Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2014-2015, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2014-2015, Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2014-2015, Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2014-2015
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Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016
Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2014-2015
Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2014-2015
Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2014-2015
Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2014-2015
Cognate debate.
Debate resumed on the motion:
That this bill be now read a second time.
15:12
Dr LEIGH
BU8
Fraser
I spoke before question time about the budget's impacts on Canberra and I now turn to the broader impact on the budget. In the last sittings, the shadow Treasurer gave a speech in which he said that the Prime Minister got to the so-called budget emergency, kicked the tyres on the fire truck and then drove off. Subsequently, the shadow minister for finance has said that he likes the shadow Treasurer but on this one he thinks he is wrong. He thinks when the Prime Minister arrived he threw a Molotov cocktail, crashed the firetruck and then gave a press conference to blame Labor. I like the shadow minister for finance but on this one I think he is wrong. I think in the case of the so-called budget emergency the Prime Minister drove the firetruck over the neighbour's cat, started a back-burning operation that went out of control and then decided he had to save the mansions but leave the weatherboard homes to go up in smoke. On the way, he stopped to give the order of the garter to a favourite koala and then gave a press conference to blame the trees for burning down.
This government said that the core test of economic management was to get debt and deficits under control. It is clear that most economists would not rate that as the core test of economic management. Indeed, there were a number of senior economists during the last term of government that criticised Labor for focusing on budget balance rather than on other issues. But this was the test that the government set itself from opposition.
The government said very clearly that it believed that the core test of economic responsibility was a government's ability to run a balanced budget. They nominated Peter Costello as their epitome of fiscal credibility because he, through a series of budgets, was mostly able to deliver surpluses. But he was only able to deliver those surpluses through the sale of public assets and in part because of the government revenue windfall generated by mining boom mark 1. Most economists would not regard Peter Costello as the greatest Treasurer we have ever had. Indeed in his new book Ross Gittins compares the legacies of the various Australian treasurers of his time—and he ranks Peter Costello pretty low.
Even if one does take running a balanced budget as the test of fiscal success, it is very clear that the government have failed. In opposition said they would deliver a surplus in their first year of government and in every subsequent year. How have they gone on that test? Upon coming to office, the Treasurer moved quickly to bring down a budget update—a budget update that doubled the deficit through things such as giving a $1.1 billion tax break back to multinationals and giving the Reserve Bank $9 billion that they had not even asked for. This year's budget yet again doubles the deficit—and that is a doubling of the deficit not relative to the Treasury and Finance numbers in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook but a doubling of the deficit based on the government's own numbers. If we compare last year's budget with this year's budget, the deficit has gone from $17 billion up to $35 billion.
On the issue of debt and deficits, it is now clear, according to respected economist Saul Eslake, that the net impact of policy decisions by this government has been an addition of $8 billion to the deficit. He estimates that policy decisions in this year's budget worsened the budget bottom line by a total of $8.2 billion and that policy decisions in last year's budget had had a significant impact on the budget bottom line as well. Mr Eslake notes that the government claims to have offset all of their initiatives, but he then inquires how that could be the case. At a recent budget panel session in the Parliament House theatrette at which we both spoke, he explained how the government was able to make that claim. The government is only able to claim they have offset all their initiatives because in their first budget they announced an unfair paid parental leave scheme and put the money for it in the contingency reserve and then this year decided not to proceed with that bad policy—and then counted their failure to go ahead with that unfair scheme as a saving! Why didn't we think of that? Why didn't we think of announcing a bad policy, not implementing it and then—after deciding not to implement it—counting the money as a saving? It is fiscal genius! If you discount that interesting piece of accounting, it is very clear that the government is failing to offset its decisions.
There was a further trick in the budget papers: earnings from the Future Fund are counted towards the surplus. As Saul Eslake points out, more than half the projected surpluses from 2025 arise out of this accounting trick. Saul Eslake noted, in the budget forum at which we both spoke, that he was raising the issue hesitantly—because, as he put it:
… the last time I was critical of a government for the way it accounted for things in the budget the then treasurer, Peter Costello, rang up the chief executive of the bank I was working for, John McFarlane, and said that he would take regulatory action that ANZ did not like if I repeated those kinds of criticisms … I don't think Joe Hockey is as glass-jawed as Peter Costello is, so I'm not really worried about that in this context.
He added:
… you might have thought that it would have been disclosed more obviously than in a footnote to a chart …
This budget also includes a $5 billion development fund for the north of Australia. These resources will go, according to the government, to 'those who are unable to access finance at a reasonable cost'. Five billion dollars is a large sum of money in anyone's language. You might therefore have expected that, if a government were announcing a $5 billion fund, they would provide some detail about how that fund would operate. Seeking to discover how the fund will operate, however, respected journalist Laura Tingle contacted the infrastructure minister's office and was told that the minister's office 'had no details on the scheme'. The minister is sitting at the table here and would perhaps like to add some detail about how this $5 billion fund is going to work. I would welcome him doing so at some point in this debate.
All the Treasurer's office have said is that the facility is 'aimed at economic infrastructure that will increase the productive capacity of Northern Australia', and they reiterated that the funding will go to projects unable to access finance at a reasonable cost. But they also said that, broadly speaking, the fund would target projects that had the ability to generate a return. So these will be projects not funded by banks but nonetheless able to generate a return for the taxpayer. Perhaps a careful analysis of such projects exists, but any such analysis has so far unfortunately been unable to find its way into the public domain. This would perhaps be less important were we not talking about a $5 billion fund.
What this budget does is effectively shift a range of budgetary challenges onto the states. The states have spoken out very clearly about their concerns, particularly about the $80 billion in cuts to health and education. Not only Labor premiers but conservative premiers—Mike Baird, for instance—are deeply concerned about the impact this will have on their budgets.
I spoke before question time briefly about the impact on inequality. We have new modelling from NATSEM, the Prime Minister's modeller of choice, showing that the poorest 20 per cent of households with children will lose up to seven per cent of their total annual disposable income in 2018-19, but households with children in the top 20 per cent will see their disposable incomes increase very slightly, by 0.2 per cent, by 2018-19. We know, according this new modelling, taking into account last year's budget and this year's budget, that nine in 10 low-income households are worse off as a result of these budgets and nine in 10 high-income households are left better off.
This is not just a budget which is bad for inequality, now at a 75-year high in Australia after a generation in which earnings had risen three times as fast for the top 10th of wage earners as for the bottom 10th of wage earners. It is also a budget which fails to make investments in innovation. We know that, as Australia transitions from the investment phase of the mining boom to the production phase of the mining boom, we need to ask the question about where the jobs of the future will come from. That is why the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply focused on getting more scientists, more technology workers, more engineers and more mathematicians.
It is important that we provide all Australian students with the opportunity to code. Some people may regard coding as a skill which can only be learnt at university. I certainly, as an empirical economist, did my share of coding using programs such as Stata, but I have also enjoyed the new apps available to teach coding to kids. My five-year-old enjoys Daisy the Dinosaur, an app which I would strongly recommend to any parents listening. It is fundamental in teaching the rudiments of coding, loops and the sequencing of instructions to children. Coding is just one skill that we will need to lay the foundations for future prosperity. It was a pleasure for me to join Senator Sinodinos and Brian Schmidt at a forum organised in 2012 at Government House, talking about innovation and entrepreneurship. This is the sort of conversation which Labor has sparked and which we continue. There is the iAccelerate facility at the University of Wollongong, which I visited last week. (Time expired)
15:25
Mr RANDALL
PK6
Canning
It is my pleasure today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and cognate bills. Before I go to what I intend to mainly speak about today, I make the initial observation that this budget has gone down rather well in the electorate of Canning, from what I can ascertain from the phone calls and emails I have received, and so it should. It makes sure it restores a lot of confidence back into the electorate in relation to business, families and small business. It has been well accepted. It has taken away a lot of the hostility that would seem to have been generated from the initial budget. I make another observation: I wish I could be paid the same amount of money as Glenn Stevens for the job that seems to be done on behalf of the Reserve Bank of Australia. It appears that fiscal policy in this country for a long time has been run on the fact that you either have interest rates up or have interest rates down. If the big decision every month is whether interest rates go up or down, that is not a hard decision if that is how you are basing the fiscal policy of this country and how you manage your job at the Reserve Bank of Australia. I would like to see a bit more imagination.
Today I wish to speak about an issue in my electorate as part of the appropriation bills. Constituents of mine, ever since I was elected the member for Canning in 2001, come to me time after time. The issue is the Western Australian environmental offsets policy. This policy works in theory to limit the negative impact of the development and the clearing of native vegetation on the environment by purchasing alternate land or making financial contributions to science and/or strategy. However, in practice I have found the policy is uncoordinated and lacks value for money when it comes to the purchase of the offset lands. Time and again—and I shall outline some specific examples further on—this policy has appeared to me and my constituents of Canning to be a policy that forces developers and others to buy offsets for just the sake of buying offsets rather than effecting any actual restorative environmental enhancement.
For the benefit of the House, I would now like to take a moment to briefly explain what an offset is. An offset is an action or a set of actions undertaken to address significant impact that a development or activity, such as the clearing of native vegetation, may have on the local environment. This is done off-site. There are two types of offsets: direct offsets which involve on-ground action such as rehabilitation, restoration, revegetation and conservation; and indirect offsets which are actions taken to improve scientific knowledge and community understanding about the impact a project can have on the environment, so that any future projects can draw upon this knowledge. It is important to note that indirect offsets also include contributing to state government initiatives, policies or strategic funds.
It is also important to note that it is stated in the Western Australian government's environmental offsets policy that 'environmental offsets will only be considered after avoidance and mitigation options have been pursued.' My first concern with the Western Australian offsets policy is the suggestion under principle 4: 'for example, offsets could include actions that complement strategic conservation plans prepared by government et cetera, such as Bush Forever.' I acknowledge that the current WA government is not responsible for the implementation of the Bush Forever program. I will pause at this point to say that it was a former Liberal minister, Graham Kierath, who initiated the Bush Forever program, and I might add that the program was noble in trying to retain remnant urban bushland, but it had no compensation aspect to it. It was draconian in its application. But I do find it incredulous that any contribution such as a slapdash attempt at conservation would be included in this current policy of offsets, and this is what it refers to.
Bush Forever has been a major problem for my constituents for a long period of time. As federal member for Canning, I have had countless meetings with constituents about the implementation of this program since 2001. In fact, as the member for Swan from 1996 to 1998, I also had people coming to me about it. For most of these people, Bush Forever equates to financial ruin. This draconian piece of policy allowed the then government of the day to come along and seize chunks of people's land or mandate their existence because they were deemed to be environmentally sensitive, and therefore declare the land as protected under Bush Forever. This then leaves the landowner to maintain a parcel of land they cannot utilise. Not only can they not use it; they have to maintain it and make sure that it is looked after and fenced off and that predators and pests et cetera are kept away from it, at their own expense. The land is significantly devalued when the fed-up landowners decide to sell.
Just two weeks ago I was contacted by a constituent with a complaint about the use of aerial photographs to establish a Bush Forever site on his property in Forrestdale some 11 years ago. In this instance, the use of aerial photographs led to the plantings line being drawn through my constituent's pool and patio, rather than following the natural wetland boundary on the property. I would like to note that it has so far taken my constituent 11 years to have this situation rectified, and still he does not have a satisfactory resolution. He is desperate to sell and downsize now that he has retired, but the current mistake means that his property is worth at least $50,000 less than it should be.
Another example of the poor implementation of the Bush Forever policy has been experienced by my constituents Stephen and Margaret Day. My constituents bought their 12-acre property in 1999, two years before the Bush Forever policy came into effect. As part of their garden, the Days planted some bougainvilleas and she-oaks—plants that were later claimed to be natives and were used as a basis to implement a Bush Forever site on seven of the Days' 12 acres! And, as if this is not bad enough, the Days were told that they were unable to clear the Bush Forever land, despite warnings from local firefighters, who had been to the property on three prior occasions to fight fires, that it was a risk to their safety.
In similar instances, because these sites are either not maintained or are unable to be manipulated, they have become a habitat for exotic/non-native species of plants that ultimately render the program's main objective futile. For the state government to then suggest in their policy guidelines that offsets could contribute to such an impractical program as Bush Forever is clear evidence that they have learned very little about the practical application of environmental conservation policies.
Another example of what I can only call a nonsensical approach to environmental offsets relates to the purchase of offset lands far away from where the clearing or development is taking place. I refer to the now one-stop shop program which has been implemented by our Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, and state environment ministers, which has resulted in duplication and overlap between the Commonwealth and state jurisdictions.
