Andrew Leigh

I spoke in parliament today about the government's schools reforms, flowing out of the Gonski Review.

Australian Education Bill, 12 February 2013

Each of us comes to this place with the perspective of the work we did before we got here. So it is not surprising when we hear former business people calling for less regulation, former union organisers calling for better protection for workers, farmers calling for more assistance to agriculture or, in my case, a former professor arguing for more investment in education. But I think there is some fairly strong evidence to back up the notion that great investment in education not only pays off in a more affluent society but also in a more equitable society. In my first speech I described education as being the best antipoverty vaccine we have yet developed, because a great education gives you opportunities in life which are greater than you can achieve without that opportunity.

Education allows people to make more choices. We know that raising education levels boosts health and boosts happiness. We also know some other things about our education system over recent decades. Work that I did with Chris Ryan found that Australian numeracy scores had flatlined since the 1960s, and our literacy and our numeracy scores had flatlined since the 1970s. Chris and I also showed that the academic aptitude of new teachers fell from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, with students in the top tier of their own class less and less likely to choose teaching. I have also done work looking at the relationship between pay and the academic aptitude of teachers, showing that when states raised the pay of new teachers the TERs of those in teaching went up, and that it is indeed possible to attract more academically gifted students into teaching by raising the pay of the teaching profession.

So it is very pleasing to me as a Labor MP to recognise the importance that teacher quality has in the government's reform agenda. As John F. Kennedy once said:

‘Let us think of education as the means to developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our Nation.’

And the way we fulfil that ambition is through having great teachers.

I recently carried out a survey on education in the Fraser electorate. We got responses from around a thousand electors and a good distribution across school sectors, with 67 per cent saying that their children were in government schools, 25 per cent in non-government schools and eight per cent in both systems. We asked respondents what they thought was the most important issue in education. The issue that topped the list was attracting and retaining great teachers, 43 per cent of respondents. That was followed by boosting literacy and numeracy, 18 per cent; maintaining  a well-rounded curriculum, 15 per cent; reducing bullying and cyberbullying, eight per cent; smaller class sizes, seven per cent; helping students with disabilities, five per cent; and assisting students from disadvantaged backgrounds, four per cent. We asked respondents whether they felt that the school that their child attended was well resourced. Of those whose children attended both government and non-government schools, 19 per cent said the school was not well resourced. Of those whose children attended non-government schools, 20 per cent said the school was not well resourced. And of those whose children attended government schools only, 29 per cent said the school was not well resourced.

A majority of respondents had used the MySchool website and a majority of respondents had seen a BER project, indicating that in my electorate many people are taking advantage of important reforms that have occurred under this government. This history of education reform goes back to the Hawke and Keating era, where funding for schools was considerably increased and a greater emphasis was placed on school completion. It often worried me in the Howard era when you would hear then Prime Minister Howard, and sometimes his ministers, suggest that education was not for everyone, that finishing school might be the right approach in some cases but not in others.

It particularly worries me when I hear politicians give different advice to kids from low-income backgrounds to what they give to their own children. Once was the day when you could leave school in year 9 and get a well-paying job in a factory or as a mechanic. There was a range of good jobs available to, say, a young man who was good with his hands but who had not completed year 12. But these days if you want to be a mechanic, you had better be able to reboot the on-board computer systems and probably download some upgrades. That requires good literacy and numeracy skills, and it requires good people skills because working on cars is a different job from what it once was.

We need an Australia in which everyone finishes school, not just as the Leader of the Opposition said last year, 'the right kids'. This government believes that we need a system which addresses equity and which invests in all schools. We have repeatedly said that the debate over government and non-government schools is a debate of the past. Our passion is in investing in all schools. You saw that when the global financial crisis hit. It was an opportunity then to carry out major infrastructure spending, knowing that the impact on the economy of infrastructure spending is greater than the impact of cash handouts. We used that as an opportunity not just to support jobs, local architecture, construction and tradespeople around Australia but also to provide schools with facilities that would improve the learning experience.

In my electorate, Florey Primary School encourages students to follow in the footsteps of the great Howard Florey, the inventor of penicillin. They used their BER money to invest in better science classrooms. At Amaroo School, they used their BER money to invest in new classrooms with removable partitions to encourage team teaching and allow teachers to learn from one another. That infrastructure investment was right for the times for Australia, and from so many schools the message that came back to me was that this was a once-in-a-generation investment.

But as I said before, we recognise that teacher quality is the No. 1 issue in education. It is the issue that came out as No. 1 from my Fraser education survey. Certainly, if you speak to education researchers it is very likely they will place teacher quality at the top of their list.

