Mr HARDGRAVE(6.01 p.m.) —In my contribution to this debate this evening, I wish to raise a number of important matters and certainly to follow on from the honourable member for Curtin (Mr Rocher) in the matter of tax reform—certainly one of those matters—and also give a couple of examples in my electorate of Moreton.

There is no doubt that, after 13 years of failure by the previous Labor government, we have been left with a taxation system which is coughing and wheezing its way towards the 21st century. Tax reform is no longer some sort of luxury—some sort of optional extra. This is now a necessity—standard equipment that we need in order to face the challenges that we as a nation have before us.

After all, if people on 1.5 times average weekly earnings are now dipping into the top marginal rate of tax, figures show very clearly that in not too many years—inside a handful of years—we are going to see people on the average weekly wage paying the top rate of tax. Yet here we have a Labor opposition who quite happily will talk about anything they can to try to create scare campaigns and to try to walk us away from legitimate taxation reform. Where are they as far as looking after average weekly wage earners are concerned? Obviously, there is a lot left wanting. It is another reason why so many Australian workers, who had in the past supported the Labor Party, felt let down so badly and sufficiently to change their vote and give it to the coalition at the last election.

I do not think anybody who has any commonsense attached to their being would disagree with what the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) said when he brought this matter up for proper debate a few weeks ago, in particular that the time for action had been reached. We certainly do need to have a responsible debate on tax. We need to understand exactly how the Commonwealth and, for that matter, the state governments, are going to raise the funds necessary to provide the services which are expected and demanded by the Australian people.

We need the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Democrats, their coalition partners in the Senate, to get on with the job of actually allowing some of these matters to be discussed and also allow them to be passed once they have been discussed. We do not need any more talk about death duties, as we have apparently heard from some of the senior members opposite. We do not need to hear talk about additional capital gains taxes on private dwellings, as we have heard from members of the Australian Democrats. We need a mature debate and one focused on helping average Australians get on with the job of surviving their own lot and also contributing to Australia.

A small business person said to me just the other day, `Why is it that whenever we talk tax reform, it has to be politicised? Why is it that the opposition automatically decide that they are going to oppose a matter rather than realise how important the debate is and contribute to it in a responsible way?' I must say for the record that I certainly do not want to be involved in a GST yea or nay debate. I think it is far broader and far more important than just that.

The recent High Court decision which has affected the way states raise their funds certainly is another reason for the sort of change and the sort of reforms and discussions we need to have. The revenue for the states goes to the heart of the States Grants (General Purposes) Amendment Bill 1997 which is before us this evening.

State governments lost the capacity to levy income tax back in 1942. It was a wartime measure. Since then they have been basically financially dependent on the federal government. From the federal perspective, we would all agree that the states say, `We've got a big shopping list. You guys provide us with the money; we know best how to spend it.' I am sure that would unite all sides of this place.

The fact of the matter is that the states rely incredibly heavily on the Commonwealth. In fact, the bulk of their funds comes from Commonwealth sources. About half of that comes from general purpose grants, which is the matter of this bill. These grants are untied. There is no specific purpose that is attached to their granting by the Commonwealth. There are three categories—the special assistance grants, the special revenue assistance and the national competition payments. I will not deal with each of those in any great detail, but I thought it was important to state that for the record.

There is a total of $16.8 billion for 1997-98 involved in this bill. Financial assistance grants are the largest category of the general purpose grants and are distributed based on the recommendations of the Commonwealth Grants Commission according to a formula which maintains the grants in a real per capita term, making adjustments for inflation and national population growth.

In Queensland there is always a lag effect. It has been a traditional complaint from Queensland, but it is a justifiable one—that is, the growth in Queensland causes the need for planning and then constructing proper infrastructure to accommodate the forecast population growth. Likewise, the argument is—and I think it is quite a sound one—that Queensland needs a premium on their per capita allocation. It is a matter that a lot of the Queensland members continue to pursue with this government, as was the case with previous governments.

Funding is guaranteed on a rolling three-year basis. That suits the states; it assists them in their planning. This year, for the first time, FAGs are absorbing the identified road funding. Commonwealth funding for arterial roads was previously allocated separately. In fact, until 1994 this type of road funding was given as a tied grant. Total FAG payments this year are expected to be about $16.14 billion.

I want to raise a matter in conjunction with this road funding issue which shows how previous state and federal Labor governments misspent or poorly allocated funds on a particular road in my electorate called Kessels Road. This is basically now a six-lane highway along with the Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road, which dissects the southern half of the electorate of Moreton. It is a federally funded road; it is a route for toxic hazardous chemicals. In fact, under Labor it went onto the national highway system linking Ipswich Road with the Gateway Arterial.

