19 November 2009 in Speeches
Speech to the House, (WATER ENTITLEMENTS AND HOME INSULATION) BILL 2009-2010
Mr BRIGGS (Mayo) (10:30 AM) —It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Appropriation (Water Entitlements and Home Insulation) Bill 2009-2010 and the Appropriation (Water Entitlements) Bill 2009-2010 and follow the member for Lindsay, who I do acknowledge is one of the more thoughtful members on the other side. It is pleasing to see the member for Lindsay speaking from some notes but without a written speech, which is an unusual event for those on the other side, and I congratulate him for doing so. He did a reasonable job in defending what is very difficult legislation to defend. The member for Lindsay is right: the opposition will support these bills, as has been the history in this place of supporting appropriation bills, except for some time ago when a famous one was not supported.
I thought the speech of the shadow minister, the member for Dunkley, was a cracker in the sense that it very much highlighted the problem with this government that it does not think through the consequences of its policies; it does not think through the policies it is implementing. We have seen this across a wide variety of issues, such as the home insulation of pink batts from China policy; the water policy, which is particularly pertinent to my electorate and is a very important issue in my part of the world; and the disaster which is the Julia Gillard memorial halls project, the $17 billion that has been thrown out of the window at a rate of knots. We saw another good example last week on the front page of the—
Mr Perrett —How are those school openings going, Jamie?
Mr BRIGGS —It is interesting you mention school openings. I will briefly touch on that. At the Meadows Primary School, for instance, the school is now having to knock down a building, move another and close down a playground because the government will not build on the land next door. The state governments in South Australia and also Queensland, the state of the member for Moreton, are simply incompetent. We are seeing policies which are not well thought through and we are having to clean up the mess, like we are today, by rushing through appropriation bills. This is an unusual event, as is the tradition in this place, but we will support the bill so that the programs are funded.
I will touch briefly on the Home Insulation Program, the pink batts program, which is the first part of the bill. There are two aspects to this. There is the macro policy level, which we have seen the member for Lindsay defend on the basis that it has created thousands of jobs—I think that was the suggestion—
Mr Billson —There are more utes!
Mr BRIGGS —That is right. It has created a lot more utes, but we will not get into utes again in this place.
Mr Laurie Ferguson interjecting—
Mr BRIGGS —I will take the opportunity to also congratulate the minister at the table, the Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services. I was on your side. You heard during question time that I was making my support known for you very clear, Minister. I congratulate you and I am very pleased to see you will be here for some time yet. The member for Lindsay was talking about the pink batts policy—
Mr Perrett interjecting—
Mr BRIGGS —That is right, it is probably good to read your speech. The pink batts policy was about jobs and about getting insulation into Australian homes. We know this program was suggested to the previous governments as part of the wish list in the ERC process. The former Treasurer was never particularly keen on it, for very good reasons, because it does create a false market in a sense. It has bumped up the price. We have seen example after example. The most famous, of course, is in the electorate of Griffith, which is the Prime Minister’s electorate. It has bumped up the price significantly and therefore the money is not effectively or well spent. Thus, we are seeing again not well thought through policies which are impacting enormously on today’s economy. They will also impact on the economy and budget situation in the future, with a massive debt that our children and future generations will have to pick up, because of these badly thought through decisions.
So this is not working at the macro level, but it is also not working at the micro level. I have a great example in my electorate of that. I wrote to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. He is not responsible for climate change, which we should make very clear in this place. Don Purvis lives at Woodside Lodge in a beautiful part of my electorate. He lives in a retirement village type situation and the whole village applied for the rebate for solar panels. He signed in the wrong spot. He signed in the installer’s section rather than the recipient’s section. The rest of them signed in the right spot. He has been denied the funding. So I have written to the minister. Presumably, the minister will overrule that decision, because it does highlight the bureaucratic nature of this. They are not thinking through the policy implications of their decision. I think it is an example, which is very similar to this case, of where the policy was rushed out the door, not well thought through. We are seeing the results by having to debate these bills today.
I thought the shadow minister addressed the pink batts policy quite well. He made some comments about water. It is the biggest issue in my electorate. It is the biggest issue in South Australia and I think it will be a major election issue come March next year and, potentially, an election loser for the Rann government. People will send them a message about how they have handled this issue over the last eight years. In South Australia today we still have a real and genuine problem with water security because the government has not invested in it over a long period of time. In relation to the Murray-Darling Basin, we have seen just a complete hotchpotch of an approach from the Rann government and we are seeing, unfortunately, from the Rudd government a similar policy approach.
Members would remember that on Australia Day in 2007 the then Prime Minister and the then minister for the environment made a historic announcement about a $10 billion water plan to address the problems which face the Murray-Darling Basin. It was a visionary plan and it was the right plan. It focused on two very particular policy initiatives. The first one was the buyback of over allocated water licences throughout the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly those in eastern states. Importantly—and I emphasise this point—it focused on getting water back into the system through the smart use of infrastructure investments in the Murray-Darling Basin.
South Australia in the early 1990s went through a lot of this process, particularly in the Riverland, by investing in pipes, getting rid of open channels and lining dams et cetera. These actions save real and genuine water which can be used for environmental flows and by irrigators. Unfortunately, other states have not invested. So in January 2007the Howard government, as part of the Water for the Future plan, as part of the Howard-Turnbull plan, allocated large amounts of money to address water infrastructure issues.
