April 14, 2014
ALP Senator John Hogg may have just 11 weeks left in his political career but that didn’t stop him from visiting members of the newly formed South Burnett branch of the party on Saturday for a pep talk.
Senator Hogg was elected to the Senate in 1996 and has been President of the Senate since 2008.
He chose not to re-stand at the last election which meant he picked the time and place of his retirement “which is a plus in politics”, he joked.
About a dozen members of the new ALP branch put on a barbecue lunch for Senator Hogg at a member’s property in Blackbutt.
Senator Hogg told them they should be proud of what the last Labor Federal Government had achieved.
In comparison, he said, the Coalition Government was “winding back superannuation” – and trying to destroy industry super funds – despite the fact that superannuation savings had underpinned the Australian economy during the GFC.
He said the Federal Government was also holding yet another inquiry into the building and construction industry targeted at “people who are out there working in a dangerous industry trying to protect their lives”.
The Productivity Commission was also looking into penalty rates “which have no effect on high income earners but mean so much to low-income earners”.
Senator Hogg said the inquiry into the National Broadband Network was “the greatest travesty of all” to “get the response they wanted … to destroy the NBN that we had running and bring in something that is sub-standard”.
“The next generation and the generation after them are going to depend on a (broadband) superhighway for their life, lifestyle and their jobs,” he said. “Younger people don’t need second rate broadband, they need the best.”
He said Labor had introduced the NBN for the future of the nation; however he believed that Australia would now end up with two classes of citizens: those that have a high-speed NBN and those that don’t.
Senator Hogg said the Federal Government had set out to destroy Labor’s achievements but “Labor can be proud of what it did”, particularly during the GFC.
“If we hadn’t invested in our communities – in roads, ports, local government infrastructure, schools – then we could have been held culpable for what we did. But it was an investment in the future,” he said.
Senator Hogg said some of his proudest moments were travelling around Queensland opening the 247 buildings constructed under the Building Education Revolution program “seeing our schools benefit in a real way for future generations”.
“I think it is important that there is a strong, powerful alternative to the nonsense that is coming out of the Campbell Newman government and the Abbott government,” Senator Hogg said.
“Hard-working Australians have the right to understand there is a political party that will defend their right to dignity and self-worth through fair and decent employment.”
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