weekly hansard - Queensland Parliament - Queensland Government

23 Aug 2005 Queensland Competition Authority Amendment Bill 2595
and we should shut off trade. Our economy would stop, but where it would first impact—where it would
hit absolutely hardest—would be in the bush. If these people who vote for the member for Tablelands
could not export their produce, we would not be selling things anymore. Some 85 per cent of our sugar
crop, for instance, is exported. Imagine the impact of shutting down agricultural exports. The member for
Tablelands, in seeking to represent her constituents, has to understand that her constituents only make
a living because Australia is part of an open world economy. That is not rocket science; it is just dead
basic economics.
There are three basic aspects of this bill. The first is that it makes QCA determinations applicable
to the lessees of assets even when they are not the owner. That is the case with the much talked about
Dalrymple Bay where the state owns the assets, but it is leased to Prime Infrastructure which, in turn, is
owned by Babcock and Brown. Secondly, the bill increases the QCA’s role in arbitration and dispute
resolution. That is, it can get the parties talking. Thirdly, it allows the QCA to share information with
relevant Queensland government departments that are coregulators.
I want to again touch very briefly on some of the debate that has gone around matters to do with
the QCA in recent times. In particular, I want to touch on the abject hypocrisy of the federal government
on these matters. In May the now former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, described the
bottleneck of coal exports at Dalrymple Bay as a national disgrace. He was particularly hard on the
Queensland government for having allowed this to happen. The hypocrisy of this situation is surreal. We
have the members of the Liberal Party, who are great advocates of privatisation, now trying to open up
the market in industrial relations. They are the free market gurus who want to bash up the state for
leasing an asset to a private provider.
Members have to ask: in this debate, which side are they on? Do the members of the Liberal
Party think that the state should own and operate all of our infrastructure, which is what they were
suggesting, or do they think that it should be privatised and leased to the private sector? In this debate
we can have it only one way or the other. The federal government, in fact, supported very much what we
had done in leasing Dalrymple Bay to Prime Infrastructure. But it saw the opportunity to take a kick at us
when there were problems. That is just rank hypocrisy. It is the most short-term political opportunism. I
really think that a government that completely lacks an abiding philosophical base on economic issues
can never be trusted. But I guess we already know that about John Howard and the federal government.
Of course, the real problem was not the bottleneck at Dalrymple Bay. The real problem was that
Australia’s current account deficit had reached seven per cent—an absolutely shocking level—and the
federal government was casting around looking for someone to blame. It decided that the fact that we
could not dig up our coal and ship it offshore at a rapid rate was as good a point to start as any.
Members then have to ask: why is Australia’s current account deficit so high? That is a really serious
economic question. The reason Australia’s current account deficit is so high is not that we cannot dig up
our coal and ship it out fast enough; the reason we have this serious structural flaw in our economy is
that the federal government does not have a particular economic strategy for where we are going in the
future.
In the debate on the industrial relations legislation a week ago I talked about the fact that we do
not have a strategy on integrating the environment with our economic policy. We do not have a strategy
for genuinely creating a knowledge nation. At a national level we do not have any strategy except to
open up our economy more and more and more. That is not good enough. While that is our only
strategy, we will deregulate, we will lower our wage costs and we will need to dig up our dirt and our
rocks and our coal and ship them out as fast as we can because we do not have any kind of higherorder
aim. That is the major failing of the Howard government. That is why it has been casting around
looking for excuses over things such as Dalrymple Bay. That is where the federal government needs to
do better. That is where we contrast with the federal government so greatly. We have a Smart State
agenda. That is where we show them the way. That is where we continue to lead them on economic
policy. Today, this debate touches on those issues because the federal government bought into it over
Dalrymple Bay. I very much support the bill.
Mrs LIZ CUNNINGHAM (Gladstone—Ind) (3.13 pm): In rising to speak to the Queensland
Competition Authority Amendment Bill, I wish to raise several matters and to seek clarification on a
couple of matters. The QCA was established to allow competition to be examined within the
Queensland context. At the time the enacting legislation was to be presented to this parliament I can
remember expressing some concerns in a briefing on it. I was told that without the QCA legislation the
competition matters would be assessed, considered and decided by the national competition authority,
which would take an Australia-wide view, if you like, and would not know some of the detail and the
information that related specifically to Queensland. On that basis, it was possible for Queenslanders to
be significantly disadvantaged. So the idea of the QCA was to establish a competition authority that
would look after the best interests of Queenslanders and ensure that monopoly entities, in their decision
making, would make decisions that were favourable in terms of service provision to our communities.
I have to say that, although I do not have a lot to do with many of the decisions of the QCA, one
or two of them have generated a deep concern within my electorate. It is on that basis that I have some