Mr SAWFORD (5:31 PM) —I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2002-2003 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2002-2003. The week I wrote this speech recognised the seventh anniversary of the Howard-Costello government. That event ought to be marked by noting their greatest achievement: being the highest taxing government in the history of Australia. In fact, they recorded that achievement for seven years in a row without exception. That is some record. Australians have had only one tax cut in seven years. That came with the GST. We still have the GST, but the tax cut has long gone. The government have had a pretty soft ride, courtesy of a pretty-much compliant media, an indulged financial big end of town and an inherited economic dynamic, which was made more effective by the Reserve Bank Governor, Ian Macfarlane, who reduced interest rates when his predecessor, Bernie Fraser, failed.

Nevertheless, when analysis is applied to the achievements of this government, it is a very narrow list. Three things stand out from those seven years: the response to the Port Arthur tragedy, which showed a stark contrast to six or seven years before when our Minister for Justice, Duncan Kerr, tried to get national gun laws through; the response to East Timor; and the nation building task of the Alice Springs to Darwin railway. They were all very positive and very clear. It is a pity that that discontinues with the current attitude of the government towards the situation and the disarmament of Iraq.

Mr Macfarlane is an interesting personality, and he is a stark contrast to people like Stan Wallis, Stan Howard, Ray Williams, Gary Toomey, Keith Lambert, Paul Batchelor, George Turnbull and Chris Cuffe, and the list goes on and on. The list of financial receivers of big handouts has been a veritable growth industry under this government. My grandfather had a saying that, if the CEO of a company was in the media, was a bit of a media tart, you should take your shares out of that company because you know that person is not doing their job. Mr Macfarlane, to his credit, appears to have got on with the job he was employed to do; albeit, he has been pretty generously served in the economic dynamic of falling interest rates, falling inflation and falling unemployment. You cannot do much wrong when that is happening.

However, that trinity which keeps governments in office and oppositions in apoplexy requires serious analysis. In every Australian city, suburb and region, millions of stories are not being told. They are not being told in the member for Grey's seat, nor are they being told in mine. They reflect negatively on the apparent impotence of this government when it comes to the formation of a future vision for this country. Buying a home has become harder under John Howard and Peter Costello. It now takes 8½ years of wages to buy an Australian home, which is an extra 27 months of wages compared to seven years ago. The proportion of Australians buying their first home compared to the total is now the second lowest on record. The average size of loans has increased by 67 per cent, while the average mortgage has risen from $104,000 in March 1996 to $170,000 in December 2002. Household debt has doubled in that period, with the average household now owing $82,000. Obviously, the synthesising of foreign debt doubling under this government from $180 billion to a figure approaching $360 billion is difficult to make meaningful at an individual family level. I note the media frenzy has not criticised the government on this issue.

Falling interest rates have benefited only a minority of Australians. Consumer debt on credit cards has sky-rocketed and blown out to record levels, at interest rates from 16 to 24 per cent—that is the real interest rate for the majority of Australian families. It is not 4.7 or 4.8 per cent; it is 16 to 24 per cent. The credit card debt of Australian families has trebled to $22 billion. In fact, Australian families are saving less and are paying record bank fees. Total bank fees have doubled since 1997. Australians can save only three cents in every dollar they earn.

Throughout the stewardship of the Howard-Costello government, there has been a massive shift of the nation's wealth to an already privileged, very small group of rich people. That is, of course, a very dangerous situation for any nation state, as has been shown throughout history over the last 2,000 years. In 410 AD, the Roman emperor Honorius was informed by his servant that King Alaric was in the north of Italy with 100,000 Visigoths, poised to invade Rome. Honorius was so confused that he thought the servant was talking about one of his prized poultry. That was his hobby; the emperor was a strange little fellow. Honorius did not appreciate that for years the emperors of Rome had increased taxation on Roman citizens for the benefit of an ever decreasing elite of very rich Romans. The emperor and his privileged group were taken aback when King Alaric and the Visigoths arrived and ordinary Romans refused to fight them; they had nothing to fight for.

Louis XIV, the King of France, was a little crazy, like Honorius with his poultry. He was not quite of the real world either; he spent far too much time with potted orange trees. They were not the only things about Louis XIV that were potty. Louis XIV and his predecessors had achieved exactly the same results as Honorius did in Rome. They transferred the wealth of the nation to fewer and fewer privileged people. As that folly marked the end of ancient empires like Greece, Egypt and Rome, it also doomed the reign of Louis XIV and his offspring. If you look at the reigns of some of the royalty in Holland—the Dutch, of course, were the originators of world capitalism—and the royalty in Portugal and Spain, you find similar stories. The point I make is that, notwithstanding how things change, some principles remain the same regardless of the millennium or century in which people live. The point is this: if you do not share the nation's wealth fairly among the majority of citizens, the fate of the nation will be determined as it was in the past.

