Mr KERR (9:47 PM) —I have heard some absurd things in my time, but for somebody on the government side to say it is absurd for government to be directing policy in respect of telecommunications when only the other day the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts (Senator Alston) set out the most prescriptive set of rules about how the band that will be responsible for television will be allocated just shows to me how stupid the have been contributions so far in this debate. I really do think that so many on the government side have sold short the great contributions that have been made by the public institutions which have made up the backbone of this nation. One of them was the Postmaster-General's Department, which was then later broken into Australia Post and Telstra.

Through that mechanism, Australians have been able to access cheap, effective communication, first by the mails and later by phone and the new technologies that have come along. To suggest that this nation-making work, which was built around public sector enterprise, is in some way now to be deserted and that we are to leave behind social obligations and responsibilities to the larger community seems to me to be not only fundamentally flawed but also stupid.

The principal critique that I would make of this from a Tasmanian perspective is the same critique that Senator Harradine made. When new technologies come along in a market related environment, those technologies are introduced where the economies of scale dictate—that is, principally in Sydney and Melbourne, and later in some regional centres. But the Sydney and Melbourne markets, where the last speaker in this debate, the honourable member for Lindsay (Miss Jackie Kelly), comes from, are going to do reasonably well out of this. The other 99 per cent of Australia in terms of geographical area is not going to feel so comfortable.

A very good example that Senator Harradine himself gave was the example of MessageBank, which operates in all capital cities except those in my state. When new technologies come along, when the government forgoes its capacity to direct Telstra, those of us in regional and remote Australia will find ourselves with less market power than the larger centres and left behind again.

But where I want to come into the debate today and make a specific contribution is in relation to what we are being told will be a social dividend. I want to come in on this so-called social dividend because we have seen in the so-called heritage trust what we can expect by way of a social dividend. A proposal that was put forward by the government, which was supposed to be the most significant environmental commitment of capital works programs ever to be undertaken in Australia, has been rorted by this government into a Liberal coalition slush fund.

We all know the broad detail of what has happened. The broad detail is that $9 out of every $10 that were allocated in the last round of funding went to coalition held seats. We know that, in some states, the distribution was even more skewed. In Victoria, for example, where $16.5 million was allocated, coalition seats received $16.3 million or 98.6 per cent and seats held by the Australian Labor Party received $0.2 million or 1.4 per cent. We know that the distribution of seats is nowhere in the same order of skew.

The first defence the government put forward was to say, `You'd expect a fund that was committed to remedy environmental degradation to be principally directed towards regional and rural Australia.' So be it. But let us look at the objective criteria established by the Australian Electoral Commission. Let us look at their allocation of provincial and rural designators for seats.

Let us look at what the AEC designates as provincial seats. The coalition holds 10 such seats and the Australian Labor Party holds eight. The distribution as a result of that is that the coalition gets $5 for every $1 allocated to Labor Party held seats. In rural Australia where the coalition holds some 40 seats and the Australian Labor Party three, again, if you compare rural seats with rural seats, for every $1 the Australian Labor Party member is allocated a coalition party member is allocated $2.

It cannot plausibly be the case that right across Australia environmental priorities so neatly match the political priorities of this coalition government, of the Minister for the Environment (Senator Hill) and the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy (Mr Anderson), in their allocations. How rich and surprising it is when we discover that in fact in the allocative decisions not only was there advice received from regional assessment panels and state assessment panels but also right at the end game when Minister Hill was making his decisions he invited Senator Crane from Western Australia into the room with him to give him advice.

Senator Crane comes in and says that he is an expert on Landcare groups. But Senator Crane apparently did not even know that his family was involved in a Landcare group right in his own backyard. Some expert! He did not even know that his particular property intersected with a group that was funded. So there he was in there with the minister, rorting Western Australian grants to go to coalition held seats, as supposedly an expert in Landcare but not even knowing anything about what happens in Landcare in his own backyard.

