for small business where a volunteer or part-time firefighter associated with the business is required for an extended period of time to be away from the business. I do not know what time that should be: perhaps anything in excess of a week. Most businesses recognise that they have a part to play too, and I am sure they would be cooperative. But I think there should be a standard, because these volunteer and part-time firefighters relieve the community of a huge burden of responsibility. It should be remembered too that, quite frequently, they put their lives at risk.Secondly, I would like to associate myself with the comments of the member for Hume with his comments about fixed-wing aircraft and, in fact, firebombing in general. It is very important that these things be available and operational the minute a fire breaks out. We should not let a fire become established before we make the decision; it is better to nip these things in the bud. I commend his ideas as well.I am here to commend the firefighters who tirelessly worked to protect lives, homes and businesses during the recent Christmas bushfire circumstance in New South Wales. I am especially proud of the contribution of 22 firefighters from my own electorate of Hinkler who travelled to the bushfire affected parts of New South Wales and also contributed as part of that task force. Those firefighters were drawn from units throughout my electorate, namely, Bundaberg, Childers, Bargara, Gladstone and Boyne Island, which are units of the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service. There were also rural firefighters from Burnett Heads, Woodgate, Childers, South Kolan, Ashfield and some other Bundaberg units.Moving on to the prevalence of bushfire outbreaks in Australia whilst I am a conservationist at heart, there is little logic in the approach that is being taken to the management of fire-prone regions, especially those within nature reserves and national parks or where those reserves or parks themselves encroach on to suburban or rural residential areas—and that is where we saw some of the worst damage in those New South Wales fires: in suburban areas encroaching on forestry and national park areas or rural residential areas. It must be heartbreaking for those people whom we saw on TV to see whole rows of homes in those sorts of circumstances wiped out.The purists—and I recognise that there are some purist conservationists, and I do not doubt their sincerity in this—would dictate that there be no firebreaks in national parks. On the other hand, there must be a recognition that, while national parks are a repository of native flora and fauna and cover incredibly varied landscapes, areas surrounding those parks themselves may not be well managed. So you cannot treat a park in isolation from the rest of the community. That means that at times you just have to have breaks, and sometimes those breaks have to go onto the parks or the reserves.The widespread destruction associated with fire seasons in New South Wales in 1944-45, 1957-58 and 1968-69 occurred because fires were left to burn for long periods unchecked and there was plenty of fuel available for those fires. Although methods now exist to reduce the risk of such fires, the potential for bushfires to destroy life and property remains a real threat right to this day—and I take up the point from the member for Hume that we should not let these fires become established. It is better to perhaps punt with a little money on firebombing exercises early in a circumstance than to see something get almost to an unmanageable situation as it did at the peak of the Christmas bushfires in New South Wales.While national parks, by their very nature, are vulnerable to fire outbreaks, indigenous Australians have used controlled and slow burns to manage the environment for centuries—and again I know that the purists would say that this has been overdone. Nevertheless, it has been done fairly successfully. As Minister Wilson Tuckey advised in his previous portfolio—and I had a lot to do with him in Forestry—the need for the judicious disturbance of national parks and particularly state forests is becoming more evident. The Americans, who have now had horrific fire circumstances, as we know—and we have even had our own firefighters over there—have been through this problem. Some judicious disturbance in a national park or in a forestry area is not only a method of keeping regeneration of that park or forest in place but also an important part of controlling the circumstances in which fire can break out. I can remember an occasion—which I think was back in the 1980s—in my own electorate. Of course, I was not a member of parliament then, but I remember this because I was associated with tourism and regional development. I remember the absolute trauma in the Childers district when the Woodgate National Park was burnt out, from memory again, 75 per cent or 80 per cent. It is a beautiful national park with a tremendous amount of high conservation values. The things that always used to stand out to me were the magnificent eagles' nests in the tops of old, dead trees—of course, the most vulnerable things of the lot in the event of a fire. I remember the ranger at the time expressing to me—because I used to be down there on tourism and development activities—his frustration that he could not get the then council or the national parks and wildlife service to put breaks through it. At the time it was, `Those wouldn't be necessary; those wouldn't be necessary.' It was literally days after he made his last appeal that the whole thing erupted and wiped out, as I said, 75 per cent or 80 per cent of that beautiful park. It is only now, 15 or 20 years later, that we see it coming back to its former glory.Of course, certain plant species are triggered by fire and its effects, and it is a necessary part of the regeneration process for native Australian flora. I have been very impressed with one revegetation project in my electorate of Hinkler, carried out on the shale flats at Callemondah in Gladstone. In this exercise several hectares were regenerated by the Gladstone City Council through its officer in charge of that project at the time, Len Woodman, by collecting native seeds from around the district, sending them to a laboratory in Newcastle in New South Wales and then having them artificially subjected to the conditions which duplicated the harsh Australian natural environment cycles. This included subjecting them to smoke, heat, water and acetic acid. The effect of that was seen when these seeds were just broadcast—not put in holes and not even trash blanketed; not watered but just broadcast very simply—in this most inhospitable landscape; and any of those who have seen shale on the surface will know just what an ugly sort of landscape it is. I saw those seeds 14 months after they had been planted, and they were up to my waist at that stage—beautiful, regenerating bushland. The project illustrates to me that sensible compromises between the competing interests can be reached and, indeed, that they can transform into wonderful results for both Australia's ecosystems and those who seek to control those ecosystems.I know I have strayed a little from the point of the fires themselves, but I am trying to illustrate the fact that we have the capacity to control situations without compromising ecosystems or environmental standards. I think we should be doing more of that—regenerating certain areas of bushland. Putting firebreaks where purists would not have them is part of that control mechanism. Quite frankly, we need to ensure that environment management systems are balanced between interference on one hand and judicious preservation on the other, for the benefit of all. In summing up, one cannot underestimate the enormous contribution made by the helicopters and firebombers during the recent New South Wales bushfires, particularly the borrowed Erickson air-crane helitankers. These machines are capable, as members would remember, of loading 9,500 litres of water in less than a minute, and during emergencies these machines proved to be very impressive weapons against the bushfires. Given the obvious value of the machines, I suggest that such helicopters be utilised in future outbreaks. One might be located in my electorate of Gladstone. Although the nature of purchase or leasing of these special Erickson helicopters might be debated, whether it would be best to have them in the RAAF or in private ownership—perhaps government subsidised in the initial instance—or leased at specific periods of the year is not important. What is important is the point the member for Hume raised: that they be available early in the circumstances of these fires. I would recommend Gladstone, which is in the centre of Queensland, as being a suitable spot because it has helicopter servicing facilities. As honourable members are probably aware, helicopters are used there extensively in industry; also, access to Heron Island, which is one of Australia's premier resorts off the Queensland coast, is entirely by helicopter. Therefore, helicopter servicing is very much a part of the Gladstone business environment, and so I would recommend to the government, if they were considering distributing these machines, that Gladstone might be a suitable venue.Before I finish, I would like to acknowledge the firefighters from my district who served in New South Wales during the recent bushfires. From the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service, I would like to acknowledge John Watson, the area director in Bundaberg; his senior firefighters, Gary Black and David Gear; Auxiliary Captain Colin Santacaterina in Childers; and Auxiliary Lieutenant Peter Mapson in Bargara. From the Rural Fire Service just across the border of my electorate, in the electorate of Wide Bay, I would like to acknowledge Ernie Dittmer and John Helmore from Tirroan; Gary Allen from Burnett Heads; John Dowling, Monty Williams and Ray Harris from Woodgate; rural firefighters Tim Kingston and Greg Leeson from Childers; Gayle Kruger from South Kolan; Wayne Perkins from Ashfield; and the administration officer, Kathy Pole, and the training officer, Michael George, from Bundaberg. In Gladstone, I would like to acknowledge the area director, Greg Adams, and his staff—Brad Hull, Shelley Wilson and Stephen Gray. At Boyne Island, I would like to acknowledge Lieutenant Michael Jahnes and his team—William Potts and Stephen Porter. All those people from my district served in New South Wales during the fires. It is also very interesting that the two area directors both went to the fires not just to look or to fight but also to bring the expertise that was gained in those fires back to the Bundaberg and Gladstone areas. Also, you will note that the administration and training officers were sent along. It was a frightening circumstance, but we hope it was a lesson well learned, and I pay tribute to all of those associated with fighting those fires.12:00:00661Murphy, John, MPMr MURPHY83DLoweALP00—I rise to support this motion before the House and also to endorse the comments made by the member for Hinkler. I take the opportunity while I am here to congratulate the