Appropriation Bill
Mr PERRETT (Gympie—LNP) (4.23 pm): I rise to speak to the appropriation bill. Has the government listened? Has a leopard changed its spots? Has the government reset its understanding of what Queenslanders need and deserve and what makes this great state tick? The answer is no. This budget is out of Labor’s playbook. Labor is addicted to putting everything on the credit card, crossing its fingers and hoping that the problems will go away. The government can spin all it likes about listening to the regions, but saying it over and over again still does not make it true. This government will be judged on what it does, not what it says.
This government has been in power for half a decade. After five years, all it can come up with is even higher taxes, more debt and almost 26 fewer jobs than forecast. New taxes will rip another $1.25 billion from the state’s economy. That is on top of the taxes that have already been inflicted on the state since Labor was re-elected—a total of $3.45 billion in taxes. That has given us a debt bomb of more than $90 billion. That is $16,000 for every man, woman and child. The jobs lost is cold comfort to the 160,000 who are already looking for work and the 1,804 unemployed people in the Gympie electorate.
In this budget, routine maintenance projects, the return of others, reannouncements, rebadging and recycling have been served up to the Gympie electorate. My electorate’s share of the multibillion-dollar budget was a rewrite of work that is already underway or previous commitments that have been dusted off for another appearance. Although I welcome the meagre offering—the crumbs my electorate was given—the government scraped the bottom of the barrel to find something to announce. It even listed the replacement of a school building that tragically burned down two years ago.
The $1.5 million to replace a school block at One Mile State School comes two years after that block burned down in June 2017. If I take the allocation for that school building out of the budget, it looks like the only new commitment to my electorate is $23,913 for Football Gympie Inc. to update rooms and install a parents’ room.
In November last year, the government announced $826,000 out of a total spend of $4.96 million to construct a new building with four learning and special areas at James Nash State High School.
Seven months later, $660,000 has been shaved off the total spend to $4.3 million.
I cannot not mention the resurrection of the replacement Rainbow Beach auxiliary fire and rescue station. It looks like this project has more lives than a cat. Three years ago—in 2016—in a glossy brochure we were promised $300,000 out of a total of $1.3 million spend to replace the station. A year later—in 2017—those funds had disappeared. They were redirected to prop up a discredited former member for Bundaberg. It was a blatant display of pork-barrelling. Now, we are promised $200,000— $100,000 less—for a $2 million project.
Other than funds for the Coondoo Creek Bridge, the budget provides next to nothing for state controlled roads in my electorate. When existing programs become the highlight of a budget, the government has big problems. It lacks vision. This budget delivers little vision for Gympie’s future. It is not as if the government does not know of some suggested projects for Gympie. Frequently, I write to and raise with the Premier and minister support for local projects. The government has missed so many opportunities. What about substantial funding for road and bridge infrastructure—projects such as overtaking lanes on the Tin Can Bay and Rainbow Beach roads, upgrading bridges on Glastonbury Road, including the Ell Creek Bridge, upgrading the Mary Valley Highway? An upgrade of the roads and bridges will help improve safety for local families, workers, children, retirees and visitors travelling in my region. It will improve the efficiency and capacity of the road network.
Other projects include the upgrading and maintenance of school infrastructure in my electorate and more police and police resources. The emergency department and maternity services at the Gympie Hospital need upgrading and expansion. There are other pressing healthcare needs, such as a multidisciplinary medical centre at the Cooloola Coast and an ambulance station at Glenwood.
Train services from Gympie north to the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane need improvement.
Residents continually raise with me their concerns about the reliability, number and frequency of services. Queensland Rail data has revealed that 134 of 414 total delays on the Gympie-Brisbane line over the past two years were caused by rolling stock failures. Lights are needed at the intersection of Rainbow Beach Road and Queen Elizabeth Drive, Cooloola Cove and flashing lights are needed on Lawrence Street near Gympie Central State School.
The Gympie electorate needs a multipurpose entertainment facility. This type of infrastructure project will benefit locals, community, cultural and sporting groups as well as increase opportunities for economic growth and development. Local businesses need support by reducing red and green tape and providing specific Gympie-centric programs to address unemployment. The 4,380 businesses in my electorate are mostly small businesses covering a whole range of industries, including manufacturing, agriculture and tourism. Business owners have nowhere to go when fixed costs rise and regulation and rules become burdensome. The reality is that they have to either close their doors or lay off workers. Business owners constantly raise with me their frustration at being bogged down in government generated paperwork.
Government has to wean itself off its addiction to bureaucratic paperwork to allow them to keep their businesses viable and generate jobs. The Gympie region has a low socioeconomic profile with an 8.2 percent unemployment rate, which is above the state average. Residents have the second worst pay cheques in the state. Everyone knows that it is the private sector that drives job creation and that creating Public Service jobs in Brisbane only adds to the tax burden. Piecemeal, short-term programs and subsidies, which are about massaging statistics and provide only part-time work for a limited period, do not help. Businesses need the confidence to borrow, invest, value-add, grow and generate jobs. The Treasurer can spin that the budget is unashamedly for regional Queenslanders. Rural and regional Queenslanders are not mugs. They can pick spin a mile off.
The government continues to slash and burn our once great Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. Staff cuts mean there will be 110 fewer full-time-equivalent staff: four jobs gone from agriculture and reassigned to forestry and fisheries, 18 cut from the Queensland Rural and Industry Development Authority, three front-line biosecurity staff and 85 from the Queensland Agricultural Training Colleges. At the same time Brisbane based bureaucrats have increased by more than 25,000 since 2015. That is an entire regional town.
