Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (10:24): I am sure you will be much relieved, Acting Deputy President Bernardi, that it is now my time. I rise to respond to the address of the Governor-General and I note that it is the third time in three years that the Governor-General has come in here and delivered the Prime Minister's speeches for the nation, which tells a story in itself. It is an unusual time in political history but an important time for each and every one of us—I am speaking for myself here and no doubt for some of my colleagues. It is an opportunity to reflect on why we are here, what we want to achieve and what our legacy is going to be for our short time in parliament. The story of what happened in Tasmania in the last three years and in the Tasmanian election is a story that I think needs more telling. I do not do this to gloat or to rub in the face of the Liberal Party the catastrophe that the 2016 double dissolution election was for them in Tasmania; I raise it because it tells a very important story about the 45th Parliament that we are going into. It concerns me that already within the first week of being back in here it is a bit like groundhog day—I feel like history is repeating already and that none of us have learned from the mistakes of the very volatile 44th Parliament. A week into the double-dissolution election campaign, I did an interview with Brian Carlton from Tasmania Talks, down in Tasmania. At the end of the interview, he said to me, 'Senator, what is your call, what is your bet on the three amigos—the three Liberal MPs in Northern Tasmania?' I said, 'Brian, my call is that they are all going to lose their seats in a landslide.' He said, 'Senator, you would be the only one saying that.' Most of the polls at the time and the expectation on the street was that those electorates were going to be tightly contested and held by the Liberal Party. My reasoning was simple: I do not believe any of those three Liberal MPs in my state of Tasmania ever recovered from the 2014 budget. The impression I got from speaking to constituents and from being on the ground was that the lack of vision and the cruel harsh budget cuts deeply impacted my electorate of Bass and the other northern electorates, which are some of the most disadvantaged electorates in the country—all the statistics tell us that; it is not something to be proud of and is something we have to work hard on. I felt and the constituents felt that that cruel, ideological budget of the Abbott Liberal government at the time was going to be devastating for many Tasmanians. We had rallies and people spoke to their local members but what did they get back from their local members, including from my local member in Bass, Mr Andrew Nikolic? What they got told was that we needed to do this because we were in a budget emergency They got told that they were going to lose, that they were going to take cuts to their pensions and that they were going to lose entitlements on social security. They were told they would have to wait 12 months before they would get payments, that there were going to be cuts to health care and education because of a budget emergency. Well, it did not cut the mustard in Tasmania then and it will not now. Fast forward to 2016 to this address of the Governor-General and the same thing is happening. We have a new Prime Minister who delivered his speech a couple of days ago through the Governor-General, which I must say was a total fizzer. I understand why Senator Hinch fell asleep. I think we all have to be honest with ourselves: most of us were employing every trick in the book to keep our eyes open during the speech. My trick was actually focusing on the Governor-General's aide-de-camp, who stood— Senator Conroy: Wasn't she magnificent! Senator WHISH-WILSON: to attention throughout the whole thing and did not flinch once. I have got to say, if that sets the tone for this government then I have to ask the question: where is the vision? Where is the plan? 'Jobs and growth' is a three-word slogan. Where is the plan to sail this economy through the doldrums? Where is it? The only plan Mr Tony Abbott had was to rip up all the good work of the Greens and Labor in 2013. There was no vision, no mandate to do anything. Nothing has changed. It pains me to read the media release from TasCOSS yesterday. They talk about the omnibus bill, the first piece of legislation that we are going to get here. They say that this bill, to be tabled in federal parliament, will 'make life for the 16,000 jobless Tasmanians even more difficult'. The CEO of TasCOSS, Kym Goodes, said: The instability of Tasmania's labour market combined with the proposed changes to NewStart … will put even more financial pressure on the entire generation of Tasmanians currently looking for work. Then she goes on to say: The NewStart Energy Supplement could be paid for many times over by withdrawing proposed Government tax cuts and cutting Capital Gains Tax and negative gearing concessions. There are so many elements already in the first piece of legislation to this Senate that are going to hurt disadvantaged Tasmanians. But there is no other plan on how we are going to stimulate the economy or generate jobs for Tasmanians. All we are going to do is put forward the same measures to make life hard for people in my state. It is Groundhog Day. We have learnt nothing from the last couple of years and nothing from the clear political outcome of a double dissolution election. The Greens do have the courage and vision to put forward an economic plan for this country—a plan that not only looks after the environment but actually delivers ideas on how we can stimulate the economy and how we can raise revenue, because we have a revenue crisis if we have a crisis in this country. We have a government that is not prepared to raise revenue. We