Senator Eggleston was also there. Senator Hill tells the Senate that he cannot remember what Senator Eggleston was doing in the room. Let us leave that to one side. But somehow he invited Senator Eggleston to be there. He invited the member for Dunkley (Mr Billson) from Victoria to come along to a meeting he held in South Australia to advise him on Victorian grants. We have heard rumours that the member for Leichhardt (Mr Entsch), whilst he was not involved in the room, was involved repeatedly with detailed representations to the minister on how the Queensland grants ought to be made.

Would this matter? It would not matter if the minister himself was basically rubber stamping recommendations that were coming forward. When we heard the minister in evidence at the Senate estimates committee the other day he said, `Overwhelmingly we followed their recommendations.' Of course those of us who grew up going to primary school and reading our dictionaries and understand what is meant by the English language would have thought that a statement such as `Overwhelmingly I followed those recommendations' would have meant that at least nine out of 10 were followed. Perhaps up to 10 per cent of applications, one or two, might not have been followed, but when you say that you do something `overwhelmingly' as a result of advice people would expect that you did overwhelmingly follow those recommendations.

What do we find? We find that the minister in fact misled the Senate. He actually changed the priority order that was recommended to him so that four out of 10 applications that were granted would not have been granted had he followed the advice that was tendered to him—39 per cent of projects that were actually funded would not have got a cracker, would not have got a cent, if Senator Hill had actually followed the priority orders recommended to him by the regional and state assessment panels, the independent groups that were supposedly there to guide him in the selection of those projects.

You might ask yourself: why have those independent assessment processes at all, particularly in some of the more exaggerated of the interventions? Take, for example, the wetlands program. In the wetlands program, the minister substituted his views in 78 per cent of the cases that came before him—eight out of 10. Yet he says, `Overwhelmingly I followed their advice.' Look at Victoria. Mr Billson was there as the minister's special adviser, rorting the funds in Victoria. What happened in Victoria? Fifty-four per cent of the projects that were funded would not have been funded but for the minister's intervention. In the Northern Territory I think 67 per cent of the projects would not have been funded. Yet the minister comes before us and says, `Overwhelmingly I followed their advice.' What nonsense! He has misled the Senate.

So we have a situation that really begs the question: why did the minister go to the bother of setting up a two-tiered independent and expert arm's length process which must have wasted tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars? Why did he put people to the trouble of all those assessment processes? Why did he send his departmental officers to each of those regional meetings and put people through this farce when, when the projects came to his office, he went through them, shuffled them like a deck of cards and basically said, `I like this one; I don't like that one. I'll fund this one; I won't fund that one'? Look at the projects to see whether this makes a difference. It does. What it really means is that the minister passed over many good projects in Labor areas.

Mr Hardgrave —Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I refer you to standing order 81 or perhaps even 85 on tedious repetition. I think the member for Denison is really digressing way past the subject matter that is before the House.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Quick) —I would remind the honourable member that he has been spending quite a deal of time on this matter. I understand the thread, but I would ask him to get back to the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 1998 and make his point.

Mr KERR —I intend to continue the rest of my speech on this theme because the government has said that one of the benefits that will flow from this bill will be a further $2 billion, which, from experience to date, will be rorted just like the money they have already rorted. This community has a stake in rejecting that kind of politicisation.

I am saying that what the minister did with the Natural Heritage Trust is directly material to the kind of abuse that we will see in the future. Take for example what happened with the Manly reservoir project. In New South Wales, this project was listed at 195 out of 202 projects. It was basically scraping the bottom of the barrel. It was seven from the end. It was at the bottom of the priorities. That project deals with regeneration. It has very similar objects and aims to a project submitted by the Bankstown City Council. The Bankstown City Council is located in the seat of Blaxland, which is held by Michael Hatton. This project was ranked at 90.

Mr Hardgrave —Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. Your immediate predecessor in the chair ruled on the member of Denison in relation to standing orders 81 and 85. The honourable member has continued as before, and in fact, has suggested that he would snub the ruling. I simply claim that he is straying way past the matter before the House.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl) —I thank the honourable member for Moreton. As you have observed, I have only just assumed the chair. I am listening very carefully and I know that the member for Denison will speak to the bill.