This government has agreed the first ever teacher performance and development framework, including annual teacher appraisal processes, starting this year. We have introduced new pathways into the teaching profession through Teach for Australia and Teach Next. I am looking forward to speaking at greater length on Teach for Australia in the Tax Laws Amendment (2012 Measures No. 6) Bill 2012, which is giving Teach for Australia deductable gift-recipient status.

Our plan is to ensure that by 2025 Australia is ranked as a top five country in the world for education performance. As I said at the outset, our test scores have flatlined—in some cases, even gone down. So this is a big ask. Looking back over past generations, the challenge of raising school performance to amongst the best in the Asian region is a major one. But there is strong support for it in the local community, and there is strong support for making sure that we raise the performance of all children.

One constituent of mine in response to the education survey wrote, 'We have one son who attends kindy. He has delayed speech and because of his disability he has fallen behind in literacy and numeracy. More funding for disabled students at both government and non-government schools is highly required as schools don't have resources to deal with children with disability'.

Many respondents spoke about the passion of their staff. One person wrote, 'The staff at our school are extremely hard working and dedicated to providing the best educational experience for our children. This would be enhanced by better resourcing and additional funding to enable them to focus on what they do best, and that is teaching'. Another constituent noted, 'We have been informed that the ACT has only one school with dedicated music teachers for students, with teachers who are actually trained in this subject'. We have listened to experts and to many, many people who have spoken out around Australia about the importance of placing quality teaching at the core of the government's reform agenda.

The bill will commit the government to providing needs-based funding to support schools in the future. It will be tied to parties' agreement on implementing reforms, and that will ensure transparency and accountability. There will be benchmark amounts for each student and, on top of that, loadings for educational disadvantage will make sure that those who need extra support get it.

In closing I would like to acknowledge the many Canberrans and those around Australia who have worked to make the Gonski reform a reality. There is a spectrum of views in the education policy debate, but I pay great tribute to those who have passionately backed the Gonski reforms. In the ACT I  acknowledge AEU Secretary, Glenn Fowler, and officers Peter Malone, Cathy Smith, Bill Book, Sue Amundsen, Sascha Colley, Mike Fitzgerald and Penny Gilmour. I acknowledge the executive: Phillip Rasmus, Roger Amey, Piers Douglas, Stuart Gilmore, Ingrid Bean, Jo Larkin, Roseanne Byrne, Murray Chisholm, Peter Curtis, Nina Leuning, David Stone, Shane Gorman, Janet Harris and Lana Read. There are many other active AEU members who have written, emailed, telephoned, visited, letterboxed and 'given a Gonski'. I am sure David Gonski's mother never imagined that his name would go from being a proper noun to being used in that way. I acknowledge former president of the AEU Phillip Rasmus, current president Lana Read, vice-presidents Roger Amey and Ingrid Bean, and the active parent community under the leadership of the P&C's Vivienne Pearce and, before her, Jane Tullis. The hard work of other organisations in the community has also been vital to bringing this bill before parliament.

This is a mass movement from the Australian community recognising that Australia is at our best when it has an education system that supports all students. The promise of Australia is not fulfilled if a child who grows up in poverty is destined to stay in poverty for the rest of her life because the schools that she attends are not able to bring her out of poverty. The great promise of Australia—the Australian dream—relies on ensuring that we have great teachers in every school, that we address educational disadvantage through targeted investment and, in particular, that we make sure that we get great teachers in every school.

Teaching disadvantaged students is, I think, among the most important jobs in Australia. It is, at times, an extraordinarily difficult and challenging job, but it is a job which can change lives. If you read autobiographies of Australians who have grown up in poverty you will often see that there is a single teacher in the author's life who, at a certain moment, encouraged that child to change their life course and to see the opportunities that lay ahead of them. That is why, in so many first speeches—particularly by Labor members—you will hear stories of education. I know that my colleague the member for Canberra will often tell of the important role education played in her life. It is a powerful story indeed.

We need education to change more lives. We need an education system that reaches out to the most disadvantaged and encourages the top. Our education system can reduce poverty and produce more Nobel laureates. I hope this bill will do just that.

I spoke today about the federal government actions that have made a positive difference in my electorate of Fraser.

Appropriations Bills, 12 February 2013

There are several old chestnuts the Liberals can be relied on to trot out every election year, and one of those that we hear so often in the ACT is the line, 'Labor ignores Canberra'—the suggestion that somehow Labor governments take Canberra for granted. But, unfortunately for the Liberals, the people of Fraser are a clever bunch. They are able to see through this line easily, because it is so demonstrably false. The investments that this Labor government has made in Fraser are visible everywhere, from the Majura Parkway to the National Broadband Network rolling out and the many schools enjoying new facilities thanks to the Building the Education Revolution program.

