House of Representatives
24 August 1971

27th Parliament · 2nd Session

  1. House of Representatives
  2. 27th Parliament
  3. 1971

Mr SPEAKER (Hon. Sir William Aston) took the chair at 2.30 p.m., and read prayers.

page 573

PETITIONS

Contraceptives

Mr WENTWORTH:
Minister for Social Services · MACKELLAR, NEW SOUTH WALES · LP

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia respectfully showeth:

That the sales tax on all forms of contraceptive devices is 27 per cent. (Sales Tax Exemptions and Classifications Act 1935-1967). Also that there is a customs duty of up to 47i per cent on some contraceptive devices.

And that this is an unfair imposition on the human rights of all people who wish to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And furthermore that this imposition discriminates particularly against people on low incomes.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the sales tax on all forms of contraceptive devices be removed, so as to bring these items into line with other necessities such as food, upon which there is no sales tax. Also that customs duties be removed, and that all contraceptive devices be placed on the national health scheme pharmaceutical benefits list.

And your petitioners will ever pray.

Petition received.

Contraceptives

Mr HURFORD:
ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia respectfully showeth:

That the sales tax on all forms of contraceptive devices is 27) per cent. (Sales Tax Exemptions and Classifications Act 1935-1967). Also that there is customs duty of up to 471 per cent on some contraceptive devices.

And that this is an unfair imposition on the human rights of all people who wish to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And furthermore that this imposition discriminates particularly against people on low incomes.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the sales tax on all forms of contraceptive devices be removed, so as to bring these items into line with other necessities such as food, upon which there is no sales lax. Also that customs duties be removed, and that all contraceptive devices be placed on the national health scheme pharmaceutical benefits list.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received and read.

Contraceptives

Mr DRURY:
RYAN, QUEENSLAND

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia respectfully showeth:

That the sales tax on all forms of contraceptive devices is *21 * per cent. (Sales Tax Exemptions and Classifications Act 1935-1967). Also that there is customs duty of up to 471 per cent on some contraceptive devices.

And that this is an unfair imposition on the human rights of all people who wish to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And furthermore that this imposition discriminates particularly against people on low incomes.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the sales tax on all forms of contraceptive devices be removed, so as to bring these items into line with other necessities such as food, upon which there is no sales tax. Also that customs duties be removed, and that all contraceptive devices be placed on the national health scheme pharmaceutical benefits list.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

National Service

Mr HURFORD:

– I present the following petition:

Te the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned electors of the State of South Australia respectfully sheweth:

That Charles Martin, a 24-year-old graduate in building technology is in Cadell Prison, in South Australia for failure to comply with the National Service Act, an Act which offends the conscience of many electors who are not directly touched by its provisions.

That his failure to comply with the Act was done as a matter of conscience, and that his imprisonment must therefore cause concern to all electors who oppose the National Service Act, and the decision to send conscripted troops to Vietnam.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled will repeal the National Service Act, and cause Charles Martin, and all others imprisoned under it, to be released.

And our petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received and read.

National Service

Mr FOSTER:
STURT, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned electors of the State of South Australia respectfully sheweth:

That Charles Martin, a 24-year-old graduate in building technology is in Cadell Prison, in South

Australia for failure to comply with the National Service Act, an Act which offends the conscience of many electors who are not directly touched by its provisions.

That his failure to comply with the Act was done as a matter of conscience, and that his imprisonment must therefore cause concern to all electors who oppose the National Service Act, and the decision to send conscripted troops to Vietnam.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled will repeal the National Service Act, and cause Charles Martin, and all others imprisoned under it, to be released.

And our petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Education

Dr KLUGMAN:
PROSPECT, NEW SOUTH WALES

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble Petition of residents of the Division of the Australian Capital Territory respectfully showeth -

That there is a likelihood that education in the Australian Capital Territory will in the foreseeable future be made independent of the New South Wales education system:

That the decentralisation of education systems throughout Australia is educationally and administratively desirable, and is now being studied by several State Government Departments:

That the Australian Capital Territory is a homogeneous and coherent unit especially favourable for such studies.

Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray that a Committee of Inquiry, on which are represented the Department of Education and Science, institutions of tertiary education, practising educators, and the Canberra community, be instituted to inquire into the form that an Australian Capital Territory Education Authority should take, the educational principles and philosophy that should underlie it, and its mode of operation and administration.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Education

Mr REYNOLDS:
BARTON, NEW SOUTH WALES

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble Petition of residents of the Division of the Australian Capital Territory respectfully showeth -

That there is a likelihood that education in the Australian Capital Territory will in the foreseeable future be made independent of the New South Wales education system:

That the decentralisation of education systems throughout Australia is educationally and administratively desirable, and is now being studied by several State Government Departments:

That the Australian Capital Territory Is a homogeneous and coherent unit especially favourable for such studies.

Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray that a Committee of Inquiry, on which are represented the Department of Education and Science, institutions of tertiary education, practising educators, and the Canberra community, be instituted to inquire into the form that an Australian Capital Territory Education Authority should take, the educational principles and philosophy that should underlie it, and its mode of operation and administration.

And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Education

Mr ENDERBY:

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The Humble Petition of citizens of the Commonwealth respectfully sheweth -

Whereas -

  1. the Commonwealth Parliament has acted to remove some inadequacies in the Australian Education system.
  2. a major inadequacy at present in Australian education is the lack of equal education opportunity for all.
  3. 200,000 students from Universities, Colleges of Advanced Education and other Tertiary Institutions, and their parents suffer severe penalty, from inadequacies in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936-1968.
  4. Australia cannot afford to hinder the education of these 200,000 Australians.

Your petitioners request that your honourable House make legal provision for -

  1. The allowance of personal education expenses as a deduction from income for tax purposes.
  2. Removal of the present age limit in respect of the deduction for education expenses and the maintenance allowance for students.

  3. Increase in the amount of deduction allowable for tertiary education expenses.

    1. Exemption of nonbonded scholarships for part-time students from income tax.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received and read.

Education

Mr MORRISON:
ST GEORGE, NEW SOUTH WALES

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The Humble Petition of citizens of the Commonwealth respectfully sheweth -

Whereas -

  1. the Commonwealth Parliament has acted to remove some inadequacies in the Australian Education system.
  2. a major inadequacy at present in Australian education is the lack of equal education opportunity for all.
  3. 200,000 students from Universities, Colleges of Advanced Education and other Tertiary Institutions, and their parents suffer severe penalty, from inadequacies in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936-1968.
  4. Australia cannot afford to hinder the education of these 200,000 Australians.

Your petitioners request that your honourable House make legal provision for -

  1. The allowance of personal education expenses as a deduction from income for tax purposes.
  2. Removal of the present age limit in respect of the deduction for education expenses and the maintenance allowance for students.
  3. Increase in the amount of deduction allowable for tertiary education expenses.
  4. Increase in the maintenance allowance for students.
  5. Exemption of nonbonded scholarships, for part-time students from income tax.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Education

Mr GARRICK:
BATMAN, VICTORIA

-I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of citizens of the Commonwealth respectfully sheweth -

Whereas -

  1. the Commonwealth Parliament has acted to remove some inadequacies in the Australian Education system.
  2. a major inadequacy at present in Australian education is the lack of equal education opportunity for all.
  3. 200,000 students from Universities, Colleges of Advanced Education and other Tertiary Institutions, and their parents suffer severe penalty from inadequacies in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936-1968.
  4. Australia cannot afford to hinder the education of these 200,000 Australians.

Your petitioners request that your honourable House make legal provision for -

  1. The allowance of personal education expenses as a deduction from income for tax purposes.
  2. Removal ofthe present age limit in respect of the deduction for education expenses and the maintenance allowance for students.
  3. Increase in the amount of deduction allowable for tertiary education expenses.
  4. Increase in the maintenance allowance for students.
  5. Exemption of nonbonded scholarships, for part-time students from income tax.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Education

Mr JACOBI:
HAWKER, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of citizens of the Commonwealth respectfully sheweth -

Whereas -

  1. the Commonwealth Parliament has acted to remove some inadequacies in the Australian Education system.
  2. a major inadequacy at present in Australian education is the lack of equal education opportunity for all.
  3. 200,000 students from Universities, Colleges of Advanced Education and other Tertiary Institutions, and their parents suffer severe penalty from inadequacies in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936-1968.
  4. Australia cannot afford to hinder the education of these 200,000 Australians.

Your petitioners request that your honourable House make legal provision for -

  1. The allowance of personal education expenses as a deduction from income for tax purposes.
  2. Removal of the present age limit in respect of the deduction for education expenses and the maintenance allowance for students.
  3. Increase in the amount of deduction allowable for tertiary education expenses.
  4. Increase in the maintenance allowance for students.
  5. Exemption of nonbonded scholarships, for part-time students from income tax.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Australian Capital Territory

Pharmacy Ordinance

Mr ENDERBY:

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of citizens of the Division of the Australian Capital Territory respectfully showeth

That the Australian Capital Territory Pharmacy Ordinances 1931-1959 Section 46, Sub-section (1) states that ‘A person shall not publish any statement, whether by way of advertisement or otherwise, to promote the sale of any article as a medicine, instrument or appliance for preventing conception’.

And that this infringes upon each individual’s right as a human being to all available information about contraceptive devices in order to help prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the words ‘or for preventing conception’, be deleted from Sub-section (1) of Section 46 of the Australian Capital Territory Pharmacy Ordinances. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received and read.

Broadcasting and Television

Mr HUGHES:
BEROWRA, NEW SOUTH WALES

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned showeth:

That the Australian people both in metropolitan and rural areas should have the best of television programmes available to them and that television as a powerful means of communication should not be in the control of too few hands.

The increased quota for Australian dramatic productions should not be imposed by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board at the expense of Australian professional variety or Australian documentary or educational programmes, but directed more towards cutting down expenditure on the purchase of imported productions, thus effecting a considerable saving in Australia’s overseas balance of payments.

The Australian Parliament has a responsibility to encourage the development of our National identity, character and heritage and the promulgation, for the sake of our children, of an adequate picture of Australia, her standards, morals and way of life, particularly through the media of Radio and Television, which is in the immediate control of the Australian Government.

Until constructive and positive action is taken by the Australian Government to promote Australian culture and protect the employment and professional standards of Australian writers, artists and producers in Australia itself there is little likelihood of stopping the flow of Australian talent from Australia to other countries.

The Australian Broadcasting Control Board must insist that its new quota standards of Australian dramatic content on television are rigidly imposed and enforced on all commercial television stations.

Your petitioners most humbly pray that the House of Representatives, in Parliament assembled, should -

Cause the Australian Government to recognise the right of Australian professional people engaged in the creative and performing arts to further develop their skills and talents in Australia, and to be protected from overseas programmes in a way that will encourage an Australian Television and Radio industry that can reflect and contribute to our identity and growth as a Nation.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Broadcasting and Television

Mr MORRISON:

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned showeth:

That the Australian people both in metropolitan and rural areas should have the best of television programmes available to them and that television as a powerful means of communication should not be in the control of too few hands.

The increased quota for Australian dramatic productions should not be imposed by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board at the expense of Australian professional variety or Australian documentary or educational programmes, but directed more towards cutting down expenditure on the purchase of imported productions, thus effecting a considerable saving in Australia’s overseas balance of payments.

The Australian Parliament has a responsibility to encourage the development of our National identity, character and heritage and the promulgation, for the sake of our children, of an adequate picture of Australia, her standards, morals and way of life, particularly through the media of Radio and Television, which is in the immediate control of the Australian Government.

Until constructive and positive action is taken by the Australian Government to promote Australian culture and protect the employment and professional standards of Australian writers, artists and producers in Australia itself there is little likelihood of stopping the flow of Australian talent from Australia to other countries.

The Australian Broadcasting Control Board must insist that its new quota standards of Australian dramatic content on television are rigidly imposed and enforced on all commercial television stations.

Your petitioners most humbly pray that the House of Representatives, in Parliament assembled, should -

Cause the Australian Government to recognise the right of Australian professional people engaged in the creative and performing arts to further develop their skills and talents in Australia, and to be protected from overseas programmes in a way that will encourage an Australian Television and Radio industry that can reflect and contribute to our identity and growth as a Nation.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received and read.

Broadcasting and Television

Mr IRWIN:
MITCHELL, NEW SOUTH WALES

-I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned showeth:

That the Australian people both in Metropolitan and rural areas should have the best of television programmes available to them and that television as a powerful means of communication should not be in the control of too few hands.

The increased quota for Australian dramatic productions should not be imposed by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board at the expense of Australian professional variety or Australian documentary or educational programmes, but directed more towards cutting down expenditure on the purchase of imported productions, thus effecting a considerable saving in Australia’s overseas balance of payments.

The Australian Parliament has a responsibility to encourage the development of our National identity, character and heritage and the promulgation, for the sake of our children, of an adequate picture of Australia, her standards, mores and way of life, particularly through the media of Radio and Television, which is in the immediate control of the Australian Government.

Until constructive and positive action is taken by the Australian Government to promote Australian culture and protect the employment and professional standards of Australian writers, artists and producers in Australia itself there is little likelihood of stopping the flow of Australian talent from Australia to other countries.

The Australian Broadcasting Control Board must insist that its new quota standards of Australian dramatic content on television are rigidly imposed and enforced on all commercial television stations.

Your petitioners most humbly pray that the House of Representatives, in Parliament assembled, should -

Cause the Australian Governmentto recognise the right of Australian professional people engaged in the creative and performing arts to further develop their skills and talents in Australia, and to be protected from overseas programmes in a way that will encourage an Australian Television and Radio industry that can reflect and contribute to our identity and growth as a Nation.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

Petition received.

Chemical Agents of Warfare

Mr O’KEEFE:
PATERSON, NEW SOUTH WALES

– I present the following petition:

To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of 17 electors of the Commonwealth of Australia respectfully showeth -

that the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2603 XXIV A (December 1969) declares that the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which Australia has ratified, prohibits the use in international armed conflict of any chemical agents of warfare chemical substances whether gaseous, liquid or solid - employed for their direct toxic effects on man, animals or plants;

that the World Health Organisation Report (January 1970) confirms the above definition of chemical agents of warfare;

that the Australian Government does not accept this definition, but holds that the Geneva Protocol does not prevent the use in war of certain toxic chemical substances in the form of herbicides, defoliants and ‘riot control’ agents.

Your petitioners therefore humbly pray -

that the Parliament lake note of the consensus of international political, scientific and humanitarian opinion; and

that honourable members urge upon the Government the desirability of revising its interpretation of the Geneva Protocol, and declaring that it regards all chemical substances employed for their toxic effects on man, animals or plants as being included in the prohibitions laid down by that Protocol.

And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray.

Petition received.

page 577

QUESTION

SYDNEY: SECOND AIRPORT

Mr REYNOLDS:

– I ask a question of the Prime Minister in his capacity both as Prime Minister and as a fellow resident of Australia’s largest and most beautiful city. When will the Government relieve the anxiety of New South Wales State Ministers, planning authorities, local government bodies and the community generally by announcing the site for a second major airport to serve Sydney? How is it that after having had the interdepartmental inquiry report for nearly 12 months the Government can make only vague indications of an impending statement not necessarily involving a choice of site? Finally, does this delayed decision mean that it will be about the mid-1980s before Sydney will have an airport that can be used 24 hours a day?

Mr McMAHON:
Prime Minister · LOWE, NEW SOUTH WALES · LP

-I discussed this problem last Thursday with my colleague, the Minister for Civil Aviation. He has submitted certain proposals to me. Those proposals will be submitted to Cabinet, and shortly afterwards the Minister for Civil Aviation will make an announcement in the Senate.

page 577

QUESTION

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION

Mr ERWIN:
BALLAARAT, VICTORIA

– What information has the PostmasterGeneral to give to the House concerning an officer of the Australian Broadcasting Commission who, in the course of carving out his duties, is organising student unrest of a violent nature in many parts of Australia?

Sir ALAN HULME:
Postmaster-General · PETRIE, QUEENSLAND · LP

– Recently 1 have seen 2 articles concerning a person named Cassidy but different first names were used. However, I think the articles referred to one and the same person. In the first article the name was Jon Cassidy and in the second article it was Darce Cassidy. This gentleman has been employed as a permanent officer of the Australian Broadcasting Commision in Melbourne since 1964. He is currently employed in the capacity of making book reviews on radio and, in relation to television, has some part from time to time in a Melbourne programe called Nightcap’. The Australian Broadcasting Commission is making investigations concerning the articles, and what was said about Mr Cassidy. He also, I understand, is ascertaining what redress he has legally in relation to the articles and against the publishers of the articles. I cannot give any more information than that to the honourable member.

page 578

QUESTION

OVERSEAS INVESTMENT IN AUSTRALIA

Mr KENNEDY:
BENDIGO, VICTORIA

– Is the Prime Minister concerned by the rapid acceleration in the foreign takeover of Australian assets during recent weeks, in particular, 2 major Australian tin mining companies and 2 beach sand mining companies which have fallen into foreign ownership? Is the Prime Minister concerned at the prospect of the Robe River company falling into foreign hands? Will he take action to ensure that such companies remain under Australian control?

Mr McMAHON:
LP

– Naturally we are all concerned with the prospects of takeovers of Australian companies by overseas sources. We have now adopted guidelines for the introduction of foreign capital into Australia, and we have expressed our views as to the borrowing powers of international corporations in Australia. Those guidelines are rigidly observed and they impose restrictions on the capacity to borrow in Australia for the purpose mentioned by the honourable member. I cannot refer to other than 3 different corporations which were or are in the hands of an official liquidator, Mr Jamieson. He is an officer of the court and is not under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth Government. He submitted these corporations to tender and tenders were made, in some cases by Australian corporations, but they were always substantially less than the amounts that overseas interests were prepared to pay. Under these circumstances we had no right to interfere whatsoever. As I said, Mr Jamieson was an official of the Court. We could not deprive the shareholders of their right to receive a fair return on their money. The case of the Robe River company is an entirely different proposition, and one about which I would not be prepared to express an opinion. Suffice to say that it is a matter for the liquidator, Mr Jamieson, to decide what should be done if Australian interests feel that it is a worthwhile proposition to bid and one that will give some kind of adequate return to the present shareholders.

page 578

QUESTION

IMPORTED MAN-MADE FIBRES

Mr GILES:
ANGAS, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

– Is the Minister for Trade and Industry aware that imported goods manufactured from man-made fibres, frequently in low wage nations, are seriously affecting the competitive position of Australian firms using natural fibres such as wool? Does the Minister see a paradox between Government subventions to wool growers on the one hand, and lowered capacity to manufacture in Australia on the other?

Mr ANTHONY:
Deputy Prime Minister · RICHMOND, NEW SOUTH WALES · CP

– I think there are 2 different issues - the subvention of the wool industry to help maintain the solvency of those in it and any troubles that the Australian woollen textile industry might have as a result of the import of cheap man-made fibres. As the honourable member may be aware, we have referred the matter of imported man-made fabrics to the Special Advisory Authority for consideration. If protection is given here it could have some slight beneficial effect on the Australian wool industry but I think it would be small. This reference to the Special Advisory Authority arose from the fact that the Australian textile industry has for some time been endeavouring to negotiate a voluntary arrangement with the Japanese textile industry. However, because of the general international turmoil that prevails with textiles the Japanese were unwilling to come to any agreement with the Australian industry to impose voluntary restraint upon themselves. As the industry was able to put up a bona fide case that threats were being made and damage was being caused to the Australian industry I referred the matter to the Special Advisory Authority. But I do not think this would help the wool industry. I am well conscious of the very serious troubles it is in. Giving added protection to the manmade fibres being imported would not necessarily help the wool industry because there is a man-made fibre industry in Australia and by giving protection we would assist the Australian man-made fibres industry, so the competition would still remain. We did look very closely into ways and means of helping the wool industry earlier this year, but my Department came to the conclusion that this was not the right solution to its problems.

page 579

QUESTION

EMPLOYMENT OF MARRIED WOMEN

Mr HANSEN:
WIDE BAY, QUEENSLAND

– My question is directed to the Minister for Labour and National Service. I refer the Minister to the questions asked of him this week and last by the honourable member for Wentworth regarding the employment of married women. Do the former Minister for Labour and National Service and the former Treasurer reflect the attitudes of the Liberal and Country Parties of acceptance and encouragement of a 2-wage economy where both husband and wife must have separate incomes to survive the difficulties caused by rising living costs? Does his Government consider that the minimum wage is sufficient to maintain a man, his wife and 2 children?

Mr LYNCH:
Minister for Labour and National Service · FLINDERS, VICTORIA · LP

– In reply to the honourable gentleman I will simply say 2 things. In the first place, the concept of the duality of wages raised by the honourable gentleman is answered by saying that we as a Government believe that every person in this country who seeks the opportunity to work should in fact have that opportunity provided. The honourable gentleman would be very well aware of the employment levels so consistently maintained by this Government as far back as the end of 1949. Secondly, the national wage is determined by the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. This Government has consistently made its submissions to that Commission which, of course, is the forum in which judgment must be provided.

page 579

QUESTION

RURAL RECONSTRUCTION

Mr TURNBULL:
MALLEE, VICTORIA · CP

– I address my question to the Minister for Primary Industry. Does the States Grants (Reconstruction) Act encompass the Australian dried vine fruits industry? I ask this question having been informed that a Victorian grower of dried vine fruit who applied for assistance to the appropriate State Minister was refused, the reason given being that the Act was based on problems within the sheep and wheat industries.

Mr SINCLAIR:
Minister for Primary Industry · NEW ENGLAND, NEW SOUTH WALES · CP

– It is true that the rural reconstruction scheme was essentially framed around the problems of the sheep and sheepwheat industries, but it is also true that it is intended to embrace problems peculiar to all rural industries. There is no exclusion other than the dairy farm amalgamation scheme which, of course, specifically covers the building up of dairy farms. There is also an indication that there may be some particular problems in the horticultural industries, which may well include the dried vine fruits industry, and to which in the field of farm build up perhaps the rural reconstruction scheme may not be particularly applicable. But now that the States, as a result of the Budget brought down by my colleague the Treasurer last Tuesday night, have received a very substantial subvention of funds for the purposes of the operation of this Act, I believe that rural reconstruction will be available across the whole field of primary industry and that it will make a very notable contribution towards assisting to overcome the difficulties which many primary producers in all sectors of rural industry now face.

page 579

QUESTION

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Mr Lionel Bowen:
KINGSFORD-SMITH, NEW SOUTH WALES · ALP

– In the absence of the Minister for External Territories, I direct my question to the Prime Minister. I refer the right honourable gentleman to the report of the select committee of the Papua New Guinea House of Assembly in which it is indicated that there are strong pressures for selfgovernment in the areas of Bougainville and East New Britain. Is it a fact that the people in these areas seek autonomy under indigenous leadership with delegated powers from the House of Assembly? Is it further suggested that the respective elected members of the House of Assembly be the leaders of the self-governing areas? Has this matter been discussed by Cabinet? Has the Government any objection to elections being held, whereby the self-governing areas could have elected representatives, at the same time as the next election for the House of Assembly in February?

Mr McMAHON:
LP

– As a major question of policy is involved here, I will refer it to the Department, and if I can let the honourable gentleman have an answer to the question I will do so tomorrow.

page 580

QUESTION

GOLD SUBSIDY

Mr COLLARD:
KALGOORLIE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

– My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Does the Government support the views expressed last Thursday by the Deputy Prime Minister that further employment opportunities must be made available in country areas to stop the drift to the city? If so, is the Prime Minister aware that an increase of a mere $3. 5m in the gold subsidy would halt the present drift of gold fields residents to the city and would also, which is surely very important, provide employment opportunities for displaced farmers, farm workers and others in Western Australia who otherwise would have no alternative but to move to the metropolitan area? Did Cabinet consider that aspect when it rejected the application for an increase in the gold subsidy? If so, how does the Prime Minister justify that rejection, if his Government genuinely supports decentralisation?

Mr McMAHON:
LP

– 1 strongly support the view stated by my colleague the Deputy Prime Minister that wherever there is a prospect of efficient and effective decentralisation we should take action to try to assist decentralisation. So far the second part of the honourable gentleman’s question is concerned, it previously has been our view that there were growing opportunities for the employment of people displaced from the gold mining industry, and there was also a feeling that because of the rise in the price of gold additional opportunities may be provided in this industry. I was pleased to see the increase in the price of gold on the free market which has occurred in recent months. Nonetheless, this is not a matter that has previously been dealt with in detail by me, so I will discuss it with my colleagues and see what conclusion we can reach.

page 580

QUESTION

TELEVISION AND RADIO PROGRAMMES

Mr IRWIN:

– Is the Postmaster-General aware of the fear and apprehension of actors and producers that the increased

Australian content of television and radio programmes, which was promised to take place on 21st September 1971, is not likely to eventuate? Can the Minister give any assurance on this matter?

Sir ALAN HULME:
LP

– From time to time the Australian Broadcasting Control Board, which has statutory responsibility in this area, reviews the standards required for both broadcasting and television, particularly having regard to the Australian content of television programmes. The new requirement in relation to Australian content was announced in November last year with particular regard to drama, children’s programmes and the total number of hours which were to be used in the evenings for television purposes. The Australian Broadcasting Control Board consulted many sections of the industry, including the stations and other people associated with it, md reached a judgment which it believed to be reasonable. The Board gave some 10 or 1 1 months notice in regard to its decision. The new proposal shall, therefore, apply from 21st September 1971. The Board has no reason to believe that the new requirements will not be met. Indeed, the annual report of the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations last year indicated that the Association saw no reason to believe that all stations would not be able to meet the new requirements. I am assured by the Board that it will do everything in its power to ensure that the new requirements will be carried out. In view of the present provisions I feel that the actors and the producers referred to by the honourable member need have no concern about this matter.

page 580

QUESTION

POLICE: TAPING OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS

Mr Donald Cameron:
GRIFFITH, QUEENSLAND · LP

– I direct my question to the Minister representing the Attorney-General. Does the Minister recall the replies he gave to the Leader of the Opposition last Friday in answer to a question on notice by that honourable gentleman concerning members of the New South Wales police force illegally taping telephone conversations of a defendant who was before the court on 16tb March 1971? Was the Minister’s attention drawn to allegations by the New South Wales division of the Australian Medical Association that police were raiding surgeries and seeking access to patients’ files which were once considered to be confidential? Will the Minister request the AttorneyGeneral to initiate proceedings against New South Wales police for breaching the Commonwealth Telephonic Communications (Interception) Act 1960 and show by example that we are not prepared to sit by idly while the rights of individuals are trampled upon? Finally, is the Minister as tired of hearing my questions on this subject as I am of the need to ask them?

Mr N H Bowen:
PARRAMATTA, NEW SOUTH WALES · LP

– I will refer the honourable member’s question to the Attorney-General in another place.

page 581

QUESTION

SOCIAL SERVICES

Mr BERINSON:
PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

– I ask a question of the Minister for Social Services. Can the Minister confirm Press reports quoting him as indicating that a national superannuation Bill has already been drafted although not yet accepted by the Government for implementation? If such a draft does exist will the Minister, in recognition of the special complexity of this matter, agree to make it available for public consideration and comment?

Mr WENTWORTH:
LP

– I have at no time indicated that such a draft does exist but I have indicated that my Department and I have given consideration to this. The matter has not been accepted by the Government. I am indebted to the honourable member for his suggestion that perhaps a complicated matter such as this might be the subject of a paper to be presented to this House, not in terms of a decision but as a paper setting out the pros and cons of the matter as is sometimes done, as I understand it, in the House of Commons. I believe there it goes under the name of a green paper.

page 581

QUESTION

RURAL RECONSTRUCTION

Mr HALLETT:
CANNING, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

– I preface my question which is directed to the Minister for Primary Industry by referring to the $100m assistance to be made available for rural reconstruction. Is it a fact that $40m is to be made available in this current financial year? If so, how will this money be allocated between the States? What will be the position in the next 3 years in relation to the remainder of the Si 00m which it is intended to make available?

Mr SINCLAIR:
CP

– The various States have only now constituted administering authorities for the purpose of rural reconstruction. In only New South Wales did there exist a body which was capable of immediately distributing the funds to be made available by the Commonwealth. Each of the States has now made an approach to the Commonwealth for an allocation of money within the rural reconstruction scheme. In consultation between the Government and the States it was determined that the allocation for this financial year should amount to $40m. The break-up between the States is on a basts that is to be determined by consultation between my colleague the Treasurer, myself and the respective State administering authorities.

As to the extent to which the $100m will thereafter be payable, this will be a matter for decision by the Government according to the needs as they appear in each of the successive years. The whole purpose of introducing at this stage so large an allocation of money for rural reconstruction is in recognition of the tremendous problems there are in trying to ensure that people in rural areas, many of whom are unable for financial reasons to carry on, should have some opportunity through the agency of the rural reconstruction boards in the several States to get financial assistance. I believe that the allocation of this very considerable portion of the $100m demonstrates the sincerity with which the Commonwealth Government is approaching the whole function of rural reconstruction.

page 581

QUESTION

TOURISM

Mr COHEN:
ROBERTSON, NEW SOUTH WALES

– Was the Minister for Trade and Industry correctly reported as telling the national development conference in Canberra last Friday that the Government did not propose to take action to accelerate the growth of overseas tourism to Australia because there are not enough hotels and motels in city and country areas? Is he aware that tourism is the largest single item in world trade, that last year Australia earned $134m from overseas visitors and that tourist spending by

Australians and overseas visitors in Australia last year amounted to approximately $2,400m, providing jobs for many thousands of Australians? Is the Minister further aware that Australia is one South Pacific country that has consistently failed to provide incentive, as an encouragement to visitors, in the building of needed accommodation in cities and rural areas, and that New Zealand, Fiji, Noumea and Singapore leave Australia behind in the provision of quality accommodation?

Mr SPEAKER:

– Order! The honourable gentleman’s question is far too long and he is giving a great deal of information. I ask the honourable member to complete his question.

Mr COHEN:

– If the Minister is aware of these factors and of the stimulus to runeconomics which overseas visitors can give as they travel more widely in Australia will he prevail on the Government to act at once to provide incentives for tourist development along lines recommended by the industry and the Australian Tourist Commission?

Mr ANTHONY:
CP

– WhatI do remember sayi ng the other day is that the Government takes a great interest in tourist development as a means of earning foreign exchange for this country. But in the course of speaking on this particular aspect 1 said it would be unwise for the Government at this moment to be promoting the building of large hotels when we have an inflationary problem in this country and the demands which are bringing about that inflation seem to be very much in the nonresidential building area as well as in the mining area. If we are going to try to restrain the pressures that exist in the nonresidential area that is, through the building of offices, hotels and other large structures then some effort has to be made to reduce expenditure there. If at this particular moment one were to build large hotels involving the use of many millions of dollars then one would only be aggravating a very serious problem and, I believe, one of the most serious problems facing the. country today.

page 582

QUESTION

EMPLOYMENT IN COUNTRY TOWNS

Mr JESS:
LA TROBE, VICTORIA

– I ask a question of the Minister for Supply consequent on the reply given by the Deputy Prime Minister about employment in small towns. Tenders have just been called for laundry services at the Army School of Health, Healesville, Victoria, for work formerly done by local industry. The contract has now been given to a large chain laundry in the State capita) city. The cost of unemployment benefits to those who are now likely to be unemployed will far exceed the difference in tender prices. Can the Minister assure me that Commonwealth contracts, where held by industry in local towns, will not in future be disturbed without full consideration of relevant factors, including local employment? Will he review the contract?

Mr GARLAND:
Minister for Supply · CURTIN, WESTERN AUSTRALIA · LP

– Over the years the Government has laid down a policy in respect of contracting which rests mainly on the principle that wherever possible a contract should be let by public tender and, in the ordinary course, the lowest tender should be accepted. Were that policy otherwise there would be room for much political interference which, I feel, most honourable members here would regard as undesirable. However, the honourable member has raised other matters which are policy considerations. I shall endeavour to obtain for him a more conclusive reply to them and, if necessary, give a further answer to this question tomorrow.

page 582

QUESTION

TOURISM

Mr WHITLAM:
WERRIWA, NEW SOUTH WALES

– I ask a question of the Minister for the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts and MinisterinCharge of Tourist Activities. Mr Speaker, I have taken the title from the first list of the McMahon Ministry in yesterday’s Hansard. I ask the Minister when he expects to table in the House, and make a statement upon the report on tourism which was published in Queensland a couple of weeks ago, and more particularly when he expects to be able to announce which of the recommendations in the report have been accepted by the Commonwealth.

Mr HOWSON:
Minister for Environment, Aborigines and the Arts · CASEY, VICTORIA · LP

– I understand that the Leader of the Opposition is referring to the report dealing with the Great Barrier Reef?

Mr Whitlam:

– Yes.

Mr HOWSON:

– The object of the report which was prepared by the Australian-

Mr Whitlam:

– It also deals with the accompanying facilities on the mainland.

Mr HOWSON:

– Yes. The object of the report which was prepared at the request of the Australian Tourist Commission was to acquaint all interested bodies, not only the Commonwealth but also private enterprise, with the potential that was available if the reef was developed in an orderly and imaginative manner. The report was to provide room for opportunity for all these bodies to examine the problem, and it was not prepared for governments to act immediately on its recommendations. The purpose now is for all the bodies concerned to examine that report in greater detail. I am hoping that they will do that, as I said in my answers last week to the honourable members for Herbert and Gellibrand.

page 583

QUESTION

POST OFFICE

Mr WHITTORN:
BALACLAVA, VICTORIA

-I address a question to the PostmasterGeneral. Why has the Government increased postal charges to such an extent in recent years? Is this additional revenue used for capital and maintenance works or is it used only to cover additional labour costs?

Sir ALAN HULME:
LP

– The Government has adopted as a principle over many years that the Post Office should make a contribution from its profits and from certain charges such as depreciation towards capital investment which is essential year by year. I think that last year’s capital expenditure of the Post Office exceeded $400m. Charges have been increased from time to time for the dual purpose of making a contribution in the area I have just mentioned and also because of very substantial increases in wages over the years, particularly in the postal services which are very labour intensive. In fact, 70 per cent of our expenditure in the postal services is in relation to wages. For this reason it has been necessary for us to increase charges from time to time.

