In the News
Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (10:16 AM) —I rise to express my concern about the government’s proposal to tax and impose a levy on all those Australians who have already given generously to the flood relief. I would like to start my remarks on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 by rejecting the viewpoint of the member for Petrie—in her rose-coloured glasses view of the world—that all you have to do to manage a national economy is accumulate surplus from a boom and it all just automatically happens and it is a wonderful world that we live in. The reality of being good economic managers is that you have to take tough decisions and you have to work at ensuring that you are taking responsible decisions that do not damage our economy and our capacity to function as a society.
What we are talking about here in these flood reconstruction levy bills is a fundamentally different viewpoint of how government operates and how government is supposed to function. We have no difference between us about the fact that government has a role to play here in reconstructing Queensland and assisting those Australians who have been hit by a natural disaster. There is no difference in this chamber in that. Government has a vital role to play in rebuilding critical pieces of infrastructure and in ensuring communities can rebuild in a way that is sustainable for their futures.
What we do have a difference in—and this becomes clear when you listen to the remarks of the member for Petrie—is that the Labor Party seems to have a view that imposing a tax and telling people what to do from a government level is better than the voluntary and natural instincts of Australians to help each other out. Government has a vital decision here. Do we want to encourage our society to be a voluntary society where we care for each other, where we voluntarily come forward and donate our time, money, effort and energy to help each other, because we want to and because it is the right thing to do? Or do we want the government, from its autocratic mechanisms, to tell people what they should do to help others—tell them how much they should help others, tell them that they must help others—because the government has decided it is the best way to proceed? It is not an approach to government that I accept from the Labor Party. When you look at the great stories and examples across this country that members of this place have spoken about, you will see why.
I was in Cowra the other week and I met a 21-year-old girl from the northern suburbs of Sydney. When news of the flood crisis broke, she jumped in her car—her own beaten-up car—and drove to Queensland. She had no plan except to go there to volunteer and help. She got out of her car in Queensland and started helping people. At the time I spoke to her, she had been there for six weeks. She had been taken in by an elderly couple in the Lockyer Valley. Her whole life plan had been interrupted by this one decision to go and help. She has now been offered a paid position in the council up there because she is so effective at what she does. But she had no plan to do that.
In talking to that girl it revealed to me more of why this government’s plan to force taxes and levies upon people is not going to work. She told me stories of individual businesses, contractors and people who owned trucks and heavy-moving equipment donating trucks and labour to man the trucks and to help move all of the damage and debris free of charge to the local council and the government. That has also been going on for six weeks. What we have there is a cost to government that government cannot afford. People have been stepping forward voluntarily. People have been giving their time, their labour, their capital and their vehicles in a way that government could not replicate or reproduce. They have done so without any prospect of reward or thanks—just because it is the right thing to do by their fellow Australians. It is that instinct which I think is under threat from the government’s proposal with this levy. That is why I have such a great concern.
When you look at how much this government wastes—and we have been over all of the arguments over a number of years in this place—you see that ‘billion’ has become the new ‘million’. ‘Billion’ is used like it is going out of fashion—a billion here, a billion there, a billion everywhere. The total amount of money raised by this levy is just $1.75 billion. The member for Petrie is exactly right: it is extremely modest. It is almost like: ‘Why are we doing this?’ We wasted so much money in so many government programs in the last term of government. More money has been wasted on the Building the Education Revolution than is being raised by this levy.
Many great Australians have been prepared to put themselves forward, their money forward and their time forward. The government said, ‘The government needs you to help.’ And we did need them to help. The reality is that so much has been done by ordinary Australians that could never have been done by government. But what I really object to is when government says to these Australians, ‘Help us. Please donate. Please give,’ and then, after they have done all that, it says, ‘Thank you for that. You have been wonderful, but now we’re going to have to tax you. We are going to have to force you to hand over more of your money regardless of what you have given or what you have done’—without any regard. That is another objection I have to this levy. It is a completely blunt instrument. It does not take into regard those who have given more than they could afford to give, those who have given a lot, and those who have suffered or have sacrificed their life plan to do what they could for others. It does not discriminate. It is a very blunt instrument.
