Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak today on the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation (Abolition) Bill 2014. I was glad to read the remarks of the Independent member for Indi in the other place on this bill. The member for Indi, as the local member for the Wodonga half of Albury-Wodonga, gave a strong contribution to the debate on this bill in the other place. I believe that bears some acknowledgement here.

I am pleased to draw on that contribution in making my remarks here in the Senate this afternoon. The member for Indi drew the attention of avid listeners to parliament and readers of Hansard to a book by Bruce Pennay entitled The Experiment: Imagining the Albury-Wodonga National Growth Centre. In this book, Pennay states:

On its instigation in 1973, the Albury-Wodonga National Growth Centre experiment was hailed as a novel and imaginative project.

It was a pilot scheme that was extended to influence the urban settlement patterns right around Australia. It was a "bold venture", a brave attempt, to solve a longstanding problem. It involved three governments working cooperatively on an "exciting adventure".

Today we have before the Senate legislation to abolish the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation. Before we vote on this legislation, it is important to take the time to look back at the history and the purpose of the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation, as the member for Indi did in the other place. When we look at Albury-Wodonga, you have only to look at the Whitlam legacy. That is the reality.

It is something of a coincidence that, in this week, when the Senate began by expressing its condolences following the passing of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam AC, QC we find before us a piece of legislation that has at its heart the legacy of the Whitlam government. The concept of regionalism and to build significant regional centres was part of the legacy and vision of the Whitlam government from the beginning. Gough Whitlam first raised the idea for the regional development projects in Albury in a speech he gave in Sydney in 1969. He then visited Albury in 1970 for a Rotary conference. I understand that he stayed at the Travelodge that night and later boasted that the speech took him from the Travelodge to The Lodge. It then formed part of his Blacktown campaign speech in 1972, in which he said:

A national government which cuts itself off from responsibility for the nation’s cities is cutting itself off from the nation’s real life. A national government which has nothing to say about cities has nothing relevant or enduring to say about the nation or the nation’s future. Labor is not a city-based party. It is a people-based party, and the overwhelming majority of our people live in cities and towns across our nation.

He went on:

A Labor Government will have two over-riding objectives: to give Australian families access to land and housing at fair prices, and to preserve and enhance the quality of the national estate—

the environment. Then he said:

We will set up a Commonwealth-State Land Development Commission in each State to buy substantial tracts of land in new areas being opened up for housing and to lease or sell at cost fully serviced housing blocks …

Today, the parliament is dealing with the legacy of that 1972 campaign speech. Upon taking government, a new department and a new function for the Commonwealth was established. We had a Department of Urban and Regional Development, with the great Tom Uren as the minister. That started the Albury-Wodonga National Growth Centre Project in 1973, which ultimately became the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation, on 21 May 1974, with the hope for it to be a model for similar schemes elsewhere. The reform program for regional development produced results through direct grants to local government bodies around Australia. Grant programs included were for flood mitigation, urban renewal, leisure and tourism facilities, and for building sewerage systems in unserviced urban areas.

Under the Department of Urban and Regional Development, the Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation was established on 21 May 1974. Out of this we not only found a vision for Albury-Wodonga but found a Commonwealth government taking responsibility for entirely new areas of policy that the Commonwealth had previously not touched. Today, we not only put down a marker for the great growth that occurred in Albury-Wodonga but also acknowledge that the principles of regionalism and the principles of obligations to people who live in cities and suburbs are something that would be a function of the Commonwealth of Australia.

I note that in The Border Mail on 21 October 2014 Howard Jones wrote that:

Five weeks after man first landed on the Moon, Gough Whitlam proposed something that ultimately turned out to be even harder to achieve — a huge new combined city for Albury-Wodonga.

Jones went on to write that Whitlam:

… started the Albury-Wodonga National Growth Centre project in 1973, four years after raising the idea in a speech in Sydney when he was still the federal opposition leader. On April 17, 1970, he visited Albury for a Rotary conference to expound his theories for regional development, drawing on the views of the then-head of Uncle Ben’s, Wodonga, Dr Henry Nowik.

Time precludes me from going further into the memories of the great Gough Whitlam on this issue. Labor supports this bill, but we have to always remember the legacy of Labor in bringing about regionalism—looking after the regions in this country. We support the bill.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On this occasion, I will agree with Senator Cameron and note the irony in some ways of this bill being introduced into this place in the same week that the condolences were held for the former Prime Minister. I think the Bills Digest came out of the House of Representatives the day after the former Prime Minister passed away. Needless to say, I would probably have a different view of the history of this particular corporation and the expansion of Commonwealth authority into an area for which it had no constitutional authority. I do accept, however, his comments that it was the particular passion of the former minister, Mr Tom Uren. But those days, in many ways, have passed. In that case, I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.