I believed last year that further increases would be unnecessary for some considerable period; but the awards which were given last year by the arbitration commission and the various tribunals which fixed wages during that year meant a carryover into this year from those awards of an additional $77m. As I mentioned in the House last week, this was some $3 5m to $40m in excess of the average increase over the last 5 years. In my view, the Government could have done nothing but increase charges for the second year in succession. I regret that this was necessary but unfortunately the matter is almost completely out of the hands of the Government insofar as the payment of wages is concerned.

page 583

QUESTION

HOUSING

Mr KEOGH:
BOWMAN, QUEENSLAND

-I ask the Minister tor Housing whether his attention has been directed to a reported statement on Sunday by the Victorian Housing Minister who said:

In April the Commonwealth promised to hold discussions with the States before deciding on any future housing policy. The Budget makes a mockery of that promise. They have announced a new policy before they have even spoken to us.

Bearing in mind the present Prime Minister’s promise at the time that he took over that position in March this year that he would be adopting a new approach to CommonwealthState relations, is the Victorian Minister’s statement correct? Were the State Housing Ministers consultedin regard to this Budget decision? If the State Ministers were not consulted, why has the Government attempted to force this new deceitful housing arrangement on the States without previous consultation and agreement?

Mr Kevin Cairns:
LILLEY, QUEENSLAND · LP

– The general wishes of the State Housing Ministers with respect to their own housing arrangements have been known since the end of last year. Since that time those wishes have been taken into account and were disclosed publicly for the first time in this Budget. But it would be incorrect to presume from this that this is the first occasion on which the nature of these arrangements and in fact 95 per cent of the details announced in the Budget were made known to the States. The details of these arrangements were made known to the State Premiers and to the State Treasurers by the Prime Minister at the Premiers Conference over 2 months ago. On that occasion it was indicated that the Commonwealth’s proposals on housing would be announced in an economic and budgetary context. That has been done, and those arrangements were made known well over 2 months ago.

page 583

QUESTION

TOURISM

Mr O’KEEFE:

– I direct a question to the Minister for the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts who is also MinisterinCharge of Tourist Activities.

Has tourism developed into a major Australian industry? Do the various State governments divide the States into regions which are to be the responsibility of regional tourist associations? Are these regional associations assisted by the States financially, and are they finding it difficult to promote tourist activities? Will the Government consider further assisting the States financially to help these regional associations further develop this fine industry?

Mr HOWSON:
LP

– The main role of the Commonwealth Government in the field of tourist activities is to promote the value of attracting overseas tourists to Australia, and this has been the main task of the Australian Tourist Commission. The task of looking after these tourists when they get to Australia is mainly a matter for State governments. I congratulate the State governments on the work they have done over the last few years and particularly on the work that they have done towards developing this regional approach to the promotion of tourism. I was gratified to see the approach that was being made in the honourable member’s electorate of Paterson when I visited it with him a few weeks ago. To go beyond that and to ask the Commonwealth to enter into a matter that is already being handled so well by the State governments is asking us to do something which at the moment is not our task. I hope that the State governments will continue to do the work that they have been carrying out so well in the past.

page 584

QUESTION

VIETNAM

Dr GUN:
KINGSTON, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

– My question is directed to the Prime Minister. I refer to his statement last Wednesday that the decision to commit Australian forces to the aid of South Vietnam “was made in the national interest’, pursuant to certain obligations. I ask: Is it still the Government’s assessment that a military victory by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong would be contrary to Australia’s national interest? At any time after the Australian troop withdrawal, if it appears that such a military victory is again likely, will Australian troops be sent back?

Mr McMAHON:
LP

– The second part of the honourable gentleman’s question is far too hypothetical to answer at question time or, for that matter, at any time whatsoever. The answer to the first part of the question is that undoubtedly it is in Australia’s interest that the Indo-Chinese peninsula should be free, that each of the 4 countries there should be able to make up its mind as to what kind of government it wants and that the people of those countries also should have the democratic right to determine whom they want as a government in that context. We on this side of the House have always stood for freedom of expression and for the right of individuals to elect the government of their choice. This is one of the reasons why we were there, as well as indirectly assisting the long term Interests of Australian security and the security of the people of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia as well.

page 584

QUESTION

DEFENCE FORCES RETIREMENT BENEFITS FUND

Mr JESS:

– Will the Treasurer advise me whether expenditure in relation to the Defence Forces Retirement Benefits Fund is deducted from the Defence vote? Will he advise me from which appropriation superannuation expenditure is deducted? Is it the appropriation for each department or is it from the appropriation for the Treasury? Why should expenditure for the Defence Forces Retirement Benefits Fund be deducted from the Defence vote?

Mr SNEDDEN:
Treasurer · BRUCE, VICTORIA · LP

– My recollection is that the Defence Forces Retirement Benefits Fund expenditure is included in the totality of the Defence vote. 1 did not appreciate the full import of the honourable gentleman’s question. I will look at the question in detail and make sure that he gets a considered answer.

page 584

QUESTION

HANSARD REPORT

Mr SPEAKER:

– I will have a look at the matter.

Mr McMahon:

– The word ‘ministerial’ was added to the words that I had used. I did say ‘my former colleague’. The word ministerial’ was included in accordance with the normal practice of the Hansard authorities because the alteration was not of substance. It does not introduce any new matter and was purely for the purpose of clarification. Now, Sir, if the honourable gentleman is intent upon nit-picking, I will assure him that I will have the word deleted from Hansard. I do not believe that there will be any necessity whatsoever for you to take any action.

page 585

QUESTION

BARRIER INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL

Mr SPEAKER:

– Is leave granted?

Mr Swartz:

– This matter can be raised on the adjournment tonight.

Mr SPEAKER:

– Leave is not granted.

page 585

SUSPENSION OF STANDING ORDERS

Mr BRYANT:
Wills

– I move:

In speaking to the motion I point out that the honourable member for Darling (Mr FitzPatrick) is the former secretary of the Barrier Industrial Council. He knows more about the situation in Broken Hill than anyone else in this House does. We have heard on successive days in this House attacks upon the trade union movement by honourable members opposite to which there is no public answer. For the Minister for National Development (Mr Swartz) to say that the honourable member for Darling can answer on the adjournment debate is utterly ridiculous. The broadcast of Parliamentary proceedings ceases immediately the motion is put ‘That the House do now adjourn’. Ministers do not remain in the chamber to listen to the adjournment debate, the public will not hear it, the Press will not report it and any attempt to muzzle the honourable member for Darling in this instance is an abdication of our responsibilities to the principle of free speech.

Mr SPEAKER:

– Is the motion seconded?

Mr Cope:

– I second the motion.

Question put:

That the motion (Mr Bryant’s) be agreed to.

The House divided. (Mr Speaker - Hon. Sir William Aston)

AYES: 53

NOES: 60

Majority .. .. 7

AYES

NOES

Question so resolved in the negative.

page 586

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Mr Malcolm Fraser:
WANNON, VICTORIA · LP

– For the information of honourable members, I present a statement of statistics on education in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory as at the beginning of August 1970. I also present for the information of honourable members the report of the Department of Education and Science for the year ended December 1970.

page 586

EXPORT PAYMENTS INSURANCE CORPORATION BILL (No. 2) 1971

Bill presented by Mr Anthony, and read a first time.

Second Reading

Mr ANTHONY:
Minister for Trade and Industry · Richmond · CP

– I move:

That the Bil! be now read a second time.

This Bill proposes amendment of the Export Payments Insurance Corporation Act to give effect to the decision of the Government, announced in the Budget Speech, that a new export financing facility, known as buyers’ credit, would be introduced for the assistance of Australian exports of capital goods. In addition, the Bill proposes to broaden the existing insurance and guarantee provisions of the Export Payments Insurance Corporation Act by giving the Corporation the authority to enter into re-insurance arrangements with its counterpart organisation in other countries, where this would facilitate Australian exports. There are also in the Bill some proposed amendments of the housekeeping nature. They are mainly drafting changes consequent to earlier amendments of the EPIC Act.

Honourable members will know that the Export Payments Insurance Corporation was established by this Government in 1956 to provide insurance for exporters against the risk of non-payment by overseas buyers. Since then, the range of the Corporation’s facilities has been progressively extended and the operation of the facilities improved to take account of changes in the pattern of Australian production and exports, in the direction of our exports, and in the nature of the competition we have to contend with in overseas markets. These successive amendments of the Export Payments Insurance Corporation Act give clear evidence of the Government’s determination to keep abreast of exporters’ requirements in the field of export payments insurance and associated facilities. And so it is with the amendments proposed in this Bill. They stem from 2 main factors. In the first place, Australia, over recent years, has developed a broadly based capacity for the production and export of capital goods which are frequently traded internationally on long term credit. The second factor is that, with competition in world trading at such a high pitch, the nature of the credit arrangements exporters can offer has assumed a special significance.

page 586

BUYERS’ CREDIT

The introduction of a buyers’ credit facility is a measure which follows consideration of submissions made to the Government by the Consultative Council of the Export Payments Insurance Corporation and the Export Development Council. More recently, various national industry organisations have expressed support for buyers’ credit financing to assist Australian exporters of capital goods.

At present, Australian exports of capital goods sold on credit are financed under the suppliers’ credit system. Where an exporter has to offer deferred payment terms to the buyer to meet overseas competition, he frequently finds it necessary to obtain financial accommodation from a bank or other lender while waiting to receive payments from the buyer. Usually he does so with the support of an EPIC insurance policy and, in some cases, against the security of an EPIC guarantee to the lender. A drawback of the suppliers’ credit system is that, over the full period of the credit, often as long as ten years on heavy equipment, the exporter is on recourse to either the lending institution or EPIC. In consequence, the exporter may carry for a considerable period a contingent liability in respect of each sale. This can impair an exporter’s ability to obtain finance for further export transactions and, in some cases, for other purposes.

Under buyers’ credit, a system which has become accepted overseas as an alternative means of financing exports of capital goods, loans are made direct to the overseas buyer by lending institutions in the country of export. These loans are usually secured by a guarantee given by the exporting country’s counterpart of EPIC and often also by the guarantee of a bank in the importing country. The loan is used by the buyer to finance his purchases from the exporter and payment to the exporter is completed once the buyer accepts the goods. Accordingly, buyers’ credit financing has the effect, for the exporter, of converting a credit transaction into a cash sale. With the agreement of all the parties involved, a buyers’ credit loan may also provide for progress payments to the exporter during the manufacturing period. Accordingly, a buyers’ credit system frees exporters from involvement in the financing arrangements of capital goods transactions and allows them to concentrate on the job of manufacturing and selling their products.

This is the position the Bill seeks to achieve for Australian capital goods exporters. In brief, the Bill proposes that, in respect of capital goods export contracts in which there is a high Australian content and where credit terms longer than 5 years are appropriate, EPIC may guarantee the repayment of loans made by Australian lenders to overseas buyers for the purpose of financing payments by the buyers to the Australian companies which are principals to the contracts. The granting of buyers’ credit loans by Australian institutions would be subject to exchange control approval by the Reserve Bank. No change is envisaged in existing exchange control policy under which extended credit terms will be approved only if they are necessary on commercial grounds and do not go beyond those offered by competing overseas suppliers. In addition, approval would normally be given only for loans denominated in Australian currency. In any exceptional case where circumstances justified the guarantee of a loan denominated in a foreign currency, it would be a requirement that the loan agreement contained an exchange variation clause which would ensure that the overseas buyer carried the exchange risk.

The proposed guarantees by EPIC would have some similarity with the guarantees that the Corporation already provides in respect of loans made by banks to exporters under suppliers’ credit operations. A buyers’ credit guarantee would be given on the basis that the lending institution would have no recourse on the t.xporter and it would provide that, subject to appropriate documentary evidence. EPIC would pay unconditionally upon demand any due instalment of principal - and interest - of the guaranteed loan which remains unpaid by the borrower for 3 months.

The guarantee would be associated with the supply contract between the Australian supplier and the overseas buyer, and also with the loan agreement between the Australian lender and the overseas buyerborrower. As the supplier would benefit from the guarantee, EPIC would also enter into an agreement with him, which would oblige him to pay premium at the appropriate rate for the guarantee provided to the lender. The buyers’ credit guarantee would not be intended to relieve supplier, lender or borrower of any commercial responsibilities inherent in transactions of this kind. All three must accept their full commercial responsibilities. As regards the financing aspects, honourable members will know that the provision of finance for Australian exports is traditionally the function of commercial lending institutions. The Government’s consideration of this matter has therefore been on the basis that the proposed system of buyers’ credit loans should be within the established framework for the financing of commercial transactions of this type. It therefore envisages that EPIC would be prepared to provide buyers’ credit guarantees, subject to compliance with the specified conditions, to all Australian lending institutions prepared to undertake this type of lending activity. It is assumed that, in practice, the bulk of any such loans would be made by the banking system, in particular the trading banks, but other institutions would not be precluded from undertaking this type of business.

The Government also considers it appropriate that such loans should be on commercial terms and conditions and that the rate of interest on each loan should be determined by the lender concerned, in accordance with Government policy that exporters should receive preferential treatment, and having regard to the security offered and the particular circumstances of the export transactions. The elements of the proposed buyers’ credit facility have been the subject of discussions between the Reserve Bank and the trading banks. The trading banks have indicated that they are agreeable to participating in a buyers’ credit scheme along the proposed lines. The Reserve Bank, in its consultations with the trading banks, will keep in touch with developments that could affect the ability of the banks to handle buyers* credit lending.

I turn now to a discussion of the main qualifying criteria for the issue of guarantees. Firstly, as I have said, the proposal relates to the financing of export transactions only where they involve capital goods. These are the kind of transactions which most frequently involve the provision of long term credit to the overseas buyer and which, because large values also are usually involved, create for the exporter the financing difficulties I have described. Capital goods transactions encompass, of course, a wide range of possible arrangements between an Australian exporter and an overseas buyer. At one end of the spectrum there is the contract involving merely the supply of a single piece of capital equipment. At the other end. there is the contract for a turnkey project, that is, the supply, erection and commissioning of a complete production plant. In view of this a definition of capital goods has not been specified in the Bill. However, it will be included, together with other qualifying conditions, in the formal ministerial approval of the policy to be adopted by the Corporation in the operation of the facility.

Importantly, this policy would preclude the giving of buyers’ credit guarantees unless the Corporation was satisfied that a credit term in excess of 5 years was appropriate for the goods concerned, or necessary to match foreign competition. In addition, EPIC would need to be assured that the business could not be done readily within the suppliers’ credit financing system. Also, it is not the intention of the Government that Australian funds be employed unnecessarily in financing the export of the products of other countries. Accordingly, it is proposed that eligible transactions should normally have an Australian content of at least 65 per cent. This will be prescribed in a regulation. There is provision, however, that, in special circumstances, consideration could be given to contracts having less than 65 per cent, but not less than 50 per cent, Australian content. This particular provision is included in the Bill.

Another important provision in the Bill is that EPIC may not guarantee a loan which represents more than a prescribed percentage of the contract amount. The percentage that will be prescribed is 80 per cent. In effect, this means that eligible contracts must provide for a down payment by the overseas buyer to the exporter of at least 20 per cent of the contract price. This provision is intended as a safeguard of the commercial soundness of each proposal.

The Bill also includes provision that consideration will be given to contracts only where the value involved is at, or above, a level likely to introduce financing difficulties for the exporter if arranged under a suppliers credit. The level which has been set, and which will be prescribed in a regulation, is a minimum resultant loan amount, after down payment, of $200,000. This figure has been decided upon following an examination of the details of long term credit transactions supported by EPIC. The level is considered to be low enough to embrace most cases which could create financing difficulties for the exporter, yet high enough to justify a buyers credit arrangement.

These, then, are the principal elements of the proposed facility and of the eligibility requirements. However, as honourable members will appreciate, in respect of a facility of this nature it is not possible to specify in advance requirements which will meet all the circumstances of possible buyers credit transactions. Accordingly, provision has been included in the Bill which would give scope for the consideration of special cases which, in one respect or another, do not satisfy all the proposed criteria but which are considered otherwise to warrant approval.

The Bill provides that the Commissioner of the Export Payments Insurance Corporation may refer to the Minister for Trade and Industry, for his consideration, particular cases which do not meet all the eligibility criteria. The responsibility for referring such cases to the Government will therefore rest with EPIC Every case so referred will be considered on its merits by the Minister for Trade and Industry and the Treasurer, in consultation with other Ministers if necessary. In other words, the procedures would be similar to those which presently operate in respect of the national interest provisions of the Export Payment Insurance Corporation Act.

I would like to illustrate the types of problems which this provision is designed to overcome. I have said that eligible contracts must normally provide for a down payment of 20 per cent of the contract price. A particular proposal may involve, for example, a substantial loan amount, say, S5m, and an Australian content of more than 65 per cent but, for sound financial reasons, the overseas buyer is able to provide a down payment of only 10-15 per cent. In circumstances where it was considered that such a transaction would result in obvious and significant trade benefits to Australia, and the commercial soundness of the transaction would not be jeopardised by the lesser down payment proposed, EPIC could recommend to the Government that it be given approval to issue a buyers credit guarantee.

Let us consider another possibility. A proposal involving a loan amount less than the prescribed $200,000- say $180,000- would not normally be eligible for a buyers credit guarantee. For one reason or another, however, financing of the transaction under the suppliers credit system might not be feasible. If this were the case, and if EPIC was satisfied with all other aspects of the proposal, the Corporation could refer the case to the Government for consideration as a buyers credit transaction. Where the Government considered that the circumstances justified acceptance of a proposal of this nature, it could authorise EPIC to give a buyers credit guarantee.

The eligibility criteria will, of course, be reviewed by the Government in the light of the operation of the buyers credit facility. However, because of the nature of the facility and the types of transactions likely to be involved, it is important that EPIC should have adequate scope to handle the wide range of commercial situations that could arise as the scheme develops.

I turn now to the other substantive amendment of the Export Payments Insur ance Corporation Act proposed in the Bill, namely, the empowering of EPIC to enter into re-insurance, or indemnity, arrangements with overseas export credit insurance organisations. Cases arise - and, again, mainly in the capital goods field - in which an Australian company collaborates with an overseas company in the execution of an export contract held by the overseas company. More often than not the collaborating Australian company is a subsidiary or associate of the overseas company. The Australian associate may be called on, for example, to supply a substantial part of the goods required under the export contract.

In these cases, the overseas company, being the principal to the export contract, looks to the export credit insurance institution in its country for cover on the contract but may not be able to obtain full cover because of the Australian content. In fact, overseas credit insurance institutions usually restrict their cover on contracts to the proportion to be supplied from their own countries. They will consider covering the full contract only where the overseas content is marginal. In a situation like this, the Australian associate naturally looks to EPIC for insurance on its portion of the contract. Under its present charter, however, EPIC cannot offer insurance, largely because the Australian associate is not a principal to the export contract and has no standing under the contract with the buyer.

In the reverse situation, where the Australian company is the principal and an overseas associate the collaborator, EPIC adopts the same attitude as that of other credit insurers. Unless the overseas portion is marginal, EPIC insures only the Australian content of the contract and its counterpart organisation overseas is unable to insure the balance, because the overseas associate is not a principal to the contract. Hence, where collaboration occurs between a company in Australia and a company overseas it is usual that only the portion of the contract to be supplied from the country of the principal to the contract can be insured.

These difficulties can be overcome if credit insurance organisations agree to enter into re-insurance, or indemnity, arrangements with each other. Under these arrangements, the organisation in the country of the exporter, who is principal to the contract with the buyer, will give full cover on the contract and then obtain indemnity from its counterpart organisation in the other supplying country in respect of that part of the total contract to be supplied from that country. It is essential, of course, that Australian companies who participate in overseas contracts should have full access to payments insurance on the goods they supply. Moreover, export collaboration between Australian and overseas companies is growing and it is in our best interests to encourage this growth by providing EPIC with authority to enter into re-insurance, or indemnity, arrangements. The Bill proposes to do that. As its effect would be only to extend the Corporation’s normal facilities to export transaction which, at present, do not have that benefit, no new policies or procedures are involved.

The amendments proposed in the Bill, particularly in respect of the buyers credit facility, will extend the range of EPIC’s responsibilities. In respect of the buyers credit scheme, for example, the Corporation will be required to ensure that each proposal complies with the relevant criteria, including the essential requirement that the overseas buyer has adequate commercial standing and creditworthiness to justify the guaranteeing of a loan to him and that his country is an acceptable risk for the amount and term of the loan. The Corporation will also be required to ensure that the provisions of the supply contract and the loan agreement are satisfactory and contain adequate safeguards from the standpoint of the guarantor, and that it has an appropriate agreement with the supplier. The nature of these additional responsibilities, however, are essentially the same as those relating to EPIC’s present activities.

On the basis of EPIC’s impressive record of performance as a credit insurer, and by virtue of its considerable experience and expertise in the field of international trade and finance, I have no doubt that the Corporation will handle these additional responsibilities as successfully as all its existing facilities. I commend the Bill to honourable members.

Debate (on motion by Mr Crean) adjourned.

page 590

STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE

Report

Debate resumed from 23 August (vide page 538), on motion by Mr Swartz:

That the report of the Standing Orders Committee brought up on 20 August 1971 be adopted, and that the standing orders of the House be amended as recommended by that Committee, to come into operation on Tuesday, 28 September 1971.

Mr BRYANT:
Wills

- Mr Speaker, I propose to oppose the Standing Orders Committee’s recommendation although I am a member of it. 1 do so because I do not think that the Parliament has given sufficient consideration at this stage to the proposed amendment to the hours of meeting and all the other things that are involved. I do not believe that this is the way we ought to handle this matter, it will be very complicated. We have before us the report and the motion that the report be adopted. If any honourable member wishes to move an amendment he has to move an amendment to the report and not to the Standing Orders. I hope that in future we will take more care about this. As a result of a decision of the former Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. member for Higgins (Mr Gorton), honourable members have been released at least from one of the imprisonments of Party discipline in these matters and they are free to make up their own minds. I hope that honourable members will do this, that they will consider the matter and make decisions based upon some of the principles on which this Parliament ought to meet.

My interest in this matter is not so much in the days on which we meet as that the Parliament meets for an adequate number of days, that those honourable members who travel long distances to get here are given reasonable consideration and that the staff in this place, including people such as ourselves, are also given reasonable consideration. I will later move an amendment to provide for the motion for the adjournment being put at 10 o’clock. The Leader of the House, the Minister for National Development (Mr Swartz), said that we need regular days for electoral work, and that the subject of days of sitting had been referred to the Government parties. During the recess I noticed that after the donnybrook that the Prime

Minister (Mr McMahon) managed to precipitate at the end of last session, honourable members on the Government side, inert as they normally are, had risen in some sort of half-heatred revolt, so a committee was appointed to examine the situation. T took a dim view of that.

The Standing Orders and the procedures of the House belong to all of us. I do not believe that there is a partisan political point in any of us unless it is the necessity for people to escape from the place, to escape Opposition criticism or honourable members of the Opposition wanting to go home to do something or another in their electorates. But it is not a Party political matter. The Standing Orders belong to all of us in this place. Under the present system the Standing Orders Committee has examined this matter. We appointed a sub-committee and drew up a schedule of possible days of meeting. We gave it a lot of consideration, talked to a number of people around the place and made a recommendation. 1 do not believe that we are being treated with proper courtesy in this regard, and I record my dissent. In other words, the House of Representatives in this Parliament is involved, not just the political Party opposite. The Leader of the House said that the present system had had a reasonable trial. That is not so. I do not know how many times we ran the 4-day sequence, that is, 2 weeks on, 1 week off, 2 weeks on and so on but I think probably it was done only once in a full sequence since it was introduced last year, so it has not had a fair trial. 1 can understand the complete dissatisfaction of every honourable member in this House with the way in which this place is conducted. The way in which we operate shows a complete lack of consideration for the staff, for the families of honourable members and for the public generally. I oppose the return to a 2i-day week. It is not, in fact, a 2i-day week even though we meet in the evenings. We will meet on Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning sitting into that evening. They are long days, true enough, but in anybody’s language that is really a 2-day week. The hours set down are extraordinarily inconsiderate to everybody concerned. I do not believe that the business of the nation can be considered properly in 2i days. I have noticed that my colleague, the honourable member tor Banks (Mr Martin), has circulated a suggestion that we meet on Tuesday morning instead of Tuesday afternoon, and my colleague the honourable member for Capricornia (Dr Everingham) has circulated a suggestion for a 4-day or 5-day week.

I cannot see how we can possibly manage the affairs of this nation in 2i days in a week or on the days that we are now here. I do not know what the difference is between myself and other honourable members in regard to our psychological, spiritual and political system, but by the time we get here and get ourselves organised we have to pack up and leave again. I know from my 15 or 16 years experience in this place that the continual gathering in, and disintegration of. this place mean that we do not do the work which I believe the people of this nation send us here to do. My own view is that we should meet at least on 4 days a week with reasonable commencing times and reasonable knocking off times. It is my view that we ought to establish some principle such as, for example, that we meet in February, March, April and May for the first 2 or 3 weeks in the beginning of each month and then have one week off so that everybody - ourselves, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, the people who supply accommodation for us in Canberra, will know what is going on. We could adjust the system to a ratio of the number of days needed to discuss the matters with which this Parliament is concerned. I do not believe that we can any longer fit the business of the nation into 60 working days in a year. It is utter nonsense to suggest that we can. I hope that at some stage in the not too distant future we will actually examine this question and do something in the way of a time and motion study on how many days are required to deal with matters before the Parliament and to give honourable members a reasonable degree of convenience. I say that this cannot be done by meeting fewer than 100 days a year. What does that involve, a terrible hardship? That is 25 4-day weeks. That still leaves a fair number of days off for the rest of the year. Did not honourable members know before they were elected that this Parliament met in Canberra?

Mr Graham:

– Can the honourable member work it out in hours?

Mr BRYANT:

– I will do that. It is 16,000 hours since you were elected at the last election by the failure and misgivings of the people in the electorate of North Sydney and we have met for 1,073 hours of them. We should be saying that this is probably a 100-day a year job in Canberra. How do we fit this in so that people can do the work properly? It is 25 4-day weeks or 20 5-day weeks. No-one would run any other institution in this way. We should give serious consideration to this suggestion. As someone remarked earlier, it is the only asylum in the world that is run by its inmates and they are making a mess of it. The whole situation is ridiculous, and I believe that the situation which has accrued since the last Federal election is a national scandal. The honourable member for North Sydney (Mr Graham), who I presume is able to read - I understand that is still a requirement for Liberal Party endorsement - will notice that on top of today’s notice paper there is printed ‘No. 109’. That means that we have met for 109 days since this session began, as well as the one day when we came here after the last election. That is, we have met for 110 days out of the last 667 or 668 days. Can any honourable member say, firstly, that this is a reasonable way to treat the business of this nation, or secondly, that it interferes with his electoral work? The most serious infringement upon the human beings in this game is the way we treat ourselves and our families.

I have absolutely and unqualified sympathy for any honourable member who needs to go and do something for his family life or his family affairs, but no other consideration should prevent our being in our place in this House. Now it is proposed to change the system because honourable -members are saying - I sympathise with them - that they have to be in their electorates on Mondays. Since the 25th October 1969 we have met on 4 Mondays. That is not a serious disenfranchisement out of the 90 Mondays since then. The Fridays have been interfered with. That made things terribly inconvenient. Out of the 90 Fridays we have met on about 16 of them. It is time that we applied ourselves with some rational attitude to this matter of the number of days, the amount of time and the facilities required. 1 have absolute and unqualified sympathy for my colleagues who live beyond the capital cities. The honourable member for Forrest (Mr Kirwan) has a long haul across the continent when he goes home each week and then has to travel 150 miles to his home after disembarking from the aircraft. The honourable member for Malley (Mr Turnbull) flies to Melbourne and then has 165 miles to go to his home. It is a difficult matter. The same applies to the honourable member for Lyne (Mr Lucock). I admit we would be better off if some of them stayed at home, but while they are elected to this Parliament I am prepared to support them. So in this instance 1 am voting for the honourable member for Forrest as I think he has the greatest difficulties of all. Is it not possible for us in considering this matter to give greater thought to the needs of the Parliament and the rational way to go about meeting those needs? As I said before, it is a national scandal that we have met so infrequently since 1969. It is completely inconsiderate to meet 2i days a week, with people rushing back and forth around the continent. As I have pointed out, the Parliament has met for 1,073 of the last 16,000 hours. I know that electoral functions and responsibilities are demanding and are important. My friends said to me yesterday when arguing about this matter: ‘When do you do your electoral work?’ I think that on the whole I do my electoral work as conscientiously as anybody else does his. I also recognise that, with 120,000 citizens whose principal contribution to Australian politics is their accurate political perception, half a dozen ombudsmen could not handle all the problems in my electorate, which contains one of the largest concentrations of migrants in Australia.

One can only do what comes ones way and only in the essence of the contract, which is to meet in Parliament, to commune and console, to oppose, amend and alter the way the country is run. One cannot do it anywhere else. At this point I appeal for something to be done about accommodation in Canberra for members of this Parliament. Honourable members should be provided with adequate accommodation in Canberra. I can think of no reason why there should not be 185 units of adequate accommodation in Canberra. If an honourable member wants a hotel room for himself or a house for himself and his family, it should be there for him. I believe it is a serious reflection on Australian national life that in the 40odd years the Parliament has been in Canberra no serious consideration has been given to the family life of honourable members. The Parliament’s members have enough difficulties through the tyranny of distance, as somebody called it. We must try to resolve the problem.

So I oppose the proposed amendment of the Standing Orders and I move the following amendment which relates to adjourning at 10 o’clock at night. One would think it could be clone in fewer words. I move:

I believe it is quite ridiculous to go on working here after 10 o’clock at night. No other organisation to which I belong considers it reasonable to continue meeting after 10 o’clock at night. I had a few words to say earlier in this discussion about the way in which we meet so briefly during the daylight hours. It is a fact, of course, that most honourable members turn up here at about 9 o’clock in the morning and that an honourable member’s working day in Canberra is usually about 12 or 13 hours whether Parliament is sitting or not. It is no way to treat ourselves and it is no way to treat the country. I know that each honourable member returning to his electorate is likely to be faced with another 10 or 12 hours a day work in his electorate, even on Saturday or Sunday. The least we can do for ourselves as part of humanity, if we cannot be humane to the rest of Australia, is to adjourn at 10 o’clock.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Lucock:
LYNE, NEW SOUTH WALES

– Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Scholes:

-I second the amendment.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– The question now is:

That the words proposed to be inserted be so inserted.

Mr GILES:
Angas

-I think it is true to acknowledge the statement of the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant) that he has a very perceptive electorate, so he thinks, but perhaps on the other hand he is bolstering his case by it. This situation is no doubt due to the fact that his electors probably have not got to know him quite well enough yet.

Mr Bryant:

– I am sorry. 1 did not hear the honourable member.

Mr GILES:

-I have not been very rude. The honourable member can read it in the morning. I think it is proper that honourable members study for the moment the motion before the House. It has been moved that standing order 40 should now read:

Unless otherwise ordered, the House shall meet for the despatch of business on each Tuesday and Wednesday at halfpast two o’clock p.m.; and on each Thursday at halfpast ten o’clock a.m.

That is, as I understand, the motion before the House at this stage. The reason for this amendment I make no apologies for it is that many members of the Party to which I belong have from time to time brought to the Party room their disquiet at the fact that they have been unable to reach their offices and be in contact with their offices more than once every 12 days. This might seem strange to those honourable members from capital cities such as Melbourne and Sydney but from my point of view I travel from only as far away as Adelaide this proved to be true. Enormous problems are involved in not being in a position to consider matters affecting constituents in one’s office more than once a fortnight.

For this reason and in spite of the wonderful case put into effect by this House not very long ago for a more effective use of the time of members of Parliament, in the majority of instances members of my Party have found this to be not effective. Reasons other than the pure convenience of honourable members and their capacity to look after their constituents were considered. I do not need to elaborate on them just now. I think it is fair to say that I personally am not altogether convinced that a return to the old sitting times will be sufficient. The honourable member for Wills very nearly touched on this issue. I would have preferred to see a 3-day week for 3 weeks and then one week off - which is the intention of the motion - but working on Tuesday mornings. There are reasons why working on Tuesday mornings would be inconvenient. Evidently it is u traditional time at which Cabinet has met for many years. As such, I think that many of us are fully aware of the enormous amount of work load that these people bear. As honourable members will know, our Cabinet meets at times when the House is sitting and for very lengthy periods during the recess to deal with major matters. Unquestionably the Executive of this Parliament needs some consideration in any alteration of the days of meeting and times of sittings that this House contemplates.

To my mind - and perhaps I am speaking in an insular, parochial fashion - there is something wrong with the priorities of members of Parliament who do not put the position of Parliament, as the top priority. It is most essential that we safeguard our position and the position of our electors by being available to them on part of Monday and part of Friday during the normal week. But within that time, I believe, we have a responsibility firstly to Parliament itself and secondly to the people of Australia to sit for the maximum possible time, that is within reasonable hours. I am afraid that I personally cannot go along with the honourable member for Wills’ amendment, no matter how much English he sees fit to use relating to the closing time of Parliament. As someone who has had a little experience during 10 months in what the honourable member for Grayndler (Mr Daly) always refers to as the very lowly position of Deputy Whip, I think it would become unworkable to have a situation in which someone could stall a government attempt to have a Bill passed in the knowledge that the debate must cease at 10 o’clock every night. The honourable member’s proposition theoretically is a desirable one and I know that every member of Parliament wishes it could be so in a practical way. But I think that parliaments in years to come, when we are dead and gone, will agree that such a proposition is probably unworkable in the sense that it does not promote successful government but does help any attempt to stall the business of the Australian nation. So I am against the amendment put.