In fact, if you were to take the time to visit all of the sites where Labor has invested in my electorate of Fraser, you would be taking a pretty comprehensive tour of Canberra's north. I can even provide you with a loose itinerary. You can set off from the flourishing suburb of Braddon, where my electorate office is located and where Minister for Human Services Kim Carr and I opened a one-stop shop for Medicare and Centrelink in October last year. The co-location of these facilities is a core part of Labor's service delivery reforms. It is making access to housing, health, crisis support, education and training, and family and financial support easier for Canberrans.

If you were to then drive north, you would pass North Ainslie Primary School, one of the 804 schools around Australia to have been awarded grants of up to $50,000 to install renewable solar energy systems, rainwater tanks and other energy efficiency measures to cut pollution and save money on their electricity bills. You would also be seeing schools that have benefited from those grants if you drove through the suburbs of Campbell, Charnwood, Dunlop, Florey, Fraser, Hawker, Kaleen, Latham, Lyneham, Macgregor, Macquarie, Majura district, Ngunnawal, Palmerston or Turner.

If you visited any primary school in my electorate, you would be proudly shown their new facilities and you would hear firsthand how that community worked with the design firms, the department of education and the architects to construct a new building that improved the learning experience. In Florey Primary School, you would be shown new science labs where children can follow in the footsteps of the great Howard Florey, who discovered penicillin. At Amaroo School, teachers can teach in their traditional classrooms or they can remove the dividing walls between classrooms and teach in teams. At the Forde campus of Burgmann Anglican School, the new multipurpose hall has sharply raked seating so all children can see the stage. At Black Mountain School you would be shown a school hall that allows all children to come in and enjoy the school community together and a stage that allows children in wheelchairs to go up and speak and receive awards just like children who are not in wheelchairs. If you were to go up the road to Jervis Bay, you would see a purpose-built learning centre with Smart Boards designed in close consultation with the local Indigenous community. The Building the Education Revolution program has seen an unprecedented level of investment in our community's schools, improving the facilities Canberra's schools need. At the same time, we have also provided transparent information to parents about their child's school. While you are up at Jervis Bay, you would probably also see the new $18 million training facility at HMAS Creswell.

You could follow Prime Minister Julia Gillard's footsteps and stop for morning tea in Amaroo, where she met with pensioners to discuss carbon pricing assistance in May of last year. Thousands of Canberra pensioners also benefited from Labor's historic 2009 increase in the pension—the biggest increase since the pension's inception, worth $1,600 a year for someone on the single full rate age pension.

Moving a little further south you might see the revamped Belconnen Skate and BMX Park, funded in part by the government's stimulus package. It is a great resource for Canberra teens to show off their ollies and kickflips, and a chance to get together and build community spirit on the shores of Lake Ginninderra. It provides a space for Canberra's youth to not only stay fit but also create lasting friendships. If you were not a particularly skilled skateboarder and you took a tumble in the park, you would be glad to know that the nearby West Belconnen Health Co-op in Charnwood provides a bulk-billing GP medical service. It currently has over 5,400 people with co-op memberships. That centre began thanks to $220,000 seed funding from the Commonwealth government in 2009, and now has another outlet in Belconnen, bringing more GPs to the electorate of Fraser.

Speaking of Labor's investing in health facilities in Fraser, you could drop into the University of Canberra, my equal favourite university in my electorate, and see how the new GP super clinic is coming along. The federal government has provided $15 million for the clinic, which will soon have another hub site in Casey. These investments provide training opportunities for young doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, not only bringing new doctors to the ACT but also improving the training of young doctors, making Canberra's health services even stronger, and providing important regional services to Canberra's surrounds, such as the mobile health clinic that I was pleased to open at the University of Canberra last year.

Before you leave the University of Canberra campus I am sure you would want to have a chat to some of the staff or students about the $26 million of investment the government is making in bringing new courses, new entry pathways and ensuring the latest learning technologies are available. You would find that since Labor came to government the University of Canberra's funding has increased by 59 per cent. Enrolments are up by 45 per cent. That is thousands more students, many the first in their family. They are able to pursue careers in health, journalism, law and finance.

You could then take a drive through the post code area of 2615, in which ACT Labor MLA Chris Bourke and I ran a campaign to help residents find their lost superannuation. We saw from government statistics that people in that post code had a particularly high rate of lost super. Residents in suburbs like Dunlop, Flynn, Holt, Melba and Spence are among the many who will benefit from our decision to remove the tax on superannuation earnings for the lowest paid one-third of Australians. Many other Canberrans will benefit from federal Labor's raising universal superannuation contributions from nine to 12 per cent.

If you are passing through Bonner, Bruce, Crace, Harrison, Nichols or Watson you will note that those suburbs are seeing over 17,000 new homes built for low to moderate income households to rent below the market rate. That is on top of an exciting NRAS investment on the ANU campus. It is all part of the Gillard government's National Rental Affordability Scheme and complements other initiatives to improve the community's access to affordable housing, including the $450 million Better Housing Affordability Fund and the $100 million Building Better Regional Cities Program. Housing affordability is a particular challenge here in the ACT, and the ACT is to receive a disproportionate share of federal funding to address housing affordability.