Observation of city, suburban and regional Australia reveals many stories. Government would do well to listen to them for they do not reflect favourably on the status quo. We see it every day in our lives. For example, the rate of bulk-billing by GPs has decreased by 11 percentage points in the last seven years, and only 69.9 per cent of GP services are now bulk--billed. More than 10 million fewer GP visits were bulk-billed last year compared to the situation when John Howard came to office. In the seat of Port Adelaide, 87 per cent of our GPs bulk-bill, and you wonder how long they can keep going. They are under real pressure; they tell me so. Some of my constituents tell me how difficult it is to find a GP who bulk-bills. We now get people from the eastern suburbs, the wealthy suburbs, coming down to the doctors in my electorate. Some of our locals have found that they have had to keep those people out and refuse them service. You now have to book a GP, and it can take weeks to see anybody.

The average out-of-pocket cost to see a doctor who does not bulk-bill is now $12.78, which is a 55 per cent increase since the Howard government came to office in 1996. Take as an example the widespread begging by young and old on the streets of our capital cities. Is there anyone on the government side who would give credence to the idea that some of the begging could be avoided if we targeted funding to the needy and if that targeting of the needy were government policy? Let us examine the begging. I do not mean the professional begging that you see in Sydney and Melbourne—and sometimes in Adelaide, but very rarely. Look at the young mothers and the children begging on the city streets. Does anyone on the government side concede that just maybe that $3 billion subsidy for health insurance is aimed at the wrong group? Could it have been better targeted?

On the same theme, everyone in this House is aware of the billions of dollars being transferred from public to private education. By the false god of choice from the coalition has many a parent fallen. Take the example of two working parents on modest wages who, noting the bias of the government against public education, feel compelled to join the bandwagon of private education. Unfortunately for many parents, this not only results in a transfer of their funds but can result in good parenting being replaced by poor parenting or no parenting. It happens, and I have seen it happen more often than people would wish to admit.

Under this government, money buys you a degree and merit cannot guarantee you a place. In this country, merit cannot guarantee you a place in a university! The coalition has ripped out more than $5 billion from Australian universities. By 2003 there were 20,000 fewer fully funded places than in 1996. Student fees have jumped 85 per cent since 1996. Some students are now paying $100,000 for a degree. Take the single pensioner with no income other than the pension who pays, even with the rebate, up to $1,500 a year—a sum they can ill afford—on health insurance. They do it. Many people in my electorate do it and they cannot afford it.

Under the coalition the Australian labour market has dived to an alarming rate of low-paid, low-skilled, part-time and insecure employment. In my state of South Australia 50 per cent of the labour market can be so described. Australia wide the figure is 40 per cent. There are 2.1 million Australians who are affected by underemployment and unemployment. In question time the other week the Prime Minister bragged that 1.3 million jobs had been created by the coalition in their seven years tenure. However, to my continued interjections of `How many full-time jobs?' the Prime Minister was decidedly silent. And so he should be. The quantum figure of 1.3 million jobs is misleading in the extreme, and the Prime Minister knows it. Almost all of those 1.3 million jobs are low-skilled, low-paid, part-time and insecure jobs in retail, hospitality, aged and child-care centres and call centres.

Where exactly are the full-time, high-skilled, highly paid jobs genuine Australian businesses have been screaming about for years? Where indeed is there any recognition on the government side of the significant skill shortages in the Australian labour market? And they are significant. If even for one moment you think that Australians are relaxed and comfortable, as promised by this Prime Minister, ignoring for a moment the serious international conflicts we face, then simply watch the behaviour of more and more Australians on Australian roads. Watch what happens at sporting events. Go for a walk in a deprived suburb. Listen to the anger in the voices of talkback radio participants. Talk to the people who have to deal with the victims of violence and child abuse. Read the letters to the editor pages. Ask yourself this question: are these the indicators of a relaxed, comfortable, inclusive and fair society? Go and visit an emergency admission centre at any public hospital and you will be shocked. It will illuminate things for you for all the wrong reasons. Observe, just for a moment, the abandonment of mentally ill people on the streets of our cities and suburbs. Take account of the fact that depression is now the second most prevalent disease in this country. Even a former right-wing extremist like former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett recognised that. It was too late, mind you, but he did at least recognise that and change his views. The evidence on Melbourne streets was overwhelming.