are talking about the Prime Minister's key focus this week as the parliament has come back. It was very evident in his speech in response to the Governor-General's speech: the massive moral obligation that we all have is to retire debt—a massive moral obligation. We heard something similar from Kevin Rudd about climate change. Now, that is a massive moral obligation for us to tackle. But it sounds very much like Mr Joe Hockey's budget emergency. We have already heard several speeches over the last two days about what Treasurer Scott Morrison calls 'the taxed and the taxed-nots'. It is the same kind of divisive language we saw two years ago. Haven't we learnt anything? Why are we going over this old ground when there is so much that we can do as a parliament to actually make Australia a better place? Why the divisiveness? We can act on housing affordability. We can tackle negative gearing and capital gains tax. Senator O'Sullivan interjecting— Senator WHISH-WILSON: You may not agree, Senator O'Sullivan. I know you have many real estate investments. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Bernardi ): Address your comments to the chair, thank you, Senator Whish-Wilson. Senator WHISH-WILSON: To you, Acting Deputy President. Housing affordability is a serious issue for many Australians. Senator Ruston yesterday talked about intergenerational debt—the debt that we are leaving to future generations—as being our biggest issue. It is very similar to our massive moral obligation on retiring debt. She did not actually break down what that debt was. I do not think any of us disagree that personal debt, especially when it is debt-fuelled consumption or debt on a dangerous housing market, has serious implications for the future of this economy. I do not think any of us disagree with that. But where is the discussion about good debt and bad debt? Where is the discussion about debt that we actually need to spend on future generations of Australians and on productive and transformative infrastructure? It is missing from the rhetoric and spin of the Turnbull government. It is disappointing because, going into the election, Mr Malcolm Turnbull did make several comments about the need to look at innovative infrastructure, financing and development of this country. But all we have had since the election is more three-word, or even five-word, slogans. So I will give the Prime Minister that—there has been an advance on the slogans. Nevertheless, we need a lot more than that; we actually need some substance. The taxation system is riddled with incentives for property speculators. It is inflating house prices. We know that a lot of Australians—and I have met a lot of them—are not fortunate enough to own their own home. This comes at the expense of an entire generation who are being locked out of the housing market in this country. Capital gains discounts, negative gearing and free passes for self-managed superannuation—the money that is flowing into investment properties—has put a handicap on young people looking to own their own home, and it is forcing them to spend more and more of their income on sky-high rents. Where do we hear the discussion about a dangerous housing market from this government and how we are going to tackle that? Well, the Greens have led on policies to tackle negative gearing and capital gains tax. Labor had a variation of that during the election. I understand—there is certainly speculation—that it is being discussed in the Liberal party room. But if we can work on that together as a parliament—on ways that we can actually tackle that—and work on intergenerational equity and inequality in this country, that would be a positive thing for the Australian people. That would be showing true leadership and true vision. Let's talk about monetary policy. We know that it has reached its limits and that it is struggling to stimulate aggregate demand. This is a theme all around the world. The world economy remains fragile. So, essentially, we are in uncharted waters. With Australian bond rates so low the government should be borrowing right now to invest in our future. I would say the massive moral obligation of our time, Senator O'Sullivan, through you, Chair, is actually avoiding underinvesting in future generations of Australians. I went around the country, including to some areas in your state, Senator O'Sullivan, and heard about the infrastructure gap in this country. Nearly a trillion dollars is needed around this nation to invest—to create jobs and to invest in our communities. I am not just talking about roads and pouring concrete; I am talking about public transport, renewable energy, telecommunications, social infrastructure, pipelines. We came up with a massive list of asks from regional and rural communities as well as cities. There is so much we can do to actually build this nation now for future generations, if we have the courage to make the decisions and get over this obsession with the spin and rhetoric that debt is somehow bad. I am especially talking about debt raised at historically low interest rates and invested in the right kind of infrastructure with the right process—an independent Infrastructure Australia so that we have a depoliticisation of the way money is allocated and spent in this country, working with markets for bond issuances against certain kinds of expenditure, developing new capital markets. I was pleased that new senator, Senator Hume, has some interesting ideas in this area. You will be pleased that we have something in common there, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, because this is the kind of thing we need to be talking about. While interest rates are at record lows, we can lock in issuances of things like bonds. We can make pools and finance available to state and local governments. In Tasmania we need $900 million now to invest