Heading out to Gungahlin, you might want to take stock of the NBN rollout. It is already becoming available for residents in Gungahlin, Harrison, Watson and Macgregor, with Acton, Braddon and Canberra City soon to follow. I recently joined ministers Conroy and Lundy at the switch-on of the Gungahlin connection. There we saw students at Harrison school speak by video link with Japanese students who were practising their English while the Harrison school students practised their Japanese. Anyone can use the Gungahlin digital hub, ACT's first public connection to the National Broadband Network. Canberrans can learn more about how to access the exciting features of the National Broadband Network through free training sessions covering a range of computer basics, everyday online activities, online safety and security and connection options.

Working your way back down south, you might go through Mitchell, where the Gillard government put in $90,000 from the billion dollar Clean Technology Investment Program to help the Elvin Group, a local manufacturer, reduce energy costs, improve efficiency and lower carbon pollution. As you continue to tour, if you are travelling at peak times, you might notice that traffic in the inner north gets a bit congested. You might therefore be pleased to learn that the Majura Parkway, 50-50 funded by the Gillard and Gallagher Labor governments, will help reduce the amount of time that Canberrans spend sitting in their cars, making us a more productive city and freeing up time for us to spend with family and friends. Construction on the Majura Parkway is underway. It will be the biggest road-building project in the ACT's history, reducing commuting times, taking trucks off our local streets and making us a happier and more productive city.

You would also notice how Labor's record $22 billion investment in early childhood education has helped the many talented early childhood educators throughout the ACT, including the terrific staff at the Acton Early Childhood Centre, which my children attend. Labor has increased the childcare rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent, which has seen a massive injection of desperately needed funds into the sector and has improved access to child care for Canberrans.

While you are on the campus of the Australian National University you will see where the new Lena Karmel Lodge will be housing 550 new students. Take a moment to remember that, since Labor has been in office, enrolments at the ANU have risen from 6,350 to 7,086, and these new students are among the additional 150,000 Australians studying at university nationally. At the ANU, $5 million has gone to refurbishing student learning and living areas, and total funding for the ANU has been boosted by over $130 million.

You might meet some of the many extra students who are able to receive youth allowance, thanks to the Labor government's lowering of the age of independence from 25 to 21, a reform that benefits not just students at the University of Canberra and the Australian National University but also students studying at UNSW@ADFA and at the Australian Catholic University. These students are able to earn more money while they study before it cuts into their Centrelink payments, thanks to Labor, and that has ensured more students from disadvantaged backgrounds are able to study at university.

Now you are near the city, and you might want to head over to Civic, where you can visit the community dental surgery. The Gillard government is investing $5½ million in the ACT's public dental system over the next 2½ years to reduce public dental waiting lists. That funding will enable almost 4,000 more ACT residents to get low-cost dental care. I was pleased on Monday of last week to visit the dental surgery with Chief Minister Gallagher and Minister Plibersek to see the great work that has been done in that state-of-the art dental surgery.

After seeing all those Labor investments in the electorate of Fraser firsthand, you might find yourself a bit exhausted, but the tour has not finished yet. Labor in the ACT has also invested $6½ million in carbon pricing assistance; $6.4 million for energy efficient upgrades to community facilities; around $300,000 for the launch site for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which was kick-started with a launch at Black Mountain School; and over $1 million each year to the black spots program to improve our roads. I am very proud to be the chair of the ACT black spots consultative panel, using federal funding to make our roads safer with a program that requires that public benefit be at least twice the expenditure. The million dollars of spending that go into the ACT annually translates into at least $2 million of community benefits.

ACT households have also seen millions of extra dollars in their pockets through the schoolkids bonus, worth $410 for every child in primary school and $820 for every child in high school for eligible families; and thousands of dollars through Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme to assist new parents in welcoming home their babies and easing the transition back into the workforce for new mums. As a city with high female labour force participation, the ACT particularly benefits from Labor's Paid Parental Leave Scheme.

We have also seen additional expenditure to make it easier for dads to spend time with their newborns through Dad and Partner Pay, not to mention the benefits of Labor's economic management, which is bringing down interest rates for Canberra's mortgage holders. I mentioned housing affordability before: a Canberra family with a $300,000 mortgage is now saving around $5,000 a year on its mortgage compared to when the Liberals were last in government. You might even schedule time to meet with the thousands of Canberra workers who, thanks to Labor, were not subject to the unfair workplace relations scheme that the then Liberal government had in place. You could talk to the many Canberra public servants who value a government that values them—a government that is not committed to getting rid of 20,000 public servants.