In conclusion, it is my personal view that we should return to the programme of sitting 3 days a week for 3 weeks in a row and then rise for 1 week as we used to do 12 months ago. It is also my view that within those 3 days we should sit for longer hours than previously. So, with respect to the Executive I say that my view is that Parliament should care for its own reputation and make sure that within these 3 days we put up a performance that can be looked on with some pride not only by us but also by the people of Australia whom we aim to represent.

Mr DALY:
Grayndler

– I rise to support the recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee. Strangely, also, I am in favour of the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant). I mention today that the change in sitting hours was made in the nature of an experiment when a number of standing orders were overhauled, and with the best of intentions members, who were free to vote as they wished, voted on this matter in a way that they thought would benefit the Parliament. If I remember rightly I think that I was in favour of the change at that time, believing that such a change might allow us to deal with more business. It was anticipated that a number of members would stay in Canberra over the weekend between the Friday and the Monday, but I think that events have proved that this has not been so.

I do not think that the experiment has been a success. Furthermore, I do not think that we have dealt with any more business. I believe also that a reversion to the old system will not prove any less beneficial than the change has been.

Undoubtedly - and the figures of attendances in this House prove it - Friday sittings not only are unpopular but also do not allow members adequate representation. I wish to quote figures, not to take any political advantage of either side, but to show the failure of Friday sittings. These figures, which show the attendances in Parliament when divisions were called on the occasions when the Whips were prepared to call them, show that Friday sittings are completely unacceptable to an average of 35 per cent of the Parliament. On 16th October 1970, the first Friday on which we sat, there were 4 divisions. In the first division there were 15 absentees; in the second division, 43; in the third, 45; and in the fourth, 47. To put it another way, I point out that during the first division there was 40 per cent absenteeism, 34 per cent during the second, 36 per cent during the third, and 37 per cent during the fourth. On Friday 30th October 29 members were absent during the first division that was taken and 43 during the second. The second division took place about the time when members were catching planes for distant places. The average absenteeism was 33 per cent to 34 per cent.

On Friday, 2nd April, 44 members, or 35 per cent, were absent. During Friday sittings alone, the average number of members absent when divisions were taken was 43 or an average of 34 per cent. I do not criticise the honourable members who were absent because I know the problems. Some honourable members are from distant cities and have to catch planes otherwise they would not be home probably until the Sunday. Those members may not have accommodation in Canberra other than in hotels and motels, as was mentioned by the honourable member for Wills. They have families to go to and it is only human to see that their family affairs are attended to. Also electorate matters crop up. So whatever else may be said about the experiment, those figures do not exactly reflect great credit on any of us for that matter, but the reasons for it are apparent to parliamentarians. [ suggest therefore that Friday sittings, come what may in the matters under discussion - should be completely abandoned because they are not acceptable to the Parliament and are not a workable proposi- tion. 1 have mentioned only the occasions on which divisions were called. I have in mind some other occasions when considerably more members would have been shown to be absent had divisions been called but for a number of reasons, were not called. Therefore, I suggest that we should revert to the 3-day sitting week on the basis that we undoubtedly will be able to deal with business and attend to our electorate duties.

As a member of the Executive of the Parliamentary Labor Party I find under the present sitting arrangements that it is impossible for me not only to go to my electorate but also to see my secretary or dictate or sign a letter for about 14 days. I have to be in Canberra on a Monday morning and attend the meeting of Parliament on Monday afternoon. With the lack of secretarial assistance it is just impossible for me to attend to anything in my electorate. I think that this is common to a number of honourable members who come from distant States and who cannot attend to their own affairs when Parliament is called upon to sit on a Friday. It is all very well to say that Parliament comes first - we all put it first - but electors also are very important in the scheme of things. If attention is not given to their requirements the inclination is for them to say: This chap is never here to see us when we want to see him about a pension’ or something of that nature. So we have to strike a reasonable balance as between the average electorate and our parliamentary duties. Consequently I suggest that a 3-day week would give us all a better chance to do that.

Other factors come into this consideration. The sittings we have arranged impose a tremendous burden on the staff of Parliament House. Under the present arrangements we sit constantly for 10 days. We have more committees now in the Parliament than ever before. They in turn require the attendance of members and also the staff when the House is not sitting and we have to squeeze in meetings. It is all very well to say that they could be fitted into the week that the House does not sit; but members who are away from their electorates for a fortnight and who have not been to their offices say - and I believe that this is not unreasonable - that they cannot come back to Canberra for a committee meeting because they must be in their electorates for some time. Therefore, if we revert to 3-day sittings, I think that these considerations will balance out. 1 believe that under the present arrangement we are not getting through very much parliamentary business, and the Friday sittings, as 1 proved, are unsatisfactory. I have the greatest respect for my friend who occupies the lowly position of Deputy Government Whip in trying to round up members on a Friday. I have the greatest respect also for the honourable member for Mallee (Mr Turnbull), who found it difficult to get a quorum of members from his Party on Fridays, so anxious were they to get back to the farms, the cows, the trees, the horses and the broad acres. Whilst I say these things in a light vein, I have a certain feeling for the honourable member for Mallee and his desire to round up his members on a Friday, and that is why I have mentioned this matter.

Passing on from that matter, strange as it may seem, I am in favour of the proposition put forward that the House should adjourn at a given time each night. I do not think that we get anywhere by having all night sittings and legislation by exhaustion. Even talking at a late hour on the motion that the House adjourn is hardly satisfactory. To that extent, the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills does not go far enough. I think there should be a standing order which provides that at a given time each night, whether it be 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock, the House should adjourn. It is not much good if we put the question that the House do now adjourn at 1 1 o’clock and then talk till 1 a.m. on the adjournment.

Whilst I would at this stage support the suggestion of the honourable member for Wills, I would be much happier if the House adopted a system whereby the question that the House do now adjourn were put at 10 o’clock and the House adjourned no later than 11 o’clock or a set time. Regretfully I say that I believe the experiment has failed. I believe also that it will be beneficial to go back to the routine we had previously. 1 summarise by saying that the Friday sittings, because of the poor attendance of members, have been proved to be unsatisfactory. I think that from the point of view of the working and the staff of the

Parliament, and in every way, it will be better if we revert to the previous system as I have suggested. We will have more time for our discussions. In addition I hope that consideration will be given to the proposition that the adjournment be moved at 10 o’clock, which is not an unreasonable hour for honourable members and for the staff, who still have a lot of work to do after that time. Having said so much, I point out that I will support the report of the Standing Orders Committee and also the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills in respect of the time of adjournment.

Mr IRWIN:
Mitchell

– I support the motion and oppose the amendment. I do so because the experiment we have had with sitting times has been useless, and the present system has proved to us that it is not an efficient way of conducting the business of the Parliament. I think I might have supported the present system, having had regard to the long distances to be travelled by honourable members who live in northern Queensland and Western Australia. But the present sitting arrangements are not satisfactory. On the Mondays that the House does not sit during a normal sitting week one can do some work in the electorate. The worst feature of the whole set-up has been the disorganised Friday about which the honourable member for Grayndler (Mr Daly) spoke. On Friday nobody appeared to be able to settle down to the business of Parliament, and those of us who live in nearby areas were expected to remain here and make sure that a quorum was in attendance. Wc were pleased to do that so that those honourable members who have to travel long distances could get home on the Saturday at least and have a few hours with their families.

Coming to the suggestion that at 10 o’clock the question that the House do now adjourn be put, let us be honest and sincere. We all knew what to expect when we came here. If we are to quibble about staying here occasionally until 1 o’clock or 2 o’clock in the morning I think we should consider whether we should be here or whether we should engage in some other vocation back home. Parliament has been conducted in this way for many years. It is only occasionally that it is necessary to sit until 2 o’clock in the morning, and any honourable member who complains about that - I have no reservations in regard to this matter - should never have sought election to Parliament. Honourable members should be prepared to make (his sacrifice.

Three sitting days in a week are sufficient. Unfortunately we cannot sit on Tuesday morning because of the Cabinet arrangements and because of consideration for those honourable members who travel long distances to get to Canberra. They are not in the same position as those of us who live in the capital cities. The experiment with sitting times has proved unsatisfactory, and at times on the Friday that the House has sat I have been ashamed of what has occurred. It has not occurred wittingly, but it has not been in the best interests of Parliament. I am in favour of the motion and I strenuously oppose the amendment and the suggested amendment to provide that we meet on Tuesday mornings. (Quorum formed.)

Mr MARTIN:
Banks

– 1 support in principle the reasons which prompted the recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee but I disagree with the method of implementation. I propose to move an amendment that we replace the recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee with the following recommendation:

That unless otherwise ordered the House shall meet for the dispatch of business on each Tuesday at half-past 10 o’clock a.m., on Wednesday at half-past 2 o’clock p.m. and on each Thursday at half-past 10 o’clock a.m., rising at 6 o’clock p.m. on each Thursday.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Lucock:
LYNE, NEW SOUTH WALES

– Order! I apologise for interrupting the honourable member, but he cannot move an amendment until the amendment that has already been moved by the honourable member for Wills has been voted on by the House.

Mr MARTIN:

– It is my intention to move my amendment later when the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant) has been defeated. My purpose in doing this is that I agreed that the original recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee, when we did meet for a 4-day week, had a certain amount of merit. At that stage it was untried.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-Order! I point out to the honourable member for

Banks that if he intends to move an amendment he intimate at this stage that he is speaking to the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills and restrict himself to that amendment. Otherwise he will forfeit the opportunity of speaking later and moving his amendment.

Mr MARTIN:

– I will reserve my right to speak later.

Mr GRAHAM:
North Sydney

– 1 rise to support the report of the Standing Orders Committee. I share with the honourable member for Grayndler (Mr Daly) the view that it would be in the interests of the House if we were to return to the previous programme pattern of sitting for 3 days for 3 weeks and then having one week to spend in the constituency. 1 believe that the reference by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant) to the hours spent in the Parliament over a long period of time was creating in the minds of those listening to him a picture that a limited amount of work was being carried out in Canberra. My interjection when the honourable member was speaking was not related to the number of sitting days. I was thinking of the actual working day. In Canberra, if the Parliament sits from 9 a.m. and commonly until midnight on 3 days a week, members have a 45-hour working week. Honourable gentleman such as the honourable member for Forrest (Mr Kirwan), the honourable member for Darling (Mr Fitzpatrick) and many others, who have to travel over great distances in order to be here immediately prior to the beginning of this 44-hour to 45-hour working week on a 3-day programme are subjected to a degree of physical strain which is out of all proportion to the degree of strain that is suffered by those of us who represent the metropolitan electorates, for example, of Sydney or of Melbourne. It seems that the 4-day week programme adds greatly to that strain. I feel quite sure that, if the Parliament decides to return to the programme of 3 working weeks here followed by one week in the constituencies, it will be acting in the interests of those members.

As the members of the Standing Orders Committee who have spoken have said, the truth is that the experiment which has been tried has not worked. It has not worked because many honourable members have discovered that when they add their travelling time to the commitments which they face as ombudsmen or as professional social workers in their electorates, their ability to attend to their commitments is gravely affected by the length of time that they must be absent from the offices which are provided for them in their electorate. As the honourable member for Angas (Mr Giles) said, it is reasonable for members of this House to commend to the Parliament and to the Executive consideration of their work within their electorates. This work is particularly important. It is not unfair to point out that probably in at least onethird of the 125 electoral divisions in the Parliament, the elected representative is working at a very intense level because his majority is a small one, whereas in probably two-thirds of the seats the pressure upon the member representing the electorate is not so great. Here again is a reflection of the different types of work that a member is called upon to carry out in relation to the variety of electoral responsibilities imposed by different seats within this House.

It seems to me that when we refer to the time factor we are thinking in terms of 100 working days in one year, with each working day averaging 14 hours to 15 hours. This presents a far more realistic picture to the Parliament and to the general public. The hours must be considered. That was the point that I particularly wished to bring to the attention of my friend, the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant). It does seem to me that one hope which may be of interest to the country arises from this general debate. That is that so many of the sagacious representatives who sit on the other side of the House of Representatives are showing beyond all reasonable doubt that a 40-hour working week is something which is not to be considered to be the lot of a member of the House of Representatives. With their extraordinary conflict of interest in policy and the absurd talk that one hears about a 35-hour working week, one would be very interested to hear how they would relate this industrial concept to the work of a member of the House of Representatives. I would recommend to them’ that they take to the whole country the simple message that a good day’s work with a good day’s return, with all sorts of emoluments, is a fair and proper thing within this community. I hope that the House will decide to return to the previous pattern of 3 working day for 3 weeks followed by 1 week in the constituencies. I therefore support the report of the Standing Orders Committee and am prepared to oppose the amendment that has been moved by the honourable member for Wills.

Dr EVERINGHAM:
Capricornia

– I realise that, if I speak to an amendment which I propose to move later in the debate, I, then, will not have the opportunity to speak again. However, I think it is fair that honourable members should hear what I propose before they vote on the amendment that has been moved by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant). His amendment is not in actual conflict with mine insofar as his amendment is proposed as an addition to the motion rather than as a replacement of the existing standing order. The amendment I will move reads:

That al] words after “that” be omitted wilh a view to inserting the following words in place thereof:

Standing orders 40 and 50 be omitted and the following standing orders be inserted in place thereof:

Unless otherwise ordered, the House shall meet for the despatch of business on each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in alternate weeks at nine o’clock a.m. so. At five o’clock p.m. on sitting days the Speaker shall put the question: ‘That the House do now adjourn’. At all other times the motion for the adjournment of the House may be moved only by a Minister. No amendment can be moved to this motion.

It may be thought at first sight that I am acceding to the view of the previous speaker that we should work a 35-hour week. If each day a luncheon adjournment of li hours was to be taken, the sitting hours would be 32i hours each week. I am referring to sitting hours, not working hours. In this way, the sitting hours would work out to 8i hours per day as against 6 hours per day on most days when the Parliament now sits.

The point of view that I wish to put in regard to sitting from Monday to Friday is this: We have heard 3 speakers say that Friday sittings do not work out and that people are anxious to get back to their electorates. The reason why they have been anxious to get back to their electorates is that they know they have to return here for a sitting on the following Monday. Under the system that I am proposing, they would not come back in the following week. Parliament would be sitting on alternate weeks. There would be no hurry to get home and no hurry to return here. The work would be done in sane and civilised daylight hours. The Hansard staff would be getting to bed before midnight instead of 4 a.m. If we wish to extend sitting hours into the evening, this can still be done but the extension would not result in the Parliament sitting into the small hours. I have had cause to speak on the absurdity and the insanity of late sittings. In fact, the irrational way in which people react when they are fatigued and the way they suffer not only from exhaustion of the mind but also from a state of confusion in which their minds become unreliable would not be tolerated in any other profession. Working into the early hours of the morning would not be tolerated.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Drury)Order! 1 point out to the honourable member that he must speak to the amendment that is before the House at the moment. Is he intending to do this?

Dr EVERINGHAM:

– Actually, Mr Deputy Speaker. 1 am opposing the motion.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-If the honourable member wishes to move an amendment later, he will have to speak later to that amendment.

Dr EVERINGHAM:

– I do not wish to speak further to my amendment. I have outlined it. All that I am doing now is opposing the motion as it stands. One point against sitting the hours that I have proposed has been raised by previous speakers. They have said that the problems of Ministers - the Executive - should be considered and that they should be able to meet in the morning. They also should consider the effect of our sitting until midnight. If they have no sittings of this House to attend, all the things that they now do in the mornings could well be done after 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. when the adjournment debate has concluded. Their minds would be just as clear then as they are when they are in charge of a debate in this House at that hour. If they still insist that they are too tired after dinner and want their minds freshest for things other than the sittings of this House, let them meet at 7 a.m. Plenty of professionals do this. If a doctor is giving an anaesthetic he often starts his work at 7 a.m., not 9 a.m. - and honourable members are not called out in the middle of the night. If they were obliged to be on duty in the middle of the night they would want to make sure that they got to bed earlier than midnight.

Regarding overall hours, in a 4-week cycle as proposed by the Committee the House is asked to sit for 9 days in every 4 weeks. My proposal is that the House should sit for 10 days in every 4 weeks. With respect to attending to electoral matters, not much is to be gained by reverting to the old system. Many members from the northern and far western parts of the continent do not get to their electorates, even under the 3-day sitting arrangements, during office hours in the 3 weeks that the Parliament sits. They are home for only one week in four. If the proposal which I shall outline later were adopted members would be home one week in two.

I do not wish to prolong the debate. The House has debated frequently the position of members who live a long way from Canberra. I summarise my remarks by saying that whether we work a 40-hour week or an 80-hour week it is far better that the bulk of our work and the important part of our work be done in the important part of the day, during the regular and normal working part of the day when we would be doing our best work. I suggest that party meetings, executive meetings and committee meetings, which frequently call on outside experts for advice or which take evidence from people, would be better held in the evenings. This would result in less disturbance to the running of the House and less disturbance to people who come to see and speak with us.

Mr Donald Cameron:
GRIFFITH, QUEENSLAND · LP

– The exhibition we are witnessing today makes evident the wisdom of our forefathers when they draw up the constitutional requirements of the Senate. Today we have an example of members from Sydney and Victoria, by sheer weight of numbers, able to dictate the sitting hours of this House. Some honourable members have spoken about the great chance they gave members from the far-flung cities of Australia to let the new system work. I suggest that the system, as introduced some months ago, was not a proper system and we have not yet tried anything. We were given a compromise which was destined to doom from its commencement. The fact is that on a Friday the House usually rises at 4 p.m. and does not resume until 2.30 p.m. or 3 p.m. on the following Monday. What else would members be expected to do other than to go home? I draw attention to the honourable member for Grayndler (Mr Daly) with his hair sleeked back. He is like a punter leaving the racecourse after he has lost his money on the first race. He hastens to get back to Sydney. But it is easy to get back to Sydney on a Friday afternoon. The honourable member for North Sydney (Mr Graham) is the same, and so are the members from the southern capital. Why do they want the reintroduction of the old scheme?

The Minister for the Army (Mr Peacock) can well remember when some honourable members returned to their electorates on the express to Melbourne. Came midnight on the Thursday and they would trot out, catch the train and travel to Melbourne. They would wake up bright and early at 7 o’clock on the Friday morning in their electorates. Yet members from Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania spent half a day travelling back to their electorates and, if they were lucky and had no plane delays, arrived in their electorates in time to spend a couple of hours in their offices. On Monday they departed again for Canberra arriving either late Monday night or first thing on Tuesday morning.

Mr Daly:

– Mr Deputy Speaker, I take a point of order. Is it in order for an honourable member who is single to criticise married members on this side of the House who want to get home at weekends?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Drury)Order! There is no substance in the point of order.

Mr Donald Cameron:
GRIFFITH, QUEENSLAND · LP

– I confess to being a single man, but I do not consider that to be a crime. It has nothing to do with the running of this House, which surely is important. The honourable member for Grayndler referred to his plight and expressed his concern that when he returns to his electorate at the weekend he does not have time to see his secretary. He is a married man. He bemoaned the fact that he did not have the chance to dictate letters. Has he not heard of the dictation machine? He could sit in his office on his own with this little machine and dictate letters onto it so that while he was in Canberra the following week administering the affairs of the country his secretary could carry on with his electoral work.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you are a Queenslander, as I am. You have to suffer, just like yours truly, the problems and burdens of lengthy travel. If we are lucky, every week we spend 8 hours just getting to Canberra and back again. The equivalent of an ordinary working man’s day is wasted in flying through the skies to get to and from Canberra. Members from the southern capitals catch one plane or use one form of transport and get to Canberra in less than an hour. Often it takes them only 40 minutes. This is the difference between honourable members. Whilst I do not intend to support some of the amendments that have been moved, because of the riders which have been added to them, T want it known that 1 believe that the experiment with changed sitting times has failed for one reason only, namely, that despite the generosity of those who made the introduction of the present scheme possible, the conditions they attached to it ensured its eventual failure.

Reference has been made to honourable members returning to their electorates at the weekend. I can remember well, when I was a member of a committee of this Parliament suggesting that the committee should sit on a Saturday morning. It was not northern and western members who said no; it was the members from Sydney and Melbourne who said: ‘No, we do not want to sit on Saturday. You can sit here on your own, if you want to’.

Mr ARMITAGE:
Chifley

– I support the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant). I have examined the proposal suggested by the Standing Orders Committee and I am glad to note that much progress has been made. However, the amendment goes even further and removes some of the faults under which the Parliament is working at present. I am pleased to note that the interest of the Minister for Social Services (Mr Wentworth), who was the main advocate of the earlier system, is waning. I did not think it was a practicable proposition and I spoke against it at the time of its introduction. Time has proved me right. Far too often we see honourable members returning to their homes early on a Friday and the number of members who have remained in the House on a Friday afternoon is no credit to the Parliament. I think that the proposition put forward by the Standing Orders Committee - in effect that we revert to the system operating prior to the introduction of the present system - is an improvement.

But, as I said earlier, it does not go far enough. I think the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills takes the proposition a step further and will remove some of the disabilities under which honourable members now work. For example, the system proposed by the Standing Orders Committee, to which the honourable member for Wills has moved an amendment, will mean that honourable members will be able better to organise their work in their electorates. This is very important. Far too many people, such as the honourable member for North Sydney (Mr Graham), seem to adopt the attitude that the work of a member of Parliament is done solely in this House. Of course, nothing is further from the truth. A member of Parliament who does his job probably spends far more working hours outside the Parliament than he does inside the Parliament. Tt would be a very nice life indeed if we could look ahead and say: Right, when we finish here our job is finished. We can go home and enjoy life’. It is when honourable members return to their electorates that the work has to be done. Under the system presently operating, that is, sitting Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of one week and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the next week, it is obvious that honourable members cannot sit down and make a long term arrangement for meeting constituents and conducting interviews in their electorate. Our job is here in the Parliament, and also outside in the electorate so that we can meet our constituents and do the right thing by them. This proposal advanced by the Standing Orders Committee will give us an opportunity once again to plan our itineraries so that we do our work here in the Parliament as well as outside in the electorate.

The amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills goes a step further. It foreshadows that the Parliament will sit on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and also that the time of sitting will be limited at night. I think this is a sensible proposal, not only for the more elderly members of the Parliament - I think most of us sitting here today are very young men - but also for the staff and for the effective working of the Parliament. For example, the Hansard staff has to work many hours after honourable members leave the Parliament. The attendants will not leave the Parliament until an hour after its rising, and have to start work an hour before Parliament commences. I also instance the case of the kitchen staff and all the various other people who have to do their jobs throughout this building. Sometimes I feel ashamed of the conditions under which we ask members of the staff in this Parliament to work. The conditions under which we ask the staff to work are a disgrace. If we were to limit the sitting times insofar as they affect the hour at which this House rises at night, we would be doing a belter job by the staff.

Possibly far more important than that, the proposal of the honourable member for Wills would mean the end of the proverbial legislation by exhaustion. It would mean that members of the Parliament do not enter the chamber early in the morning worn out. It would mean that they would come here alert and able to settle down to give serious and proper consideration to the legislation placed before them. It would also mean in the ultimate that this Parliament would sit on more days in the year. That is very important indeed, because one of the objectives of this Government and one of the motives behind the present system, as far as the Government is concerned, is to get this House into recess as quickly as it possibly can. I pointed this out in a debate on the introduction of the system under which we are now working. In other words, the longer we meet during the night and into the early hours of the morning, the less the executive and this Parliament is under the scrutiny of the general public and the Press. If the adjournment was moved at 10 p.m., the overall number of sitting days on which this House met would be extended. That would be a good thing, because it would ensure that the Parliament was under the scrutiny of the public and the Press for far longer periods. That is very important. During the last session of the Parliament we saw the Prime Minister cutting question time to a minimum. We saw him guillotine 17 Bills and gag 3 others. We saw him run off into recess as quickly as he possibly could. If the Prime Minister now introduces a system of sittings whereby he can have honourable members working throughout the night he can once again hurry legislation through and get this House into recess as quickly as he possibly can. If the time of sitting is limited to 10 p.m.. when the adjournment will be moved and followed by the adjournment debate, the House will meet for more sitting days. 1 think this will be of benefit to the public and to the Parliamentary system. Those are the reasons why I support the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills.

Mr JESS:
La Trobe

– I agree with many of the comments made by the honourable member for Chifley (Mr Armitage). 1 support the report of the Standing Orders Committee. After listening to the honourable member I feel that as he was speaking for the oh so young in the Parliament I am speaking for the oh so aged. I think we gave a reasonable trial to the sitting arrangement which were supported by many of those newer members in the House who, quite rightly and reasonable, considered that there was room for improvement. In my opinion, the debate which led to the trial period of the new sitting arrangements was most confused. But I feel now that we have given them a reasonable trial. 1 do not agree with the remarks of my colleague the honourable member for Griffiths (Mr Donald Cameron) about honourable members from New South Wales and Victoria. 1 am sure all honourable members feel great sympathy for those who live in Western Australia, Queensland and other outlying areas who, because of transport problems, have great difficulty in returning home. I think most honourable members were prepared to go along with the new system if honourable members who represented outlying electorates had been prepared to stay in Canberra over the weekends. Much of the propaganda that was advanced for the introduction of the new sitting hours was that during the weekends there would be

Committee meetings, we would be able to gambol with the diplomats, the Prime Minister would ask us all to afternoon tea, and we would play tennis on Sundays. None of these things has happened. I agree with those honourable members on the other side of the House who have said that once the House rose they dare not trip on the way to the aircraft because they would be killed in the rush, and that included in the rush were honourable members from Western Australia, Queensland and other outlying areas. I agree with the honourable member for Chifley that under the present system it is terribly difficult for honourable members to return to their electorates and do the things required of a member of Parliament. There is no doubt about it. Honourable members leave Canberra on Friday night. The civil service does not work on Saturday morning. Your secretary is not in the office on Saturday. Honourable members are expected to catch an aircraft back to Canberra on Monday morning. Half the time honourable members take correspondence away and bring it back to Canberra, hoping to get in the queue for the 2 typists who are supplied to back bench members on both sides of the House.

I think there is another factor which has to be taken into account. Listening to the honourable member for Capricornia (Dr Everingham), I felt that he became rather confused, although he was trying. I do not think that he actually gave consideration to the members of the executive. 1 do not think that I can be considered to be one of the greatest supporters of the executive or one of the greatest stampers of the executive’s programme. But I admit that members of the executive have a considerable task to carry out. Not only is it their responsibility to see that this Parliament is running - that the debates take place and that members play their part in them - but also that the country’s affairs are administered properly. I think frequently it is considered that what happens in this chamber is part of running the country. 1 think it should be clearly understood that we are debating legislation and the effects of legislation but it is the members of Cabinet who are always responsible for the day to day running of the country. They have a considerable amount of work to do which we as backbenchers have not. lt seemed to me that when the honourable member for Capricornia (Dr Everingham) suggested that they could start at 7 o’clock in the morning he was saying: ‘I want a 9 to 5 job and if they want to work any harder they can start at 7 o’clock or work in the evening until midnight or whatever it may be’. I think that is quite ridiculous. We must realise that members of the executive have additional responsibilities to those that we have as backbenchers.

Perhaps I can revert to what my distinguished friend, the honourable member for Chifley (Mr Armitage), said about which is more important, electorate work or parliamentary work. I could be wronging him. I feel that the parliamentary work would have priority if the members of Parliament did the work that is required of them. I hope I am not misquoting the honourable member but I thought he said that he felt that those honourable members who said that being in Parliament was the most important function were wrong and that the responsibilities in the electorate were more important. If that is not what the honourable member meant I apologise and take it back. But if the honourable member could have been saying that let me say that, if honourable members took responsibility, were prepared to play a greater part in the debates and perhaps to vote according to their conscience and for matters of principle and to see this Parliament work, this without any doubt would be the most important part of a parliamentarians life and work. But unfortunately I think too many parliamentarians - this is where I thought I was agreeing with the honourable member for Chifley - want to rush home to get into the baby show, to kiss the queen of the week or whatever it may be in their electorate. I do not consider that is the most important function of a member of Parliament. I support the Standing Orders Committee and I am glad to find that my distinguished young friend supports it also. I am opposed to the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant) because I feel that 11 o’clock is a reasonable hour.

Mr Bryant:

– Move an amendment to that effect.

Mr JESS:

– I think we will see it without an amendment. I am sorry it disturbed you but if you rise again I will speak for another 10 minutes. I think most of us have given the new system a try and I think that those of us on both sides of the House who have had a period under the old timetable and a period under the new one consider that the old timetable was the most workable and fair to the Parliament, to the electorate and to the health and happiness of all people concerned. If the honourable member for Sturt (Mr Foster) intends to make a personal explanation he will just goad me into speaking further.

Mr Foster:

– I rise to order. I raise this point very sincerely on the basis of the attitude being displayed by the honourable member for La Trobe. I think he is procrastinating and doing nothing more than murder the time left for debate. Why does he not show some sincerity in this place?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Drury)Order! There is no substance in the point of order. I ask the honourable member to resume his seat.

Mr JESS:

– 1 am sorry that the honourable member for Sturt rose to his feet because I was about to resume my seat. I can see that the honourable member is just biding his time until he can put over a bit of high class material for the electorate.

Mr Foster:

– I rise to order. Mr Deputy Speaker, is he not being unduly provocative to your way of thinking?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-Order! The honourable member is now bringing up frivolous points of order and 1 warn him not to do so.

Mr JESS:

– I assure you, Sir that I was not being frivolous. I can imagine the joy in the electorate of Sturt every time the electors hear their member speak. But I can only say in deference to the honourable member for Robertson (Mr Cohen) that 1 hope he gets the call next because he has been hopping up for much longer than any other honourable member.

Mr Armitage:

– Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented?

Mr Armitage:

– Yes. I just wish to correct the impression which the honourable member for La Trobe gave as to what I said in my speech. He seems to have the impression that I suggested that electorate work is far more important than work done in this Parliament. At no stage did I say this. To the contrary, what I said was that it is important that people must realise that when we finish work in this Parliament we then have other duties to carry out in the electorate, that we owe a responsibility to our electorate as well and that accordingly we should be in a position to plan our itinerary fully and in such a way that we can carry out the dual duties we have both to this Parliament and to the electorate. I would hate the honourable member to leave this Parliament under such a serious misapprehension.

Mr COHEN:
Robertson

– I thank the honourable member for La Trobe (Mr Jess) for putting in a good word for me to enable me to speak next. I am sorry that I could not follow the honourable member for Griffith (Mr Donald Cameron). 1 had intended, when 1 entered this debate, to support him but after he had spoken for 5 or 10 minutes about honourable members who represent electorates in New South Wales and Victoria I was amazed at his infinite capacity to alienate his friends and those who were going to support him. I intend to take up a few points that have been made particularly the implication in the speech of the honourable member for North Sydney (Mr Graham). Anyone in this Parliament who starts talking in terms of a 32i, 35, 40 or 45-hour week ought to be boiled in oil. There is not a member of Parliament of whom 1 am aware who works less than 80 hours a week. This is especially true of people like the honourable member for Riverina (Mr Grassby) who, as far as 1 can see, does not ever go to sleep. I say this because I share a room with him. But even talking in terms of a normal working week is dishonest. It gives a false impression to the public who are already given an incredibly false impression by a few clowns in the Press gallery, not the pressmen here but those in Sydney and Melbourne whose members repeatedly write the sort of articles that give the impression that members of Parliament work only during the hours that Parliament is sitting. This is quite a ludicrous situation but it is basically our fault because we fail to educate the public completely as to exactly the sort of role we play.

I challenge any member of the public or any pressman anywhere to come with me for one week to see what sort of hours I work. When 1 rise in the morning, I have to read the papers. That is part of our role. Then 1 spend 8 or 9 hours in my office. I always lunch with a constituent. I attend 2 or 3 functions almost every night in my electorate and get home at I o’clock or 1.30 in the morning. This would be at least 6 days a week. I have I day at home with my family and that is usually on Saturday because the children play football. I know what the honourable member for North Sydney meant but this debate is going across the sound waves and all those wonderful people in the public gallery are hearing it; so I do not think that we should even consider mentioning 35 hours a week or phrases like that. I hope that someone in the Press gallery will take up this challenge and come with me and with some other honourable members such as the honourable member for Riverina and the honourable member for Chifley.

Mr Duthie:

– He is nol the only one who works.

Mr COHEN:

– I know. I include also the honourable member from the Apple Isle, the honourable member for Wilmot. 1 will oppose this motion because one of the things that disappoints me about members of Parliament - 1 have a very marginal electorate and it could affect me - is that we seem to be approaching this problem incorrectly. I believe that fundamentally we are sent to this place as legislators. We were sent to the Federal Parliament to represent our electorates but the trouble is that once we have been elected we spend the next 3 years trying to come back here although we really do not want to be here. It is like someone in my electorate who said to me one day: ‘1 have not seen you for a couple of weeks. Where have you been?’ I said: ‘I have been in Canberra.’ He said: ‘What were you doing down there?’ I said: ‘It doesn’t matter. Forget it.’ The constituents really do not know what we do.

The point that I am trying to make is that our primary role is here in Parliament in Canberra, and I do not believe that we should arrive here and then immediately try to get back to our electorates. Since I have been elected to this Parliament I have kept a count of the number of functions I have attended. In 20 months I have attended 370 functions in my own electorate alone. That does not include the functions I have attended in Canberra or out of my electorate, interstate in Melbourne and Sydney. Those functions have been connected with the Country Women’s Association, the Red Cross Society, the Crippled Children’s Association and the Returned Services League. It is not unique; they are the sorts of functions which all honourable members attend. I think this matter is important.

Fundamentally, those honourable members in marginal seats - that would account for about one-third of the number of members - have made themselves slaves to getting re-elected. If they are so keen to spend all their time in their electorates doing those things, they are not doing the job for which they were elected, and that is to be here in Canberra as legislators. I believe that we should educate the public to what we are doing or what we should be doing, not spending all our time running around, as the honourable member for La Trobe called it, kissing babies.