I have previously risen in parliament to speak on behalf of the Tuckey family—a well-established family in Mandurah—and their problems with offset purchases. To recap, the Tuckeys own a significant portion of land, referred to as Tuckey Cove, which they develop for residential purposes by way of subdivision. During the process of developing a portion of this land and seeking the relevant environmental approvals, the Tuckeys were informed that they would need to purchase offset land to mitigate the possible destruction of habitat for local cockatoo species, including the Forest red-tailed cockatoo, and Baudin's and Carnaby's cockatoos. After consultation with the department, the Tuckeys were advised that they would need to purchase offset lands in Gingin, located some 200 kilometres from Mandurah. What relevance this has to offsets for the local bird population, goodness only knows. That shows what happens when an environment department in Canberra, 3,000 kilometres away from Western Australia, decides to make orders like this.
I make no argument against the need to preserve the environment, especially those areas that are inhabited by endangered species, such as the aforementioned cockatoos. I do, however, take umbrage with the fact that, in this particular instance, the Tuckeys were forced to purchase lands far away from the potential habitat of the cockatoos they were meant to be affecting. I know that the bureaucrats in the state government will argue that not all offsets can be like-for-like and that in some instances exceptions need to be made. But this is happening all the time. It is not just a one-off. When you couple this decision with the fact that the Tuckeys were told that their $50,000 contribution to the Gingin project was insufficient—they ended up paying $100,000—for a one-hectare development, it certainly raises some questions.
I have other constituents who have been affected by this, such as NLG Sand, who were forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to establish whether there were cockatoo habitats around their sand pit—there were not any. The Dawesville Catholic Primary School, which wanted to expand their school oval, were told they would have to buy offsets for the cockatoos. In Mandurah, a shopping centre development that wanted to put in a Coles store had to buy offset land in the wheat belt in Western Australia, with little or no relevance to their location.
An alternative arrangement would be for developers such as the Tuckeys and others to make monetary contributions to a designated fund to purchase environmentally sensitive land in the region. In other words, rather than having little bits of money here and there buying offsets all over the place, it would be sensible to have one large coordinated fund to buy large sensitive environmentally affected areas. This has been proposed by Minister Greg Hunt, and he tells me that state environment minister Jacobs supports such a pooled fund. One example of such a purchase is that part of the Yalgorup Lake system to the west of Lake Clifton in my electorate which is currently on the market. The Sarich land—Sarich of the orbital engine—could be used for conservation or recreation purposes if it were bought for this purpose. It is something like 1,000 hectares that cannot be used for anything but being retained in public ownership. But it is currently in private ownership and it cannot be developed. FRAGYLE, or the Friends of Ramsar Action Group for the Yalgorup Lakes Environment Inc., have been trying to persuade the state government to buy this land in order to maintain the local environment. The state government, however, has been unable to reach an agreeable price with the seller and the land is still for sale. It has come down from something like $30 million to $10 million—it is an absolute bargain, and the state government might want to get involved.
I acknowledge that under the policy guidelines there is scope for such a fund; however, I note that such a fund for Peel has not come into consideration at this stage. The Peel region is one of the fastest growing regions in Western Australia and, according to the Peel Development Commission, is set to rival the South West as the state's most populous region outside of the metro area. In light of the development occurring in this region and its environmentally significant areas, such as the Peel-Harvey catchment, we certainly encourage the consideration of the establishment of a fund to which offset payments for projects in the Peel region can be made. It is my understanding that such a scheme exists in a number of places around the country. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Reef Trust Investment Strategy, which allows developers who impact upon the Great Barrier Reef to pool offset moneys into a fund to target these impacts.
I would like to conclude with a quintessential example of the state government's incompetence when it comes to environmental policies. Many of you will be familiar with the case of Peter Swift, a farmer from my electorate who bought a piece of land and was subsequently prosecuted by the then Department of Environmental Conservation for clearing native vegetation on this property without a permit. As it turns out, Mr Swift was able to prove his innocence with the use of aerial photographs, which clearly demonstrated that the clearing had been undertaken by the previous owner. Even though he was proved innocent, Mr Swift was told that a significant portion of his land—310 of his 465 acres—could not be used for farming, as per Mr Swift's original intention. Once again, I find myself confronted with a constituent who has been chewed up and spat out by the state government and by the DEC and left with land that can neither be used nor sold due to its loss of value. Mr Swift has been left financially destitute and now faces foreclosure because he cannot afford to pay his loans, which were incurred through the legal fees he has had to pay.
What is the state government doing about its mistake, you might ask? Mr Swift is asking for an ex gratia payment. I hope that he gets that ex gratia payment because he did nothing wrong and he has been exonerated by the courts. The WA government needs to take seriously the issues of land tenure, land usage and the preservation of environmentally sensitive lands whilst giving serious protection and financial security for the owners of land that is privately owned. To that end, I conclude my statement to the House.
15:40
Ms KING
00AMR
Ballarat
I too rise to speak on the Appropriation Bills, which represent the Abbott government's second budget What is now too painfully clear is that the Abbott government's second budget is not a budget for Australia's future. It is not a budget that invests in the health of the nation; it is not a budget that deals with the very real challenges that we as a country have. It is a short-sighted attempt to do one thing and one thing only—to save the Prime Minister's job—and nowhere is that more painfully clear than when it comes to health care.
Frankly, given the absolute disaster that occurred last year, I could not comprehend how this year's budget could do more damage. Last year's budget, it is worth recalling, ripped $57 billion out of public hospital funding—costs that have now been simply transferred to states and territories. It gutted preventative health programs, attempted to destroy Medicare by forcing all Australians, even pensioners and children, to pay a tax every time they visit the doctor That budget also included cuts to adult dental programs and an increase in the price patients pay to access medicines, as well as changes to both the MBS and PBS safety nets that make it harder and harder for patients to reach. It was a budget that was so disastrous for health care and healthcare reform that it led to its minister being voted the worst health minister in 40 years and, before that year was out, he was gone.
But, I suspect, like everyone who cares about health care in this country, our hopes that the government had learnt its lesson on health have not been realised with this budget. Far from attempting to make at least a start in repairing last year's debacle, the Abbott government's second budget not only entrenches last year's cuts, but it adds a couple of billion dollars more just for good measure.
For the Prime Minister, it seems, too many health cuts are just never enough. Not happy with having slashed over $57 billion out of health last year, he has come back for another $2 billion this year. Still entrenched in this budget is a GP tax and the hikes in the price of medicines. Last week there was a farcical attempt by the minister to abandon those cuts, before the Treasurer forced her into an embarrassing backdown. Had her comments been left to stand, the fraud of including the cuts in the bottom line of budget would lay exposed. Now, many of these cuts are not as obvious as the GP tax or the cuts to hospitals and, as a result, many of them have not received much scrutiny yet particularly from members opposite, who, it is clear, do not understand just what their own government is up to or the impact this will have on their communities in coming months. But make no mistake, this budget will have just as damaging an impact on the health system as last year's, and once again it is real people—patients, doctors and nurses—who will be the victims.
So, I am going to use my time in this debate to go through some of those cuts. Of course, the budget locks in the $57 billion in cuts to public hospitals from last year's budget. Despite going to the election promising that the coalition would fund 50 per cent growth of the National Efficient Price, the Prime Minister has broken that promise and has instead entrenched growth in hospital funding on a formula based only on population growth and the CPI, which will not meet the demand for hospitals into the future. State premiers and chief ministers have called this for what it is: a complete broken promise and the lowest level of funding since the Commonwealth first started funding public hospitals after the Second World War. These are cuts that the New South Wales Liberal Premier Mike Baird has described as unsustainable. He stated that:
The states do not have the capacity to meet those health costs on their own.
The AMA's most recent report card found public hospitals are already not keeping pace with population growth and demand; as a result of this, the government's budget cuts are facing a future funding crisis. As the Victorian health minister, Jill Hennessy, stated:
Tony Abbott's cuts will see sick Victorian patients wait longer for treatment. It's that simple.
The Federal Government needs to play its part and contribute its fair share so Victorians can get the treatment they need.
Quite simply, these cuts cannot be sustained, and the government knows it. The cuts will have a seriously detrimental impact on emergency department waiting times and elective surgery waiting times. They will increase waiting times, and they will put lives at risk, make no mistake about it. What is even more damaging is that—after years of positive engagement by clinicians through states, territories and the Commonwealth—this government has completely walked away from any public hospital reform whatsoever, putting the reform process back years and giving up any hope of actually realising efficiencies across the public hospital system.
Then in this budget, of course, we saw that there was even worse to come. In this budget we have had more than $125 million cut from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. Could there be any decision more petty and nasty than to cut funding from kids' dental? Well, there actually could, and I will talk about that a bit later. This is a scheme that provides up to $1,000 over two years for eligible kids aged between two and 17 years. In government, Labor recognised the importance of good dental health for a person's overall health, especially for children, which is why we introduced this program. We also invested more than $650 million in public dental programs for adults in order to reduce waiting lists. But this government has already cut more than $50 million in public dental programs; it is now cutting more than $125 million in children's dental benefits in this budget, and cumulatively cutting more than $500 million when taking into account the cuts in its last budget. A few days before this announcement, the minister was boasting of how, as she put it, the government had got its teeth into dental health. It turns out that the only thing the government has got its teeth into is, again, patients.
The cuts to children's health do not stop there. This budget also includes a cut of $145 million from the Healthy Kids Check. This means that parents will no longer have access to one-hour appointments with GPs for these checks, which we know have been invaluable in the early detection of asthma, hearing and speech issues, as well as other developmental issues. This is a short-sighted and callous move from a government that is demonstrating it has no commitment to universal health care. It is a cut to an important children's health program, which goes to demonstrate that this government does not believe in a universal health insurance scheme and simply does not believe in Medicare. This is a cut that will have an impact on patient access, particularly to speech pathology, and it is a cut that Labor condemns.
Not content with cutting $197 million from the flexible funding pool last year, this year's budget also slashes a further $500 million from the funds which support so many vital community health and support organisations. We think the figure is $500 million; that is the media report. We suspect that it might be a bit more. The new measure 'rationalising and streamlining health programs'—read 'cut' in this government's language—includes a cut of more than $500 million from all the groups in every part of the nation that do so much to help in areas like drug and alcohol rehabilitation; mental health services; Aboriginal health organisations, particularly those working in chronic disease; and vital non-government organisations working across the entire health sector, including the Consumer's Health Forum, Alzheimer's Australia, the Heart Foundation and the Public Health Association of Australia. Name a health organisation in this country, and they, generally, are the recipient of flexible funds. That is the program that has been cut. It was no exaggeration on budget night when the Public Health Association described this as a bloodbath for those organisations. This will reach into the heart of every electorate in every state and territory, and rip away the local services that are the very fabric of these local communities.
Which brings me to another measure, which is still sitting within the budget from last year, the unfair increase to the PBS co-payments—increasing the cost of medicine by $5 for every general script and 80c for every concessional script before the safety net is reached. Not content with stopping there, the government also wants to increase the safety net by two scripts per year for concessional patients—that is, pensioners, people with a disability and others who are already doing it tough—as well as increase the safety net by 10 per cent per year for all general patients.
Even for a government which is famous for its chaotic and ham-fisted approach to health, the minister managed last week to set a new benchmark for bizarre health policy announcements, by unilaterally announcing just nine days after the budget that she was no longer pursuing this, because she had suddenly somehow discovered she could not get it through the Senate. That makes a complete fraud of why it is in the budget in the first place but, leaving that aside, this was despite the government knowing for almost a year that it does not have the support of the Senate to get this measure through. But nine days later, the minister announced that she had given up on it and, in the process, blown a $1.3 billion hole in the Treasurer's budget. This backdown lasted less than a day, before Joe Hockey was on morning TV making it clear to the minister that, in the Abbott government, budget cuts come first and health policy a very distant second, and that the PBS hikes and safety increases were well and truly back on the table. That is, of course, unless the minister can find another $1.3 billion of cuts in health, having already cut it to the bone. What an absolute debacle, but what insight it provides into the government's thinking on health policy: no evidence, no planning and no idea of what might constitute decent health policy.
The health system and indeed all Australians deserve a lot better than that. It is worth mentioning that this $1.3 billion measure is still in the books as being part of the Medical Research Future Fund. That fund was supposed to start on 1 January, but that has not occurred. The government knows the increase to the costs of medicines does not have the support of the Senate. It has not even been bothered to introduce it in the Senate, because it knows that it does not have that support.
Of course, still within the budget is the freeze to the MBS schedule: a $1.3 billion freeze. We have had a $7 GP tax, a $5 GP tax and a $20 GP tax, and now are being told that, somehow, there is nothing further to come in relation to this. Well, that freeze is still within the budget. It has already seen GPs change their billing practices across the country, it has seen a reduction in bulk-billing and it still sits within the budget.
You have to say that this government has hit an all-time low with some of the other measures that are here in that $2 billion worth of cuts. There is one cut that I particularly want to mention, and it is extraordinary in its pettiness. There is a very small program for about 900 patients in this country who have the disease PKU. Babies are tested for it at birth. As I said, there are 900 of these patients. It is a rare genetic condition. However, if these babies do not receive a specialised diet from start, they will develop brain damage. They have to have this diet.