honourable member for Hinkler. He is a real fighter, like so many of the firefighters in the recent tragedy in New South Wales. Whilst we are on different sides of the political landscape, he does represent his electorate well. 0V5Slipper, Peter, MPMr Slipper—His constituents were very good to him.83DMurphy, John, MPMr MURPHY—I am sure the Labor Party candidate would have done a better job than the `member for the Sunshine Coast' but I know that the member for Hinkler has his heart in the right place. I would also like to express my sympathy to those who suffered terrible material losses during the recent bushfires in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. I also would like to express my admiration for the courage of both the professional and volunteer firefighters. It is impossible to measure their bravery and selflessness in the face of extreme danger. With the bushfires which raged across the New South Wales and the ACT, it is easy to say that it was a miracle that no lives were lost or no more homes were destroyed. However, this does not do justice to the professionalism of the firefighters and the excellent training of the volunteers, who are the real heroes. There is no greater example of dedicated community service than the State Emergency Service of New South Wales, which provided such vital assistance to the Rural Fire Service during the recent Christmas bushfires. I would like to pay special tribute to all members of the SES in my electorate of Lowe who, along with so many, did such a magnificent job. Earlier this month I was privileged to attend a City of Canada Bay Council reception, hosted by the mayor, Carmel Del Duca, to honour our local SES volunteers. It was an honour to meet the esteemed guests and, in particular, the local controller for the Canada Bay City Council area, Mr Alan Parkin. Alan lives in Concord and is responsible for starting and promoting a vibrant SES team in the City of Canada Bay local government area. The numbers under Alan's leadership and inspiration have grown to some 50 volunteers. We all recognise the SES's distinctive orange overalls, but it is important that we understand the exact nature of their service during emergencies. With thousands of volunteers across New South Wales, the SES provides immediate assistance to the community in times of natural or man-made emergencies. The variety of assistance offered by the SES and the skill level of SES volunteers is quite remarkable. During the bushfires, 450 SES volunteers worked each day to assist the Rural Fire Service. Every volunteer in the field had training in general rescue, teamwork, first aid and radio communication. They assisted with traffic controled, transport and people, equipment and food. They assisted with communications and logistics, removed and secured damaged trees, tarped partially damaged structures, staffed call centres, assisted with evacuations and doorknocks, provided food and drink to firefighters and assisted with air operations, which included filling buckets for water bombing. After the terrible and tragic bushfires of January, in the first week of February the fire emergency was replaced with a water emergency. The SES started taking approximately 2,500 calls for help after heavy rains began drenching much of the New South Wales coast. The SES again responded magnificently, with a completion rate of over 90 per cent. The SES pumped water out of flooded buildings, sandbagged vulnerable homes and businesses, cleared fallen trees and fixed tarping on damaged roofs. The lesson from the SES to all residents in the metropolitan areas was to take steps to ensure that their roofing and surrounding street gutters or storm drains are cleared. Incredibly, last Saturday brought another severe thunderstorm in Sydney's west, with the SES again swinging into action. Over 5,000 calls for help were answered for this emergency. In addition to responding to both major storms this summer and the Christmas bushfires, the SES volunteers have donated thousands of hours to other tasks such as flood response, road crash rescue, assisting the police in searches and rescues and working at community events. To meet such a diversity of tasks, SES volunteers train every week in the skills they use and exercise their skills on the weekend. The basic training consists of first aid and general rescue techniques. There is also training in radio communications and operation centre procedures. The specialised training includes flood boat operations and vertical rescues.All SES volunteers in the Canada Bay area in Ashfield and elsewhere across New South Wales deserve our praise and respect. Their efforts are proof that the Australian community spirit does exist and can achieve incredible results when fellow Australians are faced with a natural or man-made crisis. I understand that the SES did not get the $160 payment paid to the bush firefighters by the federal government for fighting the fires. I ask that consideration be given to such a payment.In concluding, I salute Alan Parkin and his local team of dedicated volunteers, who are an inspiration to all of us. I encourage others in the Canada Bay area to follow the example of Alan Parkin and his team. Well done, Alan Parkin and the SES.Debate (on motion by Mr Slipper) adjourned.Bills663R1442663Debate resumed from 14 February, on motion by Mr Slipper:That this bill be now read a second time.12:07:00663Slipper, Peter, MPMr SLIPPER0V5FisherLPParliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration10—in reply—There was one speaker only in the main chamber with respect to the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2002, and that was the Leader of the Opposition. I do not intend to canvass the matters raised by the Leader of the Opposition in his speech other than to say that the speech was a long trawling monologue during which present and past ministers were smeared. The matters that he raised were nothing new, and the government has addressed the matters raised by him in earlier debates in this parliament. I intend to focus specifically on the terms of the Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2002, which is a machinery bill. I suspect that the Leader of the Opposition did not actually read the speech before going into the House to deliver this 30-minute effort.The Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2002 amends the Ministers of State Act 1952 to increase the limit on the sum appropriated from the Commonwealth consolidated fund to meet the salaries of ministers. The increase is necessary because of a determination of the Remuneration Tribunal to increase the rates upon which the salaries of senators and members are based. Base salaries of senators and members are linked to reference point A in the principal executive officer classification. Mr Deputy Speaker, you will be interested to know that, when this reference point changes, the base salary of senators and members also changes. This determination came into effect on 1 July 2001. This means that all members and senators, including the opposition and the Independents, have had the benefit of this increase since that time. The Remuneration Tribunal recommends that the salaries for ministers should be adjusted by the same mechanism in movement in base salary of the PEO band A as determined by the Remuneration Tribunal. The government adopted this recommendation in 1999.Additional salaries are set as a percentage of the base salaries of senators and members. That flow-on effect means that the amount specified in the Ministers of State Act 1952 is insufficient to cover ministers' salaries for the full 2001-02 financial year and beyond. The proposed sum of $2.8 million will cover the increase in salaries that took effect from 1 July 2001 and has a contingency for payment to the Deputy Prime Minister when acting as Prime Minister. There is also some margin to cover a possible further salary increase in the life of the present parliament. Salaries will be paid only in accordance with the formula recommended by the Remuneration Tribunal. The bill increases the amount specified in the act to $2.8 million for the 2001-02 financial year and beyond. I commend the bill to the chamber.Question agreed to. Bill read a second time.Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.Address in Reply663663Debate resumed from 18 February, on motion by Ms Ley:That the address be agreed to.12:11:00663Mossfield, Frank, MPMr MOSSFIELDMK6GreenwayALP00—In this speech on the address-in-reply, I would like to place on record my thanks and appreciation to the people of Greenway for the faith that they have shown in me in their decision to send me back to this parliament as their representative for another term. I relish the opportunity to continue representing the views of my constituents and fighting for their rights and aspirations. Greenway is undergoing many changes. It is growing and changing at a rapid pace that has not been seen before, and to be returned under those circumstances is very gratifying. My thanks also must go to the many loyal supporters and volunteers who helped me during the campaign and on election day itself, particularly my campaign director, Paul Gannon, and his very enthusiastic and hardworking campaign team. Last year was the year of the volunteers, and the Labor Party certainly demonstrated its strength in this area. I would also like to comment that on election day itself the Labor Party was the only party in the area that actually fully staffed the polling booths all through election day. I would like to move on and say that, following the election, I revisited a number of my electioneering sites, such as railway stations and shopping centres, and I was very pleased with the reception I got. There was a lot of warmth, a lot of recognition, a lot of appreciation and a lot of happiness that a Labor candidate had been returned.A week or so after the election, we had the privilege of Simon Crean, the new leader of the Australian Labor Party, visiting Western Sydney. I was very pleased that he was able to come to Blacktown in my electorate. He did a doorstop and visited a number of shopping centres in the area, and was likewise very well received. I would like to place on record my appreciation for the work that Kim Beazley did during his term as leader of the Australian Labor Party and to indicate to him the expression of warmth and support that he receives out in the electorate. Once again, a number of people have expressed their disappointment that we were not successful in winning the last election.In my speech on the address-in-reply I intend to refer to issues that I see to be important to the people of Western Sydney and, in particular, to the people of Greenway. I said in my first speech in 1996 that the area of greater Western Sydney would experience massive population growth over the next 10 years and, indeed, we have seen this happen. Greater Western Sydney accounts for 77 per cent of the Sydney metropolitan area. It comprises 15 local government areas and runs from Auburn in the east to the Blue Mountains in the west and from the Hawkesbury in the north to Wollondilly in the south. Western Sydney is one of the fastest