Mr Clyde Cameron:
HINDMARSH, SOUTH AUSTRALIA · ALP

– That is important.

Mr COHEN:

– Yes, it is important, and the honourable member for Hindmarsh is a notorious baby kisser. The important thing is that we must educate the public as to our fundamental role, and that is that we are legislators. We are in Canberra to work for the benefit of the nation as a whole. Our other role should be played when we are not needed here in Canberra.

One of the reasons why we also have to be continually in our electorates is simply because we do not have the staff to cope with our electorate work. There is no member who does not get 40 to 50 pieces of mail on his desk every morning. Admittedly a lot of it is of a circular nature. How much of it is put into the waste paper bin because a member does not have time to read it? How much is put into the file which is marked ‘Too hard’ or 1 will read it later when I have the opportunity’? I would say that three-quarters of it comes within this category. All that members are able to do is to answer letters from constituents. A lot of the mail could be answered effectively and properly for a member, after research and a precis had been done, if he had research staff. We should try to force the Government to give us the staff which is essential to carry out our job.

One of the handicaps of the present sitting days - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of one week and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the next week - is that when a member gets back to his electorate he does not have 40 or 50 pieces of mail on his desk but 300 or 400 pieces of mail, and that is the reason why members now want to get back to their electorates on Fridays. If we had the staff, a great deal of the formal mail, which has to be read through in order to get an idea of what it is about, could be handled by a research officer. A lot of it could be answered very often by sending out an acknowledgment letter. But a member has to do this himself.

I agree with the honourable member for Griffith that we should continue with the present arrangement of sitting days. I should like to see us stay in Canberra for longer periods and have the staff to enable us to cope adequately with our electoral work. I do not agree with the view that we should sit on only 3 days a week. I will oppose the recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee. I will support the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Bryant), which provides that the question for the adjournment of the day’s sitting be put at 10 o’clock at night. But here might I suggest that consideration be given to the sitting of the House continuing throughout the dinner adjournment. If honourable members are to be stopped from speaking at 10 o’clock at night, when a lot of honourable members want to speak - and the honourable member for Wills is one who never misses an opportunity, when it presents itself, to get his name on the list of speakers, so he is not denied these rights-

Mr Bryant:

– I make my own opportunities.

Mr COHEN:

– That is right; he moves amendments and that sort of thing. But a lot of members are chopped off when they endeavour to speak. I know (hat if the House were to adjourn at 10 o’clock at night, I would not have been able to make three-quarters of the speeches I have made here. I cannot see why this House cannot continue sitting through from 6 to 8 o’clock so long as there is an agreement on both sides of the House that no quorums and no divisions will be called. This would allow a great number of members to make the speeches they want to make and it would enable us to get away at 10 o’clock at night without any problem at all.

Mr Duthie:

– What about the staff?

Mr COHEN:

– Somebody may be able to inform me whether I am right, but I understand that the House of Commons operates in this way.

Mr Graham:

– It does.

Mr COHEN:

– Then I see no reason why we cannot adopt a similar proposal here, and that would allow us extra time in which to speak. A great number of honourable members could go and have their dinner and there would be no quorums and no divisions. They could make those very important speeches that they want to make. As 1 have said, I oppose the recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee and I support the amendment moved by the honourable member for Wills.

Dr SOLOMON:
Denison

– With due respect, I believe that the honourable member for Robertson (Mr Cohen) is in danger of losing us the main thread of this debate, and I would like, if I may, to return to it, although he was not guilty of leaving it entirely. It is a question of picking up when he found the thread again. Surely the question here is a matter of convenience, as to how, where and when honourable members can most efficiently fulfil their duties. There is no argument that their duties lie in 2 places: Here and in their electorates. There may be some other places they have to visit in between, but basically this is where their obligations lie. 1 do not wish to canvass the question of the hours spent in the different places. It has been often repeated here and, basically speaking, I think that it is fairly well known at least to those people who normally listen to the broadcasts of these debates. Of course there is no absolute in this matter of achieving the most effective way for us to meet. There is no right way and there is no wrong way. So far as the majority of members is concerned we are talking about a question of compromise. Along with a lot of other things in this place, and particularly, if I might say so, among those people who might have been here for quite some time and become inured to the system, the basic difficulty in solving this problem is that many things are regarded as impossible.

Even though the matter of trying the experiment, which is about to be abandoned, was carried on a free vote last year, immediately a considerable number of people opposed any suggestion that the new system, the experiment as it has now been called, could work. It is not sufficient to say that because the rear ends of a lot of people can be seen disappearing over the horizon on Friday afternoons, the system has been proved not to be workable. The fact of the matter is that if we had sufficient control, for example, by the Whips, which would not be incongruous in this place, we could assure that nothing below a quorum, or something above a quorum were maintained on Friday afternoon or on any other afternoon. The first duty of a parliamentarian, as I see it, is in this place. A number of other people agree that it is in this place. In fact, I think almost everybody from his own peculiar point of view agrees that it is. If that could be assured the system would work. It could not be assured that we would stay here over the short weekend which was included between these 2 consecutive weeks of sitting with one week off.

But once again, it was quite clear from the outset that a number of people had not the slightest intention of making the system work. That is their prerogative, and they may be seen to be right. But I venture to suggest that before many years have passed they, as members of the House of Representatives, will find themselves to have been wrong. The Senate already has developed a committee system - in fact, I might say overdeveloped a committee system; it is practically running them ragged but, nevertheless, it is producing some quite effective findings and some quite effective informational matters which in due course come before that chamber. We are not, to anything like the same extent, doing that here, and I do not advocate an approximation to that. But eventually, when the Standing Orders Committee’s report comes before us totally, we will have a proposal to develop some quite important committees in lesser number than the Senate. I do not think anybody has given serious attention to the question of when those committees will meet. Before we do so I do not believe that we can properly consider this motion that we should revert to the previous system of sitting days.

I believe that reversion to the status quo ante, to the situation that obtained before we moved to this great experiment, without qualification is just not sensible. It is as unsensible as to say that something is impossible before it has been tried. It is not sensible to say that because we do not have enough time to do our job properly or to the best of our wishes we should not have enough time to do so. That is roughly how the argument runs and it is about as sensible as that. If we believe genuinely that this system is not operating properly - I think the majority believe that to be so - then the very serious question arises whether we should revert precisely to where we were. The question in my mind is this: We did not leave the other system simply for the purpose of having fun, spending time and having free votes and all the rest of it in this House. We left the other system because it seemed to be unsatisfactory. I said at the outset that no system would be totally satisfactory but, roughly speaking, any system will be as satisfactory as the intent of the people who are operating it.

I believe very sincerely that there is a grave question mark against the thought processes of honourable members generally if we find that we have to revert without modification to a system which we left only a few months ago because it was not working well enough. I suggest that even a small modification should be entertained by honourable members. I am not one-sided about this matter. In fact, I am prepared to speak against it and against my own convenience as I did before. I believe we should try to make it work. If we revert to the 3-day sitting week I think it is reasonable that we consider sitting for 3 full days and that the Executive consider holding its meetings on a Monday or on a Friday. I am prepared to listen to the arguments which may be put up to show that this may be difficult and that it should not be entertained. If so, all right, but I would like to hear the arguments. Otherwise we will have the situation where I or other people who have to travel further than I do will be coming to Canberra for 1-day and 2 half- day sittings with accompanying matters, such as committees and so on which I do not downgrade as they are part and parcel of Parliament and as such are very important. Nevertheless we would be coming here for 1 full-day and 2 half-day sittings.

My travelling time is effectively about H days to get here for any meaningful business and to return to my electorate in the light of transport connections and so on. I point out that that is not the minimum travelling time involved. Other honourable members have longer distances to travel than I do. 1 am not complaining. I am just drawing attention to the fact that this is a lot different from the 40 minutes or 1 hour or 2 hours total time expended in travelling from Sydney or Melbourne to Canberra, that is to say from one’s home to this Parliament. The fact of the matter is that the majority, as my colleague the honourable member for Griffith (Mr Donald Cameron) pointed out, do come from the Sydney-Melbourne axis and it grieves me a little to find that a couple of people who suggested to the Government Members Committee that there might be a weighted vote in favour of those people who come here from far distant places were ignored. That was not a matter which was given serious consideration. If it had been it might not have worked but it grieves me to think that it was not given serious consideration. As the honourable member for Griffith suggested, I think there is a parochial element. I hope I will not be held guilty of introducing it. I am merely commenting on what to me is evidence of parochial voting.

If I may return to the point which I believe is most important in this matter, apart perhaps from the fact that things ‘.re considered to be impossible which have not been properly tried, it seems to me that at some point in time - it may not be now and it probably will not be now - all honourable members in this House will have to take their courage in both hands and decide that they will jointly, severally and otherwise risk the wrath of their electors at the next election, but they will risk it a good deal less if they act together, and say: Look, we believe that our prime purpose in being parliamentarians is to be here, to have sufficient time here or anywhere else to make constructive speeches, to do the requisite work and so on, and I will be available in my electorate when I can outside those times’. I do not think anybody could accuse me of not having tried to do what I could for any single member in my electorate who had asked me to tlo something for him. In fact, I advertise for their business. I think the same can be said very properly of every honourable member in this House, and I do not say that with my tongue in my cheek.

The fact of the matter is that unless we in this Parliament take it upon ourselves in some year or other to educate our electors to the fact that we will serve them on a personal basis in the time that we have available after serving the country in this Parliament, then they will never believe that message. So long as we continue to orient the situation so that we can be in our electorates on Monday, or Saturday or some other day we will do it, and we will be doing it in the year 2000 if we do not take the sort of decision I believe we should take.

Of course there are some technicalities in this matter. If an honourable member has a good secretary, as I have, who can handle the day-to-day business and pass on to him the things that need his personal attention, then he will be way ahead. If an honourable member has someone who is not competent or mature enough to handle the business of his electorate in his absence, then he may be in difficulty. However, it should not be beyond the capacity of the average honourable member to find a secretary who can reasonably attend to the affairs in his electorate while he is in Canberra and he can then pick up the traces on return to his electorate. That is not to say that he cannot do some of his electoral work by mail or by telephone.

I believe that other honourable members have put the suggestion - in fact it is not alien to the report of the Standing Orders Committee, at least it is behind what it puts as a formal motion - that there should be more sitting weeks in a year. Whatever daily system we adopt I believe that this should be so. Such was the state of affairs at the end of the last session that I doubt whether there would be much objection to that, at least at this time. I do not agree very fully as a rule with the honourable member for La Trobe (Mr Jess) but on this occasion he made a sensible point when he said that the civil service and our own secretaries and other people involved do not work on Saturday or Sunday and, therefore, if an honourable member tried to go home for a short weekend, as is the case under this system, he would not have a great deal of success in pursuing his electoral business apart from catching up with his family or public engagements. Therefore, we are back to where we were and no doubt the majority will decide that the 3-day system - or should I call it the I full-day and 2 half-day sitting system as far as parliamentary sittings are concerned - is the one we want. 1 believe there is a very basic and, if you like, environmental determinist basis to what we are having difficulties with today. It affects us in many ways. It affects our State-Federal relationships in that we have too few States or too many States, whichever way you like to look at it. If we were in the Congress of the United States and had to cope with the large area in that country and many times the population that we have here we would not, as senators, for example - they do not - attempt to communicate with their several million electors in a personal way. If we were members of the House of Representatives in the United States we would find it impossible to communicate with 250,000 or 500,000 electors in the same sort of way. We would, however, have a staff of about 15. I. believe that, as in other matters, we find ourselves very firmly between 2 stools. That is to say, we range over a very large area of country and we come from ail parts of Australia, which has an area of 3 million square miles, to get to this place to communicate the business of the country far afield. In doing so we find ourselves with the idea that we should get out of here as fast as we possibly can and go back to our electorates which are a long way from Canberra and which contain relatively few electors. If it is a rural electorate or a small town electorate or possibly an electorate as large as my electorate in Hobart, it is likely that those people will rightly enough, in the conditions which exist, believe that the honourable member concerned should be available to attend to them, if necessary, on an individual basis. So we run the risk of the parliamentary institution being downgraded to the extent that we are in demand in our electorates. as it were, on a daily basis. This is a serious matter. I believe that probably the cause is lost because honourable members have indicated in that direction. I am regretful that it is lost without having been put properly to the test, and I hope that on some not too distant occasion in the future it will again be tried in some form and perhaps with a greater sense of urgency to develop the immediately extra parliamentary pursuits of members of this House. 1 am speaking particularly about the worthwhile committee system to the extent that we should contribute more effectively to the organisation and progress of this country.

Mr KEATING:
Blaxland

-I move:

This is to enable the House to dispose of the amendment.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Drury)Order! Does the honourable member wish to move that the question be now put?

Mr KEATING:

– In relation to the amendment, yes.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion say ‘Aye’, of the contrary say No’. I think the ‘Ayes’ have it.

Mr Bryant:

– This is just the amendment, I take it?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– Order! The original question was that the report of the Standing Orders Committee, brought up on 20th August 1971, be adopted and that the Standing Orders of the House be amended as recommended by that Committee to come into operation on Tuesday, 28th September 1971, to which the honourable member for Wills has moved an amendment. Is a division required? The House will divide.

Question put:

That the words proposed to be inserted (Mr Bryant’s amendment) be so inserted.

The House divided.

AYES: 49

NOES: 60

Majority .. ..11

(Mr Deputy Speaker- Mr E. N. Drury)

AYES

NOES

Question so resolved in the negative.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Drury)Order! The question now is that the report of the Standing Orders Committee brought up on 20th August 1971 be adopted and that the Standing Orders of the House be amended as recommended by that Committee to come into operation on Tuesday, 28th September 1971.

Mr MARTIN:
Banks

– I wish to move an amendment, notice of which I gave earlier, in the following terms:

That all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to inserting the following words in place thereof:

Standing order 40 be omitted and the following standing order be inserted in place thereof:

Unless otherwise ordered, the House shall meet for the despatch of business on each Tuesday at half-past ten o’clock a.m. and Wednesday at half-past two o’clock p.m., and on each Thursday at half-past ten o’clock a.m. rising at 6 o’clock p.m. on each Thursday’.

The purpose of this amendment is to substitute an earlier starting time on a Tuesday and also to have a set finishing time on Thursday. In the original recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee it was proposed that we meet at 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday and at 10.30 a.m. on Thursday. Apparently the purpose for that was that it has been the normal practice for Cabinet to meet on Tuesday. I suggest that it is possible for Cabinet to arrange its activities to meet on a day other than Tuesday. The bulk of members of this House have to fill in time on a Tuesday until 2.30 p.m. when the actual functioning of the House commences. 1 believe that the activities of this House could be better dealt with if we set an earlier starting time on Tuesday and fixed the time of rising on Thursday at 6 p.m. This would enable honourable members who can go home on Thursday night to make their arrangements accordingly.

I suggest that another matter which could be considered and which is not actually in my amendment is the way to gain a greater period of time for business by curtailing the time taken for meals. What I suggest - and this is something which would be within the province of the House to determine - is a curtailment of the time which is allocated for meals. The li hours which is allocated for lunch is, in my opinion, too long and the 2 hours suspension at night is certainly too long. That is another factor which could be taken into account when we are considering ways to improve the orderly running of this place. I think that most honourable members will appreciate the purpose of the amendment. I do not intend to take my full time to speak on the amendment and I accordingly commend it to the attention of members of the House.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Drury)Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Keating:

– Yes, I second the amendment.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-The question now is:

That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Mr TURNBULL:
Mallee^ (5.54

– I oppose this-

Mr Keating:

– I rise on a point of order. I seconded the amendment.

Mr TURNBULL:

– I oppose this amendment for the simple reason-

Mr Keating:

– Mr Deputy Speaker, 1 seconded the amendment.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-Order! The honourable member had his opportunity to speak. I put the question on the assumption that the motion had been seconded and that the seconder had finished.

Mr Keating:

– You asked me whether it had been seconded and I said, yes.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-I took it that the seconder had concluded his remarks in seconding the motion.

Mr Collard:

– I rise on a point of order. My point of order is that the honourable member for Blaxland observed the forms of the House and sat down when you stood up, and that was the only reason he did so.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-I point out that 1 did not put the question until the seconder had finished. The seconder sat down and I took it that that was the conclusion of his remarks. I then called the honourable member for Mallee.

Mr Foster:

– On a point of order: I am on my feet now - how about that?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-Order! I suggest the honourable member address the Chair?

Mr Foster:

– Has the honourable member for Blaxland not the right to address the House as a result of seconding the motion and observing the procedure of this place?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– Yes. The honourable member may speak after the honourable member for Mallee. The honourable member for Mallee has the call.

Mr TURNBULL:

- Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to oppose this amendment more than for anything else for the last few words in it. I will not read the whole amendment because 1 do not want to delay the House for very long, but the amendment reads in part: on each Thursday at halfpast ten o’clock a.m rising at 6 o’clock p.m. on each Thursday.

This is the very thing that we are fighting against. As the Deputy Government Whip 1 want to say very definitely that we have had difficulty keeping members here when they thought that we would rise at 4 p.m. So there is not the slightest doubt that we will be asked to allow honourable members to get away at 2 or 3 o’clock if the House is to rise at 6 o’clock on Thursdays. As the honourable member for Grayndler (Mr Daly) said, it would be almost impossible to hold a quorum.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– Order! There is too much noise in the chamber.

Mr TURNBULL:

– I will say there is too much noise!

Mr Foster:

– But how would you be the Deputy Government Whip? That is what I want to know.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– Order! 1 ask honourable members not to stand in the passage ways.

Mr TURNBULL:

– When all this noise and argument is finished perhaps 1 can proceed. I just want to take the shortest possible time so as not to delay the House. I shall repeat what I said because probably it was not heard. The honourable member for Sturt was interjecting all the time asking why I am in a certain position as Deputy Government Whip.

Mr Foster:

– You are the Government’s deputy whip.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– Order! I cannot hear the honourable member for Mallee because of the noise in the chamber.

Mr TURNBULL:

– Mr Deputy Speaker, if there are a lot of interjections and much talk such as is taking place at the moment I say to honourable members opposite that there is plenty of time and they will not hurry me. I will speak when I get a hearing but if I do not get a hearing these proceedings will go on indefinitely.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

– Order! I suggest that the honourable member for Mallee address his remarks to the Chair and proceed.

Mr TURNBULL:

– Well, Sir, I ask for leave to continue my remarks at a later stage.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 5.58 to 8 p.m.

page 611

APPROPRIATION BILL (No. 1) 1971-72

Second Reading (Budget Debate)

Debate resumed from 17 August (vide page 1 33), on motion by Mr Snedden:

That the Bill be now read a second time.

Mr WHITLAM:
Leader of the Opposition · Werriwa

– I move:

Two days before the Treasurer (Mr Snedden) introduced this Budget, the President of the United States announced measures which have precipitated a great international currency crisis. It is characteristic of the uncertainty and incompetence which mark this Government that the Treasurer was unable to give the House the slightest indication of the meaning of these events for Australia and their meaning for his Budget. He has still not been able to do so. He has been unable to inform the Parliament or the public of the options open to Australia, whether to devalue, revalue or float the Australian dollar. Even if this were deemed undesirable to canvass, he has not even been able to indicate the possible consequences to trade, particularly wool, not only directly with the United

States but to and through our greatest trading partner, Japan. He has been unable to indicate its impact on the flow of overseas capital on which, under this Government, Australia has become so overwhelmingly dependent. And again he has been unable to say anything about its implications for this very Budget now before us. At a time when the whole community, particularly the business community, desperately seeks guidance and leadership from the Government, all it gets is Liberal fumbling and feuding. And we know that on this issue, as on so many, the Liberals and the Country Party are deeply split.

This Budget is a remarkable illustration of the inextricable link between politics and economics. Political uncertainty and confusion have created economic uncertainty and confusion. The divided counsels in the Liberal Party have exposed and increased the divided approach of the Government to policy making. Rapid and repeated changes in the senior ministries have destroyed stability and continuity. The Treasurer himself is a living example of political schizophrenia. As Treasurer he has argued powerfully against himself as Minister for Labour and National Service. Only in March, in a paper entitled The Labour Outlook 1971’, he ably refuted the view that wage increases were the main inflationary factor. But last Tuesday night as Treasurer he based his whole approach on just that theory. In March he said: lt would hardly, be appropriate to try to offset expected wage cost pressures by general deflationary fiscal or monetary measures.

Last Tuesday as Treasurer he introduced general deflationary fiscal measures to achieve just that result and has produced a Budget which will require harsh monetary measures in 1972. On 3rd April, after he had become Treasurer, he said: 1 don’t accept the view that the proper way to attack inflation is to increase income tax.

On Tuesday he increased income tax by 2i per cent and stressed the reliance he places on increasing the income tax to beat inflation.

There is a second feature in this Budget which highlights its political nature. It is the central document in the process of deGortonisation. Replying to my motion condemning him last Tuesday, the Prime Minister (Mr McMahon) claimed that the electoral mandate rested on policies, not on persons, and therefore was still valid despite the convulsion in the Liberal leadership. Yet this Budget scraps the policy on which the right honourable member for Higgins (Mr Gorton) managed to scrape home as Prime Minister in 1969. His key undertaking of a redistribution of the burden of taxation is reversed. His undertaking to act on the report on the nationwide survey of educational needs is scrapped. His pledge to pay special attention to the burdens of the chronically ill has been specifically repudiated by the omission of provision for nursing home care insurance and the doubling of prescription charges. Not a word is said of his undertaking in the 1970 Senate campaign to establish a rural finance insurance corporation. Presumably that has been scrapped. Nothing is said on his undertaking to establish a national system of kindergarten-cum-child-minding centres. That presumably has been scrapped. His campaign against pollution has been downgraded - virtually scrapped. The Treasurer gave no report on the effect or impact of the January measures against inflation announced by the former Prime Minister, nor did he make any attempt to show that the measures in this Budget dovetailed in any way with those measures. The present Prime Minister has thrown out the right honourable member for Higgins. He has thrown out the policies on which the Government was returned. He has not a shred of a mandate front the people.

There is a third reason why this is a political document rather than a piece of genuine economic management. This Budget synchronised an election timetable and an economic timetable. At the time this Budget was framed, the Prime Minister proposed to have an election concurrently with a South African cricket tour in the disgraceful hope that there would be violence and that his Party would be the shameful beneficiary of that violence. The internal convulsion of the Liberal Party destroyed that malignant plan. But the Treasurer is still left with a Budget now irrelevant to its basic political purposes. The real bite in the Budget will be in 9 months time when unemployment could rise to above 100,000. It is, as one newspaper has described it, a time bomb Budget with a 9-month fuse. It was set to go off after the elections the Prime Minister wanted, but now does not dare have.

And this economic strategy - to produce unemployment - reveals the other political strategy of the Budget. There is only one consistent theme running through the speech. Wage and salary earners are to be blamed for inflation and their unions and associations are to be hobbled. This is the only certainty in a document of uncertainty. This is the political message in this most political document. This Budget is a declaration of war against the wage and salary earners of Australia, against the 90 per cent of the Australian work force who are employees and who largely depend for their living standards on awards obtained by their unions and associations through arbitration or negotiation or industrial action. Indeed, the Treasurer has come very close to answering Edmund Burke’s question on how one draws up an indictment against a whole nation - because we are overwhelmingly a nation of employees, and becoming every year more so, and even those of us who are not depend ultimately on the prosperity and taxability of the wage and salary earners for our share of the nation’s wealth which they predominantly produce.

The purely political and partisan motivation of this Budget is disclosed by the socalled strategy of the Budget. We are told by the Treasurer that there is an immediate and pressing problem of inflation, yet he has produced a Budget which will have no effect on this for 9 months. Then there will be a sharp contraction of the economy. He has provided the classic formula for stagflation - inflation combined with a recession where stagnation and inflation co-exist.

We find in our economy a generally depressed rural community. The rural sector is not contributing to inflation; but that sector must equally bear the extra costs in petrol and telephones, which are fundamental to a farmer’s transaction of his business. Great sectors of our secondary industry have not contributed to inflation. Nevertheless this Government remains bound to outmoded economic theories which can adjust policy only in terms of broad aggregates - never surgery, always the bludgeon. So the Treasurer simply talks about ‘demand’ as if it were an uncomplicated single factor rather than a complex creation of many economic forces. His remedy is couched in terms of a single concept: The ‘domestic surplus’ and a crude anti-inflationary formula based on the concept of national accounts. This Government has learnt nothing from the stagflation experience of advanced industrial countries in recent years. Despite the complex interactions on the economy which the Treasury has on occasions admitted, the Government for political reasons still blames strikes and wage demands and wage rises only as the root of all evil.

The Treasurer’s blindness is the less excusable because he had the benefit of advice from the Economic Section of the Ministry of Labour and National Service and appeared to accept its point of view when he was Minister for that Department only 5 short months ago. If the ministerial convulsion of recent months and weeks achieves nothing else, it should wipe away some of the mystique of government - the myth that the Liberal Party has some magic skill or insight denied to lesser men. The Government has a Public Service, available to any government. The real art, rapidly being lost by this Government, is selecting and applying the expert advice a government receives. The Reserve Bank has also made its views known. In its annua] report issued last week, the directors explicitly refute the Treasurer’s interpretation. They thus deny the basic premise of his Budget strategy. They say that economic indicators showed that in recent years aggregate demand had been broadly within the nation’s capacity to produce. They continue:

Hence it is hard to attribute the recent acceleration of inflation in this country to excess demand pressures.

The Commonwealth itself also says this. This Government in its submissions to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in the national wage case of 1969 said:

The central feature of the economy from the point of view of this case is that wages on the one hand and prices on the other ate rising too fast. They have been doing so for some years now.

There is nothing sudden about it. It did not happen last January or last week. The Commonwealth said in 1969: ‘This has been going on for some years now’. The Australian Economic Review’ warned on 23rd of last month:

Unless the appropriate stimulus is given to the economy to induce a greater real through-put of goods and services, the level of unemployment will continue to drift upward and by the June quarter 1972 could easily exceed 80,000. lt continued:

If- traditional measures of severe monetary and budgetary policies are used in an attempt to contain inflation there will be very substantial costs in losses of real output and substantial unemployment.

This is precisely the result this Budget will achieve. Thus the likelihood is that unemployment will rise not just to 80,000 but to 100,000 and beyond when the crunch comes early next year.

Yet, far from halting the price rise, the Budget will itself force prices up. The Treasurer has failed to learn the lesson of last year’s Budget. We warned then that the indirect taxes and charges contained in the Budget would force prices up. So savagely did that Budget operate that its imposts accounted for two-thirds of the 7 per cent rise in the cost of living index in the last December quarter. This rise occurred before the 6 per cent wage and salary increase given by the national wage case decision ever came into operation. The postal and petrol increases in this Budget will have the same direct and indirect impact this year. There will be immediate rises in costs to all consumers, and there will be the inevitable flow-through as these charges are passed on later in the year. For the second time in succession, the Budget will be a major factor in price rises. And to the man in the street - not learned in the jargon of economics - that is what inflation means: It costs him more for everything. And that is precisely the result this Budget will inflict.

Moreover, the cost of living index does not reveal the full extent of price rises as they affect the average consumer. The consumer price index is based on a pattern of consumer expenditure derived from household surveys in the early and mid-1960s. These can no longer be regarded as adequate. The consumer price index does not take into account such important consumer expenditures as education, life insurance, the cost of land, wines and spirits, most fresh fruit and vegetables, pet food and interest charges. Yet it is well known that the increases in some of these areas have been and continue to be quite large. Yet it was this Government which sabotaged the Statistician’s proposed family expenditure surveys which could improve this index.

In the face of accelerating inflation, we have experienced a sharp drop in the rate of economic growth. It is the lowest since 1967-68, the year of a great drought, with the slowest rate of growth for some years. Into this ominous situation the Government has injected a traditional budgetary policy which all recent overseas experience suggests will aggravate the incipient stagflation. The Government has produced a budgetary strategy which will immediately inject large amounts of money into the system. It is a Budget which will have a significant immediate inflationary effect with an equally sharp contraction in the next year. Then, the domestic surplus will be supplied all in a single quarter by com: pany tax and income tax. As the Institute of Applied Economic Research has pointed out:

At present we still have an unannounced seasonal ‘go-stop’ monetary policy to counteract its effects.

To justify this approach the Government proposes to lay all the blame on employees. It refuses to acknowledge its own responsibility for price rises and refuses to acknowledge the inevitable connection between rising prices and demands for increased wages. At the same time, it refuses to accept any responsibility for holding down prices. It is true that industrial unrest has increased significantly over the past year. It is futile to put industrial unrest down to mindless militancy. It is futile to talk as the Treasurer does, about confrontations’ which, whether they be between governments and employees or companies and employees or between the arbitration tribunals and employees’ associations, can only add to industrial unrest and industrial loss, lt is futile to hurl insults and abuse at the leader of the trade union movement whose real offence is that he is effective.

Mr Hawke has been subjected by Ministers and the media to a campaign of abuse and denigration unparallelled in Australia’s history, except possibly for the late Dr Evatt. The truth is that Mr Hawke has saved this country millions of dollars in the strikes which he has settled or helped to settle, the petrol strike, the national rail strike and 2 national shipping strikes being the most notable of recent examples. And I hear the Minister for Shipping and Transport (Mr Nixon) nodding agreement. Mr

Hawke has saved consumers tens of millions of dollars by an initiative which shamed this Government into belatedly enacting legislation against resale price maintenance, which at the conference between the inner Cabinet and the trade unions - the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Council of Salaried and Professional Associations and the Council of Commonwealth Public Service Organisations - last February, the Government was very intent on explaining it could not do. 1 find all sorts of people very ready with general and sweeping condemnations of Mr Hawke but I find it very difficult to pin his critics to one specific or significant complaint against his activities. I repeat: His real crime is that he is carrying out with energy and effect the job for which he was elected.

Nothing illustrates the cynicism of this Government towards industrial peace more than the Treasurer’s pious protestations about, to use his own words, the ‘escalating level’ of industrial unrest ‘often resolved only at the cost of grossly inflationary wage settlements’. To support his claim the Treasurer cited the fact that working days lost in the first 5 months of 1971 topped last year’s rate by nearly 25 per cent. He did not point out that for the first 4 months the increase was a meagre 2.3 per cent, not 25 per cent. He did not point out that in the fifth month there was a prolonged stoppage of building workers in New South Wales, not primarily over an inflationary wage demand but over a claim for higher workers’ compensation, and that a State tribunal later acknowledged the justice of the claim. At any given time the wages paid to workers on compensation could hardly have an inflationary impact. I challenge anyone in the Government to cite an industrial country where workers’ compensation represents so small a percentage of average weekly earnings as in Australia. The stoppage in the building industry in New South Wales lost 507,000 working days in one State in one month - almost as many days as had been lost in the whole of Australia for the first 4 months of this year. The Treasurer incorporates the figures for this unique stoppage in order to turn Australians against trade unions and employees associations, to turn some employees against other employees and to divide the country - 90 per cent of the Australian work force being employees.

It is not in the personality of Mr Hawke that we must seek the real explanation for industrial unrest; it is in the reality of the economic situation today. The underlying reason is that employees of all kinds are convinced that the share-out of the national wealth is going against them. Employees correctly believe they are not getting their fair share. If the Government has its way with the Arbitration Commission in cutting wage increases while at the same time prices rise still faster as a result of this Budget, then the rate of inflation will outpace wage increases. This will lead to even further industrial unrest.

Nor will the Government’s plan to curb industrial unrest by the bludgeon of unemployment succeed. In the United States of America and Great Britain, two countries which have experienced the same sort of stagflation which the Australian Government is now creating, unemployment does not end unrest, even in industries which are worst hit. Not does it prevent wags increases in specific industries even when there is large unemployment in those industries. Unemployment is a cure neither for inflation nor for industrial unrest. In modern economies, it adds to both. It causes both inflation and unrest through the loss and discontent, the waste and the fear it creates.

The Treasurer mouths threats and warnings to the Arbitration Commission that it must realise the economic consequences of its decisions and this, of course, is part of his argument that wages are the sole inflationary culprit. Yet earlier this year, in a different portfolio, he was willing to concede that the Commonwealth had both responsibility and power to influence prices. Now, of course, he has abandoned his earlier hints about a prices registration tribunal. If there is ever to be an income-prices policy in Australia the Commonwealth must exercise and be seen to exercise the very considerable power it has to influence prices. In fact we already have half an income-prices policy.

The Government proposes an incomes policy exercised through the Arbitration Commission whose job it will be to keep wages down. This is a case where half a policy is worse than none because the loss in industrial unrest will outweigh the illusory advantage to the economy through low wages. Employees can be persuaded to moderate their demands only if they know that price rises will not immediately erode their modest gains. This Parliament can establish a standing committee, like the Senate Select Committee on Securities and Exchange, to scrutinise the pricing policies of those enterprises which benefit from Commonwealth contracts, tariffs and subsidies. The Minister for Supply can table the reports his Department prepares on trade products which the Commonwealth purchases. The Commonwealth must accept its responsibility to prevent unjustified price increases. A Labor government will. We will identify, publicise and expose unfair prices or practices and the exploitation of consumers.

We ought now to realise the total inadequacy of annual Budgets as a basis for planning the nation’s economy. The annual Budget is not even an adequate statement of government proposals for raising and spending revenue. For many years past now the honourable member for Melbourne Ports (Mr Crean) and I, among others, have urged a system of programme budgeting. We are delighted to see that we have a new supporter, no less than the immediate past Treasurer, the honourable member for Wentworth (Mr Bury). In an interview in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ of 11th August he said - I do not want to agitate honourable members; I quote his comments on matters of theory, not personality:

I am keen on programme budgeting. In Britain they now plan the general disposition of their resources over the whole field for about 3 years ahead. Every now and then they have a shakeout, but most of the changes they make in betweenyear by year- are pretty minor. I think our thinking is much loo short-term.