For a long time now the federal government has been providing a subsidy, a very small amount of money—$250 per month, about $3,000 per year—to these 900 families to enable them to purchase the food for their children so they do not develop brain damage. The government has cut the program in the budget. This is such a pathetic and small-minded measure. This is a very small cohort of patients with a very rare disease. They are absolutely reliant on this specialised diet. There are three providers of this special food in the country. It is incredibly expensive. Things like a specialised loaf of bread costs $10.
These families are not rich families who are able, somehow or other, to find $10 for a loaf of bread. As we know, for most households with kids, a loaf of bread does not last very long either. They received a letter the day after the budget with basically no warning and no consultation with any of the peak organisations that represent these families and this small cohort of patients. Bang! It is gone! That is the level to which this government is prepared to stoop. Those kids desperately need to have this food subsidised, because it is not replaceable. You cannot just walk into a shop and get a piece of food and know that it will have the right measure of protein for your child, given the damage that it does. These families already struggle. This has been a very small-minded measure.
One of the other measures in the budget which has not received a lot of attention is the scrapping of the GP after-hours access line. It receives some 200,000 calls. These are calls that have been referred from a nurse on-call line. People call that line; the nurse says that the case may be a bit more complicated and they need to talk to a general practitioner. There was no cost-benefit analysis of the program. It took a long time to set up and negotiate with states and territories. On 1 July—bang, scrapped, gone! We have had representations from some of the GPs who have been running that line. It has been servicing many patients who do not have access to regular GPs. They are mental health patients, refugees, rural and regional Australians who have trouble with access. Again, this is a really small-minded decision from an incredibly small-minded government when it comes to health. It is no wonder, when the government does not have any health policy and when it does not have any plans for the future of this nation, that you see this sort of decision making in the budget.
15:55
Ms SCOTT
165476
Lindsay
It is wonderful to be here today to talk about Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. Following on from the previous speaker, I will be outlining the plans that we, the coalition, have for the future. It is wonderful to have here in the chamber my good friend the member for Mayo, who has been strategising these great plans to get Western Sydney moving again—for example, the $50 billion infrastructure package that will create so many jobs for the people of Western Sydney. But I guess for those opposite jobs are not that important.
It is wonderful to be part of a government that is building a stronger Australia. The 2015 budget is the very next step to ensure the long-term economic growth to build a stronger, safer and more prosperous future for all Australians. I probably do not need to remind all of us in the House of the legacy of those opposite: the $667 billion gross debt that is projected to rise. But I like to look at the positive side. In the words of Winston Churchill: 'Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.' To grow our economy, we must grow jobs; to create jobs, we must look to the sectors and find the opportunity. I agree with Professor Michael Porter:
Innovation is the central issue to economic prosperity.
You can look right across the packages and the programs that we want to bring in to create innovation and smart jobs for the people of Western Sydney. That is exactly what this budget is all about. We can look at the small business package—the smallest small business package in our nation's history—that will reduce taxes and create opportunities. It was really wonderful to have the Minister for Small Business in Lindsay on Tuesday last week. He was so well received. He was able to meet and talk with so many of the small business people in Western Sydney. Under those opposite, over half a million—500,000—jobs were lost in small business. That is just not sustainable.
It is not just in small business where we need to look for jobs. I would also like to applaud the work of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Alan Tudge, who came out to Lindsay only a few weeks ago. We conducted an Indigenous business forum talking with local Aboriginal people who are making their own way, building their own businesses, employing other Aboriginal people. It was wonderful to see that spark. After the meeting with the parliamentary secretary, that group of 20-odd Aboriginal business owners in Western Sydney now want to build their own Aboriginal chamber of commerce in Western Sydney. That is the opportunity that this budget and the programs from this side of parliament provide to the people of Australia.
The next very big piece of the budget is the government's $50 billion infrastructure program. It is quite timely to have the member for Mayo, who will be the architect of much of this investment, in the chamber today. A lot of that will be spent in Western Sydney—and you can look at some of the reasons why, particularly as a result of those opposite. Phillip O'Neill who is a professor at the University of Western Sydney made an address on 19 April 2013 where he stated that, between 2006 and 2011, the region of western Sydney lost 6,842 jobs in manufacturing. The electorate of Lindsay will see less than five per cent of traditional manufacturing. No longer can we look at Western Sydney as a place for traditional manufacturing. We need to think bigger. We need to think greater. We need to work with partners like the University of Western Sydney to build an innovation corridor—jobs like biotech. This is going to be the sort of terminology that will be spoken about by the people of Western Sydney.
This infrastructure spend will go further. It will invest $3.6 billion in a roads package that will be shared with the state government. This $3.6 billion road package will deliver so many jobs and create opportunities for organisations like the EJ Cooper group, or Baiada, who will invest, over and above the value of their 280 hectares, $2.5 billion in the people of Western Sydney. The science park will create 12,200 jobs in biotech—12,200 jobs that will be in places like agribusiness and smart agribusiness. This is exciting news for the people of Western Sydney.
Furthermore, we will be investing $1.1 million in the planning of the Northern Road from the M4 up to the Great Western Highway. This is an area that has caused so many challenges for so many people every day of the week. The federal government is also lending $45 million to the state government to build the Werrington arterial road. Now, this will take a lot of pressure off the Northern Road intersections on the M4, as well as the Mamre Road intersections on the M4. The sod-turning for that project was on 9 March. A $35 million extension of Mulgoa Road will help the pain point just outside the plaza, under the railway bridge, so that when this project is finished the flooding under that railway bridge should be a far-distant memory.
With regard to black-spot funding, we have invested $160,000 in a single-lane roundabout at Phillip and Gascoigne streets in Kingswood; $80,000 for pedestrian safety measures along Parkes Avenue between Victoria Street and Werrington Street in Werrington; $60,000 for a stop safety island at the intersection of Dunheved Road and Tasman Street in Cambridge Park; $60,000 for a median island and curve realignment on Kurrajong and Boronia streets in North St Marys; and $40,000 for median island and stop signs at Terry Brook Road and Fifth Avenue in Llandilo—in fact, $6.1 million on Roads to Recovery across the region. This is a fabulous achievement and this will mean so much to all of us who live in Western Sydney.
But the innovation corridor really is, I think, the most spectacular piece of what this government has achieved for the people of Western Sydney. The innovation corridor will travel from Narellan through Penrith, all the way up to the north-west growth sector, linking the north-west to the south-west.
One of the pieces that have made this project of the innovation corridor so real is the free trade agreement with China and the memorandum of understanding between the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and the University of Western Sydney. This enables the University of Western Sydney to commence clinical trials on Chinese medicines to find ways to propagate or synthesise the active ingredients and to then commercialise these medicines. This will create so many wonderful jobs for the people of Western Sydney. Working with a university that really does see a bright future for our region is very, very exciting. Furthermore, the government have paired with the university and supported $3.1 million for 10 research grants. This is really important research. Additionally, the Werrington Park Corporate Centre, the first building of the Sydney IQ facility, is predicted to have 6,000 smart jobs, again in biotech. This project commenced with a $13.573 million investment from the federal government and will initially employ 450 to 500 people.
Lindsay is a family community and one of the youngest electorates in the parliament. One of the things that we have been known for a very long time is our sporting prowess. We as a government have supported the families of Western Sydney, including the families of Lindsay. We have been supporting the children to play the sports that they want to play. We have been upgrading fields right across the region: to Hickeys Lane Rugby League fields, we provided $45,000 to improve the playing surfaces; to the Andromeda Oval in Cranebrook we have provided drainage and upgrading of the playing surface, another $25,500; at the Grey Box Gum Reserve, we resurfaced the No. 2 oval and we have built an awning and a clubhouse, another $60,000; $26,000 towards the Andrews Road Baseball Complex, where we have constructed fencing and also built some tiered seating; $20,000 towards the Hunter Fields at Emu Park, where we have provided lighting so the children can now practise and play at night-time; and $90,000 to the Jamison Park netball courts in a shade structure and canteen upgrades.
This is a wonderful achievement because a lot of people think that Rugby League is the No. 1 sport in Penrith, but it is our third biggest sport. Netball comes in first, with soccer coming in second. Our netball courts in Penrith at Jamison Park attract many state and national titles to playing there. This is a great investment in netball for all young women who play netball right across our country. We have also invested in all the different sporting champions who have played for and represented our region right across the country, with some $4½ thousand in individual grants. They include people like Georgia Britton, Emily Imber, Cheyne Easthorpe, Samantha Thrupp, Amy Kellett, James Dare, Elise Izzard, Brennan Rymer and Aimee Carlin, just to name a few.
When I talk about the entire sporting package, I think the jewel in the crown is what will be the Western Sydney Community and Sports Centre. It will essentially be like an indoor rugby league field on a sprung timber floor. Think about how many netball courts that is, how many basketball courts that is. But it is not just a sporting facility. This facility will be paired with, once again, the University of Western Sydney to come up with innovative sports science to ensure that we produce elite athletes in Western Sydney. This facility will also be the third biggest exhibition space in New South Wales once it is completed: Darling Harbour, No. 1; Homebush, No. 2; and this facility in Penrith, No. 3. Having those sorts of high-level conferencing facilities available to the people of Western Sydney will do so much for creating jobs—once again, smart jobs for the people in Western Sydney.
But we have done so much more. It was only on Tuesday last week that I had both the Assistant Minister for Social Services, the minister looking after the NDIS, Hon. Senator Mitch Fifield; and the state Minister for Disability Services and Ageing, Minister John Ajaka, in Lindsay, where together they signed a memorandum of understanding that will bring forward the rollout of the NDIS. It was so exciting to have those two men there in Lindsay, signing something that is going to mean so much for children right across Western Sydney. In fact, the 2015 budget provides $20 million to fund the NDIS packages of up to 2,000 young people with a disability in the Blue Mountains and Penrith regions. This is exciting news and it is great news for children living with a disability, their parents and their carers. I would also like to thank Lisa Moffat, from the Kurrambee School, who is holding a parents' forum in the coming weeks to help parents of children with a disability with the transition into the NDIS. I would also like to commend the work of the NDIA, who have already commenced operations in the Penrith region to help families transition to what is going to be a really wonderful program to help so many of our young people living with a disability.
With all this investment in growth in the region it is very important that we also talk about the what it is going to mean for the environment. We now have our green armies on the ground. At the last election we promised to invest $15 million in Western Sydney to protect much of the Cumberland conservation corridor to link essential areas of biodiversity together. I would like to thank the reference group that has come up with the key pieces of land that we have acquired. It was wonderful to have the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, in Lindsay a few weeks ago to have a look at the first pieces of land in Londonderry that will provide this conductivity. These pieces of land had been untouched for 30 years and were in very good condition. They have large trees which are wonderful habitat for so many of our wonderful native flora and fauna.
Further to this, we will see one million trees being planted in Western Sydney. This is very good news for the environment right across Western Sydney. We have 15 Green Army teams. I would like to thank the Deerubin Land Council and also Muru Mittigar, who have been providing training and opportunity to so many local Indigenous men and women who are participating in these Green Army programs. It is nice to see the synergy of these different groups working together and providing the essential needs to the environment in Western Sydney. I could go on; there is so much more to talk about. For instance, we recently held an ice forum which was attended by over 100 people from the local community who came to talk to us about how we can end the scourge of ice in Western Sydney once and for all. Over the coming days, we, with this community of experts, will be producing a 28-page report that we will be handing to the national task force.
16:10
Ms ROWLAND
159771
Greenway
In preparing to speak on the appropriation bills, I looked up my speech on the same topic from almost exactly a year ago. It is curious that many of the issues I raised at the time were not only reflected in last year's budget but have also been continued in this year's budget. So, whilst it is almost a year ago to the day, the sentiment is still the same in relation to this year's budget. I would like to make my comments with an emphasis on the Greenway community. From going around my electorate of Greenway listening to constituents over the past week, it is clear that they have two views on this budget; the first is the lack of focus on jobs and the second is the level of unfairness.
This budget is not a budget for the future of Australia, nor is it a plan for the people of Greenway; it simply builds on the broken promises and unfairness of last year's budget. We hear all this talk about investment and infrastructure financing, but the fact is that a whopping amount of money in financial assistance grants was ripped from local government in parts of Western Sydney. To name just two, Blacktown City Council will lose $6.7 million over four years and Holroyd City Council will lose $1.4 million over four years. Among other measures that are going to hit Greenway particularly hard are the cuts to family tax benefit which will leave some families $6,000 a year worse off, cuts to paid parental leave which will leave about 80,000 mothers worse off, cuts to the Child Dental Benefit Schedule and $30 billion of cuts to schools.
This budget will hit over 10,000 Greenway families with unfair cuts to the family tax benefit. The Prime Minister said that this budget will not come at the expense of the family budget. I note, however, that a single-income family on $65,000 a year will be as much as $6,000 a year worse off. By kicking families off family tax benefit B when the youngest child turns six and freezing family tax benefit rates, over 10,000 Greenway families are going to be hit by this. It was curious too to hear the Prime Minister talking in question time about wanting to leave people trapped on welfare—this notion that his government is about employment services. I note that, prior to the last election, the ABS put the unemployment rate at 5.7 per cent; today, it is 6.2 per cent. So all this talk about putting people into work is quite useless when you do not have jobs for these people to go to.
