Brunswick Labor.net

Babies and young families, home buyers and services are the big winners in the 2008-09 State Budget, Carlo Carli, Member for Brunswick said today.

“New figures released today show we are in the middle of a baby boom,” Mr. Carli said.

“Over 73,700 births recorded last year – the highest since 1971 and we are rolling out initiatives to make sure families have the services they need for their children.”

The Eddington Report on East West transport links will be released today. The details have been splashed around the media over the last few days. As expected there will be a recommendation for an East West tunnel to join the Eastern freeway to Citylink and then over to the western suburbs joining up at Ballarat or even Geelong Rd.

The surprise is that Eddington has recommended that no such exits be built. He has accepted the argument that any exit ramps aimed towards the CBD would increase downstream congestion. This makes the project much more marginal for private investors. The economic model of the financial backers of the project was that money was to be made funnelling and tolling traffic into the CBD. It therefore makes it unlikely that the tunnel can be funded as a private sector toll road.

Therefore without significant State or Federal funding the tunnel will never be built. I also expect the poor cost benefit of the project will see the tunnel project fall over. There just is not much traffic that flows from western Melbourne to the Eastern freeway or vice a versa.

Eddington also proposes a very large rail project. This involves an underground metro link between Caulfield station, through to North Melbourne and then Footscray stations. In the long term this project is probably necessary to increase the capacity of the loop. However the debate will be whether there are more worthwhile rail projects in the short to medium term. Certainly outer areas of Melbourne will want to see extensions to rail provision ahead of increased capacity.

The cost of Eddington’s recommendation will be around $20 billion. More importantly there is a desire by the Brumby Government for an extended debate.

As a supporter of sustainable transport it is important that the debate is broad and looks not at just the issue of more roads and rail but the conditions that will allow for mobility with a reduction of car dependency. We need to look at world best practice and we need to at the transport divide in Melbourne. A divide between the public transport, walking and cycling friendly inner areas and the car dependent outer suburbs.

_{The following speech is due to be delivered at the Fabian Society on March 5, 2008.}

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Congestion is an accepted part of life in large cities. It always has been. Ancient Romans complained about congestion, and Londoners in the 17th century had similar complaints. And with half the world’s population now living in urban environments it is part of our modern experience. We deal with it by adapting, and when it becomes unacceptable by using modes of sustainable transport – trains, trams, buses, bikes or feet. Or we make decisions to defer our trip or change how we do things.

We can respond to congestion in a number of ways. Either by building more road space, or promoting modal shift to public transport, walking and cycling or we can use existing road space more efficiently.

 A Victorian Government seed grant of $50 million will help deliver the world’s largest photovoltaic (PV) solar power station to be built in northern Victoria, in a win for the state’s environment, innovation and economy.

The decision by TRUenergy to invest $290 million in renewable energy company Solar Systems to build the 154MW solar power station has been welcomed by the Brumby Government. Construction is due to begin in 2009, once the site has been finalised.

Last week Moreland City Council launched the Coburg Initiative, a $1 billion plan for the urban renewal of central Coburg. Feedback from this has been almost universally positive and Coburg residents in particular have shown themselves ready to engage and get involved in making their suburb a better place to live.

Below the fold is a speech given to Parliament on the 31st of October regarding this project.

The Melbourne and Olympic Parks Amendment Bill is being debated in Parliament. The Bill makes some changes to facilitate the construction of Melbourne's Rectangular Stadium next to the current Olympic Park and will be used by Football and Rugby.

The 8000th new nurse since 1999 has begun work in the Victorian public health system, a product of Australia’s most successful nurse recruitment and retention campaign and Labor's commitment to investing in services and people.

8061 extra nurses have joined the health system since 1999 (a 39 per cent increase), and nurse registration figures were up by 15.7 per cent (an increase of 12,850 from 69,794 in 1999 to 82,644 this year), compared to an increase of 10.8 per cent in NSW for the same period.