growing regions in Australia and currently accounts for around 38 per cent of Sydney's population and now exceeds 1.4 million people. Within 13 years it is estimated that Greater Western Sydney will constitute more than 50 per cent of the total Sydney population. One in eight Australians live in the region of Greater Western Sydney. In the next five years alone Western Sydney's population is expected to grow by more than 135,000—that is, 27,000 each year or 75 people moving into the region each and every day. Recently we have seen the release of land in the electorate of Greenway at Riverstone, Vineyard and Schofields. This has come on the back of large land releases for new residential housing in Glenwood, Stanhope Gardens, Park-Lea and Quakers Hill. I am pleased to advise that a consortium associated with Greg Norman has shown interest in developing a tourist complex of a golf course and high-class accommodation in the Schofields area. This complex will be of considerable benefit to Western Sydney in terms of tourist growth.Coupled with this population growth will be an urgent need to create employment opportunities. Currently industries and commerce situated in Western Sydney employ some 35.3 per cent of Sydney's total work force. Western Sydney has a high potential for sustained economic growth. Already an estimated 72,000 jobs have been created but many more will be needed if the new residents of Western Sydney and their children are to find employment in the region where they live. In a recent survey conducted by the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, the question was asked: what is the single most important issue that the federal government could do to improve living in Western Sydney? The most important issue by far was the need to create employment opportunities. I would like to refer now to an important organisation in the electorate of Greenway which has been working hard to assist small businesses and with which I had close association prior to coming into this parliament. The organisation I refer to is the Blacktown Regional Economic and Employment Development Task Force or BREED. BREED was funded under the Office of Labour Market Adjustment during the term of the previous Labor government. Unfortunately, budget cuts came with the first Howard government but due to some management ingenuity BREED survived. I would now like to make some comments based on the 2000-01 annual report of BREED. One of the main projects of the BREED Task Force was the Nirimba Business Development Centre. This project received establishment funds from the federal government to refurbish and equip an ex-Navy apprentice accommodation building within the Nirimba education precinct to be suitable for use as a small business incubator to assist the establishment and expansion of small business within the Blacktown region. The final funding contribution was in the 1998-99 financial year and the NBDC has been required to be self-funding since then. As landlords in a small businesses incubator environment, they face a unique challenge that other landlords do not. Ideally what you want as a landlord to a small business is for that business to be a successful long-term tenant. As an incubator, though, when the business gets off the ground and becomes successful they have to move out to commercial premises. Just when there is a long-term future for the business BREED loses them as tenants and as an income stream. While the centre is undertaking additional activities to develop other income streams, this can be detrimental to the centre's core business of being an incubator and a developer of small business. I believe the following assessment of the activities and the successes of the centre would justify on-going support from the federal government.At the end of June 2001 there were 19 businesses being assisted by the centre, occupying 52.8 per cent of the total space available. These businesses increased the number of people they employed from 26.5 full-time equivalent positions when they commenced trading at the centre to 42—an increase of 49 per cent. Total employment by the 54 businesses assisted by the centre since 1997 increased by just over 52 per cent from 71 people to 108 by June 2001. Fifty-one of the 54 businesses are still operating—an outstanding success rate. It has been calculated that these new businesses that have been helped by BREED represent a benefit to the local economy of some $2,600,000. I congratuate the staff of the centre, headed by Stephen Frost, the general manager. They have done a magnificent job in supporting local small business but they need government support to enable BREED to continue this vital and valuable work.On a related topic, the Governor-General said in his address that the government will maintain its commitment to national highways. As a representative of the people of Western Sydney, I find this hard to believe. The government refuses to fund the last link in the national highway system—namely, the Western Sydney orbital. To enable industry to expand in Western Sydney, the major infrastructure needed is quite clearly the orbital. The orbital is a part of the road network that I have campaigned for for quite a considerable time. It is the last link in the national highway. It must be completed as a matter of urgency, without placing an additional cost burden on residents and local businesses. The orbital would link Sydney's high standard orbital network by connecting all Sydney's existing motorways—the M5, the M4 and the M2. It would provide high standard access to and from all parts of Sydney and would link all major employment and residential areas. Indeed, the tourist development being promoted by the Greg Norman consortium I mentioned earlier is relying on the completion of the orbital to maximise its development.I cannot emphasise enough the need for the orbital to be constructed quickly and also without a toll. Already, we are surrounded by tolls on most of the highways around the area in which I live. Both businesses and local residents are very strongly opposed to the introduction of a toll on the Western Sydney orbital. The orbital is the last link in the national highway. If a toll were placed on it, it would be the only part of the national highway network with a toll, and I think it would be very unfair to place that financial burden on both the industry and the residents of Western Sydney.I would like to move on to another area of activity in Western Sydney: agriculture. Agriculture also plays an important role in the economy, with some 65 per cent of Sydney's fresh food production coming from this region. Agricultural products alone exceed an annual turnover of $1 million. The Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, entirely within Western Sydney, remains one of the most productive agricultural regions in Australia. Although Western Sydney comprises only one per cent of the available agricultural land in New South Wales, it accounts for 10 per cent of the state's agricultural output. Poultry, dairy and vegetables are significant rural products from the area, while the region produces one-third of the oysters consumed in New South Wales. When the government talks about the importance of regional Australia, one region often overlooked is the region of Western Sydney. Make no mistake, Greater Western Sydney is an identifiable geographic and economic region, and it deserves due consideration when discussing regional policies. An example of where Western Sydney is not considered a region and should be is in the tertiary education portfolio. The University of Western Sydney is, to all intents and purposes, a regional university, and yet it is not considered as such by this government. UWS is a relatively new university, with campuses across the region. It serves the community extremely well, and yet every budget cut to the tertiary sector has hit UWS disproportionately. When the HECS based merit scholarships were cut by this government, UWS suffered more than any other university. The students from Western Sydney—from the electorates of Greenway, Chifley, Prospect, Fowler, Werriwa, Macarthur and Lindsay—suffered more as a result. Funding must be restored to UWS, and the additional funding that is given to regional universities must be extended to the University of Western Sydney. In his address, the Governor-General said that the government understands that the higher education sector is critical to maintaining Australia's international competitiveness, economic prosperity and cultural development. I wonder if the government does understand this fundamental truth. If it did, it would find it hard to justify the cuts that have been made to this sector and to the University of Western Sydney.I will move on to another area of great importance to Greater Western Sydney. I refer to the Governor-General's speech, in which he said:Policies that support families and provide them with effective opportunities and choices are crucial to Australia's economic and social future.With this in mind, I would like to refer to an organisation in Greenway that provides support for families in need. I refer to the Quakers Hill Family Centre. This centre is a joint program between Wesley Dalmar Child and Family Care and the Quakers Hill Uniting Church. The centre's annual report advises that there has been a high demand on the centre during the previous 12 months, with an increase of 80 per cent in the numbers of families being assisted—some 628 families in total and an amazing figure of 1,222 more children than in the previous year.The centre receives funding for a youth support service for Quakers Hill and Lalor Park. Funding was also obtained for volunteer training for a breakfast club, family fun activities around child protection and group work in the multicultural family work program. As part of a state-wide program, some 25 facilitators from the whole Wesley Dalmar organisation were trained in the How to Drug Proof your Kids Program. Some of the general family issues dealt with by the centre include postnatal depression, disabilities in either parents or children and family separation issues. The family work team for the centre provides family counselling, individual counselling, multicultural case work and support group programming for both adults and children. This intensive family work program assists families that are severely dysfunctional or fragmented and experiencing conflict and relationship breakdowns.The intensive work program enables families to develop social skills, parenting skills and new ways of communication and to form social support and conflict resolution skills. Some of the success stories during the year include discovering ways of communicating with a deaf-mute preschooler which have enabled him to join in the social world in a much more self-fulfilling way; assisting an adolescent in crisis to overcome his self-harming behaviour, to gain social support and to make new choices for the future; helping single parents to improve their parenting skills and to gain social and economic support; assisting families to work through domestic violence issues; and, helping a mother to manage anxiety and depression. Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins, the issues that this great organisation is addressing are very family oriented issues, and the organisation is doing a great job for the area. You can see, from these examples, that the centre is all about assisting families with their individual problems. Another project of the centre relates to an early intervention program, where children who are hidden victims of family breakdowns and domestic violence are counselled. This includes confidence building programs to assist these children to overcome the pressures they feel in their family situations. As a further extension of the centre's program, a family centre model was established for the Riverstone area. This model was launched in November 2000 following a community forum consisting of federal and state members of parliament, local police, Blacktown Council, the department of education, the department of health, the department of housing, local churches and local school principals and parents.One of the first initiatives of this group was to establish a breakfast club in partnership with a Riverstone youth worker and volunteers from local churches. Feedback on the outcomes of the breakfast club shows a radical change in the attitude of students in their ability to learn and in school and social behaviour. Another focus area for the centre is the Sundowner Village. At this location, the needs of more than 214 families, including 371 children, are catered for. The issues addressed at this location include child protection, domestic violence and drug and alcohol problems. Many of the families assisted are at the point of homelessness: newly arrived migrants who are unable to access income for 12 months and ex-wards of the state who are not equipped with the skills required to manage a stable employment and home situation. The Sundowner Family Centre aims to make a difference over time in the family cycle to enhance the skill level of parents and the options available to them. It is important that the children of the families identified in the annual report of the Quakers Hill Family Centre are given the necessary assistance to develop into robust Australians. I therefore commend the work of the centre and thank the centre's dedicated staff—Lynne Walsh, Lorraine McGlashan, Robert Stephanovics and Rebecca Gittens—for the support they are giving to families in the Greenway electorate.I will conclude on this note: the organisation that I have been referring to has now raised with me the need for additional before and after school care places. Mr Deputy Speaker, I think you would appreciate, from the numbers I have quoted in my speech, that there is a need for this service in the area.Another area in my electorate—Parklea Public School—also requires additional before and after school care places. The centre has written to the Department of Family and Community Services requesting extra care places to provide for the students attending the Quakers Hill Public School, which is situated in an area surrounded by high density houses. The centre has a waiting list of 21 children from 15 families. I am happy to support the need for additional before and after school care places in my electorate in general but in particular in the area of Quakers Hill and Parklea.12:31:00667Nairn, Gary, MPMr NAIRNOK6Eden-MonaroLP10—Before I make my contribution to the address-in-reply, I extend my congratulations to your good self, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins, on your re-election to Second Deputy Speaker and to Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, who will replace you in the chair in a few seconds time. I also want to make a comment in relation to the bushfire motion, which I did not have an opportunity to speak to. I certainly want to record my thanks to the great volunteer work that was done by so many of the bushfire crews right around my electorate. We were lucky in Eden-Monaro that while there was a huge fire burning in the Deua National Park, west of Moruya, it did not manage to escape from that very isolated area and threaten towns like Moruya, only because of the huge work done by the local volunteers and many interstate volunteers. We also had fires around Queanbeyan and in and around the ACT in those early days. The Queanbeyan fire crews were out there straightaway and were in the ACT helping their colleagues. A tent city was set up in Moruya to look after the various people coming from interstate, because at Christmas time all the hotels, caravan parks—everything—was booked out. With the number of people coming in it was very difficult to find accommodation, so a temporary tent city was set up and all the volunteers fed those people. It was just a tremendous effort by everyone involved. Turning to the issues that I wish to raise on the address-in-reply, it is certainly very humbling to have been re-elected as the member for Eden-Monaro a third time. The result that we achieved in Eden-Monaro was certainly not predicted by a number of members opposite during the last weeks of the previous parliament. A couple of members opposite in particular took great merriment in `waving me goodbye' during the last week of sittings. I will not embarrass those who are still there opposite, but it is very gratifying that one of the more consistent `wavers' is not here himself—and of course I refer to the former member for Dobell. I thank the new member for Dobell for providing such an appropriate response to the `waving'. At another time in this place I will have something more detailed to say about the election, particularly in relation to the quite putrid tactics employed by the local Labor Party campaign which included tens of thousands of dishonest, push polling phone calls, letters which included fabricated stories that ment to thousands of constituents and a very nasty and dishonest letter circulated in Queanbeyan in the last couple of days of the campaign. I will also be taking these matters up with the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters when it carries out its inquiry into the federal election. For the moment, however, I want to record my appreciation to all the wonderful supporters who assisted in my re-election, including all the volunteers led by campaign chairman, Stephen Beer; Jan Aveyard and Neville Hughes, who I would like to single out and who did a sterling job in the coastal part of my electorate; my staff, who have been absolutely outstanding right through the last few years and particularly in those months leading up to the election; and my constant companion, my wife Kerrie, who put her career aside in those last six months to help me win.One of the major reasons we won in Eden-Monaro was that by working with the many diverse communities over the past nearly six years we had achieved a great deal. The Labor candidate, in true Richo style you might say, got off to quite a bad start in his first comment to the people of Cooma when he told them that they should not vote for me because nothing had been achieved over the past three years. Most of the people of Cooma scratched their heads at this sort of comment, noted that there was barely a vacant shop in the town, wondered how the 100 new jobs in the brand new Defence service centre could be an example of achieving nothing, remembered that the federal government helped to establish the Cooma Call and Technology Centre, and acknowledged that they now had a full-time Centrelink office rather than the one day a week social security service out of Canberra that they had under Labor—not to mention the low interest rates, low inflation and low unemployment. Yes, we did achieve lots of things in all areas of the electorate. Certainly there is still more to do. There are plenty of challenges and opportunities for this next term. Opportunities are the key. I will be working with the communities of Eden-Monaro in identifying and maximising the opportunities for them.I want to go through a few of the things I will be addressing over the next few years in the various parts of the electorate. You really have to break the electorate up. I noticed the member for Greenway talking about his area in Sydney. In a very dense urban area you can talk in a global sense: in that type of electorate everything you do tends to affect your whole electorate. But in an electorate like Eden-Monaro, of 30,000 square kilometres a very diverse area, from Queanbeyan down to Eden, up to Cooma and across to Batemans Bay et cetera—different things are affecting different parts. You have to take special note of the particular things that are happening in each of those regions, which is what we had been doing over the last few years. The Eden regional adjustment package was an example of that: recognising the particular problems existing in that part of the electorate, we were able to address them directly. For instance, in the greater Queanbeyan area—Queanbeyan out to Braidwood—there was a commitment in the election campaign by the federal government for the Defence operational headquarters to go to a site between Queanbeyan and Bungendore. This is a huge project. It is going to be a key project for this whole region. It is a $150 million plus project with in the order of 1,000 jobs when it is totally completed. They are not the only benefits that will come from that type of project in the area. It also gives us a golden opportunity to look at lots of new industry. With the sort of set-up in such a headquarters, there will be many industries and companies that will have a great interest in being on the doorstep of such a facility. I want to be working with the greater Queanbeyan area to make sure we maximise those opportunities over the next couple of years. That is when we will do it: over the next couple of years. A lot of planning is going on for this facility. The actual construction et cetera probably will not start for another year or so because there is so much to plan, but in this planning period we need to be out there making sure of companies, such as the higher tech companies, that will have an interest in being nearby. That flow-on effect will be superb. The announcement of the headquarters is coupled with the announcement of the federal government committing $2 million towards a heavy vehicle bypass around Queanbeyan. That will have a huge positive effect on Queanbeyan itself because currently the centre of the town suffers quite badly because of the constant traffic through the main street. Because of that traffic, it is not a place that people want to try and park and shop. We want to get those heavy vehicles out. I will certainly be working with the local state member to make sure that the state government, which has responsibility for this project, does what it said a few years ago it would do—although it seemed to go cold. When we said we would provide $2 million towards the $5.4 million, all of a sudden it seemed not to be interested, which is rather strange. You would think it would grab it with both hands. Certainly we will be applying the pressure there.The Queanbeyan area has been going ahead in leaps and bounds. I was at the opening of the new Jerrabomberra school only a couple of weeks ago. This is a