As I mentioned almost exactly a year ago, Western Sydney has an unacceptably high youth unemployment rate. Included in that are specific gaps between certain emerging communities, certain people in our communities who find it incredibly hard to find work; they have either arrived as migrants or are second-generation migrants, and they are finding it incredibly hard to find stable work. In Western Sydney, we had programs that were working—programs such as Youth Connections and the Partnership Brokers. Some time ago the Prime Minister went to the United States, and he spoke about a fantastic scheme there that connects young people who are still at school with employment and employers. He said: 'Wouldn't it be great to replicate that scheme in Australia.' How curious that we had a Prime Minister who wanted to replicate that scheme, yet, in his own budget, he cut the very programs that were having a demonstrable effect, an extraordinary success rate, in Western Sydney.
And you do not need to take this from me. I would like to quote from a couple of constituents who have contacted me about this budget, just to illustrate this. The first one is someone named Stephen, who says:
Jobs is one of the biggest problems facing young Australians. I have three children of whom one is currently looking for work in the trades. In what appears to be a booming housing and development sector there appears to be no path for young Australians to get into the work force. Mostly there needs to be an education of Australian businesses to nurture these people as they ARE our future.
He also makes some comments in relation to child care and balancing child care and work issues:
I am well passed the child care issues but remember those days where my wife broke even in working and sending children to child are. … Lower income families need the system support to get ahead and deserve it. One thing that needs to tie into child care is immunisations. This fact needs to be pushed to help the greater community.
And I support that also, 100 per cent.
To quote from another person, Mr Ali from The Ponds:
I think currently the national issue #1 is JOBS. For a large section of our population the job market presents a scenario of doom and gloom. For some getting a job, any stable job is proving to be a dream that is too good to materialise.
On the issue of family tax benefit and how my area is being hit by this I quote from a constituent named Leesa:
As a single working Mum with a teenage son with a disability I am disappointed with the budget implications for our family.
Family Payment Part B is an essential part of my weekly budget. It allows me to work part time and continue to care for my son without requiring respite or other government assistance. It allows me to balance the competing demands of home and family. By working part time I do not claim a carer's pension—even though I earn only a little above the threshold. Just because my son is older than 6 years does not mean that he requires my care any less. I would ask that the current age of 16 years be maintained.
So, there you have it—some real examples from people in my electorate on some of these issues that go to the cuts contained within this budget.
I would like to mention an extremely important issue that affects my constituents also, and that is this government's attack on paid parental leave. Greenway has one of the highest take-up rates of paid parental leave and in fact it features amongst the 20 hardest hit for these paid parental leave cuts. I also find it extraordinary that this government would seek to make an issue of this scheme, provided under legislation passed by this parliament, and that accessing this scheme and accessing employer schemes is somehow a 'double dip'. And I noticed how quickly this government retreated on these matters of using terms like 'double dipping'. They were not only offensive but just plain, outright wrong. I have gone through from May 2010 some of the current government members' views on some of these matters. It is quite clear. If you look even at the now Prime Minister's comments he is spruiking his rolled gold paid parental leave scheme—the one that he has retreated from, the one that he was so committed to that when he could not get his own side to follow it, to back it in, that he decided to abandon it. He said that this is his signature policy, that this is his principal, that he is a convert and that converts are the biggest zealots. And then he turns around in this budget and wants to push women, who are not only entitled to claim under their employer but also entitled under the law to make claims from this scheme that was put in place—he dares to call them double dippers, to not be embarrassed that some of his own ministers are in a situation where they have accessed it. And then Mr Hockey, the Treasurer, comes out and claims, 'Maybe their wives didn't tell them.' It just gets better and better on this issue of paid parental leave, and I think it shows one thing: that this is a Prime Minister who stands for nothing, and this budget is proof of that.
I want to go to another issue, and that is the modelling that has been done by NATSEM which clearly shows that families are going to be worse off, and worse off more over time, if they are on lower incomes. It is clear from this modelling that a family with a single income of $65,000 and two children will be $6,164 a year worse off by 2018-19, and a single mother with an income of $55,000 and two children will be $6,107 a year worse off by 2018-19. It is proof that this government merely talks about supporting families but when it comes to the crunch does nothing to support them and in fact does the complete opposite. It does not matter how many times this government seeks to call its budget fair; the reality is that it is not. You can also see it from the modelling and the analysis done by ACOSS: more than $15 billion ripped from families and low-income earners under this budget.
I note also that in question time today those opposite chose to claim that this modelling somehow lacked integrity. Well, I would point out that in May last year the Australian reported that NATSEM has previously been 'described by the Prime Minister as Australia's most respected modelling outfit'. It is quite apparent, and people are alive to this. As my constituents have been telling me over the past week, this is a budget that seeks to use the word 'fair' but is not fair in its practice whatsoever.
The last issue I want to mention, which I have taken up on behalf of the residents of Blacktown and also on behalf of one particular organisation, is a matter that I have raised previously in this place, and that is the effects of the cuts that have been continued under this budget on an extremely reputable organisation that has been operating in Blacktown for 41 years. For 41 years Blacktown Community Aid has provided service to the people of Blacktown, helping people in emergency situations, giving them advice and basically enabling them to participate in their community. But these funding cuts have forced Blacktown Community Aid to close its doors, and there is nothing in this budget to indicate that there will be anything to the contrary.
Before the shutdown was imminent, which was in late March, I met with the remaining staff of Blacktown Community Aid, and we agreed that I would make representations on their behalf to the responsible minister, essentially a begging letter drawing the minister's attention to the returns that are achieved by Blacktown Community Aid—and, I might mention, Holroyd Community Aid, which has done an equally exemplary job—for a relatively small outlay. It would say that we would be pleased if the minister would come and see firsthand the work that is done here and the difference it has been making in the community for four decades. I am happy to stand corrected, but the last time I checked I had not, I believe, even received a response to that representation.
There is a situation where we have up to 60 clients each week seeking help from the centre. It is something that not only is supported by Blacktown council and every other non-government organisation, I believe, that exists in Blacktown but also is supported by the community and has been for four decades. To have a situation where we have people who, by and large, volunteer their time and energy for such an important cause is an absolute disgrace and it is an indictment on this government that they have had to shut their doors.
One of the most cruel things about this situation is that Blacktown Community Aid only became aware that it was going to have to close its doors three days before Christmas 2014. Since that time, the community has gotten behind this organisation. I have made strong representations on its behalf, making its case here in the parliament—but this has clearly fallen on deaf ears. I would say to this government that if you are serious about wanting to make a difference in Western Sydney communities and wanting to support people who seek to support themselves and who are seeking a hand up and not a handout then you will support Blacktown Community Aid, the minister will consider the representations that I have made to him and we will be able to reopen Blacktown Community Aid and allow it to continue serving the people of Blacktown.
In closure, this is not a budget which looks at the long-term future and long-term welfare of the people of Western Sydney. What is critical to their long-term future—and I get this not only from parents but from people in our community who are serious about enabling young people to get into work—is a serious focus on science, maths and the jobs of the future. That is what Labor is committed to. That is not only a vision but a reality that can be created by the right policy settings that are focused on the future and focused on technology and not some backward-looking policy with the mere use of words such as 'fair' or phrases such as 'getting people off welfare into work' on the one hand and then on the other hand taking away and cutting all the programs that were actually doing an outstanding job, particularly in Western Sydney and my electorate of Greenway, in getting young people into work, meaningful employment and careers. These were programs that had been supported not only by the organisations which delivered them but by the broader business community, local government and just about every element of the Blacktown business sector. With those comments, it is quite clear from the reaction that I have received from my local residents that this budget is not fair and it is not a budget for the future.
16:25
Mr BROAD
30379
Mallee
I am quite pleased to be able to talk to this chamber, the people in the gallery and the Australian people who will be listening online and watching on television. It is a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to talk in the chamber. We sometimes take it for granted. I want to reflect a little bit on the journey that has made us into such a great country and has afforded us the standard of living that we enjoy. It has not just been by chance. It has been because of good decisions and often hard decisions. It has been because of the endeavour of every Australian who chooses to pull together to contribute rather than take. There is that great saying about those who put their hand up rather than their hand out. This budget is about those who put their hand up and not their hand out.
The challenge we have had since we have come to government in the last 18 months is explaining the journey to the Australian people. When the Howard government came into power in 1996, people had lived through the recession we had to have in 1992 when interest rates had been very high, when businesses had gone broke and when people who had had a great dream to purchase a home had then found that they were not able to make the repayments on those homes. They had lived through those difficult times. Then, when the budgets in the early years of the Howard government came in, they understood that there needed to be some cost cutting. They understood that we need to tighten our belts.
We had a little bit of a different situation in the Rudd-Gillard years. What we saw there as we were going into the global financial crisis in a very strong financial position is that we effectively moved private debt into public debt. That is fine. That has a place at times in the Australian economy and the global economy to keep confidence up and to keep stimulating people. That was what happened. However, we cemented in many of our forward projections that ongoing stimulating effect without being able to fund it. You can move private debt into public debt for a little while, but there will be a reckoning. There is a need to then make some changes. There is a need to then rein in some of those costs.
The challenge we have had is that people did not feel the effects in the Australian population. People did not lose their houses and jobs like they certainly did in America and like they certainly still are in Europe. Unfortunately, then, we have had a difficult narrative to say to people that things have changed, that the economic climate has changed and that we have to meet some challenges and constructively pull together if we are going to continue the prosperity that we as Australians enjoy.
People are beginning to realise that now. I think this is the difficulty that the opposition are having in trying to explain their narrative. While the narrative might sound good, people understand at the moment that the economy is difficult and that we are very much at a crossroads and we can grasp the opportunities but we can also falter if we do not have the will and the ambition and the internal fortitude to make tough decisions.
We have put forward a raft of tough decisions. Some of those from the first budget needed the rough edges knocked off. There is no doubt about that. It is the role of the Senate to try to hold us to account and knock off rough edges. But people have realised now that the job market is a little softer, that things are little bit more difficult. They are looking for a government that is prepared to make those tough decisions and to seize the opportunities so that, together, our best years can be ahead of us.
A budget really is an economic document and it is the engine room for us to build the society that we want to have. Everyone concedes that we want a society that looks after those who cannot look after themselves, looks after senior Australians, looks after our young and unemployed so that they can get on that first rung of the working latter, has a good defence system and has good roads. These are the things that we want our society. But you cannot build those things unless you can afford to pay for that with the dollars.
The dollars come from the work of average Australians. The government actually does not have any money; the government has your money. It always needs to remembered that money that the government has is your money. Often people say a great line to me, 'The government has gotta.' I say, 'Who is the government? The government is you. The government is a reflection of you. It is your hard work and then we are entrusted with spending your money to build the society that we want to have.' We cannot just spend money we have not got. We have to spent it frugally and make tough choices.
What we have done since coming into government has been a very interesting narrative. We made some very tough choices in the first budget. We have then been very mindful that we sit in the Asia-Pacific region, so we have to capitalise on the opportunities that sit in the Asia-Pacific region. Through the work of Andrew Robb and through the backbench trade committee, we have developed free-trade agreements—which had been stalled for a very long time—and have stitched those deals up with Japan, China and South Korea. As the global market changes, as iron ore has contracted and as coal has contracted, we have some great opportunities that are really the hard work and the working out of those three free-trade agreements.
This budget is actually about seizing those opportunities. It is one thing to have an opportunity, but it is quite another thing to turn an opportunity into a reality. This is the 'yes, but how' budget. For those in the gallery, these are my favourite three words: 'Yes, but how.' People always say, 'What is this policy and how does it apply to me?' That is how I look at legislation: 'Yes, but how.' We hear, 'We want to have universal education,' from the opposition and I say, 'Yes, but how?' They say, 'We want to have free health cover,' and I say, 'Yes, but how?' This is the 'yes, but how' budget. This is the budget that explains to us how we can move to seize the opportunities of the free-trade agreements.
I will tell you how we are going to do it: we are going to do it with the great ingenuity and the great thought processes and dedication of average Australians. I believe, with a lot of confidence, in average Australians. I believe that Australians are smart and that Australians work hard. If you give them an incentive, then they will go out, turn our economy around and do anything that they set their minds to.
In my electorate, we have 15,000 small businesses. They are mums and dads, usually. They have often got the children working. They are trying to build their life and build their prosperity through small business. This budget is seizing the opportunities for them. There is a 1.5 per cent tax cut for small businesses. There is accelerated depreciation for purchases under $20,000. There are great things for agricultural businesses. Even for those businesses that are not registered as corporations, we have found a way of making sure that they also receive a tax cut. Often, there are productivity gains that need to be made if they are going to capture an opportunity. That is what this $20,000 accelerated depreciation is.
