Hansard debates

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (15:47:23) — We have a chance to turn adversity into opportunity, to develop industries for the future, to create jobs for the next generation, to address housing affordability and to replace anxiety and fear with hope. This is the offer I made almost three years ago to confront critical issues challenging our country — globalisation, the demise of local manufacturing, population growth, multiculturalism and a fair go. The Premier answered the call for a collaboration between governments, businesses and civil society that I later published in the strategy Creating Opportunity: Postcodes of Hope, but wanton disregard remains the response from the Australian government and the Victorian coalition. It defines why our political system is broken and must be fixed.

The Turnbull government cannot maintain the wilful blindness that marked the Abbott government's response to place-based inequality. Endless gaming of the system for perceived partisan advantage above the national interest and community interest must change. Risks are perilous. My plea to the Australian government is for the politics of responsibility, not simply ultimate ends. It is made beyond partisanship, the news and the political cycle. So my question to the Prime Minister and his cabinet is: what is the Australian government's forthcoming budget investment to deliver the promised jobs and growth, strengthen national security and address the causes of crime where they are needed most?

So what are the options that we have and what are the answers? One of the best anti-radicalisation strategies is a job that helps connect the disconnected. The best form of welfare is gainful employment. One of the most informed national security responses is community engagement. So we know what needs to be done. The Andrews Labor government is leading the way on such critical matters, and I just want to remind the Turnbull government that the Abbott regime remained a bystander where these concerns matter most. Despite Joe Hockey's first budget hitting vulnerable families in Broadmeadows hardest, the Treasurer rejected the chance to move beyond his lifters and leaners rhetoric and meet the heavy lifters who have underwritten prosperity for generations with their muscle, sweat and manufacturing nous. So I invited not just the former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, not just the Treasurer at the time, Joe Hockey, but the entire cabinet and all of their parliamentary secretaries to come. Do you know how many turned up? Have a guess.

Ms Halfpenny — Zero.

Mr McGUIRE — None. Why is that? Because this is a safe Labor area, and rather than governing in the national interest, rather than seeing that this is an area of need going through this dynamic change and deindustrialisation — these are the families that have underwritten prosperity for generations — we should actually have a look and see how we can partner up, rather than just being bystanders, rather than just endlessly gaming the system for perceived advantage at that level. It goes even further, because unfairness was at the heart of Prime Minister Abbott's political demise. After the request from Victoria's poorest community for him to participate in the blueprint for the future, it was answered with silence.

Australians are crying out for leadership on such critical issues. Postcodes of disadvantage are increasingly complex. Globalisation offers opportunities for some but upheaval and fewer jobs for many, particularly in blue-collar communities. Celebrating 25 years of uninterrupted economic growth, an Australian newspaper editorial highlighted, as they put it, 'The thought-provoking segue concerning intergenerational joblessness in Broadmeadows'. I quote from that editorial, which said:

It speaks of the risks and opportunities facing the country — and the stern challenge that confronts the Turnbull government.

So it is not just me saying it as someone who grew up in Broadmeadows and is the first person from that community to represent it in the state Parliament. You can put any personal view I may have to one side and say, here is the editorial out of the Australian newspaper making exactly the same case that I have been mounting for nearly eight years in this Parliament.

A critical reason for these issues is that coalition governments have relegated Melbourne's north to the status of managed decline. Such a fate proved disastrous for England's north under the Thatcher government. Unemployment in Broadmeadows rose to 26.4 per cent, higher than Spain and equal to Greece, countries suffering the worst jobless rates among developed nations in 2014, during the convergence of state and federal coalition governments.

I uncovered an unspent $1.324 billion in the Australian government's automotive transformation scheme and asked the Turnbull government how much it would invest in its election promise to deliver jobs and growth. Guess how much they have reinvested. This is out of an unspent $1.324 billion. Not one dollar. Such neglect must be fixed in the Australian government's forthcoming budget, and it is easy to do. I do not want to hear any little arguments at the margin on the mechanisms. The money is there. The investment is obvious. The need is urgent.

Contrast the Australian government's failure to partner the Andrews government's investments in Melbourne's north with the $70 billion investment that the Australian government is promising Adelaide, to help a city with marginal seats respond to the closure of Australia's once proud automotive manufacturing industry. The Australian government's token gesture for Broadmeadows was a jobs fair. Do you know how many ex-auto workers from that contribution got full-time jobs? Five. Count them on one hand. So where is the contribution? This is in the communities hardest hit by the end of Ford's manufacturing.

The Australian Financial Review summed up the threat to national security with the headline, and I quote, 'Malcolm Turnbull's terror response needs less Thucydides and more Broadmeadows'. That is probably the most unlikely headline to ever appear in the Australian Financial Review. This was in 2015. Political editor Laura Tingle highlighted the gap in Australia's anti-terrorism response:

Disadvantage as a cause of alienation …

And I quote:

In the wake of the Paris attacks, a very poor area of Brussels — Molenbeek — became the focus of considerable counter-terrorism operations. Its unemployment rate is around 30 per cent.