The government allowed our agricultural training colleges to decay so it could close them. It is government from Brisbane for Brisbane. Labor does not care about farmers and the regions they support. It does not care about our $20 billion agricultural industries employing more than 300,000 across the supply chain and contributing 15 per cent to the state’s total exports. The minister’s desperation for relevance is why he is now resorting to self-praise. A wise man once told me that self-praise is no praise. The minister even tried to divert attention this week by equating me to the Gympie-Gympie tree. I do know what they are. I wonder if the minister knows what they are.
Instead of getting irritable whenever I raise issues, the minister should pick better descriptions.
The first hit from a Google search would have shown him that National Geographic says ‘Gympie Gympie: once stung, never forgotten’. If the minister believes my prosecution of issues for the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries is stinging him and I am never forgotten then I will proudly wear that badge.
The city-centric minister is clearly not standing up for the industries he is supposed to support.
He does not even want to talk about his budget. Just take a look at the front page of what regional and rural Queenslanders call the Bible of the bush. Queensland Country Life describes the budget as a shark attack on farmers. It says farmers are raising their eyebrows after the state budget’s headline act for agriculture was revealed to be a $17 million Shark Control Program. As the paper says, at least farmers will be safe from sharks. I table that document.
Tabled paper: Article from Queensland Country Life, dated 13 June 2019, titled ‘Shark Attack: Farmers are raising their eyebrows after the state budget’s headline act for agriculture was revealed to be a $17 million shark control program’ 1015.
AgForce CEO Mike Guerin said—
It is clear that Government doesn’t value agriculture strongly enough, nor understand its vital role in the economic, employment and social fabric of rural, regional and remote Australia.
He also said this government continues to demonstrate that it has no vision for the ongoing development and sustainability of broadacre agriculture. Queensland Farmers’ Federation CEO Travis Tobin said that agriculture seemed to be missing out on its fair share of stimulus funding needed to address some critical competitiveness and productivity issues and progress growth initiatives and that without more targeted and deliberate action from government agriculture will not fully capitalise on the exciting opportunities that are unquestionably there.
Canegrowers said the government has missed a clear opportunity to make significant structural changes to reduce electricity prices. Growcom CEO David Thompson said that the government had not addressed the affordability of water and electricity and that these are the key inputs in horticulture production and that inflated prices for both water and electricity are the single biggest constraint on productivity and growth in their industry. He said the budget lacked funding to address the shortfalls in the time frames for implementing Labor’s reef regulator regime and warned targets will not be met without appropriate levels of funding.
The minister operates under a culture of secrecy. He hides the independent drought report he has had since January. Industry and farmers are still frustrated they do not know what the drought support reform will look like. Farmers deserve to know what is and is not working with drought support funding. The culture of secrecy is pervasive. The government continues to hide the invasive weeds report for more than two and a half years that deals with weeds such as prickly acacia, giant rat’s tail grass and fireweed.
In April the minister signed a co-contribution funding agreement with Canberra to provide $5 million over five years to fight prickly acacia. Where is this funding commitment? Not one cent of the $5 million promised has been allocated in this budget. It is disappointing there is no extra funding to combat rampant feral pests and weeds. Farmers right across the state constantly raise this problem with me. Two weeks ago I met cane and banana growers in Innisfail to discuss issues around feral pigs.
Their message was clear: more funding is needed to combat out-of-control pigs which are decimating crops and risking biosecurity controls with the potential spread of Panama TR4. It is another issue that was missed.
Wild dogs are out of control. Where is the funding support to combat pests? As a grazier I spend a lot of time eradicating wild dogs on my property. I am offering to show the minister how it is done. The minister’s culture of secrecy continues. He sat on the report into the agricultural colleges for more than six months just to release the bad news under the cover of Christmas. I see there are funds to cover redundancies and the closures, but there is still no comprehensive plan to deliver agricultural education in Queensland. The government should be ashamed it has destroyed these colleges and ripped the heart out of the communities they support. It has no vision for the next generation of farmers looking for the right training to succeed. It effectively wiped out jobs in Longreach and Emerald with no back-up plan.
We welcome the funding towards continuing shark control management. Everyone knows that elements in the Labor Party would happily dismantle the Shark Control Program. Knowing that, and our experience that the government panders to those elements, Queenslanders have no guarantee this will not happen. The LNP will always put people before sharks. We are absolutely committed to maintaining our state’s long-term and successful Shark Control Program.
Dr Lynham interjected.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Whiting): Order! Member for Stafford, you are next.
Mr PERRETT: The government continues its botched reform process in fisheries. It is pushing commercial fishers to the wall. The commercial fishing industry is vital for towns up and down our coastline. Labor’s bureaucratic power grab has allowed inspectors to search and enter properties without notice or a warrant. It is an affront to fishers’ property rights. Using environmental pseudoscience to deliberately close family owned and operated commercial fishing businesses is disgraceful. Only an LNP government will restore balance to Queensland fisheries.
Queensland’s forest industry remains in limbo. There is no certainty about its supply of hardwood timbers from 2024. I urge the minister to take seriously his commitment to work with industry to ensure the future of this vitally important sector. Labor’s unfair vegetation laws, anti dam agenda, underfunding and mismanagement of biosecurity, closure of the last remaining agricultural colleges and attacks on the fishing industry mean no area is safe.
We have a plan to build job-creating water infrastructure such as raising the Burdekin Falls Dam and progress the building of the Nullinga and Urannah dams. We have a policy to reduce electricity prices for farmers by ending the divide between the south and the rest of the state by introducing retail competition. We have a plan for more water, more jobs and backing our farmers. A government budget should be prudent and sensible no matter where you live or what job you have. No-one needs more tax hikes, increasing debt and higher unemployment.