Ms LIVERMORE (8:55 PM) —I wish to participate in the debate this evening on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 1999-2000 . With this budget the government helped me to keep a promise I made to the people of Capricornia, going into the last election. I warned the voters of Capricornia last year that this government did not have a plan for us in Central Queensland, or indeed for Australia; I said that it had a plan for a new tax.

Every word the Treasurer said on budget night, and just as importantly every word he did not say, reassured me that I had been totally honest with the people in my electorate. There is no plan; there is the GST and there is the sell-off of Telstra. Well, the people in Capricornia have heard that one already and they did not like it the first time.

This is a lazy and complacent budget from a government that is more interested in earning pats on the back from the big end of town than doing the hard yards to meet its obligations to the Australian community for now and into the future for wherever people happen to live in this country. It is a budget that shows that this government is completely out of touch with the needs and concerns of the Australian people, and in particular with the needs of those of us who live in regional areas.

When I read through the budget papers and when I listened to the Treasurer and the Prime Minister sell the budget in the parliament and in the media, it was painfully obvious to me that there are whole sections of the community and whole sections of our country that just do not appear on this government's radar screen.

In this budget the government continues to fail the people in the community on average and low incomes. When the Prime Minister can talk about the difficult choices facing people in choosing between visiting an extra country on their next overseas holiday or taking out expensive private health insurance, it is pretty clear that he is out of touch with ordinary people.

The arrogance of this government is truly breathtaking. All over my electorate people's jaws were hitting the floor when they heard that little gem from the Prime Minister. He is out of touch with ordinary people, and more than that, he does not understand their lives.

His government does not care about the real choices people living in my electorate have to make. They are not choices between overseas holidays or private health cover, but between a new pair of school shoes or a family outing for a meal at the leagues club, a service for mum's car or a school camp for the kids. People ring my office in Rocky with a whole range of problems, but a toss up between overseas holiday destinations is not one of them.

It is clear from this budget that the government's radar is still faulty when it comes to recognising regional Australia. I say that because there is nothing in this budget to indicate that the government sees the potential of our regions or the need for a coordinated strategy to maximise each region's strengths to ensure a strong and sustainable future.

It appears that in this government's mind set, regional means rural and the two constantly get lumped together. I am fairly sensitive to the distinction between the two, because the electorate of Capricornia represents a fair proportion of rural and remote communities included in the broad region of Central Queensland, as well as the region's key centre, the city of Rockhampton.

While there are definitely a number of measures directed at the rural sections of Capricornia, there is no sense that it is part of a comprehensive strategy for our Central Queensland region, a strategy that identifies what industries and activities are going to form the foundation of our future growth, and more importantly, ensures that every part of our region has the capacity, both in terms of physical infrastructure and skilled people, to participate in that development and benefit from it. Instead, there are examples all the way through the government's policies of opportunities that are going to be lost because of the government's lack of strategic vision and obsession with its new tax at the expense of good policy.

There are two opportunities in particular that I see going begging as far as the future development of Central Queensland is concerned, opportunities to make our mark as a region in two emerging industries that will complement our traditional strengths in primary industries and mining. The two areas I am thinking of are tourism and education. Instead of pulling out all stops to support these industries, the government is taking them one step forward and then two steps back, recognising their importance on the one hand but then making it impossible for them to flourish.

As far as tourism is concerned, the step forward is the commitment in the budget to extend the runway at the Rockhampton airport. This is a commendable decision and one that holds great promise for the tourism industry around Rocky and Central Queensland. However, at the same time the tourism industry is threatened with the wipe-out of the GST. That is more like one step forward and 10 steps backwards for the tourism operators around Central Queensland.

The impact of the GST on tourism was not even looked at by the Treasury when they did their modelling of the government's package, but everyone else who has analysed the effects has forecast disaster. It does not matter whether you look at international tourists or domestic tourists, whether they are travelling by car, plane or train—every combination faces a job destroying downturn as a result of the GST.

The idea of extending Rocky airport's runway is to open up opportunities for attracting international tourists to Central Queensland. On current trends, that should succeed. The most recent Queensland visitor survey available from the Capricorn Tourism and Development Organisation found that international visitors account for 11 per cent of tourists to our region annually—a total of 89,700 visitors from around the world. That is a significant proportion and not a number easily overlooked, or so you would think. But, despite the growing significance of tourism as an export industry and employer in Australia, Treasury did not think tourism was important enough to look into when modelling the GST. Instead, it was left to those who understand and value the contribution of tourism to our economy to do the work on that front.

The Inbound Tourism Organisation of Australia said in its submission to the Senate inquiry:

Monash University Economics Professor Peter Dixon has forecast a 10 percent decline in international visitors to Australia as a result of the GST. This equates to the loss of $1.6 billion in export earnings. Queensland stands to suffer the greatest loss of income and employment.

The competition for attracting international tourists is fierce and, according to the analysis presented to the Senate inquiry, very price sensitive. That is bad news for Central Queensland when you look at the breakdown of international visitor figures. For example, 61 per cent of international visitors came from Europe and the United Kingdom, so it is a pretty fair bet that most of those were backpackers trying to see the country as cheaply as possible. How are they going to feel about paying a GST on every bus ride, hostel room and souvenir?

Unfortunately, the story does not get any better for domestic tourism. I just spent the last weekend travelling around the western parts of Capricornia, through the gemfields and out to Barcaldine. Everywhere you looked there were caravans on the roads and tourists enjoying the sunshine and the atmosphere of friendly country towns. Almost all of the tourists were from within Australia and were taking extended driving holidays on carefully managed budgets. All of the locals I talked to told me that numbers are growing every year and they are all hopeful that tourism will grow to add a new dynamic to the region's economy. I would like to think that their hope is well founded, but why is the government risking that bright outlook by hobbling it with the GST?