The new Treasurer has at least indicated that the Treasury proposed to provide 3-year forward estimates. It is perhaps an indication of the vanity of human wishes that the former Treasurer said in April 1970 that it was his ambition to be the first Commonwealth Treasurer to provide such estimates.

Mr Cope:

– That is the boy from Broken Hill.

Mr WHITLAM:

– He is leaden enough but he has never earned a bonus. Two Treasurers and two Budgets later we still have just a promise. The provision of forward estimates is not a substitute for forward programming. It is not a substitute for a national assessment of national priorities and the proper allocation of our national resources.

For ideological reasons this Government sets its face against indicative planning and programme budgeting. Yet it proposes, in another context, a kind of planning - because its proposed systematic review of tariff is itself a form of planning in that it represents a decision about allocation of resources. Our major secondary industries, however, are justifiably apprehensive of the proposed ‘systematic review’ because this review is to be conducted by a Government which is philosophically incapable of accepting the necessity of indicative economic planning. Any systematic adjustment of our tariff structure is a form of economic planning, whatever the Government would like to call it. The only difference is whether it is to be carried out in ignorance of economic repercussions, without a basic perspective of economic development and without a long term framework in which adjustments can be made. The other group vitally concerned in a review of tariffs is, of course, the employees. What basis of trust or confidence, so necessary if there is to be any review of tariffs, can this Government establish either with industry or employees? To restore confidence and efficiency to our tariff system, the Tariff Board must be truly independent and fully equipped. The Government must cease to bypass its hearings and suppress its reports. The Parliament and the people are entitled to the benefit of prompt and full reports by the Board.

The most misleading and most stultifying result of Liberal budgeting is the confusion it creates about the extent and distribution of burdens. The Liberal approach is to disguise burdens and evade responsibility by a process of compartmentalising. Like all Liberal Budgets, this Budget presents only a very partial picture indeed of its imposition. The Australian taxpayer cannot compartmentalise himself. If he has to pay increased State taxes or charges because of Federal policy, it is no consolation to him that these charges are not shown or spelt out in the Commonwealth Budget.

In this Budget the Treasurer boasts of the great improvement in CommonwealthState financial relations because the payroll tax is now the responsibility of the States. On the very day the States received that tax, they were forced to increase it from 2i per cent to 34 per cent.

Mr McMahon:

– Untrue.

Mr WHITLAM:

– The Prime Minister, who interjects in this vulpine fashion, is the man who as Treasurer urged the States to impose receipts duty.

Mr McMahon:

– There is no such thing, again.

Mr WHITLAM:

– You called it a turnover tax. They all misunderstood you. They all took your advice. Sir Frank Nicklin, the only Country Party Premier in Australia for many years, let the cat out of the bag. He said that you made this suggestion. It has never been officially denied by you. The High Court showed in several cases that whatever it thought of your economics, your law was atrocious. Then, of course, you suggested that the States take over the payroll tax. This was to be a growth tax. You told the States that is why they were receiving it, and they realised that the payroll tax did not increase as rapidly as the gross national product. It did not increase as rapidly as the Commonwealth’s taxation income. The States realised that you were trying to sell them a pig in a poke. So the very day you handed it over to them, they unanimously agreed to put the tax up from 2i per cent to 3i per cent. Only in that way would they be able to get as much from this tax which you are imposing on their behalf as they were getting under the increased formula whose place it takes. You were there at that time. You feigned distress. They can see through you; so can everybody else. The States were only acting on the Prime Minister’s own claim that the payroll tax was to be their growth tax. The increase in payroll tax is as much a Federal responsibility as if it were contained in a specific item in this current Budget. The consequent rise in prices as companies pass the increase on is an inescapable result of Federal policy.

In each of the State Budgets this year taxes and charges will rise sharply. In New South Wales public transport fare increases of between 50 per cent and 100 per cent have already been imposed. Rates and charges levied by local government will continue to rise. It matters little to the Australian taxpayer that his taxes paid to the Commonwealth are reduced if Federal expenditure is kept down by forcing up State and municipal taxes and charges. It is no relief to the Australian taxpayer if the payroll tax is transferred to the Slates merely to help them to meet the burdens imposed by the refusal of the Commonwealth to take a proper share of responsibility for schools and hospitals. The taxpayer, the parent, the patient, the consumer, the commuter, the ratepayer, the contributor to health funds is one and the same person, the one and the same*” Australian. Government responsibilities may “be divisible but personal burdens are not. Because of the negative Liberal attitude to the federal system, the Liberal inability to operate that system constructively, and the straitjacket of Liberal annual budgeting, we have, particularly at election times, the whole question of finances and functions reduced to the narrow sterile limits of the question: Where’s the money coming from?

This Budget gives some intriguing answers to that question. We see. for example, that in 1970-71 income tax on persons rose $320m above the previous year in a year when it was said that income tax was being reduced. This year it will use $484m above last year’s tax. Or, to put it in another perspective, the increase in total receipts this year is $I56m less than the increase last year, but the increase in personal taxation is SI 64m more than the increase last year. So there is no doubt as to where the money is coming from this year. It is coming from personal taxation - taxation raised on increasingly inequitable schedules now substantially unrevised for 17 years. But there are 2 other questions at least as relevant as the question: Where’s the money coming from? They are: How is it to be spent? and: What forms of government spending can bring about savings for the community or for individuals? This Budget is full of examples of how government savings increase private and community costs - how false economies for the government increase the burden to the consumer, the taxpayer, the Australian citizen.

Medical benefits increased by $27. 5m and hospital benefits by $17.7m - an increase of more than $45m - to prop up the Liberal Party’s inequitable and inefficient health scheme. Medical benefit contributions have risen over the last 2 years by up to 110 per cent and hospital benefit contributions by up to 35 per cent.

Spending on environment and the arts is reduced by nearly $lm. Presumably most of this reduction will be effected by postponing establishment of the Office of the Environment - deemed to be a matter of urgency by the former Prime Minister at the last Senate election and as recently as last Wednesday still awaiting ‘final approval’. He said then that the fight against pollution had to begin now - that was last November and he emphasised the immense but largely hidden costs to the whole community of unchecked pollution. He was right.

Payments for railway projects have declined from $34.9m in 1967-68 to $9.1 m - the smallest amount since 1960. Payments of interest and repayments of capital will be S9.5m in 1971-72, thus exceeding the Commonwealth’s outlay. Yet the urban transport systems are running into chaos despite massive increases in fares.

Payments for the Snowy Mountains Authority have declined from $47m in 1966-67 to $ 19.4m, but payments of interest and repayments of capital will be $36. 4m - nearly double the Commonwealth’s outlay. Here is the basis for a revolving development fund to build for Australia’s future. Yet Liberal budgets allow this financial asset to disappear in general revenue.

In the last year of the 1961-66 housing agreement the Commonwealth lent the States $117m and received back $53. 6m in repayments of capital and payments of interest. Last year, in the last year of the 1966-71 agreement, the Commonwealth lent $ 142.5m and received back $85m. Last session we were told that a conference was imminent between the new Minister for Housing (Mr Kevin Cairns) and the State Ministers for Housing to re-negotiate this agreement. It has not been done. The Ministers did not learn of it. I do not say that he was misleading us. He was not told. This year the advance to the War Service Homes Division will actually be reduced from $61m to $60m. Although the rate of interest is half as great and the period of the loan twice as long as in any other scheme, the payments of interest and repayments of principal will rise to $78m this year. This amount is classed as revenue in the Budget. The Government now receives enough in revenue each year from war service homes to end all the rationing schemes which the Menzies Government imposed on eligible ex-servicemen as far back as 1951 and 1962, It could extend the scheme to cover others who fall within Commonwealth responsibility.

Migrants form one of the largest such groups. The Budget reduces the number of assisted passages by 20 per cent. The cut-back should not be among migrants chosen by relatives, friends and employers but among those chosen by governments. The migrants who cost most and leave first are usually migrants chosen by governments. The government’s chief role should lie in the ass” stance, not the search, for migrants. We should allow a taxpayer to claim deductions for his dependants who arc still living overseas. We should allow a person who has become entitled to social services to live where he wishes without losing his entitlements. We should make it possible for government and non-government schools in migrant areas to employ additional teachers whom migrant pupils need.

The result of these false economies and false economics, the result of lack of programming, the result of lack of proper priorities, the result of wrong allocation of national resources, the result of Liberal failure to accept its proper share of responsibility for cities, schools and hospitals, the result of its sectional preference is this: We are rapidly creating in Australia not one but 3 nations. These 3 nations can be defined with almost geographic precision. They are: Firstly a handful of longestablished relatively affluent suburbs; secondly an increasingly depressed countryside; and thirdly the vast new growth of outer suburbs and the old inner suburbs with poor services and amenities, where most of our children and migrants live.

One result of the Liberal approach is that ordinary Australians no longer know which level of government they are to hold responsible for the growing inadequacy of the schools, hospitals, law enforcement agencies and other public facilities on which the quality of their lives depends. The buckpassing between the Commonwealth and the States under the guise of discussions on Commonwealth-State financial relations has eroded the foundations of democratic responsibility and accountability. The people fume in silence over the inadequacy of functions for which no level of government accepts unqualified responsibility.

No other advanced nation excludes from its Budget all mention of cities. The Treasurer would insist that the matters involved have no place in the lofty heights of Budget policy-making. Such things however, distort and burden our economy as much as any matter he has mentioned. Migrants find it ludicrous and Australians should find it shameful that 53 per cent of the population in Perth is still without sewerage, as are 34 per cent in Brisbane and 20 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne, over 1,600,000 people in all. Less than 2 years ago, the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ found it ludicrous, not to say shameful, that I should raise such a question as a national issue. One of my most prized and most used possessions is the series of editorials the Sydney Morning Herald’ has run in the last 18 months, since the last elections, demanding national aid for sewerage - one as recently as last week. If the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ can get over its constitutional constipation there is no reason why the national Government should not do so.

We should all find it remarkable that while the basic cost of running a car has increased in Melbourne over the last 10 years by 21 per cent, the running cost in terms of traffic delays has increased by 45 per cent. Whereas 10 years ago the average speed of traffic was below 25 miles per hour on 60 per cent of Melbourne’s arterial roads, it is now below 25 miles per hour on 85 per cent of those roads. What would all the industrial stoppages in Australia signify against the loss we sustain on our roads - the carnage, the chaos? These are costs - costs to the community - as relevant to the Parliament and to the community and to the individual taxpayer, as any item in your Budget. Within the public section, 63 per cent of the carriages currently used by Melbourne train travellers were built between 1910 and 1928 while 12 per cent were built even earlier. The price of building blocks in the areas by which they are serviced has risen over the last decade by 182 per cent to a median of $2,520 in Adelaide, $4,750 in Melbourne and $7,680 in Sydney. The CommonwealthState financial squeeze on local government obliges developers to provide services which 20 years ago were provided by municipalities and semi-government authorities themselves. The developers provide these services in the main capitals at a cost of $2,850 per average block. Income segregation, maintained in private housing developments by price and in government housing estates by the means test, separates the healthy, the wealthy, the able and the enterprising from those in whom all these attributes are less developed. This is the shape of urban Australia - 2 nations within single cities.

And what does this Budget propose for the second nation in my list? A programme for rural depopulation. The wool price support scheme is wool price sleight of hand. It reflects not a justifiable concern for the welfare of family farms impoverished through no fault of their owners, but the servitude of the Minister for Trade and Industry to large scale and corporate farming interests and the servitude of the Prime Minister to the banks.

Less than 15 per cent of Australia’s 92,000 woolgrowers produce 55 per cent of our annual wool clip. These 12,000 major growers will split up among themselves $33m of the Treasurer’s $60m appropriation while 80,000 smaller growers are left to share $27m. The big grower will receive on an average $2,750 and the smaller grower $337. Nor is this all. Payments to major growers whose debts in most instances are minimal or nonexistent will simply enhance a life style which has remained notably opulent. Payments to smaller growers who owe on an average more than the worth of their properties will pass directly into the hands of pastoral companies and banks. The Treasurer has produced a formula not for rural regeneration but for rural depopulation. Great pastoral properties often owned not by individuals but by companies will receive assistance they do not need while family farms are denied assistance without which they cannot survive. Our rural drift is to become an exodus. The Government hopes to see our present number of farms reduced within a few short years by half. It envisages not families but companies providing the backbone of rural Australia, and increasingly foreign owned companies at that.

The Treasurer proposes to smooth this process with an appropriation of $40m for what the Government describes euphemistically as rural reconstruction. Let certain things be clearly understood: The Government cannot denude the countryside of its population without producing a shift in the structure of society for which it is totally unprepared. We have neither means to compensate the dispossessed nor skills t.~> retrain them for secondary industry nor urban accommodation suitable for their resettlement. The social problems which arise inevitably when rural populations are forced overnight into an industrial workforce are ones for which we have made no preparation. Our already acute shortage of low income housing can only be made worse by a write-off of rural housing stock. I know there are some people in our cities who think that the countryside can jump in the lake. You cannot ignore the people of the country without adding increasingly to the problems of the cities. This has to be one nation.

The former Prime Minister acknowledged at least one of the most pressing problems of the family farmer. I think I heard the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Anthony), the senior man in the Ministry still remaining in the chamber, interjecting at this stage. It was astonishing earlier in the week at question time, though 3 questions were asked on decentralisation, that he was unable to report any progress on the Commonwealth-State Officials Committee on Decentralisation which his distinguished predecessor, Sir John McEwen, when he was Acting Prime Minister, persuaded the Premiers to set up in June 1964 at that year’s Premiers Conference. This Committee has not met since February 1969.

The former Prime Minister knew, perhaps from his own experience, that family farms cannot survive without proper access to long term, fair interest finance, and he promised therefore in his opening speech in the Senate election campaign that the Government would establish a rural finance insurance corporation. When I asked the present Prime Minister on Wednesday last why there was no provision for this project in the Budget, that right honourable gentleman revealed clearly by his response that he had never heard of it. He asked the Treasurer to answer the question and that honourable gentleman showed that he could dissemble better but knew no more. My Party has always recognised that farmers must be given access to the finance they require on terms they can afford to meet. The loans they receive must be for at least 20 years.

Our concern is not just with the falling price of wool or any other commodity but with the falling incomes of families who depend for a livelihood upon such commodities. We should see at least that farming families which have contributed so long and so well to our present prosperity are not denied a share of that prosperity while they wait for markets to recover or places to be created for them in other sectors of the economy.

Australia’s urban and rural problems, while daunting, are not insoluble. The aspirations of town and country are not, in this final third of the twentieth century, irreconcilable. Technology has opened the way for us to become al last one nation. Australians who once travelled 20 miles for the services of banks, lawyers, medical specialists, hospitals, shops and clubs will now as readily travel 100 miles for a greater variety and quality in all these things. By creating new cities in areas hitherto rural we can bring the convenience of town life to the farmer and the spaciousness of the countryside to his urban compatriot. We can preserve the family farm for those who value it by providing alternative sources of income within easy reach. The only way to retain and employ our rural population is to build or build up some large cities outside the present capitals. Creation of cities is the new decentralisation. It is the only decentralisation which can be justified in terms both of economics and common sense.

The Treasurer’s only reference to local government was incidental to his discussions of payroll tax. Rates are costing Australians $4.43 today for every $1 they cost 20 years ago. For every $1 paid in rates even 2 years ago we now pay $1.15. Despite these great increases the financial position of local government has deteriorated drastically. The Commonwealth owes less today than it owed in 1947 - that is the earliest postwar year for which one can get comparable statistics - whereas for every SI they owed in that year, the States now owe $4, municipalities $9 and semi-government authorities SI 2. in 1947 the debts of local and semi-government authorities were just one-quarter of those of the States. By 1968, the last year for which comparable figures are available, they were more than three-quarters of those of the States; in less than 5 years they will exceed those of the States. For every SI raised in revenue 20 years ago municipalities must now raise S3, and semi-government authorities $16. In 1947 the debt redemption payments of local government and semi-government authorities were about seven-tenths of those of the States. Today they are much more than double those of the States. They bear interest rates which have doubled in the last 20 years and are now the highest in Australia’s history.

It was against this background that the former Treasurer last September wrote to the Australian Council of Local Government Associations that it was for each State government to determine whether it should share with its local government and semi-government authorities funds provided last year by the Commonwealth to meet charges on $ 1,000m of State debts. In the same letter he went on to say that the question of local government financing is the responsibility of the State governments and that direct consultations between representatives of the Commonwealth and local government would be neiter proper nor profitable. At the same time the former Prime Minister wrote to the Local Government and Shires Association of New South Wales that, while the Commonwealth would be prepared to have its Treasury officials examine with State Treasury officials alternative possibilities for new growth taxes, any exercise along these lines would be restricted to the question of taxes for the States. Apparently the present Prime Minister, like his predecessor, has ignored or rejected the request by the Premier of New South Wales last year that the Commonwealth should provide matching grants for State government contributions to the Local Government Assistance Fund.

It is no longer acceptable for Federal Treasurers to introduce measures which will lead inevitably to higher local government rates and charges in the expectation that ratepayers will accept the burden and aldermen and councillors the blame. The functions and finances of the Commonwealth, the States and local government must now be balanced to ensure adequate services and development of resources.

My party’s new federalism envisages a framework of consultation and cooperation between the 3 tiers of government. The Commonwealth would have u greater share of administrative responsibility in those activities where increased expenditure is required. The local government and semi-government authorities would be directly involved in the financial decisions which the Commonwealth and the States have hitherto made on their behalf at the Australian Loan Council. The Commonwealth and State arrangements would be made on the recommendation of statutory commissions. The decisions concerning the local government and semi-government authorities would be made by a reconstituted Loan Council and Commonwealth Grants Commission.

Over a generation ago the Commonwealth Grants Commission was established to help the smaller States provide services equal to those of the larger States. Inequalities between regions are now far greater than any between States. A Labor government would now ask the Grants Commission to recommend the amount of Commonwealth assistance required to remove the inequalities in servicing our developing suburbs and regions. Since the Commission can meet in public and must make public reports, the public will be regularly and fully informed on the requirements of each region and the recommendations of the Commission.

I have spoken of this growth of 3 nations and 3 economies - the great economic and social divisions that must be bridged if we are to survive as one genuine nation. In each of these sections, in all parts of the nation, there are 2 groups which suffer particular discrimination, particular alienation: First the old, the widowed, the sick, the retarded - that enormous group of our fellow citizens who are wholly or mainly dependent on the community: “.nd, the young, the school children. Perhaps nothing so clearly demonstrates the bankruptcy of the Government’s social welfare policy than its gesture on pensions. And in a moment 1 want to say something about the Prime Minister’s personal breach of a solemn undertaking on this matter. But, as to the Budget provision itself, the increase does nothing more than to hold the line on pension values related to average weekly earnings. For pensioners the increase is just another instalment in the game of Budget politics. There can now be no justice, justice which will give dignity to pensioners, until we get away from the cash handout tied to Budget expediency that characterises the Liberal Government’s attitude to pensions.

The Budget is silent on the prospects for national superannuation, despite the persistent kite flying of the Minister for Social Services (Mr Wentworth). On 7th March the Minister promised that Cabinet would soon consider a national superannuation scheme. He said in reply to my colleague, the honourable member for Oxley (Mr Hayden): ‘You are really talking of things we have been mulling over for some time’. Then in May there was the decision of the faceless men of the Liberal Party, their Federal Council, in favour of an investigation of a scheme. What went unreported was the altercation in that closed gathering between the Minister and the Prime Minister. He rebuked his own Minister for mentioning national superannuation while Cabinet was undecided.

On 2nd July the Minister told a conference in Brisbane that it was only a matter of time before a national superannuation scheme was adopted. Yet today at question time in answer to my colleague the honourable member for Perth (Mr Berinson) we heard the death knell of national superannuation as far as the McMahon Government is concerned. The truth is that the present Prime Minister’s extravagant attacks during the 1969 election campaign on the ALP proposals for a national superannuation scheme have made it impossible for him to accept this principle. Meanwhile pensioners are forced to live at a subsistence level and other retired people on superannuation must suffer the inequities of the means test.

I pointed out very early in this speech that the Budget broke a dozen promises made on the Government’s behalf by the former Prime Minister in 1969 and again in 1970. But it breaks the very first promise that the new Prime Minister made - the first time he ever addressed the Parliament and the people as Prime Minister. He said in his first speech as Prime Minister in this House on 15th March 1971: _ We will follow this immediate increase in pension rates with a fundamental review of social services and related pensions and also of methods of adjusting such benefits. This review, which has already been commenced, will be under consideration in the near future with the object of bringing emerging decisions into effect for the year 1971-72.

No such decisions Have emerged. Honourable members will recall that this promise was the Prime Minister’s triumphant conclusion to an otherwise disastrous speech on the first censure motion on him. He has broken the very first pledge he ever made as Prime Minister to the Parliament and the nation.

The most blatant betrayal of the Government’s promises has been in education. Two years ago the then Minister for Education and Science informed the House that on completion of the nationwide survey of educational needs the Commonwealth and State Education Ministers would consider proposals for joint action to promote the further development of education in schools. At the House of Representatives election the former Prime Minister repeated this undertaking. Yesterday the Minister for Education and Science, on resuming office after 2 intervening incumbents, sought to escape from the undertaking by saying that the State governments had since been given access to a significant growth tax. The truth is that neither payroll tax nor any other growth tax available to the States can produce additional revenue at the rate of the increase in the student population.

The Education Ministers received the nationwide survey in May last year. In September they released a bowdlerised version of it. It revealed that Si, 143m in Commonwealth aid would be needed in the ensuing 5 years to meet the needs of government schools over and above the predictable resources available to the States. Subsequent announcements indicated that at least $2 64m would be similarly needed for non-government schools.

The student explosion at the universities is widely understood. The Commonwealth has undertaken a continuous commitment to cope with it in scholarships, salaries, buildings and equipment. The no lesser explosion in the top 2 classes of government and Catholic high schools is not so widely understood. The Commonwealth has made no similar commitment to cope with it. This Budget makes no additional provision to reduce the classes or to train the staffs in government and Catholic high schools. The disparities of opportunity will grow greater than they did last year when only 4.4 per cent of applicants for Commonwealth secondary scholarships in government schools, 6.9 per cent in Catholic schools and 15.6 per cent in other nongovernment schools were successful.

The increased number of tertiary scholarships in this Budget will continue a situation in which only 1 scholar in 3 at universities and 1 in 10 at colleges of advanced education receives assistance from the Commonwealth, in which only 1 applicant in 5 at universities and 1 in 20 at colleges can hope to obtain a Commonwealth scholarship.

The other education concession the Budget gives is precisely the one least needed and most unequal - an increase of $100 in deductions from taxable income. It is a concession to only the wealthiest - those at the very top of the top of our 3 nations. It perpetuates and extends the system of tax deduction where a man on $3,000 a year must spend $4 to get $1 back, whereas a man on $30,000 a year receives back $2 for every $3 he spends. Where is the money coming from, indeed? We know where it is going - privilege feeding upon privilege.

Only an objective and impartial national body can determine the allocation of Commonwealth aid. A Labor government will establish an Australian Schools Commission to conduct a continuing inquiry into all aspects of education, including the goals of pre-schools, primary, secondary, technical and special schools. Pending receipt of the Commission’s first report, we will assist government and non-government schools on the basis of the needs disclosed by the nationwide survey.

If the Australian people are to have faith in their system of government they must be given regular and reliable information on the finances available and the functions appropriate to each level of government. The present Budget is defective nol least because so many of the economic decisions most relevant to the lives of ordinary Australians are taken outside its context and therefore so readily can be concealed. The Budget nowhere mentions the crippling increases in health insurance contributions to which I have made reference already, it takes no account of increases amounting in the case of letter rate postage to 17 per cent and of local call telephone charges to 19 per cent announced separately by the Postmaster-General (Sir Alan Hulme). The Budget Speech glosses over the fact that an extra $50m in taxation is to be raised for the Post Office - not by Budget decision but nevertheless by an act of Parliament. It ignores the fact that for every $1 paid 2 years ago Australians now pay $1.15 in council rates, $1.25 in university fees and $1.50 in hospital charges. These are all increases dictated by federal policy and yet not one of them is mentioned either in this Budget or in last year’s Budget.

Members of the Commonwealth Parliament who seek information about most of the matters to which I have referred tonight are frequently fobbed off by Ministers with the answer that statistics are confidential, unavailable or available only on application to the States in which particular facilities happen to be located or particular functions discharged. Failure to collect proper statistical information and refusal to publish available information are favourite Liberal techniques for concealing the shortcomings of all our Government functions and arrangements and retarding their reform. Can we be surprised if a public which is so consistently denied information becomes disillusioned and alienated? Why should the public trust Ministers to understand and apply expert advice which they are so seldom willing to divulge? Liberal dislike of the Australian Universities Commission and Liberal resistance to the application of its approach in other areas of public expenditure are aspects of a consistent determination that the public shall not be informed. Under a Labor government the Commonwealth Grants Commission, and the Universities Commission which exist already, the InterState Commission which is at present dormant and the commissions for education, hospitals, conservation and construction and fuel and energy, which we shall establish, will all make periodic reports to every Parliament. I can imagine no prospect less palatable to conservatives than a continuing and objective appraisal of those public functions in which they so consistently under-invest. This Government will not trust the people. lt is this whole ramshackle structure operating so largely in such needless secrecy which is at the very root of the growing burden of costs and inefficiency in Australia. It is absurd to believe that the kind of economic juggling contained in an annual Budget like this one can be an effective instrument for either efficiency or justice. The Budget is a document produced by a divided Government which wishes to divide this nation. 1 pointed out last week the appalling truth that this Government, and in particular its Prime Minister, has a vested interest in bad things happening to this country. It is no coincidence that in the 5 months of his being Prime Minister, Australia has experienced social divisions and bitterness in a way and to a depth that even Vietnam, the most dreadfully divisive issue the nation has ever faced, failed to do in 6 years. And in this sense the Prime Minister is the true author of this document because the message it carries is one of division and bitterness - economic division, social division, industrial division. Because of its aims even more than its manifest failures it deserves not only the censure but the contempt of this House and this nation.

Mr BARNARD:
Bass

– 1 second the amendment and I reserve my right to speak later.

Mr Kevin Cairns:
Minister for Housing · LILLEY, QUEENSLAND · LP

– The economies of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Whitlam) have always had a certain mystic quality about them. One can only opine that perhaps this mysticism has received a deal at reinforcement as a result of some trips overseas. I would suggest that this mysticism is no substitute for the realities of an economic situation in which a Budget of this nature must always operate. The speech of the Leader of the Opposition contained many pages but probably the most significant part of it is the incredible eulogy of his friend, Mr Hawke, which has astounded honourable members on this side of the House and, I would think, all those who listened to his speech. In economic terms, the speech is perhaps worthy of one or two reflections.

Economic analysis is always conducted with respect to a pre-eminent principle, and the principle that is always pre-eminent, either in the short term or in the long term, is the relation of a supply, however determined, to a demand, however determined. They are often utilised and varied for causes of social justice and welfare, but they are pre-eminent. When one looks at the influence of Mr Hawke and the euology of Mr Hawke by the Leader of the Opposition perhaps one can only opine that the supply of support from Mr Hawke has become necessary for a continuous demand for the Leader of the Opposition. I am sure he has got it. But it is worth a little further analysis.

The argument that Mr Hawke and the Leader of the Opposition now go in tandem has been justified, because it has been said that the former gentleman helped in settling one or two industrial disputes. I would suggest that one swallow does not make a summer, and the influence of the said gentleman cannot explain away nearly 4 million man days of work lost within the last 2 years. Contrast him with the former President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. They are to be judged in broad, statistical, economic terms. If people do not work, as President de Gaulle found, goods are not produced and people are unable to buy them. Yet these men run in tandem in so many other ways. After all, a whole new philosophy is proposed within the industrial movement in Australia. A reformist tradition is to be thrown overboard. No longer is it desired to work within a conciliation and arbitration system in order to have work and in order to have goods produced. But these 2 gentlemen run in tandem.

The principles of the Webbs with respect to industrial organisations within a society of this type are thrown overboard. The Leader of the Opposition participates in throwing these principles overboard. And yet these men run in tandem. One other occasion on which they have run in tandem recently, perhaps like 2 Dukes of Plaza Toro, was at the time of a recent visit here of a sporting team. They induced their own members at a conference to respond actively. That did not mean to stay at home and watch the events on television. After inducing their supporters to respond actively in relation to the sporting tour both of these gentlemen found it necessary to go overseas at the same time - to lead their supporters to the barricade and go away. That is the type of social and economic philosophies which are enunciated by the Opposition. I could suggest one further thing which is worthy of reflection. Perhaps the Leader of the Oppostion is himself as terrified of the current President of the ACTU as are most Australian working men.

One further matter in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition which needs to be exposed is his reference to the Reserve Bank of Australia. As usual, he made a very highly selective reference to the Reserve Bank and quoted one sentence from page 36 of the Reserve Bank’s annual bulletin. He quoted:

Hence, it is harder to attribute the recent acceleration of inflation in this country to excess demand pressures.

Let me quote the further sentence as follows:

In fact, the recent impression, both in Australia and abroad, is of rates of inflation a little higher than might have been expected on the basis of past relationships between levels of activity and changes in priees

Therefore the Government has decided on an analysis similar to this not to impose a further demand-pressure cause of inflation on what is already a cost-push effect on prices in the economy. One further sentence on the same page reads as follows:

Even if there is a case for a wider range of policies, the importance of adequate demand management remains.

It always remains, and it has been ignored consistently by the Leader of the Opposition. After all, it is logical that he should ignore this because of the views of the advisers to Labor governments throughout the world, including Dr Balogh. Dr Balogh was the adviser to the Labour Cabinet in Great Britain for 4 years and to the Labour Prime Minister of Great Britain. He indicated in his annual address to the Fabian Society of the United Kingdom in 1969 that the Labour Government showed a perennial disability to deal with 16262/71- Jt-121) the excesses of demand in the British economy and so that economy floundered. The Leader of the Opposition would adopt the same principles as have been adopted by some of his confreres elsewhere.

Two errors of fact in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition need to be exposed. Early in his speech he indicated the extent to which his speech was written for him, the extent to which he did not understand it and the extent to which he has no comprehension whatsoever of what was said. He said that in the December quarter last year two-thirds of the increase in the cot-price index of 7 per cent aus attributable to the effects of last year’s Budget. This country has not had an inflationary rate of 7 per cent within a year for many years, let alone two-thirds of 7 per cent in one quarter. The actual detail was that 0.7 per cent of a rise of 1.9 per cent was attributable to those effects. What difference does a decimal point make? One other point that needs to be emphasised is that the Leader of the Opposition indicated that the Prime Minister (Mr McMahon), by his actions, was responsible for the States deciding to raise payroll tax from *2i per cent to 34 per cent. That is just not true. The decision was made independently.

Once again in economic matters the Leader of the Opposition has demonstrated an inability to distinguish between fact and fantasy. We known that of all the documents that come before a parliament probably none requires as much precise and clear analysis as a Budget. Of all documents, it has to situate itself more within the environment in which it operates than within any other environment. One cannot deal with fantasy. One has to deal with the facts of the situation. The facts of the situation are that the great Budgets that have been enunciated in other parliaments and in the Australian Parliament are those Budgets which are enunciated with some degree of difficulty. Let us go back to the early Budgets, such as the one in the House of Commons relating to the first developing income tax. This Budget is among those that have operated with some difficulty within recent years. Let me illustrate in broad terms what I mean. However the Leader of the Opposition might denigrate statistical analysis, it is appropriate. This is the third Budget with a very small deficit, which means that the Government has had to keep demand in some control. It is also a Budget which has had to increase substantially the domestic surplus, which in this Budget is something over $630m.

Honourable members might well ask: Why has it been found necessary to develop a domestic surplus of this size? It has been found necessary for a number of reasons, and these reasons are related to the very nature of the economy in which this Budget operates. The nature of that economy is that over the last year, in real terms, the growth of the national product, abstracting rates of inflation and other factors, has been rather slower than one would have desired. It has been slower because inflation has been greater than what has been desired. It is operating under some difficulty because the fate of private enterprise in this economy within the last year has been not to be as profitable as it has been in recent years.

Let me indicate the point that needs to be made. During the last year wages and supplements rose by something over 14 per cent. The returns to business rose by between 2 per cent and 4 per cent. There is obviously a gap and the gap that has occurred has not been passed on to the Australian community in terms of prices. This Budget will have the effect of, in a sense, causing the private sector of the economy to grow rather more quickly in this year than it has within recent years. So it is a Budget within the tradition of budgets that have been enunciated by this Government. There are expressions of the factors of difficulty that have faced the Treasurer in developing this Budget. The degrees of difficulty have to be borne in mind against 2 principles which ought to motivate a Budget analysis: What are the welfare provisions in it and what are the attitudes within that Budget to the position of human capital?

The Leader of the Opposition spent very little time dealing with the welfare provisions in this Budget, and well he might because within those economic constructions the welfare provisions have been real; they have Men generous and they have been just. I will just quote one or two details. The rise in the pension - the age pension - is one in a sustained series of rises in the pension in real terms which has never occurred before within Australian budgetary and economic history. This Budget has furthered that rise. The attitudes to family welfare, almost not mentioned by the Leader of the Opposition, in view of his adoption of a new, strange family code at Launceston, are well understood. But the attitudes to family welfare are also real in this Budget.

I would like to spend one or two moments on my own Department because what I have to say is appropriate. It has to be remembered that subventions with respect to housing in this Budget are the greatest subventions ever contemplated - not only ever granted - by. a government in Australia. The subventions with respect to housing ought to be understood. The new approach to Commonwealth housing enunciated in this Budget under which direct grants will be given to the States will continue to provide housing for the lower income groups. It will be much simpler than the arrangements under the present Commonwealth-State housing agreements. Moreover, there can be no denying that the financial assistance to housing now being offered to the States is sigificantly more generous in this Budget than that which was offered previously.

