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Record of Proceedings, 12 March 2025
In rising to speak to this bill I want to make a few comments in relation to the natural disasters that have occurred this week, particularly the damage in the Scenic Rim electorate around Logan City and Scenic Rim but also in parts of Ipswich. Significant power losses on Tamborine Mountain and Beechmont are still being endured and damage was caused to other public assets and farms. Our thoughts are with all the people affected by that.
I also want to say thanks to the Energex and Ergon workers who are on the ground doing their best in a very productive manner to try to restore power as quickly as possible. It is interesting that we are talking about the productivity bill because in the last 14 months Tamborine Mountain, Beechmont, Tamborine, Cedar Grove and Cedar Vale in the electorate have endured two really bad natural disasters which have caused there to be a great call on Energex and Ergon workers. Our community has seen the great work they do. It goes to show that there can be a huge effort put in, a very productive effort put in, to help out the communities by those entities and I want to thank them for that. I urge them to restore power as quickly as possible to those affected communities.
Turning more specifically to the provisions of the bill and also the comments about it that the Labor Party continually make, it is clear that under the Labor government that was in power in Queensland for the best part of 10 years Queensland has paid more for everything and received much less value for money. That is the hallmark of so many previous ministers of that government, and many of them now sit on the opposition benches. One only needs to look at the member for Miller and his record as the former minister for transport and main roads and the blowouts that occurred under his watch.
I make the point that under the Labor government Queenslanders paid more and got less. Productivity is a discussion that we need to have in Queensland, but we also need to have it in Australia as a whole. It is a discussion that needs to be had because recent national accounts referred to in the media showed that productivity in our nation declined by 1.9 per cent in the year ending September 2023 and it also went down 0.8 per cent in the year ending September 2024. Lowering of productivity makes it harder for families in the Scenic Rim electorate, Queensland and the whole of Australia to pay their bills because a lowering of productivity means costs go up and real incomes decline. When you have inflation running as it is—higher than it should be and higher than the Reserve Bank wants it to be—and there is a lowering of productivity, inflation goes up by more than real wage increases and so people find it harder to pay those things. A lowering of productivity leads to a decline in living standards, and that comes from economic settings that do not put productivity at the core.
I also wish to reflect on comments from members opposite about whether this commission will be truly independent of government. Of course it will be, but it is the height of hypocrisy for those opposite to criticise this bill when in their very recent history they abolished the productivity commission, and they abolished it because they received a report they did not like. I will not be lectured to by members opposite about the virtue of an independent productivity commission with their track record, and it was not decades ago. It was to 2019 or 2020 when they did it, all because they received a report that demonstrated that productivity had declined under their government. As I said, under Labor you pay more and get less; that is what the productivity commission was saying and so they abolished it.
We made a commitment to bring it back and that is what we are doing in this bill. It is productivity that leads to higher real wages. It is productivity that leads to improved living standards in Australia and across our state as well. That is why it is so important that we are bringing this back.
There is an old saying that prior preparation prevents poor performance. Some other people add another P as well, but I am not going to do that. When it comes to this Productivity Commission that we are establishing, it is about the ‘five Ps’ principle, and that is doing the research into areas that need improvement and ensuring there is not poor performance. We know that we can do better in some ways, and other members have indicated issues that need to be looked into from a productivity point of view. When we are talking about electricity and natural disasters—and I know the issue that I am about to raise is something the member for Theodore is interested in as well—it relates to the impact of overlays in our planning schemes and how it deals with vegetation overlays. It also relates to how the
management of our power network can be affected by some of those regulations and the costs that imposes on our community in times of natural disasters, not only in the days of inconvenience caused when people lose power but also by the costs imposed on our electricity sector—and insurance as well—when the settings are not right from a residential home point of view, from a commercial premise point of view but also for our electricity infrastructure. The damage caused by fallen vegetation can be significant—millions of dollars and lost electricity and productivity—when those settings are not right. I have had more than one person who has previously worked for Energex talk to me about the impact that a lack of vegetation maintenance on those electricity lines has caused and the damage it has caused when they go down. It can be done better, and it used to be done better.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank you for your forbearance with the time. I am concluding my remarks. We need to bring back the Productivity Commission. I support the bill wholeheartedly. The members opposite have no right to criticise in light of their track record.