I heard the budget reply speech. It talked about an aspiration all five per cent cut for small business. Anyone who has been in small business—and I have been in small business since I was self-employed at 22—knows that they would take the accelerated depreciation of purchases under $20,000 time after time before I would ever go for a five per cent cut on a company tax rate for small business. It simply shows that they have missed the beat on this one. They have missed the mark. If I go out and talk to people in my electorate, which I have been doing, they will say that we have got this one right.
Not only are we saying to small business that you have got to seize the opportunity but we have also presented a child care package that is about getting people reengaged in the workforce and getting young mums who—unfortunately, through necessity—need to go back in the workforce to pay off their houses and often to help with the dreams and ambitions of their family. We presented a child care package that I think will be very welcome. There is also a part of this child care package that is going to assist in those small country towns, such as in my electorate, where the child care model does not always work in its traditional way.
We have also understood that pensioners need to be valued. We have taken away the changes that were creating uncertainty for pensioners. We have said to those who are self-funded superannuation retirees that they have done well. We are very mindful that being a self-funded retiree at this time, where interest rates are quite low, is a difficult journey. We are not going to rob your superannuation. Also, those who are the poorest—in my electorate, we have a lot of the poorest—will be $30 a fortnight better off. There is a level of fairness in this that I think has been addressed.
We are also mindful that if we are going to seize the opportunities that are before us, we need to get younger people who are unemployed working. Getting people on that first rung of the ladder is a critical step. Assistant Minister Hartsuyker has done a good job working on this and having incentives. If you are not working, you are going to have to turn up 25 hours a week and do something to get you job ready. You are going to have an opportunity to work with business, hand in glove, so that you are more in tune with the demands and the opportunities that businesses present people.
I have a strong belief that the best thing you can give a young person is an opportunity. The best thing you can give a young person is an opportunity—I have said it again because it is important. If you get a young person to have a job, have money in their pocket that they earned and have a sense of self-worth, that is something that puts their shoulders back. That is something that makes them stand taller and prouder. What we want for young Australians is to be involved in this great economy and to have great opportunity, and there is stuff here to put that first rung on the ladder.
Often it is mentioned to me by some of our senior Australians, who have still got something to give, that unfortunately they are passed over at times for a job. They might be 50 years old or older but they have got the beauty of wisdom and knowledge. They are the people who are going to drive a forklift and not break it, but their knees might not be as good as they used to be for jumping up and down into that truck cabin. They have often felt that they have not been able to get that job. In this budget there is a rejigging of the $10,000 Restart program to help those who are 50-year-olds or older to get back into the workforce.
This budget also builds the society that we want to have. There is an additional $1.6 billion over the five years for lifesaving and life-enhancing drugs. Often people come into my office and say: 'We are in a situation where we are quite sick. If only this drug could be listed. That would add very much to our standard of living and maybe make us live that little bit longer.' Unfortunately, we all die; but if a drug makes us live a little bit longer then that is a good thing. There is some stuff in this budget that is really very important.
One of the things in this budget that I am most proud of is a very small amount of money—it is listed as a line item in the health budget—for the Wimmera Health Care Group Oncology, Dialysis and Community Palliative Care Centre. We had a situation in my electorate where people were not able to get treatment for cancer because there were not enough services. These people were driving up to 400 kilometres, getting their chemo and driving back, stopping on the edge of the road to throw up because they were unwell from the chemo treatment. That $1 million is a line item in this budget. The centre will be funded. It will mean that people's lives will be saved; it will mean that people's lives will be enhanced.
So please look broader than the rhetoric that is being discussed around this budget. This is certainly a financial document, and there are some really good things in this budget that will help us build the society that you and I want to live in for a long time—a society that builds on the future. I am proud to be in a government that has delivered this budget.
16:40
Mr NEUMANN
HVO
Blair
I am pleased to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills. Aged care workers can justifiably ask themselves: 'What does the Prime Minister and his government have against us?' For two years in a row, this government has ripped out money that was going to go into the pockets of the hardworking people who care for those people in residential aged care facilities, who care for people in their homes and who care for people with disability, frailty, infirmity or illness. This government has for two years in a row cut funding for aged care workers. Last year they ripped $1.1 billion from the Aged Care Workforce Supplement designed to address the pay, conditions and career development of some of Australia's lowest-paid workers. On top of that, this year they have cut—as part of their $100 million cut from the aged care budget—$40.2 million from the Aged Care Workforce Fund.
The Abbott government promised to develop a coherent aged care workforce strategy to address the demands of an ageing population. We need to triple our aged care workforce in the next 15 years to meet the challenges of an ageing population. How can the Prime Minister justify a 15 per cent cut to the aged care workforce development programs and have no plans whatsoever to address the challenges ahead? We have a situation where 52 per cent of people living in residential aged care in this country have dementia, but only about 17 per cent of those people with dementia actually live in residential aged care. But guess what? Going for a surf in aid of a good cause to help those people with dementia is not the same as cutting $20.1 million from the Dementia and Aged Care Services Fund—budget paper No.2, page 151, if the Prime Minister cares to look at it. So going for a surf, Prime Minister, will not solve the problem. It might be a good cause—and good on you for doing it—but you cut $20.1 million from the funding for dementia in this budget, after you cut the Dementia and Severe Behaviour Supplement last year. Two years in a row, cuts to aged care workforce development for pay and conditions in the aged care sector; two years in a row, cuts to funds for dementia. In the next two decades we are going to have close to 1,000,000 Australians with dementia. What strategy is there in the budget to deal with this challenge? None. There was none whatsoever in the last budget and none in this budget.
My other shadow portfolio area is Indigenous affairs. The Prime Minister said before he got elected that he would be the Prime Minister for Indigenous people. In word and in deed, they would be at the heart of his government. What did the government do in their first budget? They cut $534 million from the Indigenous Affairs portfolio straight off the top—all program cuts; that is what Senate estimates reveals—yet they had the temerity to argue it was red-tape reduction, streamlining, bureaucratic changes and that this would in fact have no impact on front-line services. Again and again and again, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs said this on national TV and elsewhere—but it is not true. In fact, we know from the submissions lodged to the Senate inquiry looking at the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advancement Strategy, the funding for which is in this budget, that front-line services have been slashed and burned. That is why we are not going ahead on Closing the Gap. They never talk about Closing the Gap, because we are going backwards on target after target.
In the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, once again, there are cuts of another nearly $146 million in this year's budget, including $46 million for health, which would help those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in community controlled health services and elsewhere to improve health and wellness and wellbeing and welfare amongst the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who, for so long, have been disadvantaged with dispossession, dislocation and discrimination. But this Prime Minister should hang his head in shame because it is his department. He brought Indigenous Affairs from FaHCSIA into his department and then he has defunded his own department. That is what has happened. Whether they are in Arnhem Land or Brisbane, whether they are in the Kimberley or in Melbourne, whether they are in the Torres Strait or Tasmania, Indigenous people across the country know. They know that this budget has betrayed them for a second time. For a second year in a row they have been betrayed by this Prime Minister because of what he has done in this budget. They know what was said before the election, and what he has now done in two budgets is completely different.
In my own backyard, in my own electorate, before the 2013 election, they opposed the Ipswich Motorway upgrade between Brisbane and Ipswich. It was so important for South East Queensland—the No. 1 project—that the Council of Mayors South East Queensland said, year after year after year, that it ought to be funded. When we were in government we upgraded it from Dinmore to Darra, at a cost of $2.8 billion. During election after election, campaign after campaign, I fought LNP Liberal opponents who opposed the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway. They voted against it again and again in this place. We know how important it was for the safety and the economic development of South East Queensland, where one in seven Australians live. In the last five years, 20 per cent of the actual growth in wealth in this country comes from South East Queensland. It is crucial to Brisbane, crucial to Ipswich, crucial to Somerset, Lockyer and the Scenic Rim, crucial to Toowoomba.
But before the last election, in something like a Damascus road conversion experience, all of a sudden, Senator George Brandis comes before the people of South East Queensland and says, 'We're gonna fund the last section of the Ipswich Motorway—the Darra to Rocklea section. We're gonna match Labor's commitment,' that we had put in our 2013 budget before we got tossed out of office. 'We'll match Labor's commitment. In fact, we'll fast-track it.' A couple of days before the last election, the Queensland Times newspaper said: 'You vote Liberal; we'll fast-track the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway.' I had a look at the press release in this budget from the Deputy Prime Minister, the minister in charge of infrastructure, who lauded himself in question time today. There was no mention of the Ipswich Motorway upgrade from Darra to Rocklea—none at all. I had a look at the forward estimates. Was there $20 million or $25 million? There is nothing on until 2018-19. Fast-tracking? Nothing until 2018-19? What about the people of Brisbane? What about the economic development along those corridors? What about the Ripley Valley development where 100,000 people will be living in the next 15 or 20 years? What about Springfield? There is about 30,000 people living in Springfield. They will have over 100,000 in the next decade and a half. What are they going to do? They are going to be stuck on what the Queensland Times calls a goat track.
So, 19 months later, there are no witches hats, no bulldozers, no cranes, no workers, no designs, no plans. So much for fast-tracking, and the budget papers reveal they have betrayed the people of South East Queensland on the Ipswich Motorway. They should hang their heads in shame. They have gone back to form. This is what Liberals do. They claim one thing before the election and then do another. Let's have a look at the budget papers. Let's have a look at what they said before the last election. They said there would be a budget surplus in the first year and each year thereafter. What did they do? They have doubled the deficit. Unemployment is high. Taxes are up. There are 17 new taxes. There is over $3 billion extra in taxes that they did not say they would do before the election. There have been pension changes and indexation changes to make it harder. In my area, 92.2 per cent of people are bulk billed, and guess what? The changes they wanted to do and their effective freezing of indexation in relation to those payments going to doctors will mean that more and more people in Ipswich and the Somerset Region will be turfed out of bulk billing. So much for universal health care in this country!
The Liberals have never once supported Medicare. They have always thought it was a con or a rort. It is the same thing with superannuation. They cannot find a superannuation bill or an increase in superannuation they will ever vote for. They have always opposed it. At the last election, I remember my opponent talking many times about paid parental leave schemes. The paid parental leave scheme that Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, was going to bring in was rolled gold. He was going to bring in $75,000 for new mums. He has had every position he can possibly imagine on that and, once again, they cannot even maintain their position post this budget. They claim that people are double dipping and engaging in other types of practices. Yet they themselves do it. It is extraordinary that they have this position with respect to paid parental leave, and it is in the budget papers. It is simply astonishing that they would have this position.
When it comes to the budget itself, what happened last year? Last year, I can remember the cigars, the pats on the back and, 'Joe, you're a great mate.' Within a matter of months, a Liberal Party member could not get the Treasurer to a fundraiser and would not have him anywhere near his electorate, because it went down so badly. It was unfair on mothers, unfair on families, unfair on pensioners and unfair on the military, DVA veterans, the aged and Indigenous affairs, cutting $80 billion out of health and education. And, by the way, another $2 billion has been cut out of health funding in this budget, including another amount of almost $1 billion cut to an undisclosed number of health programs, according to budget paper No. 2, page 110. So they had a problem with their budget strategy last year. They had to fix it. It was not about the jobs of Australians. It was about the job of the Prime Minister and the job of the Treasurer. We know that this budget is all about saving their jobs. It is not about the jobs of Australians.
The youth unemployment in my electorate is 17.2 per cent. The unemployment rate has been hovering at about eight per cent for a while. It is too high. It is way above the national average, and we have a challenge in my area in relation to jobs. It will not be solved by disinvesting. It will be solved by consistent, good investment in infrastructure and job training—not cutting more than $1 billion out of jobs training and skilling. It will not happen when you get rid of things like the trade training programs. I have about five or six high schools in my electorate that would have got trade training centres. The ones that are currently there are fantastic, and they are doing great work in preparing young people for jobs of the future. That is what they are there for. You cannot cut all of these youth training programs, including the kinds of funds that are necessary in TAFE and elsewhere, and expect the unemployment rate to go down.
What this government has done is destroy, in large part, business confidence. If business confidence is riding high, why did they introduce the small-business concessions and tax cuts, and the roll back and depreciation changes in this budget? They know they got the budget strategy wrong last year. In their hearts, they know. The polls show that they know. They guaranteed, when they were doing their mobile offices or listening posts—as they call it on that side of the chamber—they know in their heart of hearts, and their constituents would tell them, they made a mistake last year. They knew it was fundamentally unfair, and their constituents told them it was unfair. So what do they do this time? Having voted against the small-business tax cut that we had—they voted against it; so much for the party of free enterprise, opposite—and having discarded the depreciation advantages we had for small business, and the roll back in relation to the advantage that small business would have, all of a sudden they discovered them and thought, 'That is not a bad idea.' Well, they should have listened to Labor when we had the legislation in the first place, when we had those advantages on the table for small business.