Over a period of about 25 years, a number of incremental changes brought this about. Riawena Road was an extension to Kessels Road which linked Granard Road onto Kessels in time for the 1982 Commonwealth Games, which was held at the geographic heart of my electorate. The completion of the Gateway Arterial about half a dozen years ago gave a route to the port of Brisbane via Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road. Overnight we essentially had a federally funded national highway link between Ipswich Road and the so-called port road or Gateway Arterial Road.

As a result of this, there is tremendous congestion on this road these days. Major transporters, giant B doubles—double dog transporters, whatever you like to call them—use this road. It is one of the busiest roads in Australia. Trucks from Rocklea and from the national rail freight terminal in Coopers Plains access the Gateway Arterial and the port of Brisbane along what was 25 years ago a suburban street.

Brisbane City Council garbage trucks use it to transport waste to the Rochedale landfill. It is ill-designed and inadequate for all of these purposes. There are major health problems associated with intersections where trucks stop and spew out all sorts of untold toxins in the form of diesel exhaust wastes—matters that have been identified, quite rightly, by the Southside Chamber of Commerce.

There is no mechanism built into this road to handle any spill of any toxic or hazardous products like petroleum. In fact, if any accident were to cause a spill, the likely result would be that chemicals, or whatever, would wash into any one of a handful of creeks—Stable Swamp Creek, Mimosa Creek, Bulimba Creek—and, ultimately, into the Brisbane River and Moreton Bay.

Trucks at the intersection at Mains Road and also the intersection with Logan Road cause massive delays to local residents who have grown used to the long delays just to get out of their subdivisions and their homes. People in streets like Benaud and Sobers—named after the cricketers—and around Player Street at Upper Mount Gravatt are all experiencing those sorts of delays. For all its volume, Kessels Road also cruels the lot of small business retailers along its length as local residents try to avoid the area like a plague.

These matters were going to get worse, until recently, because the state government of Queensland had a very innovative plan to put a bus lane along the South East Freeway, which runs underneath Kessels Road at Upper Mount Gravatt and which would have required the lengthening of the bridge. I raised the issue and I am very pleased to say that the Queensland Department of Main Roads, to their credit, have come up with an innovative tunnelling approach which will alleviate what could have been some very long delays on Kessels Road as the construction period took place.

Through the Sunday Mail and also the Southern Star newspaper in my electorate, I have called for trucks to be banned from Kessels Road between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. This is certainly not unprecedented in the Brisbane City Council area. The BCC, along with the state government, did this in the inner city. Local traffic is, of course, excepted. In fact, the Brisbane City Council's decision in the Fortitude Valley area has caused a lot more trucks to go onto Kessels Road rather than use Ipswich Road and the Story Bridge. I would like to see a similar thing applied in the case of Kessels Road.

What really is quite relevant—and ties this back into the debate before us here—is that there is an alternate route that is now available which has been funded, in part, by the monies that we are talking about in this bill. The alternate route is the extension to the Gateway Arterial called the Southern Brisbane By-pass. It hooks onto the Logan Motorway. They are both toll roads. That link opened a few months ago. After this massive investment by the Queensland state government, you would think transporters would be using the route. The Minister for Transport and Main Roads in Queensland, Vaughan Johnson, did a very good thing in lowering the toll along this new route. That carrot approach did have an effect for about five or six weeks. There was a noticeable decline in transport along the corridor, but it has all gone back to what it was.

I have to say that I think part of that is because the state government's signage is directing traffic onto Kessels Road. There are signs on the Gateway Arterial and on the South East Freeway saying `Alternate (no toll) route to Ipswich this way'. So here we have federal funds going into a major infrastructure project, which is very important, yet we still have this dreadful lag effect of traffic delays, problems and congestion encouraged by a sign of all things. So I have written to Minister Johnson to encourage him to pull that sign down. I think it is very important that he does.

Worse still, a lot of trucks are finding that the traffic on Kessels Road—this federally funded road— is so bad that they are using Padstow Road at Eight Mile Plains, McCullough Street at Sunnybank, Boundary Road at Coopers Plains, Compton Road at Kuraby, Runcorn and Sunnybank Hills to get around the traffic. These are very much suburban roads. They run past schools. There are trucks using McCullough Road which simply should not be using it.

I was astonished the other week—and on several occasions since—to note that the state government's own transporters, the Q-Link transporters, are using these suburban roads—McCullough Street, Boundary Road and Padstow Road—to get from Coopers Plains rail yards onto the Gateway Arterial. I find it astonishing that even the state government does not have enough faith to use the new federally funded road infrastructure—after all, the pool of funds goes to the Queensland government and they spend it from there. The state government is not even using their own new infrastructure for their own trucks.