new, growing part of Queanbeyan. Something like $2.1 million of the $2.83 million cost of the school was provided by the federal government. That is three-quarters of the cost of that new school coming from federal coffers. When you add that to about 76 per cent of the costs of the upgrade of the Bungendore school that took place a year or so ago, we are certainly making a big impression there. There are prospects for a whole new housing development adjacent to Jerrabomberra which will be twice the size of Jerrabomberra. That augurs well for the region as well. The population is growing. The proportion of unemployed is constantly coming down. Right across the electorate it has come down from something around 10 per cent to seven per cent in the last year or so. In September 2000, the small area labour market figure was 1,121 unemployed in Queanbeyan. In September 2001, one year later, the most recent figure is down to 699, which is a significant drop. That is happening right across the board. So there are plenty of opportunities for us to pursue in that part of the electorate.It is interesting that even though there is this great confidence and these things happening, some in the community always want to criticise. It was disappointing that a so-called independent councillor on the Queanbeyan council made all sorts of spurious claims during the election campaign which really only tainted the city's image rather than enhanced it. I will have a bit more to say about that when I talk about the election in an adjournment debate or something similar.At Tallaganda and Braidwood I want to see main road 92, which goes through the electorate of Gilmore, connect into Braidwood, which will certainly help to grow that part of the electorate. That town has benefited from a rural transaction centre put in place by this government in the last year. They have got a lot more services into their town. They are working on an economic development plan as well. With reasonable beef and wool prices, the town has benefited from the expenditure coming through there at the moment. In Eurobodalla I know one of the big concerns is the Princes Highway, which is the responsibility of the state government. I certainly see for the future, as we have done with the Pacific Highway, that created as a road of national importance. When those works are further progressed, the Princes Highway and that growing area along the south coast could benefit from assistance. In the meantime, the money is going to the state government and I would like to see them do a lot more in addressing the various problems along the Princes Highway.The need for aged care is growing right down the coast of my electorate, in Eurobodalla and Bega Valley. There is an opportunity for creating that area as a centre of excellence in aged care. We really do have some wonderful aged care facilities. There are some people with some innovative ideas: they would like to see the aged care grow beyond just looking after people in particular facilities. I will be working closely with them on developing that matter further in coming times. A couple of great success stories down the coast in the last few years have been the setting up of the education access centres in Bega and Batemans Bay. Wollongong University and TAFE, along with local councils, have been involved in that, and the federal government has provided substantial funds to set that up. We now have 50 or 60 people in each of those towns doing degrees out of those towns. They do not have to travel away. We know the cost of sending children away from rural areas to university. And to be able to bring university to those towns is a huge saving. It is wonderful to see the Wollongong University with that commitment and, as I said, 50 or 60 people in each of those towns undertaking degrees. In Bega, a nurse education training project is also starting up this year. Twenty-five places were allocated for that. I want to see this concept of access centres expanded further. We should be using technology to take education to rural and regional areas. I would like to see this concept of access centres extend beyond Bega and Batemans Bay—particularly up into the mountains area, to Cooma, and then beyond that again. Ultimately you can have people tapping in at home, via a telecommunications connection, into those access centres and then from those access centres back to the host university. We want to see that develop much further.In the Bega Valley we have seen the deregulation of the dairy industry settle down quite substantially. It has happened quite well in that region, predominantly because of the strength of Bega Cheese and the work that Bega Cheese did in the previous five years in accessing new markets overseas. We have seen employment levels in Bega Cheese go from only about 80 five or six years ago to, by the end of this year, probably around 500. That has been wonderful. That has been helped by the federal government with the Dairy Regional Assistance Program. We put money in there to help put in place a shredded cheese line. That shredded cheese line is now already at capacity, employing an additional 25 people—just that one cheese line. They are now doing the planning work to install a second shredded cheese line because it has been so successful. Recently I announced nearly $340,000 to Mordek in Moruya, also as part of the Dairy Regional Assistance Program. That is going to enable quite an expansion of serviced industrial land. In Batemans Bay industrial land has just about disappeared, and Moruya is the location where further light industrial land should be available. That assistance out of DRAP will open up additional land for further development. The Eden multipurpose wharf and ammunitioning facility is about to start construction. It is well and truly on the way with design and planning. Similar to the headquarters in Queanbeyan, that is also going to provide an opportunity to develop a whole lot of new industries in that region. That is one of the roles I will be undertaking—working with the community to ensure that we maximise such a facility. It is great to have the facility there—the ammunitioning facility and the multipurpose wharf—but unless you maximise it by attracting new industry into the area it will be wasted. I am very hopeful there will be lots to do in that respect as that facility gets under way in the next couple of months. I spoke about the Bombala area in the House on Monday night. With the potential closure of the mill there, the area certainly needs some assistance. I will be working with that community to try and find a way around the difficulty it has. There is a great resource, a superb resource, of softwood in the Bombala area, and we just have to get the right operator in there. The New South Wales government clearly selected the wrong operator three years ago in a rushed decision. They have raised the hopes of Bombala for the last three years. It really is a shame it is now under administration. There are a lot of questions to be asked about where some money has gone, but I will leave it to my state colleague to ask those questions in the state parliament.The Monaro and Snowy Mountains area has certainly gone well in the past couple of years, after suffering a very bad drought for about seven years. The Defence Service Centre, which I mentioned before, and the Cooma Call and Technology Centre helped to get through that problem at the time. They now give us the opportunity to expand in those sorts of industries as well, beyond the traditional industries of the area—beef, wool and tourism. All of those areas are very important. They are growing and doing well, but it is nice to have diversity so that, when you do run into droughts—which will eventually always happen—you have other industry happening in the area that can fill the gaps. That was the whole basis for setting up the Cooma Call and Technology Centre and also the Defence Service Centre.I am looking forward to another term representing the diverse communities in Eden-Monaro. It is a great achievement of this government that we have so many programs to assist these communities, programs which help the communities to help themselves, so that we are working with them rather than dictating what the government wants them to do; programs that promote the diversity of each and every community. That is what I will be working on, doing more positive work for the community and assisting them to realise their goals. Eden-Monaro has a great deal of potential. Over the next three years I will be getting on with the job of representing them, assisting them and drawing them together so that, as a community with an active and dedicated member of federal parliament, we can continue on this road, which is taking us in the right direction.12:51:00671Roxon, Nicola, MPMs ROXON83KGellibrandALP00—Congratulations, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, on your re-election. I too find it is a great honour that I have been elected as the member for Gellibrand for the second time. I would like to record my thanks to the people of Gellibrand for re-electing me, and also my thanks to the many campaign workers and staff who assisted me during this very busy and often difficult election. I pledge to continue to work hard for the region, and I intend to continue doing that with the same integrity, passion and commitment that I did during the last term.I must say that the edge of the thrill of being re-elected this time, compared to the first time I was elected, has been taken away a little. Through the last term in opposition, I was able to see the damage that was being caused in my electorate and to know that Labor would have made a great difference, particularly to my region in the western suburbs of Melbourne. I am very disappointed that, with the re-election of the Howard government, I will not be able to assist in delivering some of those many programs that would have been of great assistance to us locally, particularly to the public schools of the area, to our health and aged care sector and also to the industrial relations area, which is of great concern while we still have a very high unemployment rate in my electorate. Sadly, listening to the Governor-General's speech last week just emphasised the realisation that I had on the morning of 11 November that none of these issues was going to be dealt with. We are going to be restricted in what can be delivered to those people in the electorate of Gellibrand, but it is my job now to play an active role in holding the government accountable and making sure that the people in my electorate get their share of all the services and support that the government can provide. It is also a great honour for me to be now on Labor's front bench as part of the shadow ministry team led by Simon Crean, who will, hopefully, lead us to government at the next election. But it is an even greater honour that the portfolio that I have been allocated is children and youth, because I feel very passionately that these are the two areas where we are investing in the future, in our joint future. Whilst I am about to turn 35 and perhaps in this House am regarded as young, I am probably not regarded as