Ours is a great city. It is the bush capital; it is Australia's social capital. We are a leafy, walkable and friendly city with a vibrant multicultural life, and I am proud of the investments the Gillard government has made in Canberra.

I spoke in parliament last night about a Greens private member's motion that would effectively shut down Enterprise Migration Agreements (EMAs).

Private Member's Bill - Enterprise Migration Agreements, 12 February 2013

The former New Zealand politician and head of the World Trade Organisation Michael Moore once had a terrific analogy to describe those who would argue for more foreign aid but also argue for less trade and less migration. He said that attitude was the like the attitude of someone who puts money in the collection plate on Sundays but then behaves badly to the disadvantaged for the rest of the week. It is with the same concern that I rise to speak on this bill today. The attitude that says that we ought to increase our foreign aid, that we ought to increase our refugee intake, but that when workers in our region want to come to Australia to improve their skills and send some remittances back we ought to slam the door in their face. That is not an attitude that is consistent with the values that I hold dear.

The member for Kennedy was right about one thing in his speech. He said that the old Labor Party would have supported this, and there is an era of my party's history of which I am not particularly proud. In its early founding in the beginning part of the 20th century it was the party of white Australia and the party that railed against ‘Kanakas’. That Labor Party perhaps would have supported this motion, but that Labor Party is gone. Members in this place who said that 'two Wongs don't make a white' have been replaced by members such as Senator Wong, of whom I am greatly proud. Ours is now a party of markets and multiculturalism, a party that recognises that if you do not bring in 1,700 workers to work on a resource project then 6,000 Australian jobs are gone. EMAs are fundamentally about improving the access to megaprojects for Australians. Workers can only come in under EMAs if they are essential to the project. There are key training requirements and this bill would render those EMAs unworkable. Where it does not contain statements that are consistent with what occurs already, it requires the tabling in parliament of commercially sensitive information that would then become publicly available. That would cause no company to go ahead with an EMA. As a result, we would have fewer Australian jobs and fewer overseas workers.

Those overseas workers benefit us and they benefit themselves. My colleague Senator Cameron came to Australia through a migration scheme, part of a great post-war migration, and has greatly enriched Australia. But those skills also benefit people in developing countries when they return. Work by Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro and Lant Pritchett have estimated that a Haitian who moves to the United States is six times as productive as that very same person was in Haiti. They learn new skills, send money back and often return to their countries to set up businesses.

If you are in favour of reducing global poverty, you should be in favour of EMAs. If you are in favour of boosting Australian jobs, you should be in favour of EMAs. This is a massive boom. We have seen commodity prices go up tenfold. House prices in Moranbah, Queensland, for example, have risen just in one year from $459,000 to $730,000. We have hundreds of Australians flying in and flying out every week, some of them even from Bali. This is a boom the likes of which we have not seen since the gold rushes. Yes, it is placing stresses on the Australian economy, but the right way to respond to those stresses is to make sure that we do not close ourselves off to the world, that we do not make the mistakes that past generations made under White Australia, that we have EMAs with training requirements and that require employers to test the labour market but recognise that guest workers can sometimes make the difference between a project succeeding and a project falling over. Opposition to EMAs can mean that projects will fall over. If you do not want the 1,700 overseas workers, you will not get the 6,000 Aussie jobs and, furthermore, you will not get the development that goes with EMAs.

In parliament today, I spoke about superannuation, and about aged care.

Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Reducing Illegal Early Release and Other Measures) Bill, 11 February 2013

In 1991, the then Prime Minister Paul Keating said of the superannuation guarantee:

'It will make Australia a more equal place, a more egalitarian place and hence a more cohesive and happier place.'

We do not often talk about happiness and superannuation in the same breath, but I think we should, because a strong superannuation system is a system that ensures dignity in retirement. It ensures that Australian retirees can enjoy that extra grey nomad trip and the comfort of being able to spend time with loved ones without worrying about paying the bills. It ensures that generations that have given much to Australia enjoy the retirement to which they are entitled.

Labor has always had a strong commitment to dignity in retirement. In 2009, we increased the pension—the biggest increase in the pension since its inception. That increase was worth $1,600 a year for singles on the full aged pension. Peter Whiteford from the University of New South Wales estimates that that knocked down the rate of poverty in Australia by about a fifth, from about 14 per cent down to about 11 per cent—one of the biggest decreases in poverty that we have seen. That came as a result of Labor's decision to raise the pension. That is the broad context for retirement security from this side of the house.