Take a look at the increasing failure to attend to transport, power and tourism infrastructure maintenance in this country. Will the former power failures in Auckland in 1998 be repeated in Australia? You bet they will. Will Australia ever get the right balance between road, rail and shipping transport? Not under this government. Take the classic example of the partisanship of the government and their intention to increase pharmaceutical charges by 30 per cent. The highest taxing government in the nation's history intends to tax the poor and the chronically ill even more than the unacceptable levels that they face today. Why do we pay benefits to take them away in taxation? The poor should not be paying taxation. It is just a ludicrous situation to take money away in the form of taxation and then try to give part of it back in terms of benefits. It is just a waste of time and a self-indulgent waste of energy. It is money that should be going to infrastructure.

The highest taxing government in Australian history has transferred, and continues to transfer, more and more of the nation's wealth to fewer and fewer of the privileged classes. That is true for health: there is a $2.5 billion health insurance rebate at the expense of public hospitals. That is true for education: we have billion-dollar subsidies for religious and ethnic private schools at the expense of public schools. It is out of control. That is true for transport. An exception of course is the Alice Springs-Darwin railway. The coalition has deliberately taken money away from health, education, training and transport and diminished potential job opportunities—full-time, skilled jobs with high pay—for ordinary Australians.

The coalition has deliberately created a labour market dynamic that fails to reward the people who actually do the work in our society. Is that an extravagant statement? I do not think so. Have a look at the salaries and conditions of aged care workers and child-care workers. I thought a civilised society was one that looked after its aged and its children. What do we pay our aged care workers and child-care workers? Almost slave wage rates. What about the assembly line workers, teachers, nurses, policemen, policewomen, transport operators, retail and hospitality workers and call centre operators? They run the place; they do the work—and we pay them piddling wages. At the same time we recognise that credit card debt is mushrooming out of control as people in this country live beyond their means.

Note the increasing anger in our society: go to the schools, go to the workplace, go for a drive on the roads in any city, and look in our own homes. The state that ignores those warning signs is preparing the way for its long-term demise. Hundreds of thousands of people marching for reconciliation and against the war in Iraq are marching for more than just those two issues. Just as it happened in ancient Rome, ancient Greece, imperial France or Stalinist Russia, so it can happen in what is loosely termed Western democracies. When the real purpose of the state to advantage the majority of the citizens is ignored and when education, health and real job opportunities are limited to the privileged, the government can be seen as writing its own epitaph—but it might also write the epitaph for our own country.

As Ross Gittins pointed out in a Monday Sydney Morning Herald a couple of weeks ago, the government could set up a future vision for this country. I will repeat some of his major suggestions. We could set up an education and research endowment fund—that is, take the future skill needs of this country seriously. We could break the impasse on salinity and water rights by compensating farmers in return for moving to a properly priced water regime. We could straighten out and speed up every rail freight track in the land. We could resume borrowings and start acquiring responsible debt. Of course Gittins means investing in worthwhile capital projects—not wasting money on recurrent expenditure that disappears to privileged people around this country—that would deliver both short-term and long-term benefits stretching over the next 10, 20 and maybe even 60 years. It is perfectly responsible, even desirable, to finance them by borrowing. Ross Gittins sums up his article with the profound statement for all politicians:

or the woman—

or the woman—

That is the real message in his article. It is a message that ought to be listened to by government and opposition alike. It ought to be particularly listened to by state governments, who are notorious—whatever political persuasion they are—for wasting money and failing to invest in a long-term future.

Has this Howard-Costello government got the political smarts to recognise and achieve a future vision? Its track record, I suggest, indicates otherwise. This message ought to be revisited by the Labor state governments throughout Australia, including my own in South Australia. Just prior to Christmas, the state Labor government in South Australia made a very welcome decision to commence the port expressway but, unlike what they said in their election promise, they failed to link it to the decision to build a road and rail bridge over the Port River to achieve what would be the best transport hub in Australia and perhaps one of the best in the world.

There are such things as responsible borrowings and good debt. It is time federal, state and local governments realised this important principle. Local government, too, do not do enough in terms of local spending on infrastructure. They ought to be spending 30 per cent of their budgets on infrastructure—as should the states and as should the federal government—but they do not, and that is why we are in such a mess in this country. Australians deserve better than what they are currently getting from all forms of government, including the Howard-Costello government. But the real leadership, of course, does not come from state or local government; it comes from the federal government. What a pity it has all gone missing for the last seven years.