Mr KERR —I certainly did not reject the ruling of the previous Deputy Speaker. I explained how the material I was introducing to this debate was directly relevant to the debate we are having here—that is, whether it is appropriate and meritorious that we should sell off this great public asset in order to obtain a profit which will go to the kind of distorted public expenditure priorities that this government has previously seen fit to associate itself with.

Going back to the Manly against Bankstown proposal, when questioned about this in the Senate estimates earlier this year Senator Hill's response to the funding of Manly was that he had exercised a positive bias in favour of projects located in metropolitan seats. He also commented on the environmental merit of the project and the value for money this represented.

Why then did he pass over a project that was located 100 points ahead on the recommendation of the independent merit assessment panel? Why did he overlook a proposal submitted by the Bankstown City Council which is also in a metropolitan area? On environmental merit alone, the proposal was ranked some 105 positions higher by the state assessment panel. The project represents only $34,000 in Commonwealth money and could easily have been funded from the large amounts of funding that the minister approved for projects well below that rank.

Other projects overlooked in Labor held areas—and not just in metropolitan areas—in order to fund Liberal projects of a much lower ranking include the Singleton council project which is in the seat held by my friend and colleague Joel Fitzgibbon.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —You mean the member for Hunter.

Mr KERR —Yes, my friend and colleague the member for Hunter. The Singleton vegetation rehabilitation and strategy management plan was ranked 130. It was not right down at the bottom, a tail end Charlie. It was not one of the last projects dragged up by a minister who is obviously desperate to fund something in a Liberal marginal electorate, but rather a project in a metropolitan Labor seat and a regional Labor seat, which were underrepresented in the funding weightings.

We now discover that Senator Hill was a one-man selection panel on the Natural Heritage Trust. We have now put into the public arena an analysis which shows that the minister has disregarded the expert opinion of those so-called arms-length processes that he had established. As well as the specific projects that I have mentioned, there are other instances where it is plain that the minister overlooked projects that he could have funded in Labor held electorates, which obviously had higher environmental ranking and were submitted to him by those expert panels, in favour of less meritorious projects, according to the state assessment panels, for what I can only see as political reasons. We get back to the nine out of 10 dollars going to coalition seats. I will turn to some of the other areas that I think members—

Mr SPEAKER —Order! Before you do, I just say that I am struggling very hard to find the linkage between allocations from the sale of the first tranche of Telstra and the bill before the House. I do trust that you will direct your remarks to the bill that is actually before the House.

Mr Latham —It's the social dividend.

Mr KERR —My friend and colleague reminds me of the social dividend. We are going to be told that of the funds from the sale $2 billion will go to a so-called social dividend. Is that not redolent of the greatest environmental package ever—the first social dividend; a social dividend that actually went into the rorted green barrel proposals that the coalition lined up for, the slush fund? We are going to have another $2 billion slush fund. Why would you sell the family silver, our heritage, to fund a Liberal coalition slush fund?

I find it particularly interesting to look at some of the objectives that were supposed to be met by this fund. In the Natural Heritage Trust documentation we were told funding would not be provided for projects which replace the individual's or the organisation's responsibility for the sustainable management of soil, land, water or vegetation resources under their control and there would be no subsidies for commercial activities. We were also told that projects which have a production focus without being linked to conservation of the natural heritage base would not be funded.

Given this, why is NHT funding being provided for the future profit program of the Queensland Graingrowers Association and the Cattleman's Union? Why is NHT funding also going to the Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association and the United Graziers Association when the ineligibility guidelines also state that funding is not provided for the provision of expert advice where this advice is available through coordinators, facilitators or as a core government business? Given that the NHT is being provided for state wide service delivery in the area of property management planning, why are there industry specific PMP projects being funded from the NHT? (Time expired)