Alas, this has not been bipartisan. If we look to the Leader of the Opposition, he said once, 'Compulsory superannuation is one of the biggest con jobs ever foisted by government on the Australian people.' In 1995 he said, 'Compulsory superannuation is possibly the greatest confidence trick of the last decade.' It is in that spirit that we were not surprised when the Leader of the Opposition said on 23 March last year:

'Well, we strongly oppose the superannuation increase. We have always as a coalition been against compulsory superannuation increases…'

and that he said he would therefore oppose them. You can knock him for being wrong but not for being inconsistent. At least he was following true at that point to the things he had said about compulsory superannuation. But now it appears that the opposition have backflipped on superannuation. They say they will now be supporting the increase from nine to 12 per cent. They came into this place and voted against it. It is a phased increase until 2019, but those opposite will now apparently support the increase in superannuation—dragged kicking and screaming to the line—and are now unwilling to back down on this reform.

But you know where those opposite stand when they have the chance to speak out on superannuation. On the superannuation guarantee, Wilson Tuckey said that it was ‘both stupid and dishonest’. Senator Alston said ‘imposing compulsory superannuation on individuals does not increase total savings’—a statement clearly at odds with two recent Reserve Bank discussion papers. Senator Watson from the Liberal Party said ‘unemployment is going to rise’ from superannuation. Those opposite, in their heart of hearts, would really prefer that there was not a universal superannuation system. Just as they fought Medicare at its creation, so too they fought universal superannuation at its creation. Just as they have fought a series of progressive health measures, so too they have fought the increase in superannuation from nine to 12 per cent.

Today, although they may be saying that they are going to support the increase in universal superannuation, they are also going to raise the tax on the superannuation contributions of 3.6 million low-income Australians. That is about one in three workers, and they are the lowest paid workers in Australia. Nearly a third of workers are going to have their superannuation taxes increased by up to $500 a year under the opposition. Of course this is the same opposition who cried foul when the government imposed an additional 15 per cent tax on the superannuation contributions of those earning $300,000 or more in the last budget. That affected 128,000 people and some of the highest earning Australians. This, a measure which benefits 3.6 million of the lowest paid Australians, is a measure that the opposition will claw back.

The superannuation system on which dignity in retirement is founded is a Labor creation. It was Labor that put superannuation in place and has increased it from 9 to 12 per cent. It is Labor that introduced a low income superannuation contribution effective from 1 July last year. It is Labor has put in place a measure to implement a one-off refund of small excess concessional cap contributions breaches from 1 July 2011. Labor has put in place a higher concessional contributions cap for over-50s with low balances, and we have abolished the 70-year-old age limit on the superannuation guarantee. At the same time we are making the system more efficient and making the process of everyday transactions easier through new data and e-commerce standards, the use of tax file numbers as the primary locator of member accounts and facilitating account consolidation and electronic portability.

The Find My Super campaign that I ran locally with ACT MLA Chris Bourke helped link Canberrans to their superannuation. We can also do a lot through the Australian Taxation Office to make sure that your lost superannuation account finds you. Labor is working on those reforms. We have announced new rules to make superannuation simpler and more cost-effective through the MySuper reforms, which are grounded in the Cooper Review. This recognises that choice architecture needs to operate in an environment where many people simply take the default fund and the default option within that fund. Defaults need to have high returns for individuals. The MySuper reforms see that put in place. They ensure that the defaults Australians receive are good defaults. I think this was a notion not well understood in the early 1990s. The emphasis then was very much on choice, but I think a lot of the research since then, particularly some of the studies coming out of behavioural economics, have told us that most people are not active managers of their retirement savings. They want rules that ensure good defaults, and that it what the MySuper reforms put in place.

We are making sure that the directors of super funds are appropriately accountable for meeting their duties towards members. All of this is of a piece with ensuring that Australia can be a financial services hub and ensuring that Australia is a place where we encourage good money management in a way where we ensure that financial advisers are not conflicted and that they have good disclosure for their clients. The consumer credit reforms we have put in place sit alongside the MySuper reforms in making sure that customers get a good deal, making sure we have a system that puts customers first.

To go to the specific provisions of the bill: the bill introduces civil and criminal sanctions for someone who promotes a scheme that has resulted or is likely to result in the illegal early release of superannuation benefits. At the moment, there are not those provisions available for promoters unless they are themselves trustees of a fund. This ensures that those who would seek to benefit from the illegal early release of superannuation benefits can be punished.

The bill amends the Anti-Money-Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 to require that superannuation benefits that are rolled over into self-managed superannuation funds are captured as a designated service. That ensures that we take into account the risks of money laundering and financing of terrorism that can be associated with asset rollover and that we have the appropriate customer identification and reporting requirements to ensure that superannuation is not used for inappropriate ends.

The bill amends the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 to introduce administrative consequences for contraventions relating to self-managed superannuation funds. That gives the Commissioner of Taxation effective, flexible, proportionate power to address noncompliance with superannuation laws.