The Age today published an article on the GM Canola debate today highlighting Carlo Carli's submission to the review, we spoke about earlier.

Brunswick MP Carlo Carli wants his views known. He believes that as there has been no change in the conditions that led to the 2004 moratorium, the ban should continue.

Yesterday the LHMU Cleaners Union launched its collective bargaining campaign at Federation Square. The LHMU is campaigning for cleaners to earn a minimum princly sum of $400 per week.

Speaking at the launch were Victorian Deputy Premier, Rob Hulls, Bishop Hilton Deakin and others including Carlo Carli. Youtube video's of teh day as well as stories from cleaners about their industry are available from www.youtube.com/cleanstart.

You can also join the Cleanstart facebook group.

The Victorian Government has established a review of the moratorium on GM Canola. It has been charged with...

- assess the economic impacts on Victoria of the moratorium on GM canola
- assess the expected economic impacts of:
allowing the moratorium to expire
extending the moratorium
- recommend whether Government should allow the moratorium to expire or be extended
- recommend any complementary policies and practices that are required to address the consequences of the moratorium ending.

Carlo Carli has made a submission to the review which argues that...

The risks of lifting the moratorium are greater than the risks associated with keeping it. For this reason, I am proposing that the moratorium be extended for at least another 4 years

You can download the submission here.

Kelvin Thomson, Federal Labor MP for Wills has labelled John Howard's failure to keep interest rates low as "Mortgage Trauma".

He says...

In Brunswick we have monthly repayments on an average 25 year mortgage reaching dizzying heights of $3196.

This equates to 68.37% of the average household income being allocated to paying off a median priced home in Brunswick.

Mortgage stress occurs when more than 30% of a household income is used to pay off a mortgage, but the situation in Brunswick is twice this figure.

The better expression for the situation would be ‘Mortgage Trauma’!

More information here.

A new study compiled by Griffith and Curtin University Professors David Peetz and Alison Preston, has examined workers’ wages on AWAs with wages from certified agreements.

The Howard government has argued that WorkChoices would encourage increased wages, particularly through AWAs. In the absence of any analysis by the federal government, this report provides the first study of the effects of these reforms.

The study is proof that AWAs are a fast-track in the race to the bottom in terms of wages and conditions.
AWAs are achieving exactly what the Howard Government intended - to make life harder for ordinary Victorian men and women trying to make ends meet.

Findings of the study include:

• Typical Victorian workers on AWAs earn 23 per cent less than their counterparts on collective agreements.
  
• Median wage rates for AWAs in Victoria were significantly lower because there were fewer high-paid mining jobs and a bigger take up of AWAs in the hospitality industry.
  
• Australia-wide, the study showed a typical worker employed under the Federal Government’s AWAs earned 16% less than a typical worker on a registered collective agreement.
  
• It found Australians employed on collective agreements were paid a median $24.50 an hour, some $4 an hour more than those on median AWA earnings.
  
•  Over half of AWAs abolished entitlements such as overtime pay, penalty rates, public holiday payments, shift loadings and other allowances.
  

Victorian workers are worse off due to Workchoices, which is why Labor’s pledge to abolish it is good politics and good policy.

 
The Bracks Government today introduced legislation that will encourage more small renewable energy producers into the market by guaranteeing a fair price for energy fed into the power grid.


In the first part of a two-stage plan to secure smaller-scale investment in renewable energy production, the Government today moved to amend the Electricity Industry Act 2000 to simplify the rules around “feed in tariffs” for small producers of power from wind, hydro, biomass and solar

Together with Christopher Anderson in my office I have written a submission to the Eddington Review opposing any proposed cross city tunnel. This tunnel could have serious environmental, social and economic consequences which will seriously effect the liveability of inner Melbourne.

I argue that it is not feasible to build our way out of congestion. We need to invest in alternative modes to meet the transport and freight task.

My submission can be viewed here.

Federal Labor has come out with a pre Australia Day advertisment about the need for an education revolution