May 25, 2015
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland—Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence) (17:25): I rise, in complete contrast to the member for Grayndler—I am sure you will be horrified to hear—to speak in support of the budget that was released just a couple of weeks ago. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Treasurer and the senior members of the ERC for the work they did in preparing a budget that I believe got the balance right.
They mostly got the balance right. They faced an enormous challenge in cleaning up almost seven years of Labor mismanagement and in getting the settings right, particularly for the small-business sector—to send a message of confidence and security that they could invest in the future of their businesses. Small businesses are owned by the people in our community who are prepared to take risks and invest their own money. In my case, in the seat of Gippsland, there are about 11,000 small-business owners who are critical to the employment futures of so many people in the Gippsland region. The Treasurer, the Minister for Finance and the members of the ERC worked very well and diligently to get the balance right between cleaning up that financial mess they were left with, by the Labor Party, and setting a confident and clear agenda for the future of our nation.
That is the feedback I have received, as I have travelled throughout my electorate, over the past week or 10 days. The federal budget has been very well received throughout Gippsland, particularly with the strong focus on jobs growth and its message to the small-business sector that they can build with confidence and have a prosperous future in our regional communities. In fact, the small-business package has been the one item of the budget that I have received the most positive feedback about. I will get to that in a moment’s time. The comments coming from small businesses in Gippsland have certainly been appreciative of the Treasurer’s recognition that the small-business sector is the engine room of the Gippsland economy but also appreciative of the fact that it gives them the confidence to hire more people in the Gippsland community.
Coming on the back of the successful negotiation of three free trade agreements—with China, Korea and Japan—the budget does send that very positive message to the private sector to get out there and to invest in future growth, and I do congratulate the Treasurer on his work. In particular, from my perspective in Gippsland, the focus on increased road expenditure, on upgrades, not just on the major Princes Highway—the spine that runs through the Gippsland electorate—but also through the doubling of Roads to Recovery funding for our local councils, has been very well received. In total there is about a $40 million package for roads, in Gippsland, over the next 12 months. It is a pity the member for Grayndler is not here, because I was going to pay him a compliment. It builds on the work that the member for Grayndler and I did when he was the minister for transport and I was, obviously, in opposition. I was going to pay him a compliment because he did support this project in Gippsland, the Princess Highway duplication, which has always enjoyed bipartisan support from both state and federal levels of government.
There is a total now of $260 million that has been spent on the Princes Highway through my electorate over the past five years, and this most recent budget announcement of $20 million will allow for the duplication to continue between Traralgon and Sale. It has been a multimillion-dollar boost to the road network. It delivers a very clear social and economic dividend. The economic dividend can be measured in terms of reduced travel times, once the work is completed, increased productivity for the movement of goods and services throughout the Gippsland region, and through access to the tourism attractions of the Gippsland region. So there is a very clear economic dividend that comes from the duplication.
It is perhaps the social dividend that I get most excited about, and I think anyone who uses the road network gets most excited about it as well—that is, the safety aspects that are built into a new road, particularly a duplication, which allows for two lanes in both directions on our major highway networks. We know that investing in safer roads saves lives. In a regional sense, one of the great tragedies in our nation is that we have a disproportionately high road toll in our regional communities. While there has been some great work done by most state governments throughout Australia in reducing the road toll, most of the gains in recent years, in reducing the road toll, have come in metropolitan areas. The regional road tolls have been far more resistant, if you like, to the changes that have been made with new safety regulations, new laws et cetera and changes in driver behaviour.
Improving the safety of the road environment has the potential to deliver more in savings to the health budget by reducing road trauma than any other initiative, whether it be improved driver behaviour or enforcement and those types of activities. I encourage the minister for transport, and the Prime Minister in his endeavours to be an infrastructure Prime Minister, to continue to invest in improving the safety of the regional road network. We understand that if you can reduce the severity of those accidents you reduce the severity of injuries sustained, and the people involved can go on to live longer and more productive and healthy lives than would otherwise be the case. I do congratulate the former minister for transport on the funding he secured for the Princes Highway duplication but I also congratulate the current minister for transport on continuing that good work. As I said, a total of $260 million has been allocated to that section of road during my time in parliament.