Much of the justification, and it is a typical Labor justification for anything, is that this is means tested—that somehow that makes it better; that somehow those who are perceived as being able to afford to pay should pay more. It all sounds lovely in theory, except that the average wage in this country is $65,000. I want to explain to this government a couple of simple things about life in Sydney today because it is clear they have no idea about the reality of an ordinary Australian living in Western Sydney or in most of our major cities today. If you earn $50,000, you are not rich. You are not tapping into some land of milk and honey. If you earn $60,000 and you have a mortgage in Sydney, let me tell you, you are not earning a lot of money. If you earn $70,000, there is the contention from the Labor government that you have somehow struck King Solomon’s mines—you are mining the gold out of the earth and living on a fantastic wage. I want to reject that as completely and utterly false. Families in my electorate earn $80,000, $90,000 or $100,000 and have two, three or four children and a mortgage upwards of $750,000, $500,000 and $1 million.
People are already suffering under a burden of government charges and taxes. It is very severe in New South Wales. I take one example: electricity prices across Sydney. If you are in a Western Sydney household with two kids and you earn $85,000, or a combined income of $100,000, you are not well off. For this government to say you are well off and that you ought to be able to pay is, I think, blind and ignorant of the circumstances of so many in our metropolitan areas. I really want to reject the idea that people are wealthy. They live on incomes they work very hard to get and, at the end of the day, the government takes a lot of that money off them for the privilege of working so hard.
I think this policy of the Labor Party makes a great mockery of the last term of government. They handed out $900 to so many people. Once again, the rich people—the people earning so much money, like $75,000 or over, with a $750,000 mortgage and four kids in Western Sydney—did not receive that $900 payment. They splashed money around like there was no tomorrow. A billion dollars was the new million dollars. All this raises is $1.75 billion. It is a pathetic excuse.
I also want to address the arguments of the Labor Party in relation to levies. I was not a member of the Howard government, and my instinct is not to levy Australians when savings and government policy can be found. I am an advocate for the reduction of the size of government. It is very cute of the Labor Party to say in this place that the Howard government levied different sorts of levies on different occasions during its term, and that is why the opposition should be supporting a levy for the flood reconstruction.
The difference—and I think it is an important distinction—is that the Howard government, when there was a need for a levy, did not go to Australians and say, ‘Would you please give us money and donate for Ansett workers? Would you please give us money for the dairy regulation?’ There was no purported effort from government to raise money on behalf of needy people or a needy industry at that time. The government’s plans were clear. It was articulated. There was not this false dichotomy, where the government says, ‘Give us all your money. Do what you can to help. Donate, donate, donate.’ Then the government turns around and says, ‘We are now going to tax you after all that wonderful effort you put in.’ That is a very big difference.
The Prime Minister has failed in her duty in this place to understand the challenges of this issue. She says we are asking Australians to put in a cup of coffee a week. The first point that I would clarify with her is that, by legislating for a flood levy, they are not asking; they are telling Australians that they have to provide this money, regardless. As I said before, it does not discriminate; it does not recognise the contributions of so many.
The member for Petrie said that people in her electorate are continuing to fundraise. I want to thank every constituent in my electorate who fundraises for this flood. I was at a flood benefit the other night. I took a table of key volunteers who had been at the flood and made my contribution by thanking them. We raised $40,000 that night. I want to say to the member for Petrie and those opposite: I have no doubt that more people in my community would give more if a levy was not being proposed by this government. It is certainly the case.
I also want to record that my local council estimated that $10 million would probably come out of my electorate from this flood levy. That is their estimate. What that means for our local economy and for the people who have already given so much is that it will blunt their instinct to help in the future. What kind of system are we creating here? At the next need of ordinary Australians through a natural disaster or other dire circumstance, are people going to hold back and say, ‘Look, the government’s going to do it for us. They’re going to step in and force us to do it.’ That is the danger, that is the difference in approach to government today.