in water infrastructure. Senator Bushby, through you, Chair, knows all about this: 15 communities in our state do not have clean drinking water. They still have to boil water before they drink it, and they want money. They have not been able to get any money from the federal government. Why don't we have low-interest capital available for local governments and state governments? We have some. They are very targeted and very specific programs where federal government infrastructure spending is targeted at communities around this country, but it is nowhere near enough. We could play a leadership role, if we had the courage, vision and leadership. The Senate select committee that I worked on spent a lot of time looking at this. Interestingly, Standard & Poor's—we have heard a lot of about AAA credit ratings, Senator O'Sullivan, and no doubt you will be talking about this when you get up—chief economist, Paul Sheard, is quoted in The Guardian today in an article by Martin Farrer in which he talks about the AAA impact on Australia. It says: He said the federal government had to try to reduce 'bad debt' related to recurrent expenditure but also needed to increase 'good debt' to fund capital spending. He talks about underinvestment in infrastructure. That is from the credit rating agencies. Yesterday I quoted TD securities—a big article by Jacob Greber in the Financial Review—also saying we needed to watch our AAA credit rating, but they excluded specifically investment in productive infrastructure. There are two articles in two days supporting the Greens push to have a nation-building program to put on the table for this country. I am very pleased to say—and it is very good timing for me today—that there is an excellent article in the Financial Review today by Tim Pallas, the Victorian Treasurer. So all Victorian senators, please take note—unfortunately, Senator Hinch is not here. He wrote an op-ed this morning talking about how Victoria has gone out there and spent a lot of money on productive infrastructure, how it stimulated economic growth in their state and has delivered and in fact improved their credit rating. He says: The departing Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, recently called for a more 'nuanced' debate— and by nuanced, he means a political debate— about public-sector debt, saying 'the most powerful domestic impetus that comes from low interest rates surely comes when someone has both the balance sheet capacity and the willingness to take on more debt and spend'. The federal government has the balance sheet capacity to do that, if that pool is taken away from recurrent expenditure and targeted specifically at infrastructure spending. It goes on: This is a debate the Victorian Government has been leading for some time, echoing the sentiments of S&P, which in a submission to a Senate Select committee— which is a committee I chaired— inquiry talked of the 'productivity effects of high quality infrastructure delivery'. That is, government investment in high quality projects has a direct and positive impact on GDP. We have consistently maintained that public investment in infrastructure is a key piece of the jobs puzzle, which is why we re-shaped that debate by announcing a 10-year capital plan in the 2016-2017 budget – looking beyond the budget and electoral cycle. And as the Premier made clear last week, the private sector needs a willing partner in government; one that listens and is prepared to act. Governments need to be willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work. In other words, the Australian people want to see their government taking an active role in their life, not leaving it to big corporations to make big profits in the hope that some of that is going to trickle down to the economy and to Australians at the bottom of the pile. It does not work, and that is what you are going to get from the Turnbull government—a $50 billion tax cut to big business. That is their GDP stimulating policy—that is it: give businesses a tax cut. Guess what? A lot of these businesses do not pay their fair share of tax already, so why give them another tax cut? This is a more direct way of governments getting out there and spending money where it is needed. Get money moving in this country, create jobs and invest in future generations of Australia, in the right kind of infrastructure and the right kind of projects. Tim Pallas, the Victorian Treasurer finishes by saying: While future generations may not have a voice in influencing today's investment decisions, our legacy for them should be a Victorian economy enjoying higher growth potential than if we'd sat on our hands. We have been sitting on our hands in federal parliament. We have no plan, no vision, under this government for jobs, for stimulating the economy, for sailing us through the doldrums; however, the Greens do have a plan. I am pleased that Mr Shorten in his Press Club speech said that infrastructure could be the one thing in this parliament, the 45th Parliament, where all political parties could work together. This is certainly something that we have been very keen on. We have done a lot of work in this area and we have collected evidence from—Acting Deputy President, you would be quite surprised—many right-wing commentators who also support the Greens' push for an infrastructure spending boost in this country. We also have revenue-raising, fully costed, through the PBO, policies to raise nearly $140 billion of revenue, Senator O'Sullivan. We have a revenue crisis in this country, because the government does not want to take on the hard decisions. Twenty-four billion dollars that we give to the mining companies in fossil fuel subsidies—guess what? We do not need to take any money off poor Tasmanians; let's take it off wealthy mining companies that get a direct subsidy from taxpayers, and they should.