Of course, it is not just the west that is looking at domestic tourism as part of its future prosperity. Most of the visitors to the Capricorn Coast are from within Australia and are looking for a moderately priced holiday. According to the Tourism Council of Australia:

The analysis shows that prices for Australians travelling at home will rise by 5.2 % if the trip includes an air component and 4.8 % if travel by car.

This is backed up by the Tourism Task Force in its submission to the Senate inquiry:

The Tourism Task Force estimates the overall impact on domestic travel is at least a fall of 4.4 %, due to the net impact of increased prices of domestic travel and decreasing prices of travel to overseas destinations.

There is nothing to feel very hopeful about in that outlook. Maybe people will be able to think about an extra stopover overseas as well as their private health insurance in such a scenario, but they will certainly be thinking twice about flying, driving, camping, caravanning or any other holiday activity in Central Queensland because the cost will undoubtedly go up under the government's GST. So, on the one hand, we get the runway, but the other hand deals us a tax on a developing industry that will see jobs, revenue and opportunities lost to Central Queensland.

The development of Central Queensland as a centre for education and research is another opportunity that the government has the power to either make or break. The University of Central Queensland's innovative Smart City project has the potential to position the uni and Central Queensland as a leader in distance education, in the use of interactive technology in teaching and as a major exporter of education. Following a large investment by the Beattie government and a commitment by the federal opposition to gift the Commonwealth building to the uni, the government was dragged into an agreement to sell the building to the university.

The university, and indeed the whole community of Rockhampton, welcomed the government's belated embrace of the Smart City project, but again we see one step forward and two steps back. Instead of handing over the building, the government is making the university pay for it. The government continues to limit the ambitions of universities and students in Australia due to its failure to restore funding to tertiary education. The government's spending on higher education this year is still $800 million behind Labor's spending in its last year in office.

The lack of vision and strategy in this budget is bad enough when you think of the options that would be open to the government and this country if it was not squandering the surplus on pay-offs for the GST. It is made even worse when you recall how the surplus was arrived at—it was paid for by cuts to regional services and education. We saw our government services in Central Queensland shut up shop in the name of producing a surplus. Now that there is a surplus, what do we get? We do not see our services being returned: we get a GST that increasing numbers of people in Capricornia—whether they are the pensioners at the supermarket or the bloke running the servo down the road—are telling me that they definitely do not want.

The tax office in Rocky is a classic illustration of how this government operates. Obviously, it is not about what we want or need in Central Queensland but what the government's GST obsession dictates. In 1996, the tax office in Rocky closed its doors as part of the government's budget slashing to community services. Now we find out that Rocky will get an office staffed with GST field officers. So again, one step forward and two steps back. Sure, we welcome the extra jobs that the field office represents, but there is no way we are getting back what we lost in 1996.

It is far from a fully equipped tax office, open to take all inquiries that the general public would like to be able to take directly to a tax officer rather than waiting on the phone to Townsville for every request. Instead, we are getting a cubbyhole from which field officers will travel around visiting businesses to implement the GST. So we lost our community's tax office in order to get a surplus that we are now told is going to be spent on a tax office that is not for the community but for the GST. I think the people of Central Queensland are entitled to feel pretty ripped off by that equation.

I do not like to let a speaking opportunity in here pass me by without mentioning the government's performance on jobs. Whatever I say about employment now, it will certainly be more than the Treasurer said on budget night. I was waiting quite expectantly for the Treasurer to announce some initiatives for creating jobs and cutting the unemployment rate. I could not really believe it when his time was almost up and he still had not touched on the issue. Then right at the end, almost as an afterthought, he shrugged his shoulders and said, `The unemployment rate should remain around its current level'. Just like that. Not, `We're the government and we should be committed and passionate about ensuring that every Australian has a chance at gaining the education and skills to get a job'. Not, `We're the government and we should be working with communities and businesses to identify opportunities and problems to ensure that development occurs right across Australia'. No; all we got was that the unemployment rate is just going to sit on 7.5 per cent indefinitely without too much concern from the government. And, of course, the rate in Capricornia, being a regional area, is higher than that figure—up at eight per cent. But I guess the Treasurer would just shrug his shoulders at that, too.

This government's approach to unemployment is another example of where programs and services were sacrificed in the name of producing a budget surplus, only for the surplus to be wasted on achieving a GST that will only harm the creation of jobs. The government seems quite comfortable with spending $20 billion on the GST over the next three years and not producing an improved unemployment outcome. It is quite hard to believe. Their one concession to the 700,000 unemployed people in Australia, including almost 5,500 unemployed people in Capricornia, is the Work for the Dole Scheme—the Work for the Dole Scheme with a 32 per cent success rate for participants finding employment compared to the rate of 50 per cent to 60 per cent under Labor's Jobstart wage subsidy program.

The disappointing thing here is that the government knows what it could be doing for unemployment in this country because it only has to look at the final months of the Labor government when the creation of full-time jobs was double that currently being achieved by this government. The government knows what it needs to do—provide training and wage subsidies—and it would have the resources to do that if it was not spending the surplus on a new tax.

This is a government with the wrong priorities—a GST ahead of jobs and education, and the sell-off of Telstra instead of a commitment to providing a high level of accessible and affordable telecommunications infrastructure to all Australians, both city and country. The government offers no vision for this country, and the people of Capricornia know it. All this government does offer is an unfair and job destroying tax, and the people of Capricornia know that as well and they do not want it.