We are not seeking the best in our community, in our people and in our society; we are using government instruments to force people to hand over their money. That is a different approach to government. It is a very stark distinction. I reject that distinction. I challenge the member for Petrie: will she go to her constituents, who she says are happy to pay, and will she hand them their tax bills? Will she give them the ATO letterhead which says: ‘Australian Taxation Office. Here is your bill.’ That is what we are proposing to do to Australians, not say, ‘We have a great challenge in Queensland. We have a desperate need for people. Floods have affected Victoria and New South Wales. A cyclone has hit us. Can we all come forward in the spirit of mateship, in the great Australian tradition of filling a need voluntarily when there is a crisis?’ No—the government says, ‘We are proposing, by legislative instrument, to send tax collectors around.’ I must say, that is an uninspiring scenario for me and it is not reflective of the great Australian tradition of mateship that this country is built on, whether it be the great service from citizen soldiery and people stepping forward to the breach at times of military crisis, whether it be people like Sophie going to Queensland and donating her time or whether it be contractors and businesses giving up what they can. Even my in-laws donated furniture to people who lost all their furniture in the flood. Everybody has stepped forward in this country and has risen to the challenge that has emerged in Queensland, yet now we are using a punitive measure from the federal government and sending a very bad signal to people out there that we are prepared to indiscriminately seek more revenue from people rather than tightening our belt in government, stopping the waste and reducing the excessive and gross expenditure of the federal government.
There is too much money spent, and wasted, by the federal government. There is too much money collected in taxes. We collect $117 billion in individual income taxation every year. We make $114 billion in welfare payments every year. Almost every dollar collected in individual income taxation is sent back out the door by the government. We can do better than that. We are better than that as a country and we can find savings in government—we must find savings in government and we must end the waste that this government has become so renowned for.
Looking at these bills, there are other serious consequences from what has happened in Australia. The natural disasters that have hit us have great and ongoing ramifications for many of the small businesses and enterprises across this country. It is not just about people who have been affected by flooding of their business or properties; there are serious consequences for the operation and ongoing viability of so many businesspeople and entrepreneurs in this country. I think government has a real role in doing something about that, whether by the coalition’s tax concessions—the tax holiday proposed by the Leader of the Opposition—or other measures. If we lose sight of the fact that, beyond today, tomorrow and the day after there will be people suffering from these disasters for a long time to come, we have not done our job as a parliament.
Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (9:21 PM) —Tonight I want to put on the record a compelling case within my electorate of the success of the group of parents who took on the education system in New South Wales and won. This is a story of six families who have kids with special needs. In our society today I think their story is so relevant because we pay so much tax and we are prepared to put so much into government because we believe government will do the right thing by those who have a desperate need and a special need. When government does not do that, when it does fail, I think we all have the right as taxpayers and citizens to question why we send so much money into government. It is a story of great community enterprise and initiative in the face of bureaucratic inaction.
The What About Me Foundation was formed by a group of parents I want to name today to record their important achievement: Robert Addie, Rachael Addie, Darren Dietz, Natalie Dietz, Jenny Craig, Rob Craig, Jae Eun Kim, Scott Berry, Julia Berry, Tanya Brennan, Michael Brennan and Munesh Khan. The premise of this organisation was simple: children who require a place in either autism or IO classes should be given the opportunity they deserve for access to quality education in their local school community.
Their children were the initial special needs class at Sherwood Ridge Primary School in my electorate of Mitchell. It is a great school. It is a great development from education departments that we now cater for all kids with special needs, including autism and other disabilities, and that they are catered for through school. But, of course, when they start in kindergarten and advance towards high school years you would expect that the army of bureaucrats we pay for and fund within state bureaucracies would think, ‘Here is a class of kids going through from K to 6, so we now need to think about their transition from 6 to 7.’ To the shock of these parents, to the shock of these kids, to the shock of my community and to my shock as a local member, nobody had catered for these children to transition to their local high school, which does have special needs places available. Instead, the department of education in New South Wales suggested that these parents and these kids, this community of children, break themselves up and spread themselves across Sydney in a way that would be completely unsatisfactory for the needs of those kids, the families and my community.
The value of keeping a class of kids with special needs together cannot be overestimated or overstated, nor can the value of having places in local schools. I want to record here again, as I have so many times, that I have the highest number of couples with dependent children of any electorate in this country. I have the highest concentration of kids and families in any electorate in Australia. It is so important to recognise that local schooling of kids with special needs makes a great difference to the community and the parents.