As the Princes Highway is part of the national road network, the duplication between Traralgon and Sale receives 80 per cent of its funding from the federal government and 20 per cent from the state government. I encourage the new state government in Victoria to continue to press its case for the full duplication of that section of road. Once this current round of works is finished, which will be towards the end of next year, in the order of $200 million will still be required to finish the job. That will be something I will be very keen to pursue with my state colleagues in Victoria and also with the federal minister. My state colleagues, in this case the member for Morwell, Russell Northe, and the new member for Gippsland South, Danny O’Brien, are very keen to also pursue those road safety upgrades. I will be working with them, hopefully with the support of the state minister for transport, to have those upgrades continue.
It is not just about the Princes Highway. The budget also had some positive news for my electorate in terms of some other road projects in both the west and the east of the electorate. Under the heavy vehicle program some new rest areas are being constructed, and some new overtaking lanes are being constructed on the Princes Highway further east—the section of the road that is not on the national network. That is fifty-fifty funding between the state and federal governments. Those three overtaking lanes between Orbost and Nowa Nowa are well under way, and construction has been proceeding quite well despite the recent inclement weather we have experienced. While parts of Australia have suffered through a lack of rain, Gippsland, fortunately, over the last couple of years has had fantastic rain. I do take this opportunity to extend my best wishes to those in other communities who are suffering with drought. Gippsland has had its share of droughts over the years, including during my time in parliament, but right now the conditions in Gippsland are magnificent. We have benefited from some great seasonal conditions.
The improvements funded under the current budget will obviously improve productivity right throughout the region and make our roads safer. Local councils have also benefited from the federal budget to the tune of $11 million—those three local councils being East Gippsland, Latrobe and Wellington. They will share in a doubling of Roads to Recovery funding this year. Roads to Recovery is one of those great programs that somehow has managed to withstand changes of government. We have not even changed the name, which is something very unusual for governments in the modern era. Roads to Recovery was initiated many years ago by the former leader of the Nationals, John Anderson, and it has survived through periods of budget difficulties. It survived right through the Howard-Costello years, through the Rudd-Gillard years and it is continuing today as a fantastic program. I think it works so well because of the simplicity of its design. This program gives local councils the chance to set their local priorities every year, and it has been a very successful program in the Gippsland region. This year we will benefit to the tune of $11 million, which will go towards some significant local road upgrades. Again I congratulate the minister for transport for securing the funding for that program.
It is good that the member for Franklin is here in the chamber because she has had a bit to say about another program, the National Stronger Regions Fund. It is a billion-dollar fund that was secured during negotiations between the National Party and the Liberal Party in the lead up to the last election. I congratulate the minister for securing that funding. I think 51 projects across Australia were supported in this budgetary round. One program is being funded in my electorate—one out of two; you always like to win every bid you put in but you do not always get that lucky as a local MP. In this case, $4.5 million from the federal government under the National Stronger Regions Fund will go to the Wellington shire’s Port of Sale cultural hub, and that has been warmly received by the local community. I was at a function last week and the mayor, Carolynn Crossley, spoke in glowing terms about how this $13.7 million project will assist Wellington shire. This grant has enabled a long sought-after project to be brought to reality, and again I congratulate the minister on negotiating that fund as part of the coalition agreement in the lead-up to the last election. I encourage other members in this place, whether they be on this side of the House or the other side, to work with their local councils to put forward some strong bids for the program. It is a competitive bid process, with 51 projects out of about 400 bids being successful last time. I would obviously like to see more projects successful in Gippsland in the future and I will be working with my community to make sure that occurs.