This budget is short sighted and cobbled together. It is all about something that would really resemble an episode of The Hollowmen. It really is extraordinary. It is like their medical-research fund that they cobbled together, last year, six weeks before the 2014 budget, which made Soviet-era long-term planning look like a really attractive option. This government has monumentally failed the people of Australia. They said one thing before the election, they did another in last year's budget and, when that failed them and their political necks were on the chopping block, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer had to do something. Thirty-nine people opposite, in the Liberal Party backbench—and goodness knows how many of the parliamentary secretaries or those from the ministry—voted against the Prime Minister in an attempted leadership coup, and the Prime Minister had to bring down a budget that said 'fairness'. It does not mean that your budget is fundamentally fair every time you say 'fairness'. It is not, and the people will see through it.
16:55
Mr COULTON
HWN
Parkes
I stand to speak on the appropriation bills. To those of you listening at home, those 15 minutes you will never get back—listening to the member for Blair's speech is like listening to the captain of the Titanic do a lecture on risk management. Quite frankly, it is astounding that a person who was a member of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years could come in here and lecture this House on fiscal responsibility and budgets that are relevant to Australia.
I spent six years sitting in this place, in opposition, watching the member for Blair's government take away the regional telecommunications fund and turn it into $900 cash splashes—putting up school halls that schools did not want, that could not fit in the student body, putting insulation into houses that subsequently burned down. That contribution was absolutely appalling.
The member for Blair is also the opposition spokesman on Indigenous affairs, and he had quite a bit to say about the government's response in that portfolio. The big change we have seen with this government is that there is a responsibility. The biggest insult and the biggest discrimination made against our Aboriginal brothers and sisters is to have a lower expectation. The Labor Party way is to give them more money so as not to feel that we need to do anything—to measure success and commitment by giving them more money. What we see now is that there is some responsibility.
We are not putting in programs, to fund people, that make no change—year after year after year—while the people that need the funds are still living in poverty. There needs to be some accountability. For the member for Blair to talk about this government walking away from Aboriginal people is absolutely insulting. Through our programs that are getting students into schools, our support of the Clontarf Foundation, our employment programs and our mutual obligation, we are making a difference in the lives of these people. We are not just going to shove money out to people, to drive around in government cars and sit in air-conditioned offices, who make no difference to the people that they represent.
This was the eighth budget that I have sat through and listened to the Treasurer make on budget night. This is the first one in which I have heard agriculture mentioned, and mentioned as many times as the Treasurer did. We have seen in this budget that this government recognises that Australia is still reliant on agriculture to pay its bills. The wealth of this country still focuses on agriculture and, in its time of need, in drought, this government is supporting farmers.
In the previous government, the member for Watson, when he was the agriculture minister, said that drought was a thing of the past. The word 'drought' was changed to 'dryness'. They said that this was climate change and we did not need a drought policy. So when we came to government, we had no policy for drought and the cupboard was bare. We have seen nearly half a billion dollars committed to farmers in supporting drought assistance.
I have to say: it is still tough out there. With the support farmers are getting from this government, it is still tough and, quite frankly, they will be doing it tough in those areas around Walgett, Coonamble, Brewarrina and Bourke in my electorate until it rains. But at least now there are about 5,000 farmers around Australia getting household support. We are seeing funds going into communities to build community infrastructure and create some employment in these towns. So for the member for Blair and other members in opposition to be critical of this budget is absolutely nonsensical.
Policies introduced by this government will help regional Australia stimulate growth. The $20,000 tax offset and the accelerated appreciation for water storage and fodder storage and fencing will make a real difference to stimulating not only agriculture but the communities and towns that support it. Indeed, last week I spoke to the manager of Mitre 10 in Dubbo. He said that in the three days after the budget there was a noticeable increase in activity, as tradespeople came in and purchased electrical tools and the like. The person who owns the computer store was saying that there was an increase in interest by businesses wanting to update their IT. We are starting to see small business being recognised and policies put in place that enable small businesses to grow and prosper. We know that, in Australia, the people of Australia know best. They are the ones who want to be unshackled from government and able to get on with it. They do not want this Big Brother approach where Big Brother knows best—and we have seen such policies as the school halls program that were an absolute farce and a waste of money.
In this budget we see a great stimulus for small business. Through our jobs program, the member for Cowper, the Assistant Minister for Employment, who just left the chamber, has a large amount of funds to put people back into work. This is the idea of mutual obligation where, if you are a citizen of this country, sitting at home doing nothing is not an option. You need to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and allow people to have the dignity of work—to have a reason to get up in the morning, to gain the skills and the training, to get back into the workforce and to be an example to their children so that their children understand the concept of work. If you are at work all day, at night-time you might be sleeping and allowing an environment where your children can have a regular, stable lifestyle. The previous government were absolutely missing from the field when it came to this. Their answer was to write out another cheque, borrow some money, hand some money out to other group and pretend that they cared by the size of the cheques that they wrote, rather than taking responsibility and real ownership themselves, where members of parliament are part of their communities and are prepared to put in policies that will be beneficial not merely to the people that they represent. It might not necessarily be popular in all quarters, but it is the right thing to do.
We have seen a continuing commitment to infrastructure. In the last 12 months, I have seen more federal funding coming through my electorate for infrastructure than I saw in the previous six years. The previous member for Parkes and I have seen money going into the Newell Highway through the bridges program and the Black Spot Program. We are seeing work commencing on the inland rail. Rather than just talk about this, we are actually seeing work going on out there now with the final route selection, environmental work and community engagement. It was only an academic discussion until this year. We have a government in charge now that actually does things rather than just talk about things. Through the Stronger Regions program, we are seeing some real funding to stimulate economic growth in regional Australia. The money for the Dubbo saleyards will be a benefit not only to the economy of the Dubbo district but for the whole of western New South Wales. It will set Dubbo up as a livestock exchange centre that will service probably 30 to 40 per cent of New South Wales. This is targeted money going into real programs.
On this commitment to roads, the Newell Highway has, unfortunately, claimed many lives over the years and we are now seeing work being done to widen the Newell and put space between the lanes. In the 40-kilometre section south of Goondiwindi in the northern part of the Parkes electorate, where fatigue sets in and, unfortunately, over the years we have seen some horrendous accidents, we are now seeing some real work going on. The Roads to Recovery Program will be doubled for local government areas in this coming year. As a former mayor, I understand the need for that money so that councils can prioritise and target where it needs to go.
In closing, this is a government that lets Australian people get on with the job that they want to do. This budget is coupled with other policies that we have implemented over the last 18 months, such as our red-tape reduction program, which unshackles small business and the Australian people and enables more productivity and employment. We are starting to see confidence returning.
As someone who spent last week doing about 3,000 kilometres around the Parkes electorate and speaking with many people, I can tell you that the Australian people are very pleased that they have a government in charge that actually knows what it is doing. They are saying that they are willing us to continue to do what we are doing and do better, because they are terrified of a return to the days of the Labor government when we saw a surplus—money in the bank—whittled away to a deficit and debt, which has severely impacted our ability to do what we want to do. But what we see now is a balance between financial responsibility and social responsibility and the fact that we understand what drives our economy and are supporting those areas.
We support programs that actually have outcomes and are measured. I want to speak briefly about the Clontarf Foundation. We have funding now for, I think, an extra 3,000 places around Australia through that. In the Parkes electorate, in schools in Brewarrina, Bourke, Walgett, Moree and Coonamble, and in the three schools in Dubbo, we are seeing a real turnaround where young men, young lads, from families who were multigenerational unemployed, now have real hope. The former school captain of Brewarrina is now doing a fine arts degree at Newcastle university. A couple of boys from Coonamble, after undertaking a training program, are now fully employed in road construction in Sydney. Boys who were truants, and who, at the age of 12 and 13, were taking drugs and smoking cigarettes and wagging school, are now attending school, are motivated and are looking to a future where they will be mentors for their younger brothers and sisters and a support to their family.
This budget helps the Australian people make sense of last year's budget. Last year's budget had to reverse the decline in our terms of trade and our financial standing, and, with this budget, people can now see the logic behind that.
I have to say that, from the comments I picked up, they are very appreciative that we are giving assistance to those who are having a go. Those who have got into the trap of intergenerational welfare will be encouraged to step into the workforce. There are other programs, like Green Army, that are giving young people an opportunity to experience work and undertake some training at the same time.
So I am pleased that I am part of the Liberal-National government. I am pleased that this budget is relevant to the Parkes electorate. And I am pleased to be part of a team that understands what Australia needs and is getting on with the job.
17:10
Mr ALBANESE
R36
Grayndler
Investment in infrastructure is of course the key to lifting economic productivity in this country. Just as inadequate infrastructure impedes economic growth, traffic congestion needlessly complicates life for people as they move around their communities. Inadequate highways mean road safety issues come to the fore. A failure to have efficient freight systems, whether by rail or by road and intermodal transport, is a handbrake on productivity.
So that is why every year at budget time I look forward to announcements of new nation-building projects like roads and railway lines or port infrastructure. The first step on budget night is always to look for the summary booklet from the department of infrastructure—or, as it used to be called, the department of transport. Last year, indeed, the booklet helped greatly to identify the re-announcements of the government, because you could go to the page on the Pacific Highway or the Bruce Highway and look at the projects. You could look at, say, the May 2013 budget on the Bruce Highway, then go to next year's and it was exactly the same. It showed that there were not new projects on either the Bruce Highway or the Pacific Highway from the government.
This year, they just did not bother. They did not bother to produce any documentation about infrastructure on budget night. Why? Because there were no new public transport projects. That is not surprising, given that they cut all the funding for public transport in last year's budget. There were no new major road projects anywhere in the country; not a single new project funded in this budget for freight rail anywhere in the country; nothing for ports or intermodal infrastructure; nothing for high-speed rail. Indeed, this budget cuts infrastructure funding by $2 billion over the next two years. That is a $2 billion cut, compared with the 2014 budget—compared with what they said they would do just one year ago.
It is no wonder that business commentator Alan Kohler wrote in the Business Spectator of 20 May that any suggestion that this government is an infrastructure government is nothing more than spin. Mr Kohler wrote this: 'In fact, the detail of the Budget papers show a real decline in spending in the Infrastructure and Regional Development portfolio of 11.2 per cent between 2014-15 and 2018-19.' An 11.2 per cent decline over that period! It is no wonder that Mr Kohler has described the government's record on infrastructure as 'pathetic'.
This is the worst possible time to cut infrastructure investment. Our economy is in a state of transition as we move away from the resources boom. According to the ABS, private sector investment fell by some 12.4 per cent between the December quarter 2013 and the December quarter 2014. In the same period, public sector investment on infrastructure fell by 17.3 per cent from the December quarter 2013 to the December quarter 2014. In these circumstances a responsible government would have stepped up to the plate and lifted infrastructure investment. The government tries to get around these facts and today the Deputy Prime Minister tried again. The analysis of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia shows that Commonwealth investment in infrastructure will fall from 1.55 per cent of the budget to 1.47 per cent across the forward estimates.
Last Friday we saw exactly how big the challenge was. Infrastructure Australia produced its update of the 2008 national infrastructure audit. This audit found that, without action, traffic congestion would escalate the cost to $53 billion by 2031. It found that public transport use will double over the next 20 years. So what is the government's response to these challenges? They withdraw all investment in public transport. The Regional Rail Link project that will open next month is the largest ever federal investment in an urban public transport project, making an enormous difference not just to the Melbourne suburban rail network but to Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo. When it opens it will add an extra 54,000 commuter seats a day and will take thousands of cars off the roads. Labor funded projects such as the Gold Coast light rail. The member opposite, the member for Moncrieff, would be very familiar with it. Now he is a strong supporter of it—not at the time but he now supports it. It opened last year. It has had five million people travel on it in less than a year.
We also funded the Moreton Bay rail line in Brisbane, which is under construction, and allocated billions of dollars of investment for projects like the Melbourne metro and the Cross River Rail project. At the same time, we doubled the roads budget. We invested in important freight projects. The member for Parkes spoke about the inland rail project. The government have not added a dollar, not a cent, in their first two budgets for that project. Every single dollar of the $300 million was allocated by the former federal Labor government. Indeed, our rollout was faster and the government have spent less than we would have over its first two years in government.
We need to invest in both roads and rail. All of the experts know that that is the case. We need to engage in cities and urban policy. We cannot have a situation whereby the Commonwealth simply says that it is the business of someone else to deal with these issues, when 80 per cent of Australians live in our cities and when our cities produce more than 80 per cent of GDP. In his 1972 election campaign speech, Gough Whitlam said:
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.
Yet this government has shut down the Major Cities Unit. The next State of Australian Cities report was due in 2014. The government said it would produce it but in fact it has not been published. We know that the Department of Infrastructure signed an $11,000 contract with a printing agency for the 2014 report and the contract stipulated—it is available on the government website—that the report would be published on 15 December last year. So it obviously had to be printed prior to the publication of the report. Where is it? It cost $11,000 and it has not appeared. It has just disappeared. Maybe it had something in it that was slightly critical. We do not know. We do know that for the first three years three million full copies were downloaded of this report, such is the wont for information on urban policy in cities. We do know that there is a demand there. We know the government has repeatedly, at each and every estimates, said that it would produce it. We know that it has been produced and printed and paid for. But it has just disappeared.