My plan is that trucks should be forced to travel down Beaudesert Road south of Granard Road to join up with the three major arterial freeways that I have talked about. This would get the trucks out of suburbia. It is a matter I have raised with the state government and one I certainly intend to pursue. I raise it here in this debate because I think it is important to have it on the record that funds leaving this place as untied grants need to be properly spent by the states. I think it is a matter that you sometimes wonder about from the perspective of being a member of the federal parliament and trying to be a part of the process of planning proper infrastructure. I also raise the issue to chase up the issue of allocations of further funds to a growth state like Queensland.

I certainly know the people of Coopers Plains, Salisbury, Robertson, Macgregor, Upper Mount Gravatt, Wishart, Sunnybank and Eight Mile Plains want a better deal. They certainly are going to get it if I have anything to do with it. I am pleased the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and Microeconomic Reform recently visited and inspected the roads I have talked about as part of their inquiry into federal road funding. They certainly saw the sort of mess I have talked about.

This story is, I guess, repeated all around the country with national roads passing through various suburbs and towns. It is a problem I am sure all members in this place can relate to. Road infrastructure issues are very important. In planning roads we cannot ignore the impact they have on local communities and the expectations local communities have. While federal ties to state expenditure of road funds were disconnected some years ago, the state by state planning of road infrastructure certainly does leave something to be desired.

I would like also to comment on suggestions by the honourable member for Calare (Mr Andren) in his contribution to tonight's debate regarding taxation reform. I suspect the honourable member is right when he says that Rome is burning and we cannot afford to fiddle any longer. Taxation reform certainly does need bipartisan support, but all indicators are yet again saying we are not going to get it, which I think is a very lamentable fact.

Another lamentable fact is the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley) and his party have a very bad record on taxation reform and have squibbed on every attempt to have a serious national debate. They can participate in it if they come in with an open mind rather than a scare campaign agenda. After all, in 1985 the taxation reform preferred by senior members of the then government did not take place. We ended up with new and demanding taxes and a more complex tax act, which went from taking up a metre or so of bookshelf to taking up half a dozen metres on a bookshelf. Each and every year taxation accountants have to update their knowledge about this system. It is so complex and is placing more burdens on small business operators and individuals right around this country as they try to comply and also understand exactly what they are meant to do to comply.

Certain taxes came out of the 1985 reform, including the capital gains tax and the fringe benefits tax. Restaurant owners in my electorate—that is, those who have survived—say this sector simply has not been the same since 1985. I suspect there is room to allow a certain amount of deductible lunch expenditure to help, if nothing else, an important sector of our economy to survive and grow.

The 1991 to 1993 Fightback tax debate failed simply because of the mother of all scare campaigns, the big negative, which was very effectively waged by the Keating-Beazley government. And here we are in 1997, so soon after the Prime Minister has given us what so many people in my electorate wanted, the opportunity to discuss tax reform, hearing quite silly and pointless questions in this place such as the contributions today by the member for Bruce (Mr Griffin) and the member for Werriwa (Mr Latham) and the advocacy of death taxes by the shadow Treasurer, the member for Holt (Mr Gareth Evans).

My concern about this is quite simple. We already have this scare campaign and an absolute squibbing and abrogation of the chance of the Labor Party to participate in a sensible and proper debate. They want to turn it into a GST yea or nay debate, which I think is a very immature approach to this whole issue. Yet, what are we going to get at the end of it? If we do actually end up with the reforms which so many people in this country want, we will end up with legislation which passes this place and then moves to the other place, where we will see even more delays.

Look at the deliberate delays which are occurring as a result of the Labor-Democrat alliance in the Senate on important matters such as training. Training providers in my electorate cannot start programs which should have started on 1 December last year and are probably not likely to start until 1 March next year because the legislation is still doing the circuit in the Senate.

How are we going to handle matters such as changing the arrangements relating to taxation powers for the states and the Commonwealth? How are we going to handle the taxation reform and the result of the serious debate I hope we can have? How are we actually going to get legislation which may pass this place passing the other place? These are all serious matters. No matter what may come out of this taxation debate, which has now been started in full, there is more than a fair chance that any reforms may be delayed for many years. For that matter, the bill we are discussing this evening may well sit over there in the Senate for the next 12 months.

I am sure all in this place and all thinking Australians—those who voted for this government and even those who did not—would want to see this government given the chance to implement the programs it quite rightly has a mandate for and would seriously like to see the Senate get on with the job of passing legislation. To not allow legislation to pass is an absolute disgrace. I call on in particular Senator Kernot from Queensland and also Senator Faulkner, the Labor leader in the other place, to get on with the job of passing matters so the interests of all Australians can properly be addressed.

I hope over the next eight weeks of sittings we will actually enact some of the vital legislation Australians are waiting for so we can all get on with the job of rebuilding this country and giving our kids a better future and to make sure all of those things are possible.