The offer is a basic grant of $2. 75m a year for 30 years in respect of each year’s housing activity. Let me repeat that: In respect of each year’s housing activity during the next 5 years. What does that mean in real terms? What does it mean in money? It means that for houses constructed by the State housing authorities or through recognised organisations such as the co-operative terminating societies there will be over $4 12m subvented to that housing programme by the Commonwealth Government, something not approached in real terms, not even contemplated, by former governments, in fact, between 4 and 5 times the level of real assistance ever given by a Labor government.

There are 2 further matters which need to be reiterated in respect of housing arrangements and they are these: In addition we propose to pay the States rental assistance grants amounting to $ 1.25m a year in each of the next 5 years. This is considerably more than the additional cost to the States of charging reduced rents in 1970-71. This increase has been broadly calculated to have been in the last year something in excess of $800,000. This offer of additional housing assistance is firm for the next 5 years irrespective of the benefits the States would receive if official interest rates were to decline from their present high levels. In addition the States will have access to an additional S3. 5m a year to build homes for civilian families in need of housing assistance as a consequence of the Commonwealth’s offer to provide advances to be used to construct dwellings for the families of servicemen. This meets a request by the States. Surely that is not the kind of new offer, made in an economic context of this type, which needs to be denigrated even half-heartedly by the Opposition.

There are one or two other points that probably need to be brought into line in respect of the Leader of the Opposition’s long discourse this evening. They are these. For many years Australia has had a high rate of growth. It has had a high rate of growth in real terms. It has had a high rate of growth for which this Government has been responsible. The Leader of the Opposition quotes the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as an authority for his proposals - and he has none - but as a senior authority for his proposals concerning inflation. Does he not realise that in the London ‘Economist’ of the most recent date projections from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development illustrate that by 1980 Australia is expected to have the highest living standards of all of those nations, except the United States of America? These are the most prosperous nations in the world. This kind of authority is ignored or once again he seeks to make selective quotations with respect to them.

I refer to one Other matter and it needs to be borne in mind. For many years the Leader of the Opposition made a passing reference to immigration. I have indicated that two of the welfare aspects of a Budget are its attitude to social welfare and its attitude to human capital. Immigration has been a great engine of growth within this country for many years and it has provided adequate increases, helpful increases to the work force each year. Without it we would not have had the growth that we have had. But the social philosophy of the immigration programme has been one which has influenced Australia socially as well as economically. Every immigration Minister, from the first Minister forward to the present Minister, has indicated that immigration in Australia provides a welcome addition to the natural increase in the Australian work force. The Leader of the Opposition meant to change not only Australia socially but also that form of addition to the Australian work force. Having regard to family code policies enunciated at Launceston, according to which the natural addition to the Australian work force following some second-rate left wing overseas intellectual proposition is to be reduced, he desires to increase immigration from non-European sources.

I merely say this: Two principles are involved here. He proposes that immigration no longer be an addition to the Australian growth programme; it is in fact to be a substitute for it. Opposition members cannot evade that charge. It is a change of a philosophy which is supported by the present shadow Minister for Immigration and was supported by the first Minister for Immigration in this country. The Leader of the Opposition has desired to embrace not only wholly new economic progress but also social programmes of which many in his Party are deadly afraid.

It has been my task tonight to look at the speech which has been written for and read by the Leader of the Opposition. The speech was short on simple economic analysis. It had 4 sections dealing with the politics of economics and I suggest that the politics of economics as far as the Leader of the Opposition is concerned is involved in that incredible eulogy of support for his friend, Mr Hawke; in his incredible misunderstanding of the real causes of inflation; in his inability to understand how inflation is to be cured; but above all, and perhaps most tragically, in his very wilful - and I merely say ‘wilful’ - misunderstanding of some of the very revered and respected analyses of the Reserve Bank.

Mr CREAN:
Melbourne Ports

– If ever there was a Budget that shows more clearly in the Australian context than others that things are claimed for Budgets that Budgets are not capable of sustaining, surely it is the Budget that is before us at the moment. It was claimed to be obsessed with the problems of inflation, and yet in its very structure it assumes inflation and feeds inflation by the indirect tax increases that it proposes. Then it applies a dose of deflation to those who I suppose are least responsible for inflation. The Government went out of its way not only in the course of the Budget Speech of the Treasurer (Mr Snedden) but in a number of answers to questions and statements that have been made in this House in recent days to see the real villains in the picture of continuing inflation as ruthless trade unions pursuing increases in wages.

I want to say something about one or two aspects of this claim. It seems to me to be a travesty of the industrial bargaining process to attempt, as many Government supporters do, to see union claims for increased wages as a case of lions leading donkeys to an annual picnic in the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission at public expense. That is a travesty of the circumstances that determine the wages of 90 per cent of those who derive incomes in Australia, as the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Whitlam) described. It seems to me that insidiously what is being assaulted here is not only the trade union movement but also fundamentally the integrity of the Arbitration Commission itself. On another occasion I quoted in this House the opinion of three of the judges of the Arbitration Commission, Sir Richard Kirby, Mr Justice Gallagher and Mr Justice Moore as expressed in the 1968 national wage case. In their judgment they said:

Wo all agree that in the present circumstances of full employment and in the absence of an incomes policy, it is just not practicable for increases in wages and salaries to be kept confined within productivity increases. To believe otherwise is to ignore what has happened and what is happening in other countries of the Western world.

It seems to me that that is the thesis that the Government is attempting to assault. I quote also some of the submission which the Commonwealth Government made in the national wage case of 1 970. The section on page 61 of the submission states that over the 15-year period from 1954-55 to 1969-70 the share of wages, salaries and supplements in terms of gross national product at factor cost has remained remarkably stable. It also states:

Arguments as to the trend over time can rely on the choice of base and end years; to avoid this problem a lest of the long term trend has been made -by fitting a least-squares trend line to the wages share for each of the years from 1954-55 to 1969-70. The trend shows a fractional increase-

I hope the Minister for Housing (Mr Kevin Cairns) sees where the decimal point is here - of- 0.024c per annum over the period - i.e., on. this trend it would take over 40 years for the share of wages in gross national product at factor cost to rise by 1 per cent.

The trade union movement is prepared to assert this kind of thesis and to say: ‘We have been able to hold what we have as our share of the total national product only by taking the sort of action that we have’. The only counter-claim that a government would be entitled to make - this Government is certainly not making it, and its failure to do so has only aggravated the problem - is: ‘If you had not done what you did, perhaps you might not have aggravated the situation as much as you have’. This is the kind of narrow confine in which it seems to me there is no answer that can definitely be said to be right or an answer that can be said to be definitely wrong in the circumstances.

It is rather difficult to evaluate a current Budget. All one can do is look at where the last one went wrong. There are many imponderables in the Budget, and the one that I want to come to in a moment - surely the most imponderable of all in the circumstances of today - is the rather vague item called the Budget domestic surplus. I will say more on that in a moment. Last year’s total growth performance in the Australian economy was the worst for several years and there is no denying that. To my mind that points to the failure of budgetary policy properly to regulate the allocation of total resources in the community.

The Minister for Housing should not have been very pleased with the results of dwelling construction last year. Table 8 on page 1 8 of the Budget document entitled National Income and Expenditure 1970-71’ expresses the result in terms of what are called constant prices, using the year 1966-67 as the common denominator. Building construction last year was actually less than for the previous year.

Mr Irwin:

– How much less are we’ getting?

Mr CREAN:

– Something like S30m in real terms. The star performers in the economy last year were the finance companies. Again I submit that honourable members should examine the figures very carefully and look at the performances of company incomes which are delineated on page 8 of the document on national income and expenditure. Whilst the income of trading companies as a whole fell in 1970-71, there was one group of companies whose performances rose spectacularly. I refer to the finance companies, whose aggregate income increased from $240m in 1969-70 to $286m in 1970-71, whereas the total income of companies in other fields fell by $68m to $2,908m in 1970-71.

We can again see what has happened to the economy when we look at the figures on private investment in Australia. Taken in 2 forms, firstly in terms of actual prices last year and then related to this constant price factor, they show that what looked to be an increase of $32m in private building construction this year as against last year was actually a decline of $3 3m when related to real prices. Similarly in the field of other new buildings, that is, the kind of skyscrapers that are talked about as against hospitals and so on, there was an increase from $1,1 14m to $ 1,400m. Even corrected for the price factor, the figures showed an increase from $l,005m to $l,184m, while the figure relating to factories and so on rose by a matter of only $100m. I submit that Australia is allowing financial manipulators to dictate the balance and the direction of the economy. This is an area where the Government should take the initiative. If ever anything points realistically to the need for a lowering of interest rates in Australia, or at least a selectivity of them, in relation to dwelling construction, the results achieved by the finance companies do. The same sort of conclusion can be drawn from the report of the Reserve Bank of Australia 1970-71 from which the Minister for Housing quoted. On page 13 of that report, we read the statement:

Heavy expenditure on office construction and in mining and related manufacturing industries such as refining and smelting was primarily responsible for the strong growth of private non-dwelling investment in 1970-71. Spending on private nonresidential building and construction rose by about 25 per cent at current prices and 17 pec cent in real terms.

In real terms the number of luxury offices, banks and so on being errected has increased while construction of dwelling houses has fallen. The other item which fell in the total performance of the economy last year was the expenditure in real terms on public investment. It fell from $2,430m to $2,422m. This is all revealed in the document entitled ‘National Income and Expenditure 1970-71’. Education, health and so on suffered but there was no shortage of building construction on every corner of every city square. Dozens of them are being built. This development can clearly be seen. I suppose this is all office space. Goodness knows what will happen to it if certain things happen to the economy in the next 12 months.

What I should like to do in my remaining time - and 20 minutes is a very short time in which to try to do this sort of analysis - is to refer to a table in the document entitled ‘Statements attached to the Budget Speech’. On page 15 of that document under the heading ‘The Financial Year 1970-71’ there appears what I would call a mysterious item called the ‘Budget Domestic Surplus’, upon which so much seems to be hung these days but about which most people know so little. If ever there is a mystery as to where the money is coming from, the mystery is here. What will be the sources or the composition of the $630m that is described in this glorious term ‘Budget Domestic Surplus’. All that the words ‘Budget Domestic Surplus’ mean - we get some indication of it from the text - is that it is the surplus which is withdrawn apparently from total activity and which the Government instead of private endeavour spends. But let us look at the imponderables that are embraced in this. It is the end result of a combination of factors. The ‘Budget Domestic Surplus’ appears in the table not as a plus but as a minus. It is $458m. The table shows that one item, ‘Reserve Bank Holdings of Gold and Foreign Exchange’, rose during the year by $798m. Would any honourable member like to make a prediction tonight as to what will happen to that item in the course of the next 12 months?

The other item which is of some significance and which is made up in the table of a series of pluses and minuses is

Holdings of Commonwealth Securities by the Non-Bank Private Sector’. Last year, this item rose by $277m and, again, was referred to in tie report of the Reserve Bank. Will that item be as great this year as it was last year? Will the economy be so stimulated that sums of that kind will be available from private spending to be devoted to public spending? As the Leader of the Opposition suggested, I think it is time there was more planning in the Australian economy. But the word ‘plan’ in this context is still a dirty word to some people. If ever a lesson was highlighted in the last year it was the extent to which funds flowing into this country from overseas undid what was sought to be done by monetary policy in the economy. Nobody is quite sure why these funds are coming into Australia and to where they are going. Even the Government, when it introduced its adjustment measures in February of this year, drew attention to the fact that it thought that much of this money was going into the type of building construction that I have mentioned. Mind you, the Governments only thought that this was so.

Why does the Government not know? What is wrong with the control of capital, particularly foreign capital which comes into this country? What is wrong with the policing or the controlling of this capital? Why cannot the Government tell where it is going? Why should not some conditions be set as to whether it should come? Yet the Government says that it thinks some of this capital is going into this type of building construction. One does not need to go very far to find where the capital is going. In debates in this House last year, I mentioned that the ‘Economist’ was advertising every week that it was possible to send money to Australia and earn from 9i per cent to 101 per cent mortgage. I do not believe that Australia’s economic development is best encompassed by mortgage money at high rates of interest. I think Australia’s economic devolpment is best encouraged by having development financed at the lowest possible rate of interest in the circumstances. One of the reasons we were given for this money flowing into Australia last year was that it was thought that the interest rate obtaining here was better than that obtaining anywhere else. Was that not a good reason for lowering interest rates? lt seems to me that there is a number of portents in the present situation. Presumably, we will not know for another 24 hours or 36 hours what will happen as far as currency is concerned. But, surely, if so much reliance is placed on this rather odd item, ‘Budget Domestic Surplus’, at least let honourable members on the other side of the House who study these things look at the components of this item last year and ask themselves: ‘Is this a good augury for the future?’.

As far as inflation is concerned, the Treasurer refers to the fact - this is implied in the Budget several times - that average incomes are likely to continue to rise at the same rate this year as they have in previous years. But, if inflation continues, an obligation .will fall upon the Government to do something about those elements which form ‘dropout categories’ in the process. The first 2 categories of ‘dropouts’ resulting from inflation are those on fixed incomes, not only social service recipients but also those who receive superannuation payments. I received today a letter which was written to me by a pensioner who asked: ‘Why should not my pension rise immediately? Why should I have to wait until legislation is passed when already the prices of petrol, bread and many other commodities have risen in anticipation of the passage of legislation enacting these provisions of the Budget?’ I think that that pensioner has a point. Equally, those people who are on superannuation, who have paid into funds and who believed that their payments ought to return a real purchasing power have been robbed also.

The third element which has dropped out in this process is Commonwealth-State financial relations. Whatever was thought to be done in the last Budget, in aggregate the expenditure on capital developoment at public level - I repeat that that means schools, hospitals, public transport and the like - actually declined last year while finance companies enjoyed a bonanza year. I think that it is high time that this kind of near banking mechanism was subject to the same controls as is banking proper. There is nothing to stop the Government taking this action and it would have the support of all in this House if it tried to do so.

Dr SOLOMON:
Denison

– It is tempting to speak of purely economic matters in this Budget debate but the reference by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Whitlam) to the vulpine interjection of the Prime Minister (Mr McMahon) moves me first to deal with his accipitrine observations and concerns. For those unfamiliar with the word ‘accipitrine’, it means hawklike. The Leader, of the Opposition roved and ranged widely over a number of matters which I found of extremely interesting concern to me. He made a number of revelations such as, for example, that politics is tied to economics in the Budget. Whoever thought otherwise? He sees it, in fact, as the final document in the process of de-Gortonisation. That, of course, suits his convenience, but it does not alter the fact that the Budget is designed to reduce anti-inflationary processes and, in fact, is almost totally irrelevant to the matter of any divisiveness which he thinks he sees in the Government ranks.

He is concerned greatly that we have become and are increasingly becoming a nation of employees. He did not bother to explain why that worried him - why we find ourselves in the same situation as the great majority, in fact all, of the other nations. He sees great sectors of secondary industry - I think I quote him aright - which have not contributed to inflation. J should like more elaboration of that point. Which great sectors of secondary industry have not contributed to inflation?

He foresees increasing unemployment. I suppose not many members of this House would wish to see increasing unemployment, but in relation to the forces that are at work it may be one answer to the sorts of things which the Leader of the Opposition himself is instigating. He sees that extra charges which are payable as a result of this Budget will hit later. The hammer will fall, the axe will fall, 9 months hence. I presume he is thinking of company tax and allied matters. Surely the people concerned will make some provision for such payments and will not read the Budget speech and the Budget in 9 months time.

Let me come to a really telling point for the people of Tasmania, not to mention others. The Leader of the Opposition makes the magnificent observation that Mr

Hawke’s money-saving strike-solving operations have been in the interests of the populace at large. Tell that to the people of Tasmania. Tell that to the people of my electorate. Tell that to the businessmen and the consumers of Hobart, and see how much they are convinced about Mr Hawke’s strike-solving actions. Talk to them about the stewards’ strike that held Tasmania to ransom for two or three weeks. Tell the men about the promise of no further dis.sention or involvement in these strikes, especially when 2 weeks later the next strike occurred. True, in due course Mr Hawke did solve the problem, but a heck of a lot of damage was done before that happened.

The Leader of the Opposition tells us of Mr Hawke’s forcing the Government into resale price maintenance - on the whole a good operation, one believes; that is to say, the legislation in that regard. But could he tell us more about the very small curtailed range of goods in particular lines held by Bourke’s stores - a mere handful of ranges of goods - whereas a firm such as Myers, for which I have no particular brief but it makes a contrast, has, say, $1,000 or so outlaid in 100 or more different lines, colours and sizes? Because the thing is appropriated by our St Georges of resale price maintenance at that level, the whole process becomes gummed up, and a line cannot be supplied in the same way to the people who have been supplying it in larger measure. So let us hear about some of those things.

Of course there were other matters in the 70 minutes of the speech of the Leader of the Opposition to which I should refer. For example, his near final remark that here we have a divided government wishing to divide the nation. He speaks in the best of holier than thou attitudes. He speaks, I presume, from the position of one who has instigated physical demonstrations in relation to Vietnam and in relation to the Springbok tour. If those things are not divisive of nationalism or of national unity then I have a lot to learn.

However, I want to come to what 1 regard as even more important matters that the Leader of the Opposition dealt with and, in particular, after a breathless 40 minutes or so of his speech we got to the point which I was in fear of his ignoring this year, because he made much of it last year and in a basic sense I agree he should have made something of it. This is what he calls our 3-nation situation. He is, in fact, so bold as to describe it as a matter of almost geographical precision. He speaks, first, of our affluent suburbs; secondly, of our depressed rural areas and, thirdly, of our depressed suburban areas. As I say, I cannot agree more that it is a matter fit to be raised. I regret that there is no more direct reference to it in this Budget or, in fact, perhaps in any other, although there are indirect references in relation to grants made in respect of roads and things of that nature, not to mention social services and other things which affect the populace in the cities as much as or more than those in the rural areas. But it would help greatly, in my view, if the Leader of the. Opposition understood somewhat more what he was talking about, because to define our country into 3 geographical areas of that kind totally ignores the functional integration between city centres and suburban areas - the whole process of urbanism and urban living which is now world wide, begun in a thorough going modern way in the 19th century with the industrial revolution in Britain and has now spread to this country almost as much as to any other. But to describe the situation as he did indicates a considerable lack of recognition of the things which tie together these particular areas which he has identified. He describes our lack of mention of cities as perhaps unique in national budgets. Whether or not that is true, I cannot say.

He talks much of the rising price of land. As I heard him, he appeared to me to be repeating the oft repeated Party assertions of, in particular, the honourable member for Reid (Mr Uren). While what he says is true, and while there is a case to be made for holding down the increasing prices of land as they affect every man’s budgetary position, he still does not understand, he begs the question or makes invalid comparisons, because the basis of what he is talking about is the sort of thing the honourable member for Reid talks about - the block of land in the centre of a city is now a great deal dearer than it was 20 years ago. He tells us that these days people, particularly those in the younger age groups, have fallen on hard times. In saying so he totally ignores the advent of the automobile and the advent of the capacity of young people to buy those things and other things on hire purchase, and the fact that they no longer have to live on that block of land near the centre of the city. So it goes on. Much of the sort of thing which comes to us from the Leader of the Opposition and which is only half truth at best, needs to be explored.

He talks - again properly, I believe, in relation to this theme because the two are interrelated - of our programme of rural depopulation. He talks further of pastoral properties owned by companies. As I understood him, he seemed to find that a matter of relatively recent advent - a matter et some concern for having happened. If he cares to look at something more he can read Heathcote’s book ‘Back of Bourke’. He will find that the company ownership Of properties back of Bourke has been going on for about a century and is very well documented, for a sample area, in that book. The Leader of the Opposition goes on and brings us down somewhere - 1 do not know where it falls within his 3-nation concept - to the level of local government problems and local government debts. Surely he recognises that these are within the province of the States. How, in a 3-tier system, it can be laid at the door of the Commonwealth Government without bypassing the responsibility of the States is difficult to understand.

The Leader of the Opposition passed to the proposition that inequalities between regions arc greater than those between States. I should like to see the documentation of that. He. suggests that this again is a Commonwealth responsibility. Much as I sympathise with the view of reducing certain inequalities, surely within the structure we have this is a State responsibility to a substantial degree. This is no playpolitics argument; it is a sheer political argument in the purest terms. Surely in the structure we have, the responsibility for reducing inequalities between intrastate regions can hardly be said to be a responsibility of the Federal Government. 1 will leave that point for a moment and deal with another major area which the Leader of the Opposition touched during his speech. It is the question of education. I was extremely disappointed to hear the way in which the Leader of the Opposition dealt with this problem. He spoke of broken promises, of a nationwide survey, of concessions to the wealthy and so on. Let me deal more specifically with those points. I will leave the subject of broken promises to the judgment of others. He referred to the nationwide survey in a totally uncritical manner in the same way as has now been repeated and regurgitated for about a year by various organisations interested, as we all are in this chamber, in the process of education. The Leader of the Opposition dealt with the survey in wilful ignorance of the fact that in the distribution of Federal finance to the State Governments one year ago particular reference was made to the fact that the considerable increase of the order of 10 per cent to IS per cent was made on the basis that education was among those major fields that needed more finance. This fact has been totally, and I suggest, wilfully ignored. I do not know whether the honourable gentleman mentioned a precise figure, but a figure of $ 1,400m has been referred to again and again during the last year.

The Leader of the Opposition dealt in a totally uncritical way with the survey of needs. I was tremendously disappointed to hear him refer to the additional $100 income tax deduction for education expenses in the terms: ‘It is a concession to the very wealthy; those at the top of our three nation structure’. I, and a lot of people like me, had parents who were schoolteachers, people of religion, or clerks. We were sent to private or church schools by the considerable sacrifice of our parents. For what it is worth, my father was earning about £6 a week when he sent me to such a school. But the fact is, rightly or wrongly, that many parents believe it is worth spending their money - more than they can afford on some occasions - to do just that. I find it a very cheap reference by the Leader of the Opposition although I do not take personal offence at the remark. But I find it a cheap reference to all those parents who make sacrifices to send their children to religious schools. It is utter imbecility on the part of the Leader of the Opposition to suggest that only the very wealthy send their children to schools for which they pay fees in addition to the taxes they already pay to help to run the state school system. I do not have time in this debate to range over the whole field of educational inequalities. I find it extremely depressing that a person with such a degree of training, insight and apparent intelligence as the Leader of the Opposition has should make that sort of cheap reference to a matter which is of great help to people who need that assistance. 1 have said that I have allowed myself to be drawn into the ambit of the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition because of some of the things he has said in relation to the Budget and to drift away, for the time being, from the purely economic matters. I wish to devote the few remaining minutes available to me to some of those economic matters. The Treasurer has said that the basic purpose of the Budget is to counter inflationary tendencies in the economy. The subject of those inflationary tendencies has been argued. A Reserve Bank report of recent vintage has been quoted to suggest that the Treasurer may, in fact, be acting on wrong advice. It is very difficult for a layman such as 1 to assert which of these things is absolutely correct. However. I wish to quote from the most recent Treasury Information Bulletin of July 1971. The opening sentence reads:

The general picture is one of moderate growth in both output and demand accompanied by a strengthening of inflationary tendencies.

It may be that the whole of the Treasury is wrong. That has probably happened on occasions. But the plain fact of the matter is that at the very best there are conflicting opinions, and at the very worst, the Treasurer has some fairly substantial opinion behind him.

Dealing with the question of inflation, it has been generally assumed in Australia in post-war times that increases in costs should and can be passed on by management to the consumer. Insufficient price consciousness among those consumers, which include honourable members, and an increasing concentration of our industrial production - through takeovers in particular but by other means also - have made our industries less inclined than they might otherwise be to offset increased costs by greater efficiency or productivity. When productivity increases, as sometimes it does, and unit costs of production are reduced those reductions axe rarely passed on to the consumer in the form of decreased prices. For the benefit of honourable members of the Opposition, I presume that they are aware that I am for the moment criticising managerial techniques. More often than not the savings so made by reducing unit costs of products are expended on the promotion and distribution of the goods produced. No doubt honourable members could cite many examples. I will take a mundane one. I will take the product dental floss which some people use to clean their teeth. ‘About a year ago a small tube of that product could be purchased for 10c or 20c: No longer can that be done. It is now packaged in a form which costs 50c or more. It is done up in a very nice cellophane and cardboard package by Johnson and Johnson or other manufacturers. One cannot purchase a smaller piece of dental floss. One has to distinguish between what is hygienic, what is convenient and what is sheer luxury. I submit that that sort of instance is a wasting of resources in the promotional field. It is not needed to sell the product and it does nothing for anybody. In America the situation has been reached where supermarkets sell only large units of packaged goods and no small units. If the average passerby wishes to purchase less than a dozen of something, he cannot do so. He may wish to purchase only one article. We have not yet reached that stage in Australia and it is a situation we should aim to avoid. The recent introduction of legislation dealing with resale price maintenance and restrictive trade practices, coupled with the advent of discount houses, should assist the consumer by their support of the competitive element in commerce. I suggest that is something which is not incapable of resurrection. The maintenance of demand at high levels for many years in Australia, aided by government and banking measures for the most part has almost removed the inclination of industrialists to use price reduction as a means of stimulating demand. Any temporary decline in demand does not now produce price reductions to the consumer. The producer tends to wait out the period for the return to normal conditions. I believe that that is something capable of improvement.

The other side of the coin is the matter of wage rates. In a situation of increasing productivity, as we have seen created in recent times, demands are made for increased wage rates. The effect of these demands in some areas of the economy can be catastrophic, particularly for pensioners and others on fixed incomes. In homes for the aged, for example, 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the costs are in labour. Substantial increases in labour costs can send such institutions to the wall. Arising out of this a situation develops in which the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission clearly regards this process of increasing productivity leading to increasing wage demands as a reasonable expectation. A chain of events develops such as that outlined as long ago as 1959 by Dr Coombs: Productivity increases and wage earners want to share in it, not recognising that a fall in prices will give them a share. So they seek higher wages. The next step is that the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, or its equivalent, will approve increased wages in accordance with the growing per capita output. Next, industrialists and traders are reluctant to lower their prices in response to increased productivity. So the wage earner can improve his lot only by seeking an increase in wages. Next, wages rise. The resulting increase in costs of production are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. As a consequence the benefit of the wage increase becomes illusory. To quote Dr Coombs:

Fundamentally prices rise because too many people wish them to rise and too few are anxious to resist.

Honourable members opposite may not believe that but it appears to be so. So what is required is a change of attitude among producers - perhaps excepting primary producers at this stage - among wage earners and, in fact, among consumers. A change of attitude in all these people is needed to counteract progressive inflation, and in fact it is difficult to see how such a cycle cr such a spiral can be counteracted in a permanent fashion unless all those elements in the community show a willingness to change their attitudes and hold hard in the interests of themselves in the short run and the economy of the nation in the long run.

Mr GRASSBY:
Riverina

– I rise to support the amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Whitlam) and his condemnation of the Budget. The

Leader of the Opposition said tonight that the policies of the Government have split Australia into 3 parts. This Budget will further split the nation and worsen the artificial crisis which has been foisted on the countryside. The Government keeps referring to excessive demand. The former Treasurer has even talked of a shortage of land and there is increasing reference to the problems of over-population. Yet the Australian countryside today is dotted with towns that are losing population. They are full of empty houses and empty shops. One town has abandoned its annual show and in the football State of Victoria one proud little community for the first time in this century could not find enough young men to field a football team. Unemployment is rising. There is a stream of rural refugees to the city and those who remain in some of the rural areas struggle on unemployment benefits which are 20 per cent of the average weekly income. While many roads remain dust tracks dotted with pot holes in many places in rural Australia able bodied willing young men are condemned either to subsist on 20 per cent of their usual pay, stand in the sun on the street corner and do nothing or head for the city.

One builder in a small western town who used to have 50 men working for him had one left when I last called, and he was weeding the garden. The root of the crisis lies in the agricultural sector. Wilcannia wool grower, Mr Bob Hudson, who came to Canberra the other day for the Ivanhoe Survival Committee, is an example of what has happened. On 140,000 acres carrying 20,000 sheep there is now no-one employed. All maintenance work has stopped and no improvements are contemplated or possible. The Treasurer (Mr Snedden) paid some passing attention to this situation in his Budget Speech. But I was shocked that he should find the impact of the lost rural earnings restricted to rural communities. I am deeply concerned that he has not acknowledged that the country’s troubles today are- the nation’s troubles of tomorrow. It is my intention to demonstrate this inter-dependence and to pose basic policies to end what is demonstrably a false crisis, a needless depression in the Australian countryside at this time.

But first let us examine the papers on national income which the Treasurer used as the basis for his budgeting and then establish what the Government intends to do about the crisis in half the nation. The basic fact which emerges from them is that profits of trading companies have declined but that those of finance companies have increased. The only major leap forward in the nation’s profitability has been registered by those who manipulate and handle finance. In terms of overall economic growth, contrary to the glowing references by the Government to the nation’s performance, we have in fact once again registered the lowest growth but one among the major nations of the West. But we should not be surprised at this. In the last decade Australia has been almost permanently in second last position rating behind Japan with 10.1 per cent, Italy with 5.3 per cent, West Germany with 4.7 per cent, France with 3.9 per cent, the United States, with all its troubles, wih 3.2 per cent, while Australia’s average over the 10 years was 2.8 per cent. Australia, which prides itself on its image of virile expansion, has an economy so arthritic that we usually rate behind the tiny Republic of Ireland in terms of economic growth. The fact is that Australia’s economic problems stem from the misapplication of resources. For the second year in succession investment in new high rise offices to house more clerks and bits of paper has exceeded $3 00m.

We now have a situation where in the past 5 years the percentage of the work force handling money and property has risen by 31.25 per cent - 50 per cent more than those engaged in production. Perhaps the most disastrous decision made by this Government - I do not blame the Treasurer for not mentioning it - was to raise the interest rate. This gave the greatest single boost to inflation and to the distortions in the Australian economy which put a premium on speculation and the heaviest cost burdens certainly on .real production in either the primary or secondary spheres. Against this background the Treasurer brings down a budget which he claims is meant to contain inflation though he said we have had it for some time and he saw nothing wrong with that. Yet inflation in the past 7 years has added 20 per cent to the costs of the primary producer. Inflation has added more to his costs than have wage increases. But what has the Treasurer done about inflation? In the name of fighting inflation and bringing down costs he has brought down a Budget which increases costs and charges which bear particularly severely on the rural half of the nation. It will cost more to write letters, more to telephone and more to travel; every means of communication so vital in the countryside has been subjected to an increase in cost.

The Budget papers envisage cost rises of no less than 9 per cent in the ensuing year. This is inflation with a vengeance. The Treasurer’s answer is to increase a whole range of costs, to administer the medicine as before in relation to nearly every activity of State arid keep a domestic surplus df $630m, presumably in case of an election. So the strategy is to dampen down Australia’s economic growth - already one of the lowest among the advanced nations of the Western world - ignore the needs for upgrading education, health and welfare services and to take no effective remedial action to end the rural slump. But the Government claims, and I quote from the Treasurer’s Budget Speech, that it has: . . given high priority to measures aimed at giving support to farmers whose enterprises are basically viable but who are burdened with an excessive amount of short term debt or whose properties could be with advantage built up to a larger size.

What do the Government’s brave words amount to? It has rested its claims to be helping the countryside on 2 main handouts, as the suburban lobby likes to call them.

The first is the Government’s much vaunted rural reconstruction scheme. What does it really amount to? Let us take New South Wales as an example. It actually imposes the toughest conditions for rural reconstruction that New South Wales has had for 2 generations. The Commonwealth dictated higher interest rates and shorter term lending. The actual amount of money in a full year available in New South Wales for debt adjustment and carry on purposes is $4m. The Commonwealth itself spends $328m on stationery, travel and fixing up the offices. But this is for the whole State in a full year and we find 1,000 primary producers are now in the queue with the Rural Reconstruction Board dealing with about SO a month and lucky if it can help 80 families a year with debt adjustment and build-up. Woe betide the man who finds himself in a situation caused by the Government’s interest rate hike. This has influenced many lenders not to renew mortgages on rural land but to call up the money and put it into purely speculative development in city areas. In other words, money has been taken out of production and put into pure speculation. If the first mortgage in such cases is too high - not in relation to productivity or value of assets but just too high for the inadequate funds available - the applicant is refused - not because he is a bad risk, not because he is uneconomic but because the board just does not have the money.

Rural reconstruction is a lottery which, under the present conditions, only a few can win. It has been estimated that in Victoria only 10 per cent of those applying can be helped because of the Commonwealth’s ruthless provisions. Let us turn to the build-up provisions. The Commonwealth demands a profit for itself of more than 6 per cent. The Commonwealth is hell bent on making a profit out of rural hardship in this scheme because it has required and forced the States to charge double the old interest rates. But what it means is that the primary producer, under the Commonwealth Government’s build-up scheme, would have to show a return on capital of between 9 and 10 per cent to survive. This is just not possible. So the answer is that the carry-on stage of the scheme is a lottery with a doubtful prize at the end and the build-up segment is a farce. If honourable members think I use strong words I can quote the Victorian Minister for Lands who calls the scheme a disaster and the Liberal Party member for Albury who said it was a fizzer or a damp squib. So the Commonwealth stands today with a scheme that is not a rural reconstruction scheme at all but a smokescreen for the destruction of the rural sector. It will force 100,000 people into the cities; it will swell the stream of refugees from the rural half of the nation.

But the Treasurer also referred to the other great rural decision of his Budget, the wool subsidy scheme. Once again the

Government has double crossed the wool industry. Ministers toured the countryside to address carefully arranged meetings attended by more than 6,000 people who demanded an acquisition scheme. They double crossed them by seeming to accept it and then giving them a wool commission tied hand and foot by Government dictation as to its selling and freedom of operation. The second double cross came when the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Anthony) and his associates pretended to fight for a reserve price of 40c a lb for wool. They did not fight for it and they did not get it. They have produced instead a scheme which will help the rich get richer and the struggling family wool grower will receive practically no benefit at all. In fact, the Minister for Primary Industry has indicated that 10 per cent of the wool which only needs some simple scouring in decentralised plants in the countryside will be banned from the scheme altogether. This means that in low rainfall western areas the Minister is giving the family wool grower the kiss of death.