young by those 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds whom we often find very difficult to engage in the political process. It will be one of my great challenges to make sure that their voices are heard in this House. Obviously, the role is a creative one and, through the next three years, I intend to put a lot of time and energy into looking at how we can deliver services and support in a better way for the children and youth of the future. But I also intend to hold the government accountable for its activity—or inactivity—in this area.I was a bit disappointed that in the Governor-General's speech there was only one sentence that really touched on children. It was about the government making a commitment for early legislative steps to be taken to implement their election promise to introduce the first child tax refund, recognising the loss of family income that generally results from the arrival of a first child. Whilst everybody is aware that there are expenses involved in having a child—and we certainly will look closely at the detail of this proposal when the bill is introduced into the House—I flag some concern that this is regarded as the government's immediate priority. When the world is changing so quickly for the working lives of many women and many families, when the patterns of support for children are changing, when we are learning new things about early childhood development, and when the drastic need in many sectors of the child-care industry is not being dealt with, I have concerns that the government sees the expenses involved in having a child as the most immediate priority and that addressing that issue is the best way to try to improve choices and support for young families.There are many practical problems that still exist in the child-care area. There are shortages of places in the long day care and family day care sector. As we heard from the member for Greenway, who spoke before me, there are drastic shortages in many areas for outside school hours care. There are still major muck-ups in the administration of the child-care benefit to both families and centres and the question of affordability still has not been properly dealt with. These are issues about which I intend to make the government answer, whether they are effectively supporting families in these times of need. I hope that there is an active role that we can play in trying to find some solutions to these problems as well.I do think there are ongoing issues in the community sector and the private sector where the lack of planning and the lack of the government playing an active role in planning for child-care places in a range of different services still creates great problems. This is one of the areas where there is a clear overlap in my role as a local member and my role in the portfolio areas. We have extraordinary waiting lists currently in all of our municipalities in the electorate of Gellibrand where the numbers of families who cannot find places in any type of care for their children have just gone through the roof. We know that that has a lot of consequences that can be pretty dramatic.I think one of the important things we need to look at during this term is what the needs of children are in the 21st century. There is now a lot of extra research and work that has been done in the early childhood development area, and I think that has changed, or is starting to change, the way that people are looking at issues that relate to children. When you think about it, it is very basic and we did not really need research to tell us that when we are concerned about children we need to be concerned about their whole development and wellbeing. We need to be interested in their health, their development, their care, their socialisation—a whole range of things that cannot be dealt with discretely by just looking at the provision of child care, our education system or family support. Those things obviously need to be brought together. We also need to more actively take account of the changing workplace and the effect that that has on so many different families. Members opposite might have seen the recent report released by CEDA with some fairly alarming statistics about the age group 24 to 35 being unable to make choices about buying a house or having a family primarily because of the difficult circumstances in trying to find full-time employment or employment that is perment enough to be able to commit to these sorts of life changes. We need to take account of things that are happening in the world around us that are leaving people in that age group at such a disadvantage compared to generations of the past. Or we need to ask whether it is a disadvantage. If it is not, we need to look at whether our policies are appropriate for these changing patterns. There is also a very significant issue in the child-care sector in relation to the quality, training and payment of staff. As we do learn more and more of the value of care, the value of learning through play and the quality of care that is required and needed by children and their families, we need to make sure that there is appropriate recognition in terms of pay and also in terms of the ratio of staff to children. These are all issues that we will be able to look at further during the next term.As any of the members in the chamber would know, parents are increasingly frustrated by the multiple levels of service providers they need to go to for the different types of support and care they need for their children, by the number of different forms that need to be filled in for every type of arrangement there is for children and by the multiple layers of regulation that cover them. We need to be prepared to say that children in this country are entitled to a certain living standard and that, by working with other levels of government, we will ensure that children and their families can get that support wherever they live—in whatever state, and in both urban and regional areas. I noticed just before the Christmas break, on 23 December, a very detailed article by Simon Kearney in the Sunday Telegraph—listed as `an exclusive'—saying that John Howard would embark upon `radical social welfare reform to help disadvantaged children as a major platform of his government's third term'. It talked about testing four-year-olds to identify developmental problems and trialling free child care for low income families, saying that instead of talking about health immunisation we need to think about `social immunisation'—all pretty radical stuff, I must say, coming from our Prime Minister, and all suspiciously absent in the Governor-General's speech. For something that was going to be a `major platform' of the government's third term, it seemed to me odd that these issues were not going to be dealt with in any way. It seemed to me odd at the time that on Sunday, 23 December the government was making a major commitment to what it wanted to do in its third term, but it was not one that it spent any time raising during the election. A number of these things were spookily reminiscent of some of the issues Labor had been campaigning on in announcing its Headstart policies and the plans it had for young families. We would be delighted if the government were to pick up on these issues and really try to make them work—not put out some sort of `exclusive' interview a couple of days before Christmas and then have the issues disappear forever. We will be interested to see whether those issues are going to be dealt with properly. We cannot talk about introducing the testing of four-year-olds and these sorts of things without being very careful about delineating what it is we are trying to achieve. We can have as many arguments as we like about the appropriateness of how young we should test people but, leaving those arguments aside, we have to be confident of what we are testing children for and what we will do with the information when we get those test results so that we can give our young people the best start in life. Obviously in my portfolio there are some pretty difficult areas in terms of children and young people who are at risk. We need to ask what role the national government should play in the areas of child abuse and child protection—which are primarily run by the states—early intervention programs, child poverty and homelessness and even issues like child prostitution, child sex, child pornography and children affected by drugs, not to mention the questions that have been raised recently about children being held in our detention centres. These are all very difficult issues and, frankly, pretty grim ones and difficult for us to deal with. But we must, as a national government say that we need to care as a whole for the children whom we are responsible for in setting policies and making laws for the future. Although this is not an opportunity for me to speak in any detail about the allegations that have been made about the Governor-General, it is a point that needs to be raised in dealing with my new portfolio. I am greatly concerned that we have the two men who hold the highest offices in this country, the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, seeming in their language to be so dismissive about something as serious as child abuse. 10000Causley, Ian (The DEPUTY SPEAKER)The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. IR Causley)—I remind the honourable member for Canberra of standing order 74. 83KRoxon, Nicola, MPMs ROXON—I think that we, as leaders in this country and as politicians, need to take some responsibility for the public role that we can play in educating people about important issues that have been handled in different ways in the past and have been shrouded with secrecy. We need to look at growing patterns of things that are causing serious dislocation in our community. Children at risk are the most fundamental and the most vulnerable starting point for some of this. We need to look at young people at risk and at the increasing rates of youth suicide. Mr Deputy Speaker Causley's electorate would be one where, in regional areas, there are a lot of difficulties for young men in particular. We need to deal with the health consequences of this changing societal pattern. We need to be prepared to say that we have to play a role as a national government and must be careful with the words that we use and the message that we send out to the community about what is okay and what is not okay.As I have said, my portfolio areas cover children, youth and, obviously by virtue of covering children, young parents. I should have been excited when I saw in the speech of the Governor-General a heading that said `Flexibility and reward in the workplace'. This is a very big issue for young parents in particular—how to strike the right balance between work and family and how to deal with the changing nature of the workplace and make sure they have an adequate income to provide for their families and their training needs. All sorts of things were rushing through my head when I saw that short heading. I was thinking about the security that workers need when businesses go under, as we are seeing happen more and more often, and the flexible hours