To the great credit of this group of parents, What About Me was formed to fight the state government and to take them on where it counted. They went and saw the minister. With great initiative and enterprise they got a legal team and put up a great set of arguments. They actually read the Principals Handbook. They went through all the department paperwork, all of the bureaucracy, all of the red tape, and they ended up knowing more about the department’s policies than the department’s own officers. They were able to say to the department, ‘This is your policy, that you must plan and provide for the transition of these children.’ Again I question why we fund so much bureaucracy and so many people in government today at all levels. Why do we do that if we do not look after kids with special needs? Why do we have such a high taxation burden on the ordinary Australian if we are not there to look after the most vulnerable in our society today? That is the justification for the entire foundation of our taxation system. If we do not do those things well then, in my book, we are not doing anything well. The initiative and enterprise of these parents in forming this group was able to achieve a commonsense outcome, and I praise them for it. But it had nothing to do with government. It was a forced outcome—forced by the determination of a group of parents to understand and explain to the education department in New South Wales that their kids had needs and that they deserved local schooling.
I want to highlight this case today in the House because one of the parents, Jenny Craig, unfortunately, passed away during this period. She was a very courageous woman. I had the privilege of knowing her for some time. She fought very hard for these kids. It was such a wonderful thing to attend the celebration party for the awarding of their positions at their local school. Unfortunately, Jenny was unable to be with us but the materials that she put together were there. The initiative that she put into those children and this group to ensure that they got the right outcome from the department in New South Wales was something amazing to watch and something that I was privileged to be involved in. I want to highlight this case to the House today because this is a model for students and parents across New South Wales. We do have to seek better for kids with special needs in our society, and it ought to be the prime function of government to look after those who cannot look after themselves. (Time expired)
The Gillard Government’s Flood Levy is an insult to the tremendous spirit we have seen during and following the recent flood crises around Australia, said the Federal Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke.
“The Gillard Government must reduce its gross and excessive spending and should look to itself first before slugging all Australians with this new tax,” Mr Hawke said.
“We must and will help our fellow Australians in need. But as the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, stated in the Parliament this week, ‘mates help each other, they don’t tax each other.’”
“This levy, this tax, it will fall on volunteers, it will fall on the donors—people who have already given and sacrificed so much in perspiration and out of their own pockets. It will also in some instances fall on flood victims.”
Mr Hawke questioned why it was that the Opposition, the Federal Coalition, and not the Gillard Government who were willing to seek savings measures rather than immediately resorting to a new tax.
“The Government has a vital role in rebuilding infrastructure, but it shouldn’t discourage our volunteering ethos,” Mr Hawke said. “The Gillard Government is positioning Government as an autocratic institution that will tell us how, when, and how much we are obligated to give when there is a natural disaster.
“I have received much feedback from upset residents in our local community. People who have pitched-in, who have given more than they really could afford to give, and who are now questioning why they should have donated in the first place if the Government was just going to tax them afterward.
“We must not blunt the instinct to help in times of need. The incalculable contributions, from the heavy equipment company lending their machinery and donating the cost of their employees’ labour, to the volunteer turning up with a shovel, cannot be matched by Government.
“The Gillard Government should look to make savings itself before resorting to this new tax,” Mr Hawke said.
The Gillard Government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) is an expensive, short-sighted project that will be outdated before it even completed, said the Federal Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke.
“The Government through the NBN is dictating what internet technology people should use rather than what they want,” Mr Hawke said.
“Many local residents have told me they don’t need the NBN – they prefer their own wireless internet connection to meet their online needs.
“Why is the Gillard Government determined to impose this limited technology on Australia? “Why is the Government setting up an enormous monopoly to do so?
“Ten years ago many people in the community had no knowledge of the online environment, let alone broadband. The dynamic nature of the online environment means new technologies are emerging all of the time. Yet the Gillard Government is locking us into an expensive program that many people in the community don’t want.
“As I told Parliament last week, President Obama made it clear that innovative wireless solutions are the United States way forward. The Gillard Government should be more open to new technologies and not the blinkered thinking that has produced this NBN.”
Mr Hawke said the NBN involved enormous sums of taxpayers’ and borrowed money, at present around $37 billion.
“Since 2007 we have seen the Gillard and Rudd Governments throw billions of our dollars at projects and schemes that had been poorly planned and not thought through,” Mr Hawke said.
“Following on from the failed Home Insulation (pink batts) program, the waste under the Building the Education (school halls) program, and the Green Loans scheme, we now have the National Broadband Network,” Mr Hawke said.
“Instead of learning from their mistakes, the Gillard Government is determined to keep on spending away our future. The NBN has the potential to be Labor’s greatest white elephant of all.