In fact, at this particular stage we should examine the rural debt. The breakdown of the $2,095m rural debt, for the latest period available to me, is: Major trading banks, $998m or 47.6 per cent of all debts; pastoral finance companies, $349m or 16.7 per cent of all debts; Commonwealth Development Bank, $176m or 8.4 per cent; assurance societies, $128m or 6.1 per cent; ex-service settlement schemes, $80m or 3.8 per cent; and State banks and other government agencies, $364m or 17.4 per cent. Let me sum up the rural debt. More than 90 per cent of the rural debt is held by public and private banks and by pastoral finance companies. So the wool subsidy will be much less than 36c per lb when one takes out the increased brokers fees, the increased fees charged by the Australian Wool Commission and the 10 per cent of the wool which has been banned from the scheme.

The subsidy will not only be less than 36c per lb; it will go directly to those who hold the debts. More than 50 per cent of all the $60m involved will go to only 10 per cent of growers. The family wool grower may receive a few hundred dollars while the pastoral finance companies to whom he is in debt will receive, in some cases, $100,000 direct from the Government for sheep they own, and they may decide that the family grower on their books will receive none of the money due to him personally; they may decide to retain it and apply it with the rest of their profits to buying up ice cream firms in the city. There is no guarantee that the family producer will receive very much at all from the subsidy payment.

But the venerable British Tobacco Co., which was first incorporated in England in 1904, will do very well. Here is a company with its birth in English tobacco, its interests in Hong Kong printing, and its use of profits to acquire Australian companies manufacturing and distributing frozen foods, soft drinks, beer and cordials. It does not sound much like the traditional wool grower whom we are supposed to be helping. But let me complete the picture. The British Tobacco Co. made a net profit of $ 12.2m and paid a dividend of 14 per cent last year, and with between 20 and 25 huge properties spanning between 2 million and 3 million acres, it could be eligible for thousands of dollars from the scheme which was conceived, so we were told, to help the poor, struggling grower.

The story is the same with other similar companies. The industry itself has told the Government that the 36c per lb wool subsidy will result in 100,000 people being forced like refugees to the city. The Government has promised a loan of up to $1,000 to rehabilitate displaced families. These people have spent a lifetime of work in the countryside, and the Government will give them a loan of $1,000 at interest rates to be fixed. It is contemptible and insulting to the people. But this is what the Government has said; this is its policy. We have the position where the Government has determined on a course which will force 100,000 people from the countryside across the nation. The Government has made its decision; the Budget confirms it. The Government says: ‘Give them sympathy and a whisky and send them home while we press on with rural destruction.’ It is being successful in this. Wool production fell by 10 per cent last year, and 5 years more of the present Government and its present policies and it will have succeeded in cutting back wool production by 50 per cent.

The Government’s actions indicate its. conviction that the rural sector is expendable and its belief that we can rely on minerals to fill the gap left by its demise. But the facts give the lie to this assumption. According to the Government’s own figures, minerals will not equal agriculture until 1985. A downturn in agriculture therefore means a downturn in total trading, and Australia could be short of foreign currency. Our present substantial overseas balances could disappear as a consequence of the present world currency crisis which makes the Budget already out of date. It is obvious already that our dollar is being temporarily revalued in effect by up to 3 per cent. An upward revaluation will make it tougher to sell, and it exposes the already beleaguered manufacturing sector to great difficulties in this regard. It will also impose tough conditions on the sale of primary products. So there is a real danger we could be short of foreign earnings and might have to cut imports of metals, tools, petroleum, wood paper pulp and many of the imported parts necessary to keep secondary industry going.

Make no mistake: We are facing a serious attack on our standard of living as a nation, and the one saving factor could well be the primary sector. Last year agricultural exports increased and represented 51 per cent of earnings; mining of minerals represented 23 per cent and the rest represented 24 per cent. The figures show our continuing dependence as a nation on the primary sector - whether you like it or not. We produce 90 per cent of our own food. In fact, what happens is that the price of food on the domestic market is at least 5 times that of the farm gate . price. A farm recession of output of Si 00m will mean a loss to the farmers of $100m and a further loss of $100m to the railways and transport and handling facilities. So this is a loss of S200m in export income. It must be remembered that gain due to farming is a real gain, since most Australian farming is still in the hands of Australians. But this is not so for mining and the overseas export earnings of S925m from mining have to help cope with nearly $800m due to be repaid annually to overseas interests.

I repeat that a rural slump means a city depression in the long run. But here we are talking depression in a rich country. Just what does our mineral boom mean to Australia? The ex-mine value of minerals in 1969 amounted to more than SI. 141m. It cost probably at least SI 00m of Australia’s available money for investment to help the foreign firms which dominate mining in the main in Australia to get this amount of minerals out of the ground and out of the country. Yet the only direct return to the nation is in royalties, which in that same year amounted to only $24m. I hope that honourable members have understood the contrast between the figures of $l,141m in the value of minerals and $24m in royalties. Let me make the exploitation of our natural resources more plain. Western Australia - and this is the State of the great mineral boom - received in royalties in a single year $19m. This is less than Mr Robin Askin received from poker machine tax in New South Wale.«i - he received $30.4m. Yet there is no hint in the Budget of this reckless alienation of natural resources of tremendous value in return for a veritable mess of pottage. A cost benefit analysis of the so-called mineral boom in Australia is long overdue, as is a full investigation of the costs and the benefits to this nation, not to a handful of foreign firms which, according to the Minister for National Development (Mr Swartz), dominate 71 per cent of the outflow of minerals.

Decentralisation is ignored in the Budget. The only Commonwealth action here remains a committee set up in 1964 which has met 3 times - dramatic action indeed. In contrast, the Australian Labor Party, at its Launceston Conference, has spelt out a multi-pronged policy which provides a strengthening of the rural sector with 3 per cent finance available over 5 years and as much as is required to turn the tide of the rural slump. Stay orders will operate for the whole of the time in cases where they are needed. That policy was adopted unanimously. Under the new Launceston policy, for the first time the Commonwealth is committed directly to decentralisation efforts by the States on a $1 for $1 basis.

These are real policies, and the finance in one of the richest nations in the world will come from the increased productivity which those policies will stimulate, from the application of our resources away from speculation, and from an overhaul of probably the most primitive and outdated handling and marketing systems, particularly for primary products, in the world. A new deal is what is needed. A new Budget is vital, and that can be the product only of a new government of radical reform. May it come soon before economic darkness falls and the lucky country runs out of luck.

Mr PETTITT:
Hume

– I rise tonight to support the Budget. First, I want to draw attention to the fact that in this House tonight we saw the man who grovels to Chou En-lai grovelling to his master. The headline in one of tonight’s newspapers was ‘Whitlam backs Hawke’. If it had stated ‘Whitlam bows to Hawke’ it would have been much more accurate. This is the man who would sell his country down the drain. I do not need to do more than quote, as has been quoted in this House previously, what a former member of the Australian Labor Party, Professor Arndt, said about the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Whitlam). He said: ‘He has given away every bargaining point; he has sold his country down the drain’. This is the man who aspires to become Prime Minister of Australia. God knows what other promises he made. Maybe he has even invited Chou En-lai to come to Australia and help at the next elections. I know that they are trying to get Mr Hawke into my electorate. I have told Mr Whitlam that Mr Hawke would be worth 1,000 votes to me at any time. If he brings both of them into my electorate it will be worth 2,000 or 3,000 votes.

The honourable member for Riverina (Mr Grassby) went on with the usual lot of nonsense that he goes on with. This is the man who supports the policy of the Opposition which has done more to increase costs for the farmer and the producing community than has anything else. This is the man who weeps tears of blood for people in the country yet he has opposed every rural organisation. He opposed the Wool and Meat Producers Federation, the Australian Wheat Board, the Australian Wool Commission and all the other woolgrower and farmer organisations. How is it that he is always so far out of step with rural organisations? Like other honourable members opposite, he has never grown a pound of wool or a bushel of wheat yet he is prepared to spend other people’s money and tell them how to run their business. 1 believe that the Budget is a serious attempt to damp down the dangerous inflation we are experiencing in this country. I believe it will do a useful job but we must go further and attempt to get at the root causes of inflation and deal with them relentlessly and with determination. I can be critical of my Government without getting my head cut off. If this Government has failed in any way it is because it has not been strong enough and has not dealt with the disruptive elements within the community which are the real basis of the rising costs and the declining efficiency in our community. I am not talking about the wage earners alone. I am referring to the economy as a whole. Big business has been too willing to pay higher wages which results in a rise in costs, and this destroys the purchasing power of the people. Unquestionably the greatest challenge facing the Government is the need to assert its right and to get on with its mandate to govern. The overwhelming majority of the people of this country - the decent ordinary Australians - are sick to death of the mob rule and dictatorship from the extreme left. They are sick to death of strikes, demonstrations and the would-be Fascist dictators like Mr Hawke who are trying to take power out of the hands of this democratically elected Government. They are confronted by what I am afraid has been too often a weak administration. Strong action to deal with Mr Hawke and his left wing and Communist destroyers would have the backing of the great majority of the people. It is the boasted policy of the extreme left and the Communists, many of whom control the largest industrial unions in this country - I am not calling them Communists, because they profess that they are Communists - to destroy a democratic society by promoting strikes, unemployment, hunger and misery. These are the means by which the extreme left hope to gain power. This is the policy that has been pursued in every country where the extreme left has eventually gained power. These people, although they do not represent more than a very minute portion of the trade union movement, have gained power because of the great Australian apathy.

I am convinced that one of the most urgent matters facing this Government is the introduction of compulsory secret ballots under the supervision of the Commonwealth Electoral Office for the election of all union executives, and the conduct of a compulsory secret ballot of all workers engaged in an industry before a major strike is called on. I have said this for over 2 years, and we now find that the New South Wales and Victorian State governments and the Federal Government are looking into the matter. I have seen in my electorate that the people who support me most strongly on this matter are the union members themselves, but they say to me: ‘We are not game to openly support you because we know that we will be victimised’. Compulsory secret ballots in union elections would put the control of the unions back into the hands of the rank and file where it ought to be. Do not honourable members opposite agree with me that that is where the control ought to be? What is more democratic than a compulsory secret ballot? Can those honourable members opposite who are interjecting tell me why it is that the extreme left and the Communists so bitterly oppose secret ballots?

Secret ballots would replace the disruptive dictators who are in control of many unions with men of sound commonsense and moderate views who would be prepared to sit down and discuss matters with management in a sensible manner to the benefit of all concerned. It is a statistical fact that in this country fewer than SO per cent of people employed in industry belong to a union of any kind although unionism is compulsory in many areas. It is true to say that fewer than 10 per cent of the financial members of unions attend union meetings. I am told by many members of unions that this figure is an exaggeration and that it is nearer to 5 per cent but let us leave it at 10 per cent. So the militant, arrogant and fanatical minority of 10 per cent of members elect the leaders who then proceed ruthlessly to impose their will upon the whole of the work force in that field.

I am a strong supporter of democratically elected unions and nobody can tell me that employers would not exploit employees if we did not have unions. But let us have democratic unions and not the farce which exists in so many areas today. The unions must have responsible and democratically elected leaders representative of the people in the work force. Most wage earners in this country cannot afford continual frivolous strikes. They need their wages to maintain their households. Many of them, young people particularly, have the problem of bringing up a family at the same time as they are buying a house on terms. They have to meet their hire purchase commitments on motor vehicles, washing machines, furniture and all the other things which go to make up a home. They do not want to go out on strike. They do not want a 35-hour week. There is little doubt that Mr Hawke and friends have a vested interest in industrial unrest. They are not complete fools. They know that each rise in wages without an equivalent increase in productivity reduces the living standards of the people of this country. Of course they know it. Likewise they know that the introduction of a 35-hour working week would lift the cost of goods by approximately 12 per cent or even perhaps 20 per cent in country areas.

The honourable member for Riverina supports a 35-hour week. He supports a 4- day week. He supports a reduction in working hours and a reduction in productivity. The granting of an additional weeks annual leave to Federal Government employees would cost the taxpayers about $250m yet we hear weeping from the Opposition side over the $60m to be paid by way of assistance to the wool growers in an attempt to give them an opportunity to re-establish themselves. The introduction of a 35-hour week is estimated to cost the community about $ 1,400m to $2,000m and up to $2,900m if extra payment for overtime is included. Unless this Government is prepared to govern the country and to make it abundantly clear that it will not condone disruptionists law breakers and extortionists in carrying out their activities as they have been, this Budget will not be effective in damping down inflation.

In addition, it is vital that there should be a re-constitution of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission so that its members will have to accept some responsibility for the economic consequences to the community as a result of its decisions. We need to have men of practical experience, brought up in commerce and industry appointed to senior positions in this Commission in which there are now too many theorists who have never had to battle - either as the lower wage earners or in management.

The Minister for Trade and Industry (Mr Anthony) has promised a review of all tariffs. Many of our tariffs have not been reviewed for over 20 years. The prevalence of over-award payments in industry is a clear indication of the over protection of many industries. Big business, with its heavy over-award payments, is every bit as much to blame as is Mr Hawke because it gives very little resistance to demands for the exorbitant wage rises, lt says: ‘It is easier to put up our prices. Let us give this increase to the workers for the sake of peace’. So the purchasing power of the people in the community - the pensioner, the superannuitant, the man with a large family - is decreased. We have to curb this galloping inflation. With high tariff protection, the heavy inflow of foreign capital and subsequent competition for labour and materials, big business is able to take the easy way out. Every wage rise is making the working man progressively worse off. The result can only be bankruptcy for both primary and secondary exporting industries. It can only result in a falling standard of living for all the people, particularly pensioners, the superannuitants and those in the lower income bracket. I believe that this is exactly what Mr Hawke and his Communist friends are seeking to enable them to gain their own ends.

This Government must make a serious attempt to economise in its expenditure and demand a greater efficiency in its departments. The more I come in contact with senior officials in Government departments and their staffs the more I appreciate their dedication to their jobs and their efficiency and ability. But there is a great deal of room for improvement in the general run of departments. Every single one of us knows, if he is honest, and could not help but see that there is a need for more efficiency and more discipline in many government department. How many of us have met young people who work in government departments and who boast of the excellent wages they are receiving and how little work they do? It is a fact today that out of every 4 people employed in this country 1.2 are government servants. In other words, 2.8 of the workers must earn the money to pay for the government servants as well. The least we can expect is a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.

I want to deal briefly with, the rural industries and the problems of the wool industry and rural reconstruction. I say ‘briefly* because I hope to have more time at a later date to deal more fully with rural finance, rural reconstruction and debt adjustment. I stress that no matter what is done by the Government in these fields it will be useless unless strong action is taken to restore the power and the determination of the Government to govern, and the strongest possible action taken to deal with the destroyers, the exploiters, the Communists and the extreme Left fellow travellers who are at present allowed to defy constitutionally elected governments.

One of the first essentials in regard to rural industry, if it is to survive and is to regain profitability, is the provision of long term finance. Length of term is much more important in rural finance than rate of interest, particularly in the purchase of properties and enabling farmers to develop their properties or diversify and change from wool to cattle or to growing various types of crops. I have stressed repeatedly to primary producer organisations that to demand loans at low interest rates is to make sure that money is shaded away from farmers by lending institutions. Financial institutions, including trading banks, are in the business of lending money to make money. Naturally they are going to do all that is possible to lend funds where the greatest profit is available. While bank overdraft rates to the rural industry are restricted to 7i per cent and hire purchase companies and other money lending sources are unrestricted, can anyone blame the trading banks for diverting funds to more profitable areas?

Only the Commonwealth Development Bank provides loans of up to 15 years and, in very few cases, for slightly longer terms. Rural industry requires finance extending up to terms of 20, 25 and even 30 years to enable an effective programme to be put into practice. This sort of finance is available overseas. Housing loans are available for terms of up to 45 years on a nominal deposit. Yet housing deteriorates; in 4.5 years many a house will deteriorate, while land remains and generally appreciates in value, particularly if it is improved and developed. A primary producer would be much better off paying even 10 per cent on a 30 year term loan than 7 per cent for 10 years. For example, a farmer would have to earn 14.4 per cent on capital to service a loan at 7 per cent for 10 years, but he would have earn only 10.61 per cent on capital to service a loan at 10 per cent for 30 years. So even if he had a loan at 5 per cent for 10 years he would be very much worse off than if he had the same loan at 10 per cent for 30 years.

It is significant that one large trading bank recently admitted that it owns 60 per cent of the shares in a hire purchase company - and intended to extend its holding - which paid a 39 per cent dividend on its capital last year. Many hire purchase companies last year paid 25 per cent up to 39 per cent on capital, and most of the banks have substantial share holdings in associated or subsidiary hire purchase companies. I believe that the provision of long term finance at reasonable rates of interest is of greater importance and much to be preferred to the payment of subsidies, even though subsidies to the rural industry can be fully justified when compared with the exceedingly high cost of protection given to secondary industry.

The trading banks have indicated that they are not interested in providing long term loans, and they are in fact quite obviously withdrawing funds from this area when and where they are able to do so. They have also indicated a lack of interest in long term rural loans, even if they can be insured with a Commonwealth rural loans insurance corporation similar in constitution to the present Housing Loans Insurance Corporation. I believe that the Government must look very seriously at restricting the rates of interest on lending by hire purchase companies and other lending bodies if it is to restrict overdraft lending rates. The only alternative is to set up a special rural mortgage division of the Commonwealth Bank with the power to make loans on terms extending to 30 years at reasonable rates of interest.

The guaranteed price of 36c per lb for wool, together with the rural reconstruction scheme and the farm build-up scheme will provide vital breathing space and allow time for readjustment, diversification and an opportunity to review and remodel the handling and selling of primary products. There is a very great deal to be done here. But it will prove futile unless this Government takes immediate steps to hold costs and to provide the right type of long term finance that is vital to rural industry.

In summing up, I would stress the most urgent areas in which the Government must act quickly and effectively. Firstly, it must reaffirm in the most determined and unfaltering manner the Government’s determination to govern. The people are demanding this and they expect it to do so. Secondly, it must legislate for compulsory secret ballots in all union elections and provide for a secret ballot for all persons employed in an industry before a strike is called,. Thirdly, the Arbitration Commission must be reformed and its terms of reference revised, to make it mandatory for it to consider the effects of its decisions upon the whole national economy. The Government must appoint to the Commission men of wide practical experience in industry and commerce in place of some of the impractical professional theorists who are now there. Fourthly, the Government must press on with an immediate and urgent review of all tariffs, with a balanced regard for efficiency and necessary protection for fully efficient industry. Fifthly, it should continue and intensify its drive for greater economy and efficiency in the Public Service, with the elimination of redundant employees who do not want to render a fair day’s work. Lastly, the Government must treat as a matter of utmost urgency the provision of long terra rural loans at reasonable rates of interest with terms of up to 30 years.

I believe that these things are all within the power and the ability of this Government to do, if it has the guts and the determination to do them. I am convinced that if it proceeds with strength and determination it will receive the strongest possible support from the great majority of the Australian people.

Mr BENNETT:
Swan

– It is with regret that I must say that I sat here and listened to so many people talking about trade unions who so obviously know nothing about them. I doubt whether they have ever held membership. If they did, I congratulate them. If they did not, then

I suggest that they join a trade union and learn some of the principles involved. No doubt the Budget is so poor that Government supporters must spend their time talking about unions. One can only feel sorry for them. If they spent some of their time talking to trade union officials and members they would find that they are human beings who are just looking for a better way of life. Perhaps if honourable members opposite spent some time in the industrial courts listening to the evidence presented when the learned men grant wage rises they might understand some of the problems facing the ordinary man. But they seem devoid of this information. They are not even aware that decisions are made and carried out at the direction of properly constituted congresses and executives, and that one man acts as a spokesman only no matter how able he may be. 1 speak about the Budget with a feeling of despair for those people who have been neglected, not only by the complete inattention to their needs but by the paucity of the amounts granted. 1 refer to the pensioner and the part pensioner who sees the application of the means test continuing to their detriment. We had all hoped that a solution was in sight, that some formal attempt would be made to give justice to the pensioner and the superannuitant by ceasing to use the pension system as a political football. This Budget has finally convinced me that pensions must be taken out of the auspices of Parliament altogether and placed in the hands of an independent tribunal which will give proper consideration to the needs of these people and not take into consideration whether it is an election year or not. Perhaps this tribunal will be able to find how the wife of a pensioner can live on a wife’s allowance of a miserable $8 a week or so. It is ridiculous to imagine that any thought has been given to the equity of the situation, that by some sudden miracle of aging process they are able to exist on half their counterparts’ income.

The situation often arises in which a pensioner has to look after a sick spouse, which necessitates extra work and extra expense, lt is political chicanery to offer them only this pittance just because their numbers are not sufficient to effect a swinging seat in Parliament. But the time is overdue to take a serious look at the situation and to treat pensioners as people and not as figures in the ballot box to be bought and sold at will. For that matter all wage setting should be taken from Parliament, including parliamentarians’ salaries.

In a country which pretends to support an arbitration system it is ludicrous to have 2 standards for the population - one for organised labour and another for the mist defenceless section of our community. The retired, the deserted, the bereaved are at the mercy of Party politics. I do not suggest they should fix their own incomes any more than we in Parliament should, for it is not only that justice should be done but that it should also appear to be done. If Parliament is to continue to set pensioners’ incomes, perhaps Parliament would be content to have pensioners set Parliamentarians’ salaries. I think not. So let us be decisive about this festering sore of injustice and forget Party politics. Let us find a true solution of the problem, perhaps by way of national superannuation. But let us discuss it and agree on a true solution so that old age will be a time of dignity and joy in a retirement well earned by all.

An ominous note can be found in the Treasurer’s speech. When he speaks about unions and arbitration it would appear that he is preparing for a confrontation with both these bodies. Does he realise that because of his Government’s continued, irresponsible attacks on both these bodies which constitute a wide representation of Australian opinion and which have backgrounds of all political followings the Government is destroying public confidence in the fabric of law and order which we as Australian citizens hold so dear, which we in the Australian Labor Party stand for? I refer to the lawful organisation of workers in trade unions who in turn make their applications in respect of wages and conditions to a lawfully constituted authority of independent tribunals free from political bias and the interference of Party politics. However, we see the frightening situation of a government continually attacking an arbitration system formed under its own legislation, the members of which are appointed within the framework of its own legislation passed during the course of its reign. What sinister purpose has the Government in making this continual attack on our democratic framework? What is the purpose of its continual attacks on the trade union movement which consists of normal, everyday Australian citizens of all political colours? Is it that the Government wishes to destroy all that is unique in our Austraiian way of life, where the password of the Australian worker, the citizen, is a ‘fair go for all’? There is some purpose in this pattern of attack when it is used to attempt to hide glaring deficiencies in the Budget and to attempt to conceal over 23 years of mismanagement by resorting to the trick of attacking part of our properly constituted community, it is a despicable form of politics and can only weaken the framework which goes to make our way of life. it is far past the time that this country was administered by statesmen with the interests of the nation at heart and not by politicians who utilise day to day situations for personal Cabinet ambition. We lack an administrative blueprint. This Budget should be one, but it is just another cog in an admitted stop-go policy, so long fostered by this Government which now complains about the way wages steadily increase. They steadily increase in order to keep up with prices and usurious interest rates - interest rates which were boosted by this Government in late 1970 and which caused an immediate increase of rent for most tenants and even larger weekly increases for home purchasers. Some were even forced to extend their purchase period from 5 to 7 years. This in turn caused a disastrous slump in the building industry from which it has not yet recovered.

Although world trends are now towards a reduction in interest rates, no relief is offered by this Government. Without question, if there is an easing of interest rates generally in the distant future, interest rates on existing homes will not drop. Those people who have bought homes and paid an interest rate of 13 per cent on the loans will be unable to withdraw from their contracts. That situation will have been brought on by this Government which alone is responsible for the mismanagement. The ordinary man in the street has been brought to such a position where he must campaign for more money to enable them to exist. Their position is made even worse by the attack on wages through taxation, direct and indirect, in this Budget.

The Government knows full well that the ordinary man will not be able to absorb these increased costs. It is fatuous nonsense to slate otherwise. The Government also knows full well that rank and file trade unionists will bring pressure to bear on their leaders to rectify the situation. In this lies the danger of Government statements about the ‘economic responsibility’ of the Arbitration Commission. Where is evidence of economic responsibility to be found in the Government’s planning in this Budget? The Budget is a vacant, unimaginative document designed to extract more money from the people who can offer the least resistance to the demand. The lower the wage the harder the earner is hit. It is long past the time for strong measures to be taken to freeze unrealistic profits, particularly in the non-productive areas ofmoney making, money in hire purchase debts and home finance. Such measures would be an immediate relief to the not so rich and no doubt would boost building and allied industries. If world trends are followed this must eventually happen, even if it is when the trade union movement itself enters this field and offers active and real competition.

The lack of provision of an Army base as promised for Western Australia for so long is a bitter disappointment to a State whose major cities are closer to Asia than to Canberra. This remoteness from the eastern States may account for the lack of consideration. Western Australia and eastern Australia are not even linked by an all-weather highway as yet. The request for the relatively small amount of $6m, which is all the Commonwealth is asked to contribute, has again been ignored. What do we need to do to persuade the Government to initiate a sensible and balanced defence system for the west? Do we need a war or a threat of war because I find it too hard to believe that even this Government would abandon us completely in time of war? The Government is getting far too much out of iron ore royalties alone to do that. But it is a senseless situation when one half of the area of Australia is left without proper defence planning. We have a naval base in the making at Cockburn Sound and an airfield on North West Cape. But where is the balancing power of the Army? We would be more reassured when a firm date could be offered. This situation is like the rest of the Budget. It lacks an eye to the future. Is it to be a disaster?

We have not yet had any indication of what the future holds in regard to the present monetary crisis. Is there to be another recession or depression? There is the Government’s indecent haste to destroy the trade union leadership and create industrial anarchy. Perhaps the Government is acting on the theory that if they are destroyed there will be no real opposition to further wage cuts by way of taxation or by other legislation. However, wage cuts will lead only to rank and file confrontation. Union leadership and arbitration will be bypassed if the Government’s plans, which are shaping towards fruition, so that it may rule by force and fear, are implemented within the next 12 months. It would appear that the ranks of the unemployed will be further swelled by the farming community which is dying a slow death, so to speak, at the moment. Many producers are awaiting execution by stock companies and banks which are content at the moment to allow them to remain on their properties with a growing interest bill. The companies know full well that they must eventually become the owners of the properties, that is, if they are not in fact already the owners, due to unpaid stock bills and so on, which are compounding.

The only business survivors in country areas will be the banks and the stock companies. This will mean an influx to the cities of the country’s unemployed and dispossessed farmers. I already have a number of them in my electorate and they are doing the most menial jobs. These men are the most insecure of all sections and they will be the worst hit by increases of unemployment in the future. The farmers in the most pathetic situation are those who have sold properties to families or others who have been unable to meet their commitments. These people have no cash income and must find work again at a very late stage in life, because due to the means test they do not qualify for social service benefits. This Budget offers no relief to them so they continue to compete in the employment field and perhaps help this Government achieve its purpose of a pool of unemployed to suppress wages.

Out of all of the comments made on the Budget by newspapers the most appropriate appears to be that of the Melbourne Herald’ which said, in effect, that the Treasurer’s first Budget told the average wager earner: ‘You are overpaid. We will take the surplus from you. We can handle it better than you can’. He appears to be obsessed with demand inflation - potential demand at that. But Australia’s problem today is not excessive demand but cost inflation. There has been, in fact, a disturbing slow-down in demand. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Govern-, ment has taken the lazy way out. This comment was a very appropriate description of a Treasury device which has been tried overseas, and failed, and can lead only to a general slow-down and unemployment. The suspicion arises that the surplus of $630m which has been budgeted for is planned for unemployment relief.No other explanation which is of any value has been offered. Perhaps the Treasurer is planning some of the capital expenditure works as unemployment relief works.

There are hidden reductions in war service building loans. The amount of the loan to each individual has been increased but the total amount allocated for war service homes has been reduced by Sim. This means that fewer war service homes will be built this year. So in fact a cut back in war service homes has occurred. At the same time, the curtailing of the CommonwealthState Housing Agreement has been described as treachery by one Liberal State Housing Minister. This curtailing leaves a situation in which the States will be unable to have proper planning over the years for low cost housing. They will be at the mercy of every yearly Budget, at the whim of the Federal Cabinet and the Federal Treasurer of the time. Quite clearly there is no argreement no reassurance, that housing will not fall victim to changing circumstances as we have seen with so many items in this Budget. Reassurance is needed in this area. The Government’s departure from its agreement with the States on housing seems in keeping with the lack of overall planning of which I complained.

The Budget offers no relief to local government bodies which are suffering under usurious interest rates. This is a field that the Commonwealth can enter with results in employment and local works. The Commonwealth can assist by making grants to local government bodies and by providing loans to local government bodies at reasonable interest rates. Not only local government bodies in the cities are feeling the economic stress, but country shires also are unable to raise loans even to meet previous commitments. The future is indeed bleak, with falling country populations and incomes.

The Government’s attitude in completely ignoring this area in the Budget is similar to the contempt shown to the education crisis which exists in Australia and which has brought condemnation from private and government school bodies. This problem is a compounding one which has suffered a lack of attention for so long that there will continue to be a large number of young people in the employment market. If proper schooling facilities were available these young people would still be studying for their own benefit and for the benefit of the nation. It is not enough for the Government to say that it cannot keep up with the demands on it for universities and colleges of advanced education. The suspicion exists that the Government believes that by curtailing the facilities for education at the lower level it is reducing the demand on universities and colleges. This may well be true, but it is a disgrace that so many of our young people and children of migrants who have come to this land believing it to be a land of promise are denied opportunities which are their right and which they should not have to beg for.

A country is judged internationally by its standard of education and technology. We are not keeping pace; as has been proved by recent surveys in both government and private sectors. The evidence has been substantiated and is irrefutable. Campaigns have taken place to draw the attention of the Government to the gravity of the situation, yet the matter has been substantially ignored. What has to happen before action is taken? Is this yet another matter which is being saved as the subject for an election gimmick? We have had. these situations before, and how many election promises have been kept? Very few have been kept, and those that have been honoured have been subject to severe pruning.

Education is one area which must not be allowed to degenerate as it has in the past until it has become a political instrument for buying votes. The future of our young people, who will have charge of our nation’s future, must be taken far more seriously than it has been in this Budget. In the fields of social services and education the average man is prepared happily to make some sacrifices. It is up to the Government to recognise this and to take action to put these matters on a sensible standing above politics. We need imaginative action over and above the personal ambitions of Government members, above vote catching measures ia election years and above party politics. In. fact, for a solution to problems in these areas pol /cians must act as statesmen and not as PO.ticians. This is not too much to ask for the sake of the nation. .

This Government has forsaken the interests of the country. With the increased overseas control of our finance, no wonder our Government has not been able to predict how a world monetary crisis will affect us. The decisions on Australia’s finance are now made, overseas, with some 60 public companies engaged in non-bank financed activities being substantially overseas owned, with 39 overseas banking institutions being represented here since 1957. With the overall trend of joint participation by Australian and overseas financial institutions, the hope of Australian control of our financial destiny will become even more remote unless the Government is prepared to take strong action to protect us as most democratic governments protect their people. During the year 1970-71 the Government foreshadowed possible action to increase the degree of . competition within the economy and from external sources. It also foreshadowed measures to dampen spending on non-dwelling building construction. Was this because it presented a challenge from overseas financial institutions which had a vested interest in the continuance of these projects? But the Government was content to see a dampening of home dwelling units which was caused by the lending cutback of the banks. In all the Government has proven by its past actions and its Budget proposals that it is completely orientated not to the average Australian but to the financial institutions, major mining, investment . and production monopolies which seem to be protected in this country.

This position is not unique to Australia. The same situation applies in the United States of America where lack of action by politicians is described in one report as: Bureaucratic cowardice and anticipatory polities’. One can only hope that this description will not apply to this Government, that action will be taken and that anti-trust legislation will be made effective to prevent the growth of price fixing monopolies and overseas control of all that we buy and borrow. These non-competitive industries are like this Government which holds the ordinary working man and the social service pensioner to ransom. We are working for the Government and overseas interests. It is time our national pride came to the forefront. It is time this Parliament introduced truly Australian self-protection legislation on which all members of this House would agree. In those circumstances we could really consider the benefits of a truly Australian Budget based on a blueprint for the future and not a stop-go policy.

Debate (on motion by Mr Giles) adjourned.

page 647

ADJOURNMENT

National Service - Australian Capital Territory Parole of Prisoners Ordinance - Australian Capital Territory Evidence Ordinance

Motion (by Mr Peacock) proposed:

That the House do now adjourn.

Mr UREN:
Reid

– The Prime Minister (Mr McMahon) has announced that Australian troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam by Christmas. Of course, this has brought a great deal of joy to many people throughout Australia, particularly those boys who are eligible for national service call-up. But I remind the House tonight that there are at least 2 young men in Australian gaols who are in fact political prisoners. I refer to Charles Martin in Adelaide and Geoffrey Mullen in New South Wales. It is time we gave this question some consideration. I think that this Government should release these 2 young men. They are not conscientious objectors in the full sense of that term. They have not sought exemption from the provisions of the National Service Act as conscientious objectors. They are opposed to going to Vietnam because they were opposed to the war in Vietnam. Therefore this Parliament should call on the Government to release these 2 young men from gaol. It does not matter under which banner you put it, they are political prisoners.