As I said at the outset, this budget is a particularly good one for small business. It is not just me saying that—that is the feedback I have been getting from the small business owners in my electorate. One of the great things about being a regional member of parliament is that you do get to meet dozens of people almost every day as you travel throughout your electorate, and they are never short on giving you some free advice. It is fair to say that over this past week the advice I have received from my electorate has been a bit more positive than I may have received after previous budgets. I will leave it at that! The free advice I have had this week is simply ‘Keep up the good work; we like what the budget is doing for small business—this has given us confidence and we are already seeing a direct result in our own business.’ This is the case whether it is small hardware shops selling more equipment to local tradies or electronics outlets selling more computers and that type of thing—our package has been very warmly received. Of particular benefit is the ability for businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million to immediately deduct from this year’s tax return the depreciation of an asset that costs less than $20,000. Quite frankly, that is just about every one of my small businesses in Gippsland. That is a reasonable figure to set the mark at—it is your mum-and-dad operations with two or three staff members, perhaps. All I can ask those businesses to do is to shop locally as much they can to support other businesses in Gippsland—the money will then go around in the community and provide even greater opportunities and support for local jobs.
While I am talking about local jobs, there is one issue that is of particular interest to me and other members in this place, particularly the member for McMillan—and that relates to the Australian Paper mill located at Maryvale in my electorate. It employs in the order of 1,000 local workers. Earlier this year I publicly extended a challenge to other MPs, senators, ministers and particularly federal government departments to at least consider their procurement policies when it comes to using imported paper in their offices. I encourage them to consider switching to Australian paper. Australian paper has a range of products that are all fully certified in terms of environmental credentials. They have 100 per cent recycled paper; they have 50 per cent recycled paper. They are a world-class business operating in a difficult market. It is simply staggers me to still see a long list of Australian federal government departments that continue to use imported paper. I urge procurement officers in departments and I will be writing to all ministers, with the support of the member for McMillan, to urge all MPs to support Australian jobs and support Australian families. The economic, environmental and social benefits are there for Gippslanders and all Australians.
As I promised earlier this year, I will get around to actually naming some of the departments which do not use Australian paper. Unfortunately, the list is quite long. There are only six that I can find at the moment that have Australian paper in their list and procurement guidelines. Fortunately for me, being the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence, the Department of Defence does use Australian paper. The Department of Human Services does, Australian Customs does, and the Department of Agriculture recently changed its procurement guidelines after some discussions with the minister and now uses and offers Australian paper to its staff. ASIO and ASIC are the only other two I can find.
The list I have here has 15 other Australian departments which source their paper from either Indonesia, Germany or Austria. On that list is the Australian Taxation Office, the Department of Immigration, the Australian Federal Police, the Department of Health, the Department of Industry—the Department of Industry; that is amazing—the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Department of Education, the Department of Employment, the Department of the Environment, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Infrastructure, the Department of Finance, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of the Treasury. I apologise if I have wrongly named a department which has switched to Australian paper in recent times. If I have made a mistake, I urge them to give me a call in my office tomorrow and I will amend the public record for them.
But if I do not have a wrong, if these are the 15 Australian departments that do not use Australian-made paper, I simply ask the question: why not? Why on earth would the Department of the Environment be using paper from Germany? The Australian product is fully certified, it comes from a mix of plantation and native hardwood timber and it is harvested under strict environmental guidelines. This is a world-class industry which is being crucified by procurement decisions which are impossible for the average Australian to understand. How can it be cheaper and how can it be more environmentally friendly to bring paper from Austria, Germany and Indonesia rather than sourcing from Australian grown products? So I do urge other members of this place, ministers and procurement officers who are responsible for signing these contracts in their departments to at least consider supporting Australian families, supporting Australian jobs and buying the Australian-made product. Again, if I have got it wrong, if your department has switched to Australian paper, give me a call and I am happy to publicly congratulate you in the future.