Unfortunately when the Rudd government came in in 2007 they were ably assisted by the Bracks-Brumby government in stopping a national system from being formed. That was a major part of it and an absolute goal that needed to be fixed. I am very pleased that my leader, the Leader of the Opposition, when elected as Prime Minister is committed to finishing the job he started in January 2007 so that we have a truly national system, not the half-baked solution we have today.
Importantly, what we really need is the upping of the ante on investment in the infrastructure. Minister Wong is not really focused on water; she is focused on the ETS issues. Given the importance of the Murray-Darling Basin to South Australia and to my electorate, I think it is a disgrace that the minister has let water go by the wayside. The member for Moreton, being from Queensland, probably does not realise that I have half the Lower Lakes in my electorate. Patrick Secker, the member for Barker, has the other major part—Lake Albert and the Coorong. Those lakes are in dire need of a drink. Unless we take immediate action to address the Lower Lakes, we will lose that environmentally historic site to action which I do not support—flooding them with saltwater.
One of the things that can be done is genuine and fast spending on infrastructure to prevent loss of water through open channels and to deepen the Menindee Lakes. I understand that the engineering work that has been done will save approximately 200 gigalitres of water a year. It would be just fantastic to get that water back through the system to help irrigators in the Riverland and the southern half of the basin and also to get some environmental flows into the Lower Lakes through the Gawler channel and down the Coorong to really give that system a boost and save it from the terminal decline that it is in at the moment.
We have seen from this minister an approach of just buybacks. She is purely focused on buybacks and, again, this is what this bill addresses today—bringing forward some of the allocated money from the original Turnbull plan for the buybacks. Buybacks are part of the answer—buybacks with regional plans to help those workers in the affected towns to manage the changes. Labor is simply forgetting workers in those towns. When they buy back the water they are not assisting these people find new industries and adjust to the situation. It is okay for manufacturing businesses in large cities. They get assistance packages and dedicated government resources, but if it happens in rural communities in New South Wales, there is nothing. They just come in, buy the water and walk away. Of course there need to be buybacks. I support the buyback program. Some on this side of the House are not as supportive about it, and I understand their reasons for that. I do support the buyback program, but with focused support.
More important is investment in the infrastructure which can save real water today without destroying jobs. It can mean that we can continue to grow our own food in this country, which of course is the major issue that we face. I am thankful for the work Senator Heffernan has done which focused on the food security issue in particular and raising Australians’ awareness of the challenges facing Australia and the world in growing enough food to sustain our way of life.
We need to do more on infrastructure investment. I plead with this government to focus on investing in this infrastructure and spending some dedicated money—and not just on another study. I understand that the Menindee Lakes project up to about its third study. It is quite insane. They should be getting on with this today. We get a bill rushed through to do the easy bit. The buyback is simply the easy bit. It is buying back licences. Much of the water is not being returned to the river system right now because it is not there. But there is the water there for the infrastructure investment. There would be savings with the infrastructure investment, but it takes a bit more dedication and a bit more work.
I suspect it is an ideologically different approach from what this minister wants to do. I do not think that she has a lot of respect for the rural communities and what they deliver for our country. In that respect she is focused on the buyback. She thinks it is the easy answer—that is her approach on this issue. We see that through this bill. It is not well thought through. Again, it is a consistent problem with this government. They are not thinking things through before they implement their policy. They do not see the consequences of their policy. We on this side of the House stand up for regional communities. We stand up for the communities that need their water and their local jobs and we see the effects of the water crisis day after day. We want to see some real action on this issue—not just rhetoric, not just a focus on the water buybacks, which we have seen. In the first two years of this government we have seen that buybacks buy a lot of air and not much real water, because the water is not in the system. The water is there with infrastructure investments. So rather than debating today another $650 million for the buybacks, which are of course part of the answer, we should be debating how the infrastructure can assist to get real water back into the system.
Mr Billson —Instead of using taxpayers’ money in private roofs!
Mr BRIGGS —That is right; it is not well thought through.
I will make some comments in respect of the other issue troubling South Australia, that being water security. This government has spent so much money over its first two years. It borrowed money to hand out $900 cheques. We saw last week that even its advertising about the borrowed money for the handouts misinformed people as well, so that is another issue about the approach of this government. It borrowed $23 billion to hand out. Imagine what we could have done for the water security challenges this country has by investing that money, rather than just handing it out to the punters. We could have seen a real investment in water security, as we have done in Adelaide, in South Australia, throughout regional New South Wales and Victoria and so forth. Instead we have seen that money disposed of up a wall, so to speak! Again, it is a badly thought through decision that will be costly for us in the future. It will cost Australian taxpayers when we start paying higher taxes; we are seeing interest rate increases already. It was a such a missed opportunity. It is such a pity that we are now lumbered with this huge debt with nothing to really show for it.
In conclusion, and as I said at the start, we support the passage of these appropriation bills. We are disappointed that the government have to rush through bills. They are not thinking through these policies, they are not thinking through the consequences, and it is high time they started to do so.