that people often want or need when they are a primary care giver. I was thinking about questions about employer-sponsored child care. I thought, given that the Prime Minister had a rush of blood to the head on that press release before Christmas, that maybe he had decided that employer-sponsored child care was something that might be revisited. I thought the heading might even have been about young workers being trained properly in the workplace or about the difficulties young people face when they try to get a loan and they only have a casual job, even if they have had that casual job for a number of years.All of these issues are issues that the community is greatly concerned about and on which they are looking for suggestions, assistance, ideas and leadership from this government. But what do we get under this heading? The priorities in the first weeks of parliament included a promise of urgent legislative action on—wait for it—compulsory union fees, secret ballots before strikes and protection from unfair dismissal. By anyone's measures, these are not the issues that the community is most concerned about. But they are, according to the Governor-General's speech, the priorities of the government in its first few weeks of parliament. I am sorry, but I do not think that that is responding to the needs of the community in these areas.There are a lot of issues for young people that can be raised and developed further in this forum in our national parliament. I just do not believe the comments that people make about young people not being interested in politics. They are just interested in different things from what we are interested in here. Often, we are too readily critical when young people may not actually take any interest in the things that we regard as being of the most importance. We have an obligation to make sure we are listening to different sectors of the community. Just because young people do not vote when they are under 18 does not mean that they do not have a keen interest in the way this country is going to be shaped. We need to look at the different phases people are going through and the importance of making sure we deal with those issues. What are the issues that face a young person when they are going for their first job? What are the problems for casual workers, particularly young ones? What do young people want us to do on questions like the environment—the broader issues of environmental management and sustainability—and the republic? There are new questions of debt for young people arising from mobile phones and all sorts of other communications, and many other things. And there are those other issues that are coming more to the fore, like self-image, eating disorders, images of young women in advertising—a whole range of things that we are not talking about, yet we wonder why some young people are not interested in what we are doing.The government commissioned the Youth Pathways Report, and now it has been made public. It deals with some of our young people who are most at risk in the community. This is an excellent report which deals with the need for us to look across different portfolios in dealing with the problems of young people who may be homeless, may be unemployed, may be at risk of drug abuse, and many other issues. We will be watching very carefully to see what action the government is taking following the detailed recommendations of this report, and we will obviously be supportive of any steps that can assist in reducing the risk that young people are at in many of these circumstances. We will also be advocating to make sure that the government acts upon these areas and takes seriously the recommendations that have been made.The Governor-General said in his speech that `with our political stability and social cohesion, we are the envy of the world'. I had to ask myself whether we are really the envy of the world. Wouldn't it be nice if we were? But we have just gone through an extremely nasty election, where we had demonisation, and now we know that there was certainly a lot of misleading, if not outright deception, on the issue of asylum seekers and refugees. We have children in detention—not just in Woomera, but in my electorate in the Maribyrnong Detention Centre. We have falling investment in early development and education, we have increasing suicide rates for young men and increasing rates of homelessness, and we have large numbers of young people in rural areas feeling they have no hope for the future. Are we really able to say with a clear conscience that we are the envy of the world? I think not, but I would like to make it my job over the next three years to ensure that we are promoting a policy for our young people and children that will make us the envy of the world when they come to adulthood. It is not something that is unachievable; it just requires us to focus our attention on these issues. I would love us to be the envy of the world, not just for some abstract pride, but because it would really secure our place in the future. That is something that I look forward to working on in the next three years.13:11:00675Bevis, Arch, MPMr BEVISET4BrisbaneALP00—A couple of weeks before the Governor-General's address, most members of parliament would have attended Australia Day ceremonies around the country. As many thousands of new Australians pledged their allegiance to their new adopted country, we would have heard echoed around the country these words: `From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey.' A new Australian citizen takes an oath to his or her fellow Australians and to the democracy in which we all live. Members of parliament do none of those things. The Governor-General or his representative—in the House of Representatives, of course, it is his representative, because the Governor-General, as in all Westminster parliaments, as with the monarch, is not permitted in the people's house—oversaw the swearing of oaths and affirmations by members of parliament in a very different form. Members of parliament—those of us sitting here—take an oath, and you need not believe in democracy at all to take that oath. In fact, the oath just asks that we `be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, her heirs and successors'. There is no call at all for a belief in democracy or, as in the case of the United States Congress, to quote from their oath, `to support and defend the Constitution'. We are not obliged to do that. In South Africa, new members of the national assembly affirm that they `will be faithful to the Republic of South Africa and will obey, respect and uphold the Constitution'. In the taking of our oath, our national identity disappears altogether. You could close your eyes and repeat those words of the oath and you could be in the parliament of England, Wales, Scotland, Canada or New Zealand. It bears no relationship to the identity of this land. This is a fact that has been recognised by some of our state parliaments. The state parliament of Queensland and the state parliament of Western Australia have put in train a process to review the oath taken by members of their legislatures so that they properly reflect what I am sure the people of Australia expect of their representatives. The oath that federal parliamentarians take needs amendment to reflect that reality. It needs amendment to reflect what is, I am sure, the view of the overwhelming number of Australians—that we, as with new Australian citizens, pledge ourselves to the laws of this land, to the democracy, to defend the rights and liberties, to respect those rights and liberties. Surely these are sentiments, these are high ideals, that all members of this parliament would freely subscribe to, and indeed should be obliged to pledge an oath on, in my opinion. But we do none of that.The time has come for the parliament to commence to address that. I think the time has come for the parliament to establish an all-party select committee to examine the requirements for changing our oath and the form of a new oath. I have no doubt that in an inquiry of that kind the overwhelming submissions we would receive from the public would support these changes, which I have referred to, further down the road. I am quite sure the voters in the electorate of Brisbane, whom I represent, would hold that view. I need not remind too many people that at the republic referendum that was held not that long ago a 57 per cent majority of the people in the electorate of Brisbane voted in support of a republic. That was on the question that was advanced at that time, which we know was constructed as a tool—a piece of wedge politics on the issue—to divide those who supported a republic. If indeed there had been a simple question of, `Do you believe Australia should be a monarchy or a republic?' the vote would have been much higher, I wager, in every electorate in the country. It would have been higher in my own electorate of Brisbane. When I say these things about the expectations of the people of Brisbane I have no doubt that they would certainly expect me, as their member, to pledge myself to uphold and work for those things more akin to that which we ask of new Australian citizens than what we, in fact, are obliged to pledge ourselves to here.We also need to look at the process of the parliament. There has been a number of things said by the Leader of the Opposition about the need to modernise the way in which the parliament operates, including the role of the Speaker and other things. They are important issues, and I welcome that debate. The ceremony on the day in which the parliament opens is steeped in history. One of those important historical aspects is the monarch and their representative not being permitted into the House of Commons, in the case of the UK parliament, or into the House of Representatives in the Australian parliament.Whilst those important traditions need to be retained, we also need to enhance the standing of the ceremony in an Australian way and recognise some of our own Australian heritage. I personally would like to see, as part of that formal process on the day in which the parliament opens, an opportunity for the parliament to be welcomed by the elders of the local indigenous community. I can remember some years ago when Jim Soorley, the then new Lord Mayor of Brisbane, conducted citizenship ceremonies and, for the first time, had elders of the local Aboriginal community conduct a welcoming service. A few eyebrows were raised the first time he did that. It is now an event which is cherished and looked forward to and, I might say, commented on very favourably by many of the new Australians who go there. Just recall the opening ceremony of the Olympics and the Aboriginal welcome that occurred there. I think all Australians really embraced that and took pride in it. I think the world looked at that and thought better of us for it. If you have a look at the words that are spoken on the day in which this parliament opens, they are more in keeping with the oath we make, rather than the oath we should make and the expectations that our electors have of us. So I think there are a few things we need to do in responding to the Governor-General's address that