We know that since national service was introduced some 43,000 young men have failed to register but only a handful of men have had action taken against them. This Government has been particularly careful not to affect too many people by its actions in order to lessen the repercussions against it. Apart from Charles Martin and Geoffrey Mullen there are at present 12 young men who have refused to comply with the National Service Act. Summonses have been served on them as conscription resisters, and within a few months there could be in fact 14 young men being held in prisons in Australia. The 12 young men to whom I refer are Paul Fox, Ian Turner, Tony Dalton, Michael Hamel Green, Karl Armstrong and Laurie Carmichael from Victoria, Peter Hornby, Jerry Gilling and Mike Matteson from New South Wales, Robert Hall from South Australia, Garry Cook from Western Australia and Steve padgan from the Australian Capital Territory. It seems to me that, in the 1970s, these young men should not be threatened with gaol because they have taken a moral stand and refused to be conscripted to serve in a war such as the Vietnam war.

Not only Australia but also the world knows how unpopular this war has been. No matter what conflict Australia has been involved in in the past, Australia has not found it difficult to encourage the youth of the nation to come forward and to make themselves available for service. But the Vietnam war is an unpopular war. Confusion exists amongst people because of the corrupt regime in Vietnam. We have been involved in the war for many long years. Australia has been involved in Vietnam since May 1962. For many years one was not sure from week to week which government ruled South Vietnam. It was like a game of musical chairs. One government would be overthrown by a coup and so on.

The position today is still unstable. Gen,eral Minh who, with the assistance of the

Americans, was responsible for the overthrow of the Diem regime has refused to stand in the forthcoming presidential election. Vice-President Ky who was feted at Kirribilli House in Sydney by the then Treasurer, now the Prime Minister, has refused to stand in this election because he has said that it is rigged. It has been revealed publicly now, although I have been saying it for years, that the Government led by President Thieu is a minority government; it had the support of 34 per cent only of the population at the last general election. Now. President Thieu is falling into some disrepute with the United States of America and it is revealed that his government is a minority one. These are some of the factors which have made the Vietnam war unpopular. The youth of our nation has no confidence in the Australian Government. This is demonstrated by the fact that not enough volunteers came forward for Army service and the Government had to introduce conscription to make ‘fodder’ available for Vietnam.

Mr Giles:

– That is a rotten remark and it is untrue.

Mr UREN:

– The Minister for the Army (Mr Peacock), who is sitting at the table, knows that 500-

Mr Giles:

– I rise to take a point of order. I ask the honourable member for Reid to withdraw that remark. It is untrue and it is not worthy of the dignity of a front bench member of the Opposition.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Lucock:

– Order! No point of order arises. The honourable member has made no reference to any individual.

Mr UREN:

– Not only are these young men fodder but also - I have said this before - every Government member including the Minister for the Army and the honourable member for Angas has blood on his hands. The Minister will have on his hands for evermore the blood of nearly 500 young men who died in Vietnam and of the 2500 who have been maimed. In addition an amount in excess of $200m has been spent stupidly - I use the word advisedly - on this war.

Be that as it may, the Government still intends to continue with conscription. These 12 young men whom I have named will be threatened with 2 years gaol for their defiance. Because the period of service under the National Service Act will be changed from 2 years to 18 months, I suppose that they will be gaoled for 18 months. But the Government may use the severity of a 2-year sentence to keep the fear of gaol before young men. I ask: Why is it necessary to maintain conscription when the former Prime Minister and former Minister for Defence, the right honourable member for Higgins (Mr Gorton), said recently that he did not foresee in the next 10 years any danger of any invasion of Australia’s shores. There is no foreseeable danger to this country. There is no fear of any invasion. It is not necessary to continue conscription which disrupts young men’s lives and restricts their freedom.

I ask the Government not to proceed with convicting these young men and sending them to gaol. I ask it to release the 2 young men who are now in gaol. The Minister for Labour and National Service (Mr Lynch) who is the responsible Minister under the National Service Act, said in this House the other day that he cannot release these 2 young men, and he put the onus on to the Attorney-General (Senator Greenwood). But we know the Government can do this; we know that the Prime Minister can; we know that the Cabinet can, and we know that this Parliament can. I ask the Government to release these young men and not to proceed with prosecutions which in peace time when this country is not threatened put young men in gaol. It is time that the spirit of withdrawing troops from Vietnam was extended to these 2 young men in gaol so that they may return to their homes, not before Christmas but by next week, lt is not difficult to release them from gaol. These are young men of great moral courage, because any young man who can stand against the Establishment when he is between the ages of 20 to 24 is to be respected. These young men have taken a strong moral position against conscription as such as well as against the Vietnam war. Prosecutions against them should not be proceeded with.

Mr BRYANT:
Wills

– I would, with some brevity, support the remarks of my colleague the honourable member for Reid (Mr Uren). The House knows my opinion quite well but I do think that one bas to reinforce it here as often as possible. The morality of conscription has not become a matter of public debate of sufficient magnitude to make people stop and think about it. I have said before and I say it directly to the Ministers who are here now that the young men whom I know are not pacifists. Many of them cannot claim to be conscientious objectors in the sense that that phrase is used in the Act. But they are conscientious and objectors.

They have a deep feeling about this matter in such a way that I believe we are morally bound to find an alternative to putting them in gaol. When I say that they are not conscientious objectors within the meaning of the Act, I mean that they are simply straightforward, dinkum Australians. Many of them - not all of them - say to me in private conversation that if the country were attacked they would defend it. 1 believe that they are expressing the best of the Australian spirit when they stand up against everything which is involved in this matter, sometimes their parents, the community and all the rest of it. We are not paying proper respect to the spirit which is involved in this situation.

Mr ENDERBY:
Australian Capital Territory

– I rise to say a few words in continuation of what I tried to say last Friday when this House was debating a motion to disallow certain provisions of the Parole of Prisoners Ordinance 1971 of the Australian Capital Territory. I was prevented from saying the few words I wanted to say in reply to the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr N. H. Bowen), who in this House represents the Attorney-General (Senator Greenwood), because the gag was moved. The reason the gag was moved - I do not think there is any doubt about it - was because it was a little after 4 o’clock in the afternoon. When the matter came on for debate at about a quarter to four in the afternoon the Leader of the House (Mr Swartz) put to us that the debate was a matter of urgency. It was not a matter of urgency.

The time limit for the Government to bring on the matter for debate extended until Thursday of this week. There were at least the sitting days of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday left before the 15 days within which the Government had to bring on the matter for debate expired. Yet the matter was forced on. I use that term because it is the only descriptive word that one can use. lt was forced on at quarter to four. I described that action then as a disgrace and I say that again. It was a farce, if you like. The only way in which laws are made for the Australian Capital Territory is by ordinance. That is a delegated form of legislation. It is an unfair, second-rate, cheap way of making laws. Last Friday I said that there are now 150,000 people in the Australian Capital Territory for whom laws must be made by this Parliament, yet this is the way in which the Government treats the people of the Australian Capital Territory and allows their laws to be made.

The Government restricted the debate to fewer than 30 minutes, as it turned out, by applying the gag. I spoke, the honourable member for Maribyrnong (Dr Cass) supported me briefly and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, representing the AttorneyGeneral, replied. He said some things which were completely innocuous and irrelevant. He missed my point completely. When I rose to reply to him, he moved the gag. This is not an effective, fair or just method of making laws for the Austraiian Capital Territory. It is time the whole system was changed. We have seen the same sort of scene re-enacted in a different way in the Senate - that so-called other place - where another ordinance of the Australian Capital Territory has been disallowed because something was wrong with it.

My first point in rising is simply to protest. It is time some better method of making laws for the Australian Capital Territory was worked out. People have been saying this constantly. If this House has not time to make laws properly for the Australian Capital Territory it should stop trying to make those laws and give the job to someone else. It should give the Australian Capital Territory a territorial form of government of its own which could do the job properly. When I was speaking on Friday I described how it is just as important to decide whether to let a person out of gaol as it is to decide whether to put him into gaol. That was the whole point of my speech. If we impose and build safeguards into the system for determining whether a person goes to gaol we should have just as good a set of safeguards for deciding whether he should be let out of gaol. This particular ordinance gives a discretion. It allows a judge to say that a prisoner can be released after a minimum non-parole period.

Instead of giving the job to an independent judicial-like body - a parole board such as exists in nearly all of the States of the United States of America, in New South Wales, in Victoria and in the other States of the Commonwealth - the power in the Australian Capital Territory is given to the Attorney-General or, strictly, to the Governor-General acting on the advice of the Attorney-General. As I said, that, in effect, will be the decision of an anonymous public servant buried somewhere in some back room of the Attorney-General’s Department, because the Attorney-General will not have time, or should not have time - he should be doing other things - to consider matters of that sort, important as they are. These decisions should be left to a proper independent judicial-type body. When he replied, the Minister for Foreign Affairs said that I underrated ministerial responsibility. What nonsense, in this context. The Minister for the Navy (Dr Mackay) is sitting opposite and he will appreciate the strength of my remarks when I ask: How can any back bench member gain access to the material that has been used by the anonymous public servant in the report which has been sent to the Minister, to know what it is about and to decide whether he can challenge the Minister in this House and bring into play this wonderful ancient doctrine of ministerial responsibility? In this context it is a farce, a fraud and a cloak to hide secret processes and to keep them hidden from the light of day. Ministerial responsibility is just a fancy high-flown phrase in that context. It means absolutely nothing.

Again I am reminded by the presence of the Minister for the Navy that if a member seeks to gain access to a psychologist’s report, a psychiatrist’s report or a welfare officer’s report that might have been acted upon he will be told: *No, it is confidential. It is none of your business. It is a matter of Service routine, prison routine or of something else’. Time and time again this is said. How can a back bench member test this by saying: ‘But hold on, you are wrong’? He might go to see the Minister secretly, privately or in confidence and ask him to exercise his good offices. If the member gets along on a personal basis wich the Minister he might achieve something. If he does not he will not achieve anything. As a system of seeing that justice is done it is mediaeval and ancient and should be done away with.

In the course of the speech I made last Friday 1 described the system as being not a system but a cheap form of administrative expediency. The Minister for Foreign Affairs as much as admitted it was because he said the number of cases in the Australian Capital Territory was not sufficient to warrant a parole board at this time. Of course, he twisted the argument. He implied that I was suggesting a full time parole board when nothing had ever been said about a full time parole board. Not even New South Wales and Victoria have full time parole boards. Theirs are made up of part time officers who are simply seconded from their full time duties, whether they be judges or secretaries of departments, to consider the case in question. The Minister admitted this and if one looks at the speech he made as reported in Hansard one sees he was confirming exactly what I have said. It is a cheap form of administrative expediency because the Government does not want to take the time or spend the money to set up a proper system to see that people are let free or not let free.

Mr HURFORD:
Adelaide

– 1 support the remarks of the honourable member for the Australian Capital Territory. I am sure every man of conscience in this place will feel the frustration that the honourable member has felt in this battle he is waging. I too noted what I can only call the deceit of the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr N. H. Bowen), representing the Attorney-General, in the remarks that he made on Friday afternoon.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Lucock:

– Order! I ask the honourable member for Adelaide to withdraw that remark.

Mr HURFORD:

– I withdraw the word deceit’. On the spur of the moment I could not think of the right word. What the Minister said was a misrepresentation of the facts. He suggested that the parole board had to be a full time parole board. Only a couple of weeks ago in Adelaide I met the members of the parole board in

South Australia, who are not full time members, and at the same time met a visiting church man from the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh, who was the chairman of the parole board in Scotland. His was also a part time position.

I rose tonight to refer to the subject raised by the honourable member for Reid (Mr Uren). In fact, I would have tried to get the call after the honourable member spoke had I not expected the Minister for the Army (Mr Peacock), who was at the table, at least to show concern for this matter and tell us the Government’s view on these 2 young men, Geoffrey Mullens’ and Charles Martin, who are in gaol. The honourable member for Reid is particularly interested in Geoffrey Mullens. I am particularly interested in Charles Martin because when he was put in gaol he was a constituent of mine. I visited him in Yatala gaol soon after that. I have been on cavalcades to the Cadell training centre, 120 miles from Adelaide, when so many people from Adelaide visited him there.

As soon as we learned by way of an answer to a question asked in the Senate that the Government would, to. use the words of the Minister for Works (Senator Wright) and the Attorney-General (Senator Greenwood), consider appropriate submissions - if that was not the term used it was some similar term - I contacted officers of the Prisons Department in South Australia and asked them to request Charles Martin to make an appropriate submission for his release from gaol. Everybody who has learned of his reply to my suggestion can have nothing but admiration for it because he said that on no account would he apply to the McMahon Government or any other Liberal-Country Party government for his release. So I have taken it upon myself to apply on behalf of the people of conscience in this nation for that release. He was gaoled on 26th September 1970. If the sentence is reduced by favour of the Governor-General to the period of 18 months which people are obliged to serve in national service and with a. remission of one-third of the sentence he would be due to come out of gaol on 25th September 1971. I put the case on that ground and on the ground of the more compelling reasons that the honourable member for Reid has mentioned - the fact that these 2 lads I have already mentioned, another 4 who have served gaol sentences and the other 12 whose names the honourable member for Reid mentioned who have been in and out of gaol but who have not been put there permanently, have been used as an example to the other 43,000 in the community. This just is not justice. There are only 2 in gaol at the present time. The 4 others who have spent any length of time in gaol have been released.

It is about time the Government tried to redress this shocking situation it has created by division and divisiveness in our community and at least made this gesture to the only 2 lads who are serving in gaol at the present time. I want it to be made known that I was expecting the Minister for the Army to answer these representations, as he was sitting at the table at the time. That is why I did not rise in my place earlier. I will be asking Senator Cavanagh and other honourable senators in another place who do not have the frustration that honourable members have in this House experience because they have there the Attorney-General (Senator Greenwood), a senior officer of the Government, to place this matter of when we might receive a reply to this most serious question before Senator Greenwood day after day.

Mr N H Bowen:
Minister for Foreign Affairs · PARRAMATTA, NEW SOUTH WALES · LP

– The honourable member for the Australian Capital Territory (Mr Enderby) has dealt with 2 matters, the question of parole of prisoners and also the disallowance of the Evidence Ordinance in the Senate. On the question of parole of prisoners, the honourable member has repeated the arguments which he put last Friday, perhaps at - somewhat greater length. But he misses the point in 2 respects. The honourable member says that these matters are decided by a clerk in a back room. He said this on Friday, and I explained to him that this was not the position. Tonight he gets up and solemnly repeats that ridiculous assertion. Let me assure him that prosecutions, remissions, parole matters and the exercise of the prerogative of mercy are not very numerous but they are very troublesome matters to a Commonwealth’ AttorneyGeneral. These are matters which come before a Commonwealth Attorney-General. Although they do not see the light of day, do not result in legislation and are not publicly debated, they are some of the matters which cause a Commonwealth Attorney-General the most personal anxiety of any matters that come before him. The honourable member is simply ignorant of what goes on in this regard.

The second point I wish to make is that he has not understood what I have said in relation to the protection of the liberty of the subject. What the honourable member wants is a parole board which is virtually anonymous - anonymous unless one goes to the great trouble to find out who is on it. He wants a parole board which is not responsible to this Parliament nor to anyone who can publicly contact it, instead of action by the Minister. The old English method of protecting the liberty of the subject which is still in force in the United Kingdom is that where the liberty of the subject is involved a Minister must be responsible and answerable to the representatives of the people in the Parliament. That is the position in Australia. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that that is not a very great safeguard of the liberty of the subject. Let me take a simple example.

Mr Uren:

– What about conscription?

Mr N H Bowen:
PARRAMATTA, NEW SOUTH WALES · LP

– You do not want to listen.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-Order! I warn the honourable member for Reid.

Mr N H Bowen:
PARRAMATTA, NEW SOUTH WALES · LP

– Let me take this simple example: Customs officers made an entry into the house of a woman at night in Brisbane. The very next day, the Minister for Customs and Excise, who was the then honourable senator, was questioned on the floor of the Senate. Eventually that matter was pressed. It may possibly have had some bearing on whether or not the Minister remained in his position. This powerful weapon is held where a Minister is responsible for interference with the rights or the liberties of the subject. Do not let us lightly give that away. I know that in certain States of America this has been done. I know that in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia it has been done. But why has it been done? It has been done largely because the great number of cases dealt with has resulted in it being almost beyond the power of an individual Attorney-General to give his personal anxiety and care to individual eases. When that position arises in the

Australian Capital Territory we may reluctantly be forced to hand over that responsibility to an independent body. But honourable members should not be misled into thinking that the liberty of the subject would be very greatly increased if this were to happen. My final comment on that aspect is that the Attorney-General acts with the advice of the parole officers, and this is the best of both worlds.

I turn now to the question of the disallowance of the Australian Capital Territory Evidence Ordinance. This Ordinance, which came into operation in the Australian Capital Territory in March of this year, is probably the most progressive piece of legislation on the question of evidence in Australia at this time. On Thursday of last week the Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances recommended that the Evidence Ordinance be disallowed and the Senate accepted this recommendation. Because of the Senate’s actions the Australian Capital Territory has no Evidence Ordinance at the present time; indeed, it has a lack of procedure. The result is that persons convicted of criminal offences cannot obtain a proper trial at this time. I question whether the disallowing of this Ordinance was a responsible way in which to deal with a very serious matter. The reason for disallowing it was not because it was a bad law but because it was such a good law that the Parliament should have had the opportunity of debating it. Broadly, the approach adopted by the Senate was that, because the Ordinance contained some fresh and new ideas, it must be disallowed; it was too good; it must be debated by the Parliament. This is a Gilbertian situation. My colleague in the other place the AttorneyGeneral (Senator Greenwood), is giving very careful and urgent consideration to what steps can be taken to protect the people of the Australian Capital Territory from the rather arbitrary action which has been taken in disallowing the Ordinance.

Mr Enderby:

– Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to make a statement.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Lucock:

– Order! The honourable member for the Australian Capital Territory has already spoken in the debate on the motion that the House do now adjourn.

Mr Uren:

– He claims to have been misrepresented.

Mr Enderby:

– I do claim to have been misrepresented. I am indebted to the honourable member for Reid for his assistance.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-The honourable member for the Australian Capital Territory is entitled to speak only on the particular point on which he claims to have been misrepresented.

Mr ENDERBY (Australian Capital Territory) - I claim to have been misrepresented on several counts, Mr Deputy Speaker. The first one is that my reference to the Australian Capital Territory Evidence Ordinance was simply to describe and illustrate the inadequacies of law making in the Australian Capital Territory. What is now being enacted over in the other place is as good an example as the example I gave of events in this chamber last Friday, of a government and of a parliamentary process not allowing enough time to its members properly to consider the laws of the Australian Capital Territory. The Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr N. H. Bowen) has suggested that I said that the Evidence Ordinance was a bad law. 1 did not say that. It has many good features and it has some bad features. I referred to it merely as an example. The Minister for Foreign Affairs has twisted what I said.

Mr N H Bowen:
PARRAMATTA, NEW SOUTH WALES · LP

– Oh!

Mr ENDERBY:

– It is in all sincerity that I say that he has twisted what I said. In fact if what has happened had taken place in a court of law - I say this to the Minister knowing his previous occupation - he would have been hauled right over the coals by any member of the bench. The Minister has twisted completely every argument that has been put forward.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Lucock:

– Order! I suggest to the honourable member for the Australian Capital Territory that he is now debating that issue.

Mr ENDERBY:

– 1 am trying hard.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER:

-The subject upon which an honourable member claims to have been misrepresented can be stated in order that an explanation can be given but must not be debated and I think the honourable member for the Australian Capital Territory is debating it.

Mr ENDERBY:

– The second point is in relation to the Minister’s statement about the reasons why the Government has adopted a certain policy and imputed to me that I had missed the point of his argument, but I had not missed it. 1 would direct the Minister’s attention to the second reading speech of the Minister of Justice in New South Wales in introducing that reform legislation in 1966. He made it abundantly clear that it was introduced not because of the number of cases that were coming up in New South Wales but to impose judicial-like safeguards in order lo overcome defects in the previous system. That is the system that the Minister described as being good in England. That was my point exactly. I did not misunderstand him and I direct him to the second reading speech by Mr Maddison, the Minister for Justice in New South Wales, in 1966.

Motion (by Dr Forbes) agreed to:

That the question be now put.

Original question resolved in the affirmative.

House adjourned at 11.40 p.m.

page 654

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS UPON NOTICE

The following answers to questions upon notice were circulated:

Industrial Stoppages (Question No. 3369)

Mr Lynch:
LP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:

  1. There are difficulties about making valid International comparisons of working days lost through industrial disputes, partly because of the variation from country to country in the definitions used for the statistics. However, it is considered that a table issued annually by the British Department of Employment, based on information supplied by the International Labour Office and showing the number of days lost per 1,000 workers in certain industries (mining, manufacturing, construction and transport) in a number of countries during the previous ten years, provides the best basis for making valid international comparisons. The latest table, issued in February 1971, giving figures of average annual losses during the period 1960-1969 showed that Australia lost fewer days through industrial disputes than Italy, Ireland, Canada, United States, and Denmark. Countries which had a better record than Australia during the ten year period were, in descending order of magnitude: Switzerland, Sweden, Federal Republic of Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, New Zealand, Japan, United Kingdom, Finland and France.
  2. During 1970, action was taken in two areas aimed at improving the industrial relations climate and reducing the number and effect of stoppages of work. First, following tripartite discussions at national level between representatives of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the National Employers’ Policy Committee and the Government, a set of principles to be observed for avoiding and settling disputes was agreed upon. The principles set out the guidelines for the establishment of dispute settling procedures.

Second, following a thorough review of the sanctions provisions of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, the Government last year amended the Act to introduce new sanctions provisions. In place of the injunctionmaking power of the Commonwealth Industrial Court and its power to punish for contempt, the Act now provides for an industrial stoppage to be dealt with as a breach of an award, but before prosecution may proceed it is necessary for the parties to have taken advantage of the conciliation, and if necessary, the arbitration of a presidential member of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, and the presidential member must have issued a certificate under section 32a. Since June 1970, these provisions have worked effectively.

The Government is at present conducting a major review of the Act. This will be the most comprehensive examination of it for some 15 years.

Also, the National Labour Advisory Council, of which I am Chairman, has agreed that representative tripartite discussions should be held on the operation of the Act. The tripartite group which will conduct the discussions will be representative of the Government, the National Employers’ Policy Committee and the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Public Servants: Use of Motor Vehicles (Question No. 1373)

Dr Gun:

asked the Prime Minister, upon notice:

  1. How many Commonwealth public servants are chauffeurdriven to and from work each day throughout the Commonwealth?
  2. Can he state the annual cost of this service?
Mr McMahon:
LP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is:

  1. The explicit answer is ‘none’.
  2. See answer to Question (1).

Note - As part of regular and approved official practice, public servants are on varying numbers of occasions, which are determined by reference to the need, driven to or from work in chauffeur driven cars. These may be officers of senior status or may, for example, be officers required to work after the normal hours of duty, where public transport is not reasonably available. Other recognised uses of official transport for travelling to or from work include female staff ceasing duty in hours of darkness and use in emergencies. In all of this, it is the responsibility of departments, under their Ministers, to ensure that official transport is only used for official purposes. No estimate is available of the cost of using official transport to take public servants to or from work in these circumstances, but determination of the cost would require a major accounting task and the amount involved would represent only a small proportion of the transport costs of departments.

Motor Vehicle Accidents: Public Servants and Servicemen (Question No. 2734)

Mr Cohen:

asked the Prime Minister, upon notice:

How many members of the Commonwealth Public Service and the Armed Forces were killed on duty as a result of motor vehicle accidents during the last 10 years?

Mr McMahon:
LP

– The answer to the honourable members question is as follows:

The number of Servicemen killed on duty as a result of motor vehicle accidents from 1961 to 1970 inclusive was RAN 8, Army 75 (approximate), and RAAF 8.

Precise figures for the Army and comparable information in respect of the Commonwealth Public Service are not available without excessive research.

Ministerial Staffs (QuestionNo.3411)

DrGunaskedthePrimeMinister,upon notice:

  1. How many persons are employed on the personal staff of each Minister?
  2. What are the salaries of these personnel?
Mr McMahon:
LP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:

  1. As at 16 August 1971, the numbers of persons employed on the personal staffs of each Minister were:
  1. Personnel occupying positions on the personal staffs of Ministers receive the following salaries:

Private Secretary- Clerk Class6 $7020-7559 plus Special Allowance of $1400 per annum

Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister $13820 per annum

Private Secretary to the Treasurer Clerk Class 10 $10374-10776

Private Secretary to the Minister for the Navy Clerk Class 7$7827-8366 plus Special Allowance of $593 per annum

Private Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs- External Affairs Officer Class 2 $6819-7559 plus Special Allowance of$1400 per annum

Acting Private Secretary to the Minister for Supply- Clerk Class 8$8769-9169

Press Secretary - Journalist Grade A1, $9234- 9611 plus Special Allowance of $1400 per annum or overtime payments

Press Secretary to the Prime Minister- $12071 plus Special Allowance of $3000 per annum

Assistant Private Secretary $4281-4651

Secretary/Typist $4034-4157

Steno-Secrelary Grade 1 $3635-3880

Stenographer Grade 1 $3043-3205

Typist $2844-3086

Clerk/Stenographer $4281-4403

Clerk Class 2/3 (Female) $4287-4952

Clerk Class 4 (Female) $5142-5715

Clerk Class 5 (Female) $5906-6478

Clerk Class 6 (Female) $6669-7181

Ministerial Travel to Singapore (Question No. 2301)

Mr Whitlam:

asked the Prime Minister, upon notice:

  1. Did the then Prime Minister and the then Minister for Foreign Affairs travel to Singapore for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference byseparate aircraft?
  2. On what day and at what hour did each (a) leave Australia and (b) reach Singapore?
  3. What was the cost of travel by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs and those accompanying him?
  4. What would have been the cost if the Minister and those accompanying him had travelled in the Prime Minister’s aircraft?
Mr McMahon:
LP

– The answer to the honourable’s member’s questions are as follows:

  1. Yes.
  2. The then Prime Minister left Canberra at 12.15 p.m. on 12th January and arrived at Singapore at 9: 35 p.m. 12th January. As Minister for Foreign Affairs, I departed from Sydney at 1.00 p.m. on 12 January and arrived at Singapore at 7.00 p.m. 12th January. All times are expressed in local times of the places concerned.
  3. The cost of the commercial air fares to Singapore was $1,370.40.
  4. i am advised by the Department of Air that in relation to the particular journey, takeoff weight from Canberra for the BAC1-11 was limited. This means that if the larger party had travelled on the route selected for the Prime Minister’s aircraft via Alice Springs it would have been necessary to transport maintenance crew and aircraft spares to Alice Springs by separate aircraft. The additional cost involved in this way would have been between $999 and $2,893, depending on which RAAF aircraft was used to transport the maintenance crew and spares. It would have been possible for the whole party (including maintenance crew and spares) to have travelled in the BAC1-11 via Adelaide and Alice Springs at an additional cost of $323, but this would have involved more travelling time.

Environmental Hazards (Question No. 2934)

Mr Uren:

asked the Minister for the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts, upon notice:

  1. Has his attention been drawn to the recommendation of President Nixon of 8th February 1971 that, as a first step towards the institution of disamenity charges on products known to be environmental hazards, a charge be imposed on lead additives in petrol and sulphur dioxide released to the atmosphere?
  2. Is it a fact that because the Commonwealth holds all the major taxing powers, it has the power, which is denied the States, of instituting taxes on a wide variety of chemicals known to be environmentally destructive, and that the levying of such a tax would have the effect of encouraging the research and development of alternatives which are less environmentally hazardous?
  3. Are there any objections which prevent the Commonwealth (a) from passing legislation on a wide variety of environmental issues in Commonwealth territories which legislation would serve as a model for the States and (b) from levying pollution taxes in the States as well as in Commonwealth territories based on emission levels and using the tax collections to provide grants to the States to help them measure and police their pollution laws?
  4. Will he consider including in the next Budget pollution taxes on (a) lead in petrol (b) sulphur dioxide, (c) pollutants from cars such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen, (d) particulates emitted from chimneys, (e) arsenic and heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium, (f) persistent pesticide such as DDT and (g) polychlorinated biphenyls, which are pollutants themselves, or on their manufacture, such as the manufacture of poly-vinyl chloride, the disposal of which causes much environmental damage?
  5. Will he have compiled a complete list of chemical elements and compounds known to be environmentally destructive so that a thorough examination of the impact of a pollution tax can be carried out?
  6. Does the decision to postpone the establishment of the Office of the Environment indicate that in the Government’s view the Commonwealth need not play a leading and co-ordinating role in the development of a rational environmental policy or that the role is unimportant?
Mr Howson:
LP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:

  1. 1 have read President Nixon’s environmental message to the Congress of 8th February 1971.
  2. , (3) and (4) Under the Constitution the States cannot validly impose duties of customs and excise. Whether the States would however, thus be prevented from levying the kind of taxes which the honourable member apparently has in mind would depend on the precise nature and form of the tax. Further the honourable member will appreciate that the levying of ‘pollution taxes’ is not the only or the most direct and effective way in which to control pollution. The questions of the imposition of new Commonwealth taxes and the introduction of new Commonweath grants to the States are matters of policy which it is not the practice to discuss in answer to parliamentary questions.
  3. It would not be possible to compile a complete list of chemical elements and compounds known to be environmentally destructive as many substances are environmentally destructive only if misused. The Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment to be held in Stockholm in 1972 is considering the establishment of an International Registry of Chemical Compounds as a means towards understanding the effects of environmental contaminants on human health and biological systems.
  4. The Office of the Environment has been established within my Department.

Members of Parliament: Additional Secretarial Assistance (Question No. 3023)

Mr Enderby:

asked the Prime Minister, upon notice:

  1. What are the names of those members of Parliament other than Ministers who have been granted extra secretarial assistance since members became entitled in 1945 to one full-time secretary?
  2. Will he provide details of the assistance provided including the periods involved and the reasons advanced in support of each case?
Mr McMahon:
LP

– The Minister for the

Interior has advised me that:

  1. and (2) There are no readily available records to provide complete information dating back to 1945. However, in the last 10 years the following members have been granted extra secretarial assistance for periods showns:

    1. H. Irwin- Mitchell, N.S.W.- 10.6.69 to 5.12.69.
    2. W. Lee- Lalor, Vic- 22.9.69 to 5.11.69.
    3. H. Nicholls- Bonython, S.A.- 19.6.69 to 2.9.69 and 15.9.69 to 5.11.69.
    4. R. Fraser- A.C.T.- 17.3.70 to 24.4.70.

In the case of the late Mr Fraser extra secretarial assistance was provided during and immediately following his illness.

In relation to the three other cases an offer of an additional secretary/typist was made in June 1969 to each member whose electorate then exceeded 90,000 electors. The offer applied only until the elections later that year when the redistribution of electoral boundaries reduced those electorates to between 39,000 and about 60.000 electors. Only the three members named above took advantage of the offer.

National Film Library (Question No. 3449)

Dr Everingham:

asked the Minister for the Environment Aborigines and the Arts, upon notice:

  1. Has the National Film Library refused to supply films to schools except through local film centres?
  2. ls he able to say whether these centres have refused to carry out this intermediary service in Queensland as a result of the recent economy drive undertaken bv that State at the instance of the Commonwealth?
  3. Will he restore the rights of Queensland students and save the needless cost and delay of this intermediary system by allowing schools approved by regional authorities to borrow direct from the library?
Mr Howson:
LP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows: 1 have been informed by the National Librarian that:

  1. lt has been the policy of the National Library to lend films directly to agencies of the Commonwealth, to organisations in Commonwealth Territories, to universities, to other tertiary educational institutions, and, in order to supplement their own film resources, to State film centres and to State education departments.

This practice was established more than 20 years ago as a result of an agreement between State and Commonwealth film centres. It was reaffirmed as satisfactory and desirable at the Conference of Commonwealth and State film representatives held at Lindfield, New South Wales, on 21st and 22nd November 1966.

National Library films are available to State government schools through the State Education Departments. Other borrowers in the States have access to National Library films through the State film centres.

  1. No.
  2. The present film lending system was introduced to make the most efficient use of the nation’s film resources. The National Library does not have the resources of staff or films to serve the thousands of schools in Australia directly.

Port Development (Question No. 3713)

Mr Whitlam:

asked the Minister for Shipping and Transport, upon notice:

  1. Have Commonwealth and State Ministers held the meeting postponed from 4th February 1971 to consider recommendations of officials on future port development (Hansard, 20th April 1971, page 1744)?
  2. If so, when and where was it held, what were the names and portfolios of the Ministers who attended and what requests or suggestions did they make for legislative or administrative action by (a) the Commonwealth (b) the Territories and (c) the States?
Mr Nixon:
Minister for Shipping and Transport · GIPPSLAND, VICTORIA · CP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:

  1. and (2; No. A meeting of Ministers is scheduled to be held in Perth on 24th September.

Wheat Sale to China (Question No. 3179)

Mr Whitlam:

asked the Prime Minister, upon notice:

  1. Has his attention been drawn to a report in “The Australian’ of 7th April 1971 that a Government spokesman said after question time the previous day that the Prime Minister had given a very high security classification to the communication received through the British Government on the sale of Australian wheat to China?
  2. Did any person make such a statement an behalf of the Government
Mr McMahon:
LP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:

  1. 1 have already said that no classification was ever given by me.
  2. No authority was given by me.

Wheat Sale to China (Question No. 3222)

Mr Whitlam:

asked the Prime Minister, upon notice:

  1. On what date did he receive (a) the cable from Hong Kong and (b) the record of a conversation between British and Australian officials concerning the purchase of Australia wheat by the People’s Republic of China (Hansard, 7th April 1971, page 1557)?
  2. Since he has given no security classification whatsoever to these communications (Hansard, 7th April 1971, page 1549), will he table them?
Mr McMahon:
LP

– The answer to the honourable member’s question is as follows:

  1. I received advice of (a) on 12th March and of (b) on 7th April.
  2. The communications made available to me had already been given security classifications by the originators and I do not believe that tabling would be either appropriate or useful.

Cite as: Australia, House of Representatives, Debates, 24 August 1971, viewed 22 October 2017, <http://historichansard.net/hofreps/1971/19710824_reps_27_hor73/>.

View PDF View XML View in Voyant