“Once again taxpayers in the Hills will be slugged to fund an ill-thought out and rushed scheme. Once again, future generations are being encumbered with the consequences of Labor’s haste to spend billions of borrowed dollars,” Mr Hawke said.
Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (6:25 PM) —I rise to endorse the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 as a long overdue measure this parliament ought to take in implementing what I regard as a vital piece of our national infrastructure. I reject the proposed amendment by the Greens, and I will get to that in a moment. I endorse the comments of the member for Lyons. It is a brave man inside the Labor Party who stands up and calls for the use of nuclear power, and I encourage him to pursue that line. We have seen in recent times union leaders coming forward and saying that they feel that nuclear power is a good way for this country to proceed. We have seen more and more Labor members realising—after decades of inaction—that nuclear is a viable and long-term strategic option in Australia’s interests.
However, I do want to correct the member for Lyons on a couple of points that he made. He contended that the coalition had done nothing in government and that somehow we are here today because of coalition inaction. We are standing here today after 11½ years of coalition policy stating that we need a centralised waste management system because of the intransigence of the Labor Party in opposition. They opposed us in that endeavour. Why did they oppose us? They opposed the centralisation of waste management in Australia because they could not resolve their own internal political tensions. Labor, the Greens and the left of centre in Australian politics have always sought to create fear out of the nuclear issue. That is why I think the comments of the member for Lyons were radically different here today. I endorse his comments, because it is long overdue that the left of centre of Australian politics came to grips with technology and with the realities of the world in 2011.
I say to the member for Lyons that it is not that we are only now learning about the use of nuclear power and how valuable it could be. It has been in operation for decades. Australia has been mining uranium for decades. We have been using the benefits of nuclear medicine for decades. These benefits have been obvious to those people following and interested in the debates on nuclear power, nuclear energy generation and the use of nuclear technology in this country. These benefits have of course escaped the notice of the Labor Party.
In the 2007 election campaign the Labor Party sought to run a series of fear campaigns around this country on the siting of nuclear power plants. The front page of local papers in my electorate of Mitchell carried a big picture of a reactor tower and the words ‘Nuclear plant coming to Mitchell’. That might have been a plan proposed by the member for Werriwa—who I notice is here in the chamber—because that was certainly replicated right across this country, particularly in marginal electorates. I thought that was a shallow and defeatist set of campaign tactics. We have to seriously consider these very important technologies for the future, not cynically campaign politically on such an important and vital part of this country’s future.
We have one of the world’s largest reserves of uranium. We were held back for decades by Labor’s three mines policy. People talk about trade cartels. Labor had a three mines policy for so long in ignorance of the opportunities that we are provided by this fortunate land that we live in. The coalition’s longstanding position has been one of support for this concept, and we support this bill. We are behaving responsibly in opposition. We are behaving in the national interest. For 11½ years we sought to act in the national interest and construct a repository in a suitable location. I note that the member for Solomon is here in the chamber today. She is here in defence of her constituents—and I think she is doing a great job in that regard.
Years ago there was a proposal for a suitable site in northern South Australia. The only reason that facility did not go ahead was Labor Party intransigence by the Rann government. That is what we have seen from state Labor governments around the country: a lack of leadership and a lack of vision for their state and for their country. We have seen short-term temporary politics overtaking long-term national interest and decision making. People in this country are sick of it. No wonder every Labor state Premier is as unpopular as Captain Bligh in the rebellion. No wonder every state wants to reject them. We would have had a centralised waste management facility in a suitable location—which was identified in the report—in northern South Australia many years ago, and everything would have proceeded in a much safer way for ordinary Australians. Labor has been content to allow the storing of radioactive waste containers in car parks, hospitals and inner city areas all around the country—totally unsuitable arrangements. That is why this bill is important. It is why a centralised facility in a suitable location is important to all Australians. We do have to handle the waste that is generated by nuclear activity, and it is something that Labor has opposed.