These reforms are essential if we are to ensure that the superannuation system remains a strong system which ensures good investment in Australia—we have seen the pool of assets grow to around the size of Australia's GDP. These reforms ensure that Australians have dignity in retirement.

I call on those opposite to change their commitment to scrapping the low-income superannuation contribution. They have argued that they are not going to support any measures that are linked to the mining tax, but we know that is not the case because, as soon as the breath was out of their mouths, they then said: 'Not the increase from nine to 12 per cent.' The increase from nine to 12 per cent is not small bickies. I understand that each percentage point is around $1 billion of forgone tax revenue for the government. So there is $3 billion sitting right there.

My call to those opposite is: if they are going to support a good measure—increasing superannuation contributions from nine to 12 per cent—why not continue and support an equally good measure in bringing down the tax rate paid by the lowest income Australians on their superannuation contributions? It is a reform that follows the Henry review. The Henry review recommended the tax paid on superannuation contributions should be an individual's marginal tax rate minus 15 per cent. We have not gotten to precisely that, but we have recognised the wisdom of the Henry review's recommendation that superannuation taxation should not be a flat tax, that it should be lower for lower income Australians. So we have brought down the tax rate to zero for 3.6 million Australians.

I call on those opposite to support that measure. It is a good measure. It improves dignity in retirement and it improves dignity for lower income Australians, who are disproportionately female workers. As we know, women earn lower wages in the Australian labour market, for a range of reasons—from industry, to discrimination, to career breaks. Women in the Australian workforce earn less and, as a result, have lower superannuation balances. These 3.6 million Australians, disproportionately women, are benefiting from the low-income superannuation contribution. If the coalition were to come to government and scrap it, they would be raising taxes on a group of low-income earners, disproportionately women.

This is as good a measure, in my view, as the increased superannuation contribution. It is an important equity measure and it is an important measure to ensure that Australians in their retirement have the independence to be able to travel, to spend time with loved ones, to enjoy a good retirement. I hope that sense prevails, that the Liberal Party, which has traditionally been deeply suspicious of universal superannuation—since the very inception of universal superannuation—can now see its way to support recommendations coming out of the Henry review that low-income Australians pay less tax. I commend the bill to the House.

Private Member's Motion on Aged Care, 11 February 2013

On Saturday, 1 December it was my great pleasure to attend the Belconnen Senior Citizens Club's 30th anniversary party. I went along with my two older boys—my five-year-old Sebastian and my three-year-old Theodore—who I must say were wonderfully feted by the members of the Belconnen Senior Citizens Club. This is a club which is focused on sports and recreation. There are older Australians in the Belconnen area who are engaged in dancing clubs, walking clubs and sports of all kinds. Mal, Noelene and Marj were particularly generous in looking after Sebastian and Theodore, and I also enjoyed seeing new ACT MLA Yvette Berry and her father, Wayne, at the event. It was a great reminder, if one were needed, of the vigour and energy of older Australians in my electorate of Fraser.

Over the last 40 years life expectancy in Australia has increased by around a decade. And one of the great thought experiments is: which would you prefer—an extra decade of life or the economic growth that has come over that period, with approximately a doubling in real per capita incomes? I have barely met a person who says if they had to choose between the two they would take the money over the years. Most of us value that extra decade of life far more than even a doubling in income. It is a reminder of the great advantages of Australia and of the health and lifestyle reforms that have increased longevity. When I hear commentators talk about the ‘problem’ of ageing, I am tempted to reply—as Minister Shorten sometimes does—it beats the alternative. Certainly there are challenges that Australia faces in an ageing population but they are great challenges to have.

On 19 November last year Minister Butler came to my electorate and held with me an aged care forum to speak with Canberrans about the aged care changes that the government is putting through in its Living Longer. Living Better aged care package. The package is improving the wages in the aged care sector and making sure that people have greater access to choice and information. Older Australians and their loved ones often have to make quick decisions and it is important that people have access to all of the information in front of them. It is important that people looking at retirement home options realise that they do not just have to pay bonds but that they can pay daily payments. It is important that people have support if they want to stay in their own homes as so many do.

The forum was the most popular event I have run in my electorate. I held another on 7 December, which again packed out the room in the Griffin Centre. It was a real reminder of the interest that Canberrans have in understanding the government's aged care reforms. This is a government that is committed to improving dignity in retirement. When we increased the single aged pension for someone on the full rate by $1,600 a year, it decreased the poverty rate. The University of New South Wales’ Peter Whiteford estimated that it reduced by about a fifth the number of people living in poverty in Australia, a massive reduction.

Now the government's increase in universal superannuation from nine to 12 per cent is again going to see more Australians enjoying dignity in retirement. By bringing down the tax rate on superannuation contributions of lower-income Australians to zero, we are encouraging low-income Australians to save for their retirement. Recognising that low-income earners are disproportionately women, who have lower superannuation balances, this is a measure that particularly advantages women, which is why taking it away would so disadvantage low-income Australians and women. This government is proud of its reforms, of its assistance to people in the aged care sector and of increased longevity in Australia.