go to the forms of the House and the standing of the parliament that elevate us as members and senators, dare I say, in the eyes of all. One of the things that struck me about the Governor-General's address was the lack of direction that the government has in this its third term. That is not surprising. During the election campaign, the government did not actually advance a series of policies across the portfolios as to what it thought it should do. Every party has its policies—and I am sure each party could provide a booklet that tells us that—but anyone who was here during the month of the election campaign just needs to recall the ads that were run and the literature that they got in their letterbox. What were the things that were being pursued? We all know that overwhelmingly there was one issue and one issue alone that the government pursued, and that was the question, as the government—the Liberal Party and the National Party—put it, of defending our shores from an invasion of refugees and asylum seekers, with a subtext that these people were evil nasty folk who threw their children overboard into shark infested waters. The government implied that they were probably the same sorts of people as the terrorists who did things on 11 September and, therefore, people we must stop coming to our shores. The veracity of that has unravelled in front of the nation's eyes in the course of the last 10 days or so.KV5Neville, Paul, MPET4Bevis, Arch, MPMr BEVIS—I am glad you have raised that, Paul, because you may not have caught up with the evidence in the Senate inquiry from last night. The Australian Federal Police evidence to the Senate inquiry was that—and I hope I am not maligning their evidence—they believed, on good evidence, that the sabotaging of the boat was not done by the asylum seekers but by the Indonesian crew. Let that be another furphy on the record that you as a member of the government have perpetrated. Even after the exposure and events of the last week, let the record show that we still have government members of the parliament who want to pursue that approach. The fact that this government has no agenda is not just something that those of us who follow politics closely inside and outside this place understand. It is something you just have to look at the sitting pattern to understand. In the seven and a half months following the Australian people's casting of their vote, this parliament will sit for six weeks. That is worse than Joh Bjelke-Petersen's days in Queensland—I think, although that is a big ask; Joh may have sat for fewer days than that, actually. But the fact is that it is extraordinary for our national parliament to sit so seldom for so long. Remember that this was not a change of government; had there been a change of government, as Kim Beazley, the member for Brand, pointed out in the parliament yesterday, we would have had this parliament sitting in December to deal with some of our reforms. This was a continuation of government—there was no dislocation; there was a continuation. And it was a continuation of a government with no program. So bare are the intellectual and policy cupboards of this government that during the seven and a half months after the people voted it back into office, the parliament will sit for six weeks—and that will only be for the House of Representatives. The Senate will be sitting even less, because they have estimates hearings in place sittings at the time of some of our sittings in the House of Representatives. I do not think the people of Australia expect this parliament to sit for only six weeks every eight months, but that is what is happening under this government. Why? Because, in the period after its election, the government, having had one issue and one issue alone, sat back and said, `Well, now that we are re-elected, what the heck is our third term agenda?' And they have not got one. The legislation that is being trotted out in the parliament now is a carbon copy of legislation they had in the last parliament, most of which the parliament rejected. There are a few changes here and there, but it is basically the same material. They got re-elected on one platform, and there is not much more you can milk out of that, particularly when the truth or lack of truth of it has been exposed. So in seven and a half months we are going to have only six weeks of parliamentary sitting. There is the proof of this government's agenda, the progressive nature of this government and their activity, laid bare for all to see. As a nation, we will look back on the last six months without any pride. When the history books—and it will not take too long for this history to be written—are written, we will look back on the last six months without any pride. These have not been the finest hours of Australian public debate or Australian policy. There was reference made in the Governor-General's speech to Australia being seen as a leading nation when it comes to some of these issues of multiculturalism and the like, and there was also comment made about that before. I will just make a couple of observations about that. I remember when the world actually did think that of us. I remember meeting with the European Union delegation who came to Australia in 1995. At that time in Europe there were racial tensions because the economy was taking a downturn there and some of the cheap labour that had come in from Africa and other places was being victimised, and they were seeing the rise of extreme right-wing groups. Concerned at this, the European Union sent a delegation to Australia to look at how we had handled our multicultural society, because at that point they viewed Australia as the example to the world on how to get a mix of people from different races, religions and backgrounds to live peacefully and in a friendly manner, coexisting in a multicultural society.Measure that against the world view of us today—just seven years later. You put this government in office, you have this Prime Minister running foreign policy, you have the actions that we saw in the last six months and the world view is now different. You talk to anybody who has been to Europe and the United States—whether it has been for business or a holiday—and, when the discussion has turned to recent Australian events, inevitably, the picture people have now of Australia is of an insular society, one that is not open to the ideas of others, that is racist, a society that a few years ago Australians would not have thought possible. Many Australians would, rightly, say that that is an unfair assessment for them to make of us. But, make no mistake, that is the assessment they make of us today, and that is a product of this government's policies. It is a product of deception: the deceptive policies that were used during the last six months. We will not take, as a nation, any pride out of the last six months. Any of those people who have been a party to it, that have engineered it or have continued to perpetrate the untruths, will not be able to sit back in their elder years and talk to their kids and grandkids with any pride about the way they behaved—none at all. This is not lost on the people. On the weekend back in Brisbane, I noticed a survey in the Sunday Mail titled `Cover-up damages Coalition'. I will read the first paragraph which sums that up:Fifty-one per cent of Australians believe the Howard government acted dishonourably by failing to correct the false “children overboard” claims made during the election campaign.This survey was done before the most recent revelations. I have no doubt if you took that poll tomorrow that that figure would be higher than it was last week when they took that poll. Fifty-one per cent is a clear majority. One of the really concerning things is that the percentage is much higher amongst young voters. Younger voters—that is, 18 to 24—were especially shocked by the issue, with 65 per cent saying that the government had acted dishonourably. Those young people are the future of this land. When they look to this government for leadership, two out of every three of those young Australians are saying that they are led by a government that `acted dishonourably'. That is the verdict they will make later on when they get the opportunity. It is the verdict they will contribute to making as part of the history of Australia, as they grow up. That is the memory they have and will leave to their children. If I were on the other side, I would not take much comfort out of that, but they are things for ongoing debate in this parliament. During the couple of minutes left to me, I want to thank those people without whose support I would not be here. Firstly, I want to thank the people in the electorate of Brisbane who have seen fit to return me on a number of occasions and most recently at the last election. It is for all of us a great honour to be in this place. For someone who has spent all of his life in and around the heart of Brisbane, it is an honour to be able to represent in this place those people I grew up with and, as I have in the past, I pledge myself to represent them truly and fairly and to the best of my ability. I also thank the Australian Labor Party members in the electorate of Brisbane—the hundreds and hundreds of people who not just during the election campaign but every month, every year get out there and help and also express their views about the issues of the day. We would not win elections without that small army, the band of people who come out there and work for us. I also thank them for their ideas and their input into policy. I have a very vibrant and active ALP branch membership, and I am grateful for that. I especially want to thank Terry Evans, my campaign director. Those of us in this place know the job of campaign director is a pretty hard and thankless job. For some months you are working flat out for what at times you sometimes wonder, is very little reward. Terry did a magnificent job and I am very grateful to him.I also pay a very special thanks to my staff. They work hard, every day all year, but when it comes to election time the demand on people just does not stop. As I know other members have, I have had situations where, during election campaigns, my office has literally gone for a full 24 hours without closing—it has gone all day, all night and into the next day. The staff do that and that is more than anyone can ask of friends and staff. Shirley Fallows has been with me now for over 11 years, and she keeps me on the straight and narrow. Thank you to her. To Rod Kendall and Cameron Milliner, my thanks also. Finally, and most importantly, the biggest thanks of all go to my family. All of us in this place make this comment, and it is absolutely true—it is the one bond that everyone in this place shares: that our families, not that the public accept it or appreciate it, make a terrible sacrifice for the work that we do here. My wife, Cathy, children, Shane, Emma, Daniel and baby John, who is not a baby any more, he is now seven, are always there to provide the moral support for me without which I would not be here. I know that is true of all members. Debate (on motion by Mr Neville) adjourned.Main Committee adjourned at 1.33 p.m.