What I am drawing together here are these themes about why the political system must change to address these social issues and the opportunities that Broadmeadows and Melbourne's north provide. This is the way we need to actually stop the gaming of the system and actually act in the best national interest and community interest.

Even in business, if you look at what happened there, disturbingly, CSL, one of our absolute leaders, one of the best in medical research and pharmaceutical development, making life-saving blood products and exporting them globally, with a share price that is about $160 a share these days — a great success story that has been built from Australia getting its act together to make sure that an island continent did not get wiped out by Spanish flu, which killed more people than the First World War — built a $500 million plant not in Broadmeadows but in Switzerland for three
new products. It warned the Senate inquiry in 2014, and I quote:

Australia is a relatively unattractive location … to commercialise locally developed intellectual property into global markets.

I have called for this. Rewards from Australia's ideas mining boom should be manufactured in Broadmeadows, not abroad. Such a result is a folly. The Victorian government, the Andrews Labor government, has set up the science, medical research and technology panel to try to address these sorts of issues. How do we bring capital to ideas? How do we get discoveries off benchtops into businesses? How do we create more CSLs? But we need the Australian government to actually be partners in putting these sorts of deals together.

The Premier has responded to calls for new deals for postcodes of disadvantage. Look what he has done. He has established a new portfolio for suburban development under the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change. I was grateful to be appointed as chair of the Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board to help coordinate the three tiers of government, business and civil society to try and establish what the new industries are, how we get more investment and how we create more jobs where they are needed most.

A city deal is one of the other mechanisms that I have called for. Really what I am asking there is that Melbourne's north must have a city deal to match Sydney's west. Again, look what happened. Sydney's west has marginal seats, and it got the deal. I am happy for them to get a deal, but all I am asking for is a fair go for these communities as well, because the issues now are really obvious. The gaming of the system just for marginal seats is to the detriment of the community, particularly in areas that are vulnerable. But the opportunities are also significant.

If you just look at Melbourne's north, the opportunity for economic development is one of the best in Australia. The gross regional product of Melbourne's north is $37 billion. It boasts Australia's largest concentration of advanced manufacturing. It also features the highest proportion of undeveloped industrial land in the world's most livable city, about 60 per cent. That defines it as the most sustainable and affordable region to cope with population growth.

Here are the key assets that I think we should be leveraging and that we need the Australian government to partner with us. It is the proximity to the heart of the city, affordable land, blue-chip infrastructure and population growth. These are the opportunities that capital craves to help create a 21st-century vision. The need is vital and urgent. One in 20 Australians is predicted to live in Melbourne's north within two decades, so we are going to be the size of Adelaide within that time. Melbourne's north is already four times the population size of Victoria's second-largest city, Geelong.

Then let us have a look at the assets. Strategic infrastructure includes the jewel in Victoria's crown, the international curfew-free Melbourne Airport. Again, I compare and contrast. We have the Australian government saying that they will invest $5 billion to build an airport in Sydney and a promised rail link, and the airport is not even there. Melbourne Airport is looking to build another runway. It is looking to expand. This is one of our most vital pieces of infrastructure. If you think about it, cities in the past developed around ports, but in the 21st century they are expanding around airports. This is why this is a critical hub for economic growth, and harnessing its potential is vital for economic development.

If you look at the other propositions that we have, we actually have to look at the politics that happen in Victoria. The Victorian coalition adopted a reverse Robin Hood strategy for Melbourne's north, particularly for Broadmeadows, redistributing funds of about $80 million from shovel-ready infrastructure projects in Broadmeadows to sandbag marginal seats. It was the now Liberal opposition leader, then Minister for Planning, who made the decision. Now remember, he was claiming to represent the families of Broadmeadows as a member of Victoria's upper house.

The former Victorian coalition government also cut $25 million from Kangan Institute at the worst possible time, given the need to retrain workers losing manufacturing jobs, then merged its Broadmeadows campus with Bendigo TAFE, a pork-barrelling exercise for another marginal seat.

Craving the new seat of Sunbury at the 2014 state election, the Victorian coalition government committed to subsidising a breakaway council by redistributing $25 million from the City of Hume, further punishing families in Broadmeadows in another triumph of politics over rational decision-making. The opposition leader is in the local newspapers out there, spruiking the same proposition, another 'Sunbury out of Hume' proposition. This was a gobsmacking example of abuse of executive power and was one of the last acts of the one-term coalition regime, a ploy that was unprecedented, unfair and unsustainable, that a former Supreme Court judge said was probably unlawful.

We cannot have this back. We cannot have this continuing approach from coalition governments. They need to actually act in the national interest, to act in the community interest and to see what they can really deliver. We cannot have this bias against Victoria on infrastructure, where we only get less than 10 per cent; on health; on education and on major projects, including recently the Land 400 deal. This was a $5 billion deal that would have provided more than 2000 jobs in Victoria and helped Australia's smartest defence and engineering precinct be built right here at Fishermans Bend, which would have been an outstanding legacy for this state, delivered on jobs to build the future. They dudded us one more time. It is not just one time, it is almost every time. That is the disgrace of what is going on in the political system in Australia, and it must be fixed.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Richardson) — The member's time has expired.

Question agreed to.