The government have also undermined the Infrastructure Australia process. Its key adviser on infrastructure, Infrastructure Australia, has of course been sidelined from the funding decisions that have been made by the government. They have not funded a single Infrastructure Australia priority project since they came into office. They said there would be a cost benefit analysis for projects costing over $100 million. There has been none. When the East West Link cost-benefit analysis was actually exposed by the incoming Victorian state government, it showed there was a cost benefit of 0.45 or 45c benefit for every dollar that was invested.
Yet this government stubbornly says, 'That's where the money should go'—not to remove level crossings, not for the M80 project, not for the Melbourne metro project, not for the West Gate project but for a project that simply does not stack up.
This year's budget shows that the funding of Infrastructure Australia has been slashed from $15 million this year to $8.8 billion by 2018-19—in real terms, cut by more than half. That is an absurd proposition. They are ignoring Infrastructure Australia. They are ignoring cost-benefit analyses and they simply do not have credibility when it comes to the decisions that are being made, including the vindictive decision that is in this budget and which the papers show. These budget papers show that Victoria, with 25 per cent of Australia's population, will get eight per cent of the infrastructure investment contribution from the Commonwealth. If this Prime Minister thinks that Victorians will cop being punished because they voted for a Labor government last year, then he will find out what the response is come the next federal election because no group, no state or territory would cop that sort of behaviour from a federal government.
That is why the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply made it clear that a Labor government will give Infrastructure Australia the status it deserves at the centre of government. We will act on expert advice, as we did previously. We will also make sure that there is proper consultation, including with the opposition, on key appointments to the organisation.
If you want an example of mean-spirited decisions that make no sense there is one that stood out to me in the budget, because it is a separate line item: the regional school buses program. That program is about getting seatbelts in school buses that operate in regional areas. Do you know how much it cost? It was $1 million—$1 million that was cut by those opposite. It makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever, to engage in that sort of cut. The managed motorways fund, which funds better infrastructure, smart infrastructure, using better signalling systems to make better use of roads that are there, was cut in last year's budget—in terms of the Monash Freeway—with no new allocations. Labor's successful Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program was cut, with only $1 million of last year's $48 million that was budgeted actually spent. The government has even cut funding to its own Bridges Renewal Program by $60 million. An extraordinary proposition.
Then we move to the ideological section of this budget. On page 132 of Budget Paper No. 2, they say, in terms of shipping, that the reforms are aimed at 'better aligning employment conditions for ships based in Australia with international standards'. Can you imagine explicitly saying, in black and white, that you want Third World wages and conditions for Australians who work on ships?
We know it is not just the shipping sector where they want to move to Work Choices on water. They also want Work Choices in the sky by abolishing cabotage that ensures only Australian based airlines can operate in our domestic industry, as occurs everywhere in the world. There is nowhere in the world where Qantas can say, 'I want to operate in your domestic routes'—not in the United States of America or in Europe or anywhere else. And yet, that is what they are proposing to open up.
Last year's budget shocked Australians with its savagery, but this year's budget is no better. In infrastructure and transport it reveals the government's inability to deal with the challenges ahead. This nation needs an adult government prepared to invest in nation building. This country needs leadership on infrastructure. It needs nation building, it needs vision and it needs a Labor government.
17:25
Mr CHESTER
IPZ
Gippsland
I rise, in complete contrast to the member for Grayndler—I am sure you will be horrified to hear—to speak in support of the budget that was released just a couple of weeks ago. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the Treasurer and the senior members of the ERC for the work they did in preparing a budget that I believe got the balance right.
They mostly got the balance right. They faced an enormous challenge in cleaning up almost seven years of Labor mismanagement and in getting the settings right, particularly for the small-business sector—to send a message of confidence and security that they could invest in the future of their businesses. Small businesses are owned by the people in our community who are prepared to take risks and invest their own money. In my case, in the seat of Gippsland, there are about 11,000 small-business owners who are critical to the employment futures of so many people in the Gippsland region. The Treasurer, the Minister for Finance and the members of the ERC worked very well and diligently to get the balance right between cleaning up that financial mess they were left with, by the Labor Party, and setting a confident and clear agenda for the future of our nation.
That is the feedback I have received, as I have travelled throughout my electorate, over the past week or 10 days. The federal budget has been very well received throughout Gippsland, particularly with the strong focus on jobs growth and its message to the small-business sector that they can build with confidence and have a prosperous future in our regional communities. In fact, the small-business package has been the one item of the budget that I have received the most positive feedback about. I will get to that in a moment's time. The comments coming from small businesses in Gippsland have certainly been appreciative of the Treasurer's recognition that the small-business sector is the engine room of the Gippsland economy but also appreciative of the fact that it gives them the confidence to hire more people in the Gippsland community.
Coming on the back of the successful negotiation of three free trade agreements—with China, Korea and Japan—the budget does send that very positive message to the private sector to get out there and to invest in future growth, and I do congratulate the Treasurer on his work. In particular, from my perspective in Gippsland, the focus on increased road expenditure, on upgrades, not just on the major Princes Highway—the spine that runs through the Gippsland electorate—but also through the doubling of Roads to Recovery funding for our local councils, has been very well received. In total there is about a $40 million package for roads, in Gippsland, over the next 12 months. It is a pity the member for Grayndler is not here, because I was going to pay him a compliment. It builds on the work that the member for Grayndler and I did when he was the minister for transport and I was, obviously, in opposition. I was going to pay him a compliment because he did support this project in Gippsland, the Princess Highway duplication, which has always enjoyed bipartisan support from both state and federal levels of government.
There is a total now of $260 million that has been spent on the Princes Highway through my electorate over the past five years, and this most recent budget announcement of $20 million will allow for the duplication to continue between Traralgon and Sale. It has been a multimillion-dollar boost to the road network. It delivers a very clear social and economic dividend. The economic dividend can be measured in terms of reduced travel times, once the work is completed, increased productivity for the movement of goods and services throughout the Gippsland region, and through access to the tourism attractions of the Gippsland region. So there is a very clear economic dividend that comes from the duplication.
It is perhaps the social dividend that I get most excited about, and I think anyone who uses the road network gets most excited about it as well—that is, the safety aspects that are built into a new road, particularly a duplication, which allows for two lanes in both directions on our major highway networks. We know that investing in safer roads saves lives. In a regional sense, one of the great tragedies in our nation is that we have a disproportionately high road toll in our regional communities. While there has been some great work done by most state governments throughout Australia in reducing the road toll, most of the gains in recent years, in reducing the road toll, have come in metropolitan areas. The regional road tolls have been far more resistant, if you like, to the changes that have been made with new safety regulations, new laws et cetera and changes in driver behaviour.
Improving the safety of the road environment has the potential to deliver more in savings to the health budget by reducing road trauma than any other initiative, whether it be improved driver behaviour or enforcement and those types of activities. I encourage the minister for transport, and the Prime Minister in his endeavours to be an infrastructure Prime Minister, to continue to invest in improving the safety of the regional road network. We understand that if you can reduce the severity of those accidents you reduce the severity of injuries sustained, and the people involved can go on to live longer and more productive and healthy lives than would otherwise be the case. I do congratulate the former minister for transport on the funding he secured for the Princes Highway duplication but I also congratulate the current minister for transport on continuing that good work. As I said, a total of $260 million has been allocated to that section of road during my time in parliament.
As the Princes Highway is part of the national road network, the duplication between Traralgon and Sale receives 80 per cent of its funding from the federal government and 20 per cent from the state government. I encourage the new state government in Victoria to continue to press its case for the full duplication of that section of road. Once this current round of works is finished, which will be towards the end of next year, in the order of $200 million will still be required to finish the job. That will be something I will be very keen to pursue with my state colleagues in Victoria and also with the federal minister. My state colleagues, in this case the member for Morwell, Russell Northe, and the new member for Gippsland South, Danny O'Brien, are very keen to also pursue those road safety upgrades. I will be working with them, hopefully with the support of the state minister for transport, to have those upgrades continue.
It is not just about the Princes Highway. The budget also had some positive news for my electorate in terms of some other road projects in both the west and the east of the electorate. Under the heavy vehicle program some new rest areas are being constructed, and some new overtaking lanes are being constructed on the Princes Highway further east—the section of the road that is not on the national network. That is fifty-fifty funding between the state and federal governments. Those three overtaking lanes between Orbost and Nowa Nowa are well under way, and construction has been proceeding quite well despite the recent inclement weather we have experienced. While parts of Australia have suffered through a lack of rain, Gippsland, fortunately, over the last couple of years has had fantastic rain. I do take this opportunity to extend my best wishes to those in other communities who are suffering with drought. Gippsland has had its share of droughts over the years, including during my time in parliament, but right now the conditions in Gippsland are magnificent. We have benefited from some great seasonal conditions.
The improvements funded under the current budget will obviously improve productivity right throughout the region and make our roads safer. Local councils have also benefited from the federal budget to the tune of $11 million—those three local councils being East Gippsland, Latrobe and Wellington. They will share in a doubling of Roads to Recovery funding this year. Roads to Recovery is one of those great programs that somehow has managed to withstand changes of government. We have not even changed the name, which is something very unusual for governments in the modern era. Roads to Recovery was initiated many years ago by the former leader of the Nationals, John Anderson, and it has survived through periods of budget difficulties. It survived right through the Howard-Costello years, through the Rudd-Gillard years and it is continuing today as a fantastic program. I think it works so well because of the simplicity of its design. This program gives local councils the chance to set their local priorities every year, and it has been a very successful program in the Gippsland region. This year we will benefit to the tune of $11 million, which will go towards some significant local road upgrades. Again I congratulate the minister for transport for securing the funding for that program.
It is good that the member for Franklin is here in the chamber because she has had a bit to say about another program, the National Stronger Regions Fund. It is a billion-dollar fund that was secured during negotiations between the National Party and the Liberal Party in the lead up to the last election. I congratulate the minister for securing that funding. I think 51 projects across Australia were supported in this budgetary round. One program is being funded in my electorate—one out of two; you always like to win every bid you put in but you do not always get that lucky as a local MP. In this case, $4.5 million from the federal government under the National Stronger Regions Fund will go to the Wellington shire's Port of Sale cultural hub, and that has been warmly received by the local community. I was at a function last week and the mayor, Carolynn Crossley, spoke in glowing terms about how this $13.7 million project will assist Wellington shire. This grant has enabled a long sought-after project to be brought to reality, and again I congratulate the minister on negotiating that fund as part of the coalition agreement in the lead-up to the last election. I encourage other members in this place, whether they be on this side of the House or the other side, to work with their local councils to put forward some strong bids for the program. It is a competitive bid process, with 51 projects out of about 400 bids being successful last time. I would obviously like to see more projects successful in Gippsland in the future and I will be working with my community to make sure that occurs.
As I said at the outset, this budget is a particularly good one for small business. It is not just me saying that—that is the feedback I have been getting from the small business owners in my electorate. One of the great things about being a regional member of parliament is that you do get to meet dozens of people almost every day as you travel throughout your electorate, and they are never short on giving you some free advice. It is fair to say that over this past week the advice I have received from my electorate has been a bit more positive than I may have received after previous budgets. I will leave it at that! The free advice I have had this week is simply 'Keep up the good work; we like what the budget is doing for small business—this has given us confidence and we are already seeing a direct result in our own business.' This is the case whether it is small hardware shops selling more equipment to local tradies or electronics outlets selling more computers and that type of thing—our package has been very warmly received. Of particular benefit is the ability for businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million to immediately deduct from this year's tax return the depreciation of an asset that costs less than $20,000. Quite frankly, that is just about every one of my small businesses in Gippsland. That is a reasonable figure to set the mark at—it is your mum-and-dad operations with two or three staff members, perhaps. All I can ask those businesses to do is to shop locally as much they can to support other businesses in Gippsland—the money will then go around in the community and provide even greater opportunities and support for local jobs.
While I am talking about local jobs, there is one issue that is of particular interest to me and other members in this place, particularly the member for McMillan—and that relates to the Australian Paper mill located at Maryvale in my electorate. It employs in the order of 1,000 local workers. Earlier this year I publicly extended a challenge to other MPs, senators, ministers and particularly federal government departments to at least consider their procurement policies when it comes to using imported paper in their offices. I encourage them to consider switching to Australian paper. Australian paper has a range of products that are all fully certified in terms of environmental credentials. They have 100 per cent recycled paper; they have 50 per cent recycled paper. They are a world-class business operating in a difficult market. It is simply staggers me to still see a long list of Australian federal government departments that continue to use imported paper. I urge procurement officers in departments and I will be writing to all ministers, with the support of the member for McMillan, to urge all MPs to support Australian jobs and support Australian families. The economic, environmental and social benefits are there for Gippslanders and all Australians.