I want to endorse the remarks of the member for Groom. I think he has a great understanding, as a former Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, of what this issue represents. In listening to what the member for Lyons had to say, it is interesting to note that, yes, we are a signatory to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, and we do have obligations in this country. Yet it seems to me that the Labor Party and the Greens, in particular, are always talking about meeting our international obligations in relation to so many things. We have international obligations for the safe handling of nuclear waste and yet that has not figured in their policies nor in their campaigning for so long. That is why this parliament has to override by necessity—using its powers under section 51—state and territory laws in relation to waste handling. It has to do that. The member for Lyons’s comments, while welcome, are long overdue in this case. The irrationality that has pervaded this debate from members of the Labor Party has been extraordinary.
When you look at the benefits that nuclear technology has brought to us, nuclear medicine today enables doctors to produce quick and accurate diagnoses of a wide range of conditions and diseases in persons of any age. When we look at the provisions of this bill, in Australia we have to recognise that we do not deal with high-level waste. We deal with low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. It makes sense to centralise, in a safe way, the waste and to have a facility for dealing with it. I think it is odd to hear the remarks in this place, especially by the member for Melbourne, about the benefits of nuclear medicine to increase the standard of health care for all of our citizens and about the benefits of nuclear technology in an advanced and modern society.
The position of the member for Melbourne is that the location in the Northern Territory would be the wrong one, but he has no proposal for where to centralise waste management in this country. It is absolutely unsatisfactory to come into this chamber and say, ‘It’s the wrong place,’ and to have no alternative. I think it is absolutely the wrong position to come in here and say, ‘I really want the benefits of nuclear medicine; I want the advances that come from nuclear technology’—we live in a society where people do enjoy the benefits of it—and then say, ‘We don’t like the waste.’ Radioactive waste is a very unfortunate by-product of this technology. It is the level of technology that we have reached at this time in human development. We have to deal with it in the best way we can and in the most advanced way we can. We cannot be half pregnant on this issue. We cannot have nuclear generating facilities like Lucas Heights in Sydney and hospitals that use nuclear technology and not deal with the waste in the most intelligent fashion that we can. We must.
It is vital that this bill is supported as quickly as possible, and that is why the opposition is moving to do so. I think that the Greens have not just missed the practical and common-sense arguments about the importance of this technology to our country’s health and other benefits; they have also missed their own arguments on climate change. It is no accident that countries like France have so many nuclear power plants and have no problems with nuclear power. With the advances in technology, with fourth and fifth generation plants, and the way it is moving and progressing all around the world, we can move down this path in a very safe fashion. It is not an accident that other countries have lowered their emissions. Australia is one of the highest emitters of carbon, per capita, in the entire world and it is primarily because of our power generation. Everything this government has attempted to do around the edges that has not dealt with power generation is a waste of our time. We have wasted so much time. We can tackle carbon emissions through the use of nuclear power, and we can do so intelligently, in a forward-thinking fashion that provides energy generation for Australians for a long time to come.
It would not be a surprise to those opposite that I am a supporter of nuclear power plants. It would not surprise the member for Werriwa—who may or may not have been the architect of the scare campaign all around Australia about nuclear power plants—that I was not a supporter of the one that was reported on the front page of my newspapers in Mitchell. Mitchell is an unsuitable site for a nuclear power plant, just by virtue of it being in a metropolitan area, and it was wrong of the Labor Party to try to scare my constituents into thinking that there was ever a plan to put a nuclear power plant in Mitchell. It was wrong of them to scare communities across this country that they may have had a nuclear plant coming towards them. That was a wrong thing to do. But I am a supporter of nuclear power. I think there are appropriate sites in a country so large and a population so small.
I think that many of the provisions of this bill are improvements. While it does call for the repeal of the coalition’s previous act, I do think that there have been some improvements made in this bill. However, I also note that much of the original legislation is replicated in the bill before us today. They have not reinvented the wheel. They have fulfilled their promise of repealing the previous act and they have used large sections of the act and added new provisions. So it is a little bit cute of the Labor Party to come in here today and say that the coalition did nothing for 11½ years when, at every turn, the coalition proposed to deal with radioactive waste in the very manner prescribed in this bill. The reason it never came to fruition is that Labor at federal level and state levels across this country opposed it, at every step of the way, for pure political interest. That is why we are here as an opposition behaving differently. We support this bill because it is the right thing to do. We support this bill because we do need a centralised waste management facility in this country to ensure the safety and security of Australians in our metropolitan areas and to ensure that waste is properly handled, sensitively handled, in the right way and the best way that we know how. That is why I support this bill.