Parliamentary Speeches
Motion of No Confidence ( 24/09/2008)
Mr DONALD PAGE (Ballina) [9.33 p.m.]: I support the no-confidence motion. I do so because I believe that the Government has been one of wasted opportunity. It has been a government of declining services. It has been a government of failing infrastructure. I know that the member for Lismore, who is in the chair, will be the first to agree with me that the taking away of the Casino to Murwillumbah train service was a good local example of the Government allowing infrastructure to decline. I note that the member for Willoughby is the next speaker on our side. She will clearly state the failures of transport infrastructure. It has been a government of insufficient police presence. The constant complaint of the people across New South Wales has been that there are insufficient police available to attend to the State's level of crime. It has been a government that in many areas has made New South Wales business uncompetitive with business in other States, particularly in taxation and regulation. It has been a government of spin over substance and a government that after 13½ years has lost the confidence of the people.
In most fields of government activity the Government has been a failure. Even though the Government continues to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic every so often, the fundamental challenge of addressing the good management of the hospital system, the education system and the transport system, which are all State responsibilities, seems very much beyond it. It is not as if the Government has not had the money over the years. It has had the money but done nothing but waste it. When the Government first came to power it had a revenue stream of about $17 billion dollars; after 13½ years it has a revenue stream of about $46 billion dollars. The Government has disappointed the people of New South Wales who in the past put their faith in it. Even those people who were prepared to give the Government one more chance at the last election must be disappointed.
It is going to be a long night so I will be brief because many members wish to speak on the no-confidence motion. I will concentrate on the areas of particular interest to me in my shadow portfolio of tourism and business. Members would be aware that the report of John O'Neill on tourism came down recently. The key finding of that report was that the Labor Government has cost the people of New South Wales at least $3.5 billion over the past six or seven years. The reason for that has been the neglect of the Government to understand the importance of tourism to the economy of New South Wales and the Government's inability to seriously address the marketing of New South Wales as a product at the same time as Victoria and Queensland have been undertaking serious promotion campaigns.
According to the O'Neill report the loss of revenue in tourism was due largely to the fact that New South Wales hosted 18 million fewer visitor nights than would have been the case had the visitation levels of 1999-2000 continued. I will quote a couple of salient features from the report. On the decline of visitor nights in New South Wales the report said:
The graph shows that over the period as a whole, New South Wales hosted 18 million less visitor nights than it would have if it had maintained visitation at 1999-2000 levels, while the rest of Australia hosted 20.8 million visitor nights.
John O'Neill went on to state:
On the basis that during this period a visitor night was worth about $128 in expenditure, this means that over the seven-year period the rest of Australia gained an extra $2.7 billion in revenue. In contrast, New South Wales lost about $2.3 billion in revenue. Had New South Wales actually kept up with the rest of Australia, it would have received an extra $1.2 billion in tourism revenue. So, given the decline in New South Wales visitor nights, the State was about $3.5 billion (or $0.5 billion per annum) worse off in tourism revenue than if it had maintained its position relative to the rest of Australia. These are not trivial.
That is not from the Opposition; that is from a detailed report commissioned by the Government and produced by John O'Neill with the backing of a lot of very informed people in the tourism industry. The Government sat on the O'Neill report for about nine months because it knew that the report was damning about its lack of performance. It was not keen to see it released. It was only as a result of pressure from the Opposition and the tourism industry that the Government finally released the report. But it was not able to spin doctor the report. The fundamentals of the report showed, as I indicated, that the Government has cost the State $3.5 billion dollars in lost tourism opportunities.
John O'Neill, in the executive summary of his report, stated:
Despite the attraction of Sydney, New South Wales is progressively losing market share of Australian tourism, due to a combination of factors including ongoing societal and technological change—
this is important—
government imposed constraints and inaction and the way government promotes tourism in New South Wales.
The John O'Neill report on the tourism industry is most damning. Government members, whether they belong to the right or left faction, should acknowledge the importance of the tourism industry, the significant contribution by John O'Neill, and the damning nature of his report. One of the major problems in tourism has been the Government cuts in expenditure over the past eight years. The Government has reduced expenditure on the promotion of tourism in this State by 12 per cent in real terms. At the same time that the Government has cut expenditure Victoria and Queensland have substantially increased expenditure by 20 per cent and 46 per cent in real terms. They have seriously increased their expenditure. New South Wales Labor has been asleep at the wheel.
Overnight visitors in New South Wales have fallen from 33 million people in 2000 to 24 million for the year ending 30 June 2008. Sydney is the only Olympic city to have experienced a downturn in tourism after the Olympic Games. That is disgraceful. The reason is that the Government took for granted that it did not have to promote Sydney following the hosting of the Olympic Games. The figures show that Victoria and Queensland have promoted their States and have stolen our market share. The New South Wales tourism budget expenditure per visitor is the lowest of all States and Territories. New South Wales is losing market share, and has been for many years, to Victoria and Queensland.
The O'Neill report recommended that regional tourism should be funded by in the vicinity of $21 million per year. The Government's response to that recommendation was to provide $10.5 million over three years—about $3.5 million each year. The former Minister for Tourism, Matt Brown, made that announcement last month, but that commitment may be up in the air because, as we heard today, the Premier is not prepared to rule anything in or out except the reduction of payroll tax to 5.5 percent over a three-year period. Regional tourism is a significant contributor to the tourism market. Government members may not be aware that in the holiday and leisure market the regions account for 72 to 73 per cent of the total number of visitor nights throughout the State. The regional tourism budget gets a very small percentage of the total tourism budget and a fraction of the amount recommended by John O'Neill. I implore the Government to seriously consider the impact on regional tourism and to implement the recommendations of the O'Neill report in relation to tourism throughout the State.