As I promised earlier this year, I will get around to actually naming some of the departments which do not use Australian paper. Unfortunately, the list is quite long. There are only six that I can find at the moment that have Australian paper in their list and procurement guidelines. Fortunately for me, being the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence, the Department of Defence does use Australian paper. The Department of Human Services does, Australian Customs does, and the Department of Agriculture recently changed its procurement guidelines after some discussions with the minister and now uses and offers Australian paper to its staff. ASIO and ASIC are the only other two I can find.
The list I have here has 15 other Australian departments which source their paper from either Indonesia, Germany or Austria. On that list is the Australian Taxation Office, the Department of Immigration, the Australian Federal Police, the Department of Health, the Department of Industry—the Department of Industry; that is amazing—the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Department of Education, the Department of Employment, the Department of the Environment, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Infrastructure, the Department of Finance, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of the Treasury. I apologise if I have wrongly named a department which has switched to Australian paper in recent times. If I have made a mistake, I urge them to give me a call in my office tomorrow and I will amend the public record for them.
But if I do not have a wrong, if these are the 15 Australian departments that do not use Australian-made paper, I simply ask the question: why not? Why on earth would the Department of the Environment be using paper from Germany? The Australian product is fully certified, it comes from a mix of plantation and native hardwood timber and it is harvested under strict environmental guidelines. This is a world-class industry which is being crucified by procurement decisions which are impossible for the average Australian to understand. How can it be cheaper and how can it be more environmentally friendly to bring paper from Austria, Germany and Indonesia rather than sourcing from Australian grown products? So I do urge other members of this place, ministers and procurement officers who are responsible for signing these contracts in their departments to at least consider supporting Australian families, supporting Australian jobs and buying the Australian-made product. Again, if I have got it wrong, if your department has switched to Australian paper, give me a call and I am happy to publicly congratulate you in the future.
17:40
Ms COLLINS
HWM
Franklin
It is great to be able to talk to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and cognate bills, the government's budget bills, because of course everybody knows that this budget was simply a political document to try to save the jobs of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. They are not that interested in the jobs of Australians. You can tell that because their own budget papers talk about unemployment going up—indeed, going up to 6.5 per cent, and that is the highest level of unemployment for 14 years. Sadly, it even projects that it will stay there for some time.
This budget still contains a lot of the nasties from the previous budget, which was so unpopular with the people of Australia. It still includes the increase in the petrol excise, which will disproportionately impact on the people in rural and regional Australia every day as they go to work or take their kids to school. In this budget there is still the plan to increase the pension age to 70. I am sure that is something that the tradies who might be taking advantage of the instant asset write-off will not be very happy about. It still contains the deregulation to Australia's universities that could lead to $100,000 degrees. Still contains more than $80 billion in cuts to health and education, and of course it does not contain the fifth and the sixth year of the Gonski education funding that was promised by this government. It also contains family tax cuts. There are cuts to Family Tax Benefit Part A and Family Tax Benefit Part B.
Indeed, we have seen some modelling today which shows just how that will impact on average Australian families. To give you an example, for a couple on a single income earning $65,000 with two children, one in primary school and one in high school, over the four years of the budget it is a loss of more than $20,000. That is a very significant loss indeed. For a couple on a single income of $75,000 with two kids, one not yet of school age and one in primary school, over the four years it is a loss of $6,000. And for a sole parent with an income of $55,000 with two children, one in primary school and one in high school, again it is a loss of more than $20,000. How can the government say this budget is fair? What they are trying to do to these families is rip money away and, on the other hand, say that we need this budget saving so that we can fund changes to child care. They want to take money off some families and give it to other families, and the way they are going about it is absolutely not fair.
This budget also includes the changes to paid parental leave. We saw some really appalling language used by the government to describe families that were taking paid parental leave, the government scheme and their employer's scheme. Of course, they seem to forget that a lot of the employees who are accessing employer funded paid parental leave have bargained for that leave. They have forgone other entitlements or possible wage increases to obtain that paid parental leave. They will have worked with their colleagues and with their boss and negotiated that additional leave so that they can spend more time at home with their newborn babies. They do not expect to be called fraudsters by the government when they access, legitimately, both schemes. And, of course, those changes to paid parental leave that are in the budget will affect more than 80,000 families. It is a loss of up to $11,500 per family at that critical time when many people are resorting to one income and are relying on this leave to spend time at home with their babies. Those opposite go around the country taking happy snaps in childcare centres. They go out and about in their electorates with tradies and say that this budget is full of good news. That is simply not true. They are linking cuts to family payments to childcare benefits for other families and they are taking money away from families with newborn babies.
As I said, those opposite talk about this budget being all about jobs, but what we actually see in this budget is unemployment going up. In my portfolio of employment services there is a package in relation to youth unemployment, which we are pleased to see they are acting on. Youth unemployment in Australia has been growing, and it has been growing at an alarming rate. There was a big announcement of $200 million for youth unemployment measures. As I went through the budget papers, I was looking and looking for it, but there was no new money for this; it is coming out of what is already allocated to employment services in the budget.
From 1 July the government have their new jobactive program. They have taken money out of the jobactive program to pay for youth unemployment services, which is well and good, but they are actually admitting that jobactive will not work for young people. It will not work for young people because many young people are vulnerable. The new jobactive program will not work for vulnerable people, regardless of their age. The government needs to do a lot more if it wants to address long-term unemployment and unemployment for people with serious barriers to employment. It needs to invest to move people from welfare into work, as we keep hearing all the rhetoric about. This government is not seriously investing in jobs for people who face barriers to employment.
There is also nothing in the budget about job creation. There is not a proper plan for job creation. Yes, there is a short-term plan for small business, but there is no long-term plan for infrastructure, for investing in education, for investing in science, for investing in innovation and for investing in those jobs of the future, where Australia's prosperity will lie. That is what we heard about in the opposition leader's budget reply speech. We heard about investments in science, technology, engineering and maths and how important they will be. They are really critical to Australia's future.
In the past Australia invented some great things and made some great innovations. We need to ensure that Australia continues to do that in the future. We need the smart jobs of the future, the well-paying jobs of the future. We need to make sure Australians are qualified to take up these jobs, which means we need to invest in education. As I said earlier, the money for the Gonski funding that is so critical for our students' education is not there in years five and six of the budget.
The youth unemployment programs the government has brought in are only replacing programs that were previously cut—great programs like Youth Connections, Partnership Brokers and national career development services. All these wonderful programs were designed to get young people into work. So, for a government who says it is serious about jobs, there is not a lot of assistance in this budget to get disadvantaged people into work. The budget papers say that unemployment will be going up. I am not convinced and I do not think the Australian public is convinced that this budget is good news for those people who are trying to work in Australia.
In relation to my other portfolio, the budget papers contain some interesting things, including a couple of funds under the Regional Development Program. One is called Stronger Communities, and $150,000 for each electorate is mentioned. A fortnight out from the budget, there is no information on exactly how this will work or what the process will be. We have been told that the involvement of the local member is going to be important, but we do not know what that will be. So we are not sure quite how this program will work. But I am concerned that it might work like the Community Development Grants Program, a program which the government created out of uncontracted Regional Development Australia funds. They put money into it and—surprise, surprise—90 per cent of the funding went to coalition-held seats and contained a whole heap of election commitments. So I would be very concerned about the Stronger Communities fund and how that is going to work.
Interestingly, the Community Development Grants Program had an additional $50 million popped into it in this budget. Again, a fortnight out from the budget there is no process for applying for grants under this program. Surprisingly, there has been an announcement out of this program—a program under which there is no process for people to apply. So, again, I would be very concerned about this program and how it is going to be used by the government and how it will apply across the country. We all want to see investment in local communities across Australia, but we want to be sure that that money is going to the best projects, the projects that support local jobs and local communities and that have a benefit for every community, with funding going right across the country. It should not simply be used as a bucket of money for coalition election promises, which is sadly where I think it is heading. So there are those two interesting little buckets of money in the budget.
Finally, in the few minutes remaining to me, I would like to talk about my home state of Tasmania. Tasmania seemed to miss out in this last federal budget. Western Australia gets another half a billion dollars for infrastructure, but Tasmania, which has the highest unemployment in the country, misses out. What is worse is that not only do we miss out; the $100 million cut to the Midland Highway is still in the budget and there is a $120 million cut to rail infrastructure from state and federal Liberal governments. That was money for freight rail in our state that was supposed to build on previous investment by the Labor government. Further, the University of Tasmania is getting a funding cut over four years of over $125 million. So several hundred million dollars is coming out of my home state of Tasmania.
Last Friday the Prime Minister was in town and he was asked about funding for the Mersey Hospital—it is a hospital on the north-west coast that, many people might recall, was bought by former Prime Minister Howard for the princely sum of a dollar from the state government. It is the only Commonwealth owned hospital, I think, in the country. The Commonwealth is in negotiation with the state for funding for this hospital, and everybody was expecting the Prime Minister to make an announcement that there was no money in the budget for it, but, of course, he did not. So we have no idea whether the money for the Mersey Hospital is in the budget or not.
We know one thing that is not there, and that is the Cadbury's money. People may recall that in the fanfare of the election the Prime Minister visited the Cadbury's factory at Claremont and announced 200 new jobs and an investment of $16 million in Cadbury's. Sadly, I have to report that on Friday, 80 Cadbury workers were told they no longer had a job—80 workers are now without a job—and my sympathies go to those workers and their families. This was an investment that was promised by Mr Abbott personally, but this money was not forthcoming. Now it is a budget saving; in the budget papers it is minus $16 million in the tourism budget. We are assured by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister that that money will still come to Tasmania, but nobody can tell us where it is in the budget. The Treasurer was asked where the money is and which department has it, but he did not know. The Prime Minister does not know either. So I am looking forward to Senate estimates to try to find out where this money might actually lie for Tasmania—what projects it is earmarked for—because nobody seems to be able to find it at the moment. Tasmanians do not have a lot of confidence that they will get this funding from the Abbott government.
There has not been a lot of good news for Tasmania in the budget. There was a little bit of good news, though: irrigation projects received some funding in the budget. They were announced by the Prime Minister a couple of months ago, and these projects have bipartisan support in Tasmania. The former Labor government invested more than $140 million in irrigation projects in the state of Tasmania, and the state and federal Labor governments established Irrigation Tasmania—a wonderful body that has been putting together a range of irrigation projects. It has been talking to Infrastructure Australia to get the projects properly assessed. It is good to see they are getting some funding under the current government, although the funding envelope is somewhat short of what is required for these projects. Again, I am a little curious as to how the remaining $40 million will be found for these very important projects in an industry that is growing jobs in Tasmania. It is an area where we have invested heavily in the past and has had bipartisan support in the past. The agriculture industry has been going extremely well in Tasmania; many new jobs have been created in agriculture; and I would like to see that continue and to see additional funding come to my home state.
Overall it is not great news for my home state of Tasmania. There is no great news for families in this budget, particularly families who receive the Family Tax Benefit or for those people who are currently looking for a job in Australia. I do not think that this budget is something that those on the government side should be taking happy snaps about while they travel around the country, proclaiming that it is a great budget when clearly it is not.
17:55
Mr JOHN COBB
00AN1
Calare
I rise to say that this budget concentrates on people who need or want to work and businesses that need surety and want to expand to take advantage of a lull in the world economy. At the moment there is quite a lot of money slushing around the world, but it is not being lent—either because those who have it do not have confidence in those might want to use it or because the businesses themselves do not have confidence in the world situation to take advantage of it. Our government has said to small business in particular: 'We want to go with you, if you want to try your hand.' It has said to families who want to work or have to work as a couple: 'We'll make sure you have the means and the time to get out there and fill those positions.' Those positions will appear as small business hits its stride, whether it is on the North Coast or in western New South Wales. They are measures to stimulate and to give confidence to small business. The government understands their problems with the cost of production and in finding suitable employees. If they do expand there will be more mature people to fill the need.
In Calare we are very appreciative that from the Stronger Regions program $8.7 million is going to a recycling and filtration plant in Parkes, which is quite a long way from the Lachlan River. Every gallon does count—perhaps I should say every litre or megalitre counts, whichever you want. We will send a bit down to the Riverina occasionally when the rain falls that way.
Mr McCormack
219646
Hear! Hear!
Mr JOHN COBB
00AN1
It is a very big thing when regional areas see that government is willing to back them when necessary. I am happy to say that CareWest in Orange received $750,000 on top of their own money to set themselves up as a group in the region—it is not just about Orange; it about the whole region—to look after people with disabilities.
My part of the world—and I am very proud of it—is the oldest part of regional Australia since Europeans came to the country, and Bathurst is older than any capital city in Australia apart from Hobart and Sydney; probably the only other city which is older is Parramatta. But I digress; what this area can do and will do is get into productivity. It is something that will pull Australia through the debt situation that it is in. I always say: in regional