For the third year running, I am inviting locals to come along and celebrate the newest members of our community at “Welcoming the Babies” on Sunday 24 February 2013 (10.30am to 12.30pm) Glebe Park, Canberra City.

The inaugural Welcoming the Babies held in 2011 had 150 people in attendance, including babies, their parents, and siblings.
Parents are invited to register babies up to 18 months of age, so that they can participate.

As a father of three young boys I know how daunting it can be trying to get information about what’s out there. By bringing together the various services and organisations in one place we’re hoping to make looking after young ones that little bit easier. It’s a chance for parents to find out the different things out there for them and benefit from the camaraderie of fellow sleep-deprived parents. It’s also a way for us to celebrate our youngest and cutest residents. The event is also a reminder that we need supportive families and a strong community to give children the best opportunity in life. Last year was a great success and was a fun filled day with face painting, balloons, and entertainment. I’m looking forward to an even bigger "Welcoming the Babies" this year. Parents wishing to register their babies should email andrew.leigh.mp < at > aph.gov.au or call 6247 4396 with the name of their baby and their contact details.

All members of the community are invited to come along and help celebrate “Welcoming the Babies”.

People in the ACT will soon enjoy a variety of health services in convenient locations, with the first sod turned on the ACT GP Super Clinic ‘hub’ in Bruce today.

[caption id="attachment_3831" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Joining Minister Tanya Plibersek, and Chief Minister Katy Gallagher for the first sod-turned on the Bruce GP Super Clinic construction site"][/caption]

This new GP Super Clinic will mean easier access for patients to healthcare services, with three locations around Canberra. GP Super Clinics are a key part of the Government’s commitment to providing all Australians with access to high quality health care, when they need it, where they need it. These clinics bring together a variety of health professionals to work as a team, providing the best possible overall care for their patients.

The Australian Government has provided $15 million for the ACT GP Super Clinic, which will be built on a ‘hub and spoke’ (main and subsidiary clinics) model. The Bruce hub will be in a larger four-storey building on the University of Canberra campus. The second hub will be built in Casey, northern Gungahlin. An existing practice in Calwell will form a GP Super Clinic ‘spoke’, giving staff and students the opportunity to work across a number of practice areas.

In addition to providing GP and nursing services and a variety of other healthcare services such as physiotherapy, the Bruce hub will also strongly emphasise education for medical, nursing and other health students. We know that medical students who train in the ACT are more likely to end up living and working in our community. Training the next generation of healthcare professionals in the GP Super Clinic environment, with its emphasis on teamwork, will lay the groundwork for better and more convenient health services in Canberra.

The ACT GP Super Clinic is being established by Ochre Health (ACT) Pty Ltd. The construction at Bruce is being funded jointly by Health Workforce Australia, the University of Canberra and the Department of Health and Ageing, and is expected to be completed by early 2014.
The Australian Government is making a significant investment in GP Super Clinics. It. has committed about $650 million to build more than 60 of the clinics around Australia, and upgrade and extend about 425 existing general practices, community and other health services, and Aboriginal Medical Services. There are now 48 clinics either open, providing limited services or under construction.

On Sky AM Agenda today, I spoke with host Kieran Gilbert and Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield about why a profits-based mining tax has volatile revenues, why Labor is committed to seeing low-income earners pay no tax on their superannuation contributions, and the importance of politicians not meddling in criminal investigations.

I spoke today with Mark Parton about Labor's investments in the ACT, including through the NBN, the Majura Parkway, and the new GP SuperClinic in Bruce. Here's a podcast.

This month there are a series of free financial information sessions designed to help locals take control of their finances. They are a local and practical avenue for people of all ages to gain information on a range of important topics. The Australian Government has offered the Financial Information Service (FIS) for over 20 years, educating hundreds of thousands of people by providing information to help them plan for their future security. The experienced FIS Officers can show you how to make informed financial decisions and help you understand the consequences of those decisions in the short, medium and long term. These seminars are regularly held across the country, educating communities on a wide range of topics from superannuation and creating wealth, right through to finance and accommodation options in retirement and they're not just for people receiving Centrelink payments - they are open to anyone interested, and are popular so bookings are essential.

Upcoming local seminars at Belconnen Premier Inn (110 Benjamin Way, Belconnen)

Age pension and your choices, Tuesday 12 February 2013, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm;
Running your own super fund, Thursday 14 February 2013, 6:00 pm to 8:30pm

For FIS seminar bookings call 13 6357 or email [email protected]
To find out more about Human Services free Financial Information Service seminars visit humanservices.gov.au/fis.