I remind the Government that the tourism industry is a significant employer, employing approximately 165,000 people in this State. About 73,000 of those are employed in regional areas. So it is roughly a 50-50 split. The industry is worth $23 billion a year to the economy of New South Wales. Unfortunately, because of the negligence of this Government and its neglect of the tourism industry, the State has lost about $3.5 billion—according to the O'Neill report—in the last five or six years in revenue opportunities. That means not only lost opportunities for businesses involved in the tourism industry but also lost government revenue. Investing in tourism means increased employment, more payroll tax and probably more stamp duty because of increased money flow. This incompetent Government does not understand the many benefits to be derived from the tourism industry.
The O'Neill report is condemnatory of the Government's lack of performance over many years in the Tourism portfolio and highlights the significant failings of the Government. However, in the latest ministry announcements the new Premier appointed the most junior Minister to this portfolio. I will not attack the Minister; she is new to the Parliament and new to the ministry. Tourism is a significant industry that is worth more than $23 billion a year to the State, and the O'Neill report states that the Government has forsaken the tourism industry. Yet the Government has given the portfolio to its most junior Minister. That shows that the Government has learnt absolutely nothing from the O'Neill report and its interest in tourism is zero.
People talk to me all the time about problems with small business. Red tape is choking small business. In a report this year Westpac stated that small businesses in New South Wales spend on average 20 hours a week on administration and red tape compared with 15 hours a week for small businesses in Queensland. Some of that relates to Federal red tape and administration. However, the Federal component would be common to businesses in all States. Businesses in New South Wales spend five hours a week more than businesses in Queensland on administration because of the administrative and regulatory framework in New South Wales. I implore the Government while it is in office—God knows how long that will be; I hope we have an election soon so that we can get rid of it—to examine the issue of red tape and not just pay lip service to it.
New South Wales is the only State in the country where businesses cut spending in the June quarter, following cuts in spending in the previous quarter as well. The Sensis Business Index report released last month showed that 15 per cent of small businesses had reduced employee numbers, with 60 per cent of small businesses reducing the number of full-time staff in the past year. Business confidence in New South Wales is at its lowest level in 15 years at just 7 per cent. New South Wales has far too many taxes on small business. A small business can pay potentially 23 separate State taxes. A New South Wales Business Chamber survey of 400 businesses showed that 57 per cent of respondents stated that New South Wales was uncompetitive compared with other States. The Premier seems to be hanging his hat on payroll tax when he says that he will retain the commitment to gradually reduce payroll tax over the next three years to 5.5 per cent. Payroll tax in Queensland is 4.75 per cent and in Victoria it is 4.95 per cent. The threshold in New South Wales is $623,000, compared with the threshold in Queensland of $1 million. The payroll tax rates in Queensland and Victoria are much lower than the projected rates in three years' time in New South Wales and the threshold at which businesses start paying payroll tax is $623,000 in New South Wales and $1 million in Queensland.
I can understand why people, particularly in my part of the world near the Queensland border, say that they would rather invest in Queensland than in New South Wales because New South Wales is not competitive. The Government must take heed of their comments. The introduction of a vendor tax at a time when the property market was looking superficially overheated but was going into decline—so that property owners paid stamp duty on purchase, land tax during ownership and vendor duty on sale—was the worst thing that this Government ever did. Michael Egan must account for the flight of investment capital from New South Wales to other States, particularly investment in rental accommodation. People did not want to put up with high land tax as well as bad tenants.
And in those days too, of course, the State Government reduced the threshold on land tax and took it back to zero for a year, which meant that if you owned any property other than your own home you had to pay land tax. The combination of the removal of the threshold on land tax and the introduction of the vendor tax was an absolute disaster for the property market in New South Wales and it caused a flight of investment out of this State into other States, particularly Queensland.
There are 32,000 businesses that operate across State borders, and they are burdened by not only an uncompetitive tax system but also an inefficient regulatory system. The Government needs to do much more than it is. It pays lip service to the small business community in the same way it pays lip service to the tourism industry, and in neither case is it addressing the real needs of either of those sectors. I point out that the Coalition introduced cross-border legislation in two Parliaments in the past seeking to address cross-border anomalies but this Government on both occasions voted down the proposed legislation.
Furthermore, to my great pain and to the anger of people out there who know about this issue, the State Government voted down legislation that was designed to protect homeowners who cannot pay their mortgage: to ensure that those people who are in a mortgagee in possession situation would at least get market price, because, as we know, if someone has a property worth $1 million but owes the bank $700,000 the bank is only interested in getting that $700,000 back, and the $300,000 equity that is held by the borrower can easily be sacrificed in such a situation. Our legislation would have guaranteed that the borrower would get at least market price, but what did the Labor Government do? It voted down the legislation. The legislation would have been very important in the current financial crisis. Many people are suffering more stress at the moment and yet this Government voted down the legislation.
We support the no-confidence motion because the State Government has done so many stupid things that people have had a gutful and we are determined that through the passage of this motion—I hope the Independents will back us—we can have an election in this State and get rid of this bad Government. I support the idea of fixed-term Parliaments but the problem is that they do not allow us to get rid of a bad government. That is the problem we have in New South Wales today. In relation to both the tourism industry and the small business community the Government has been a complete and utter failure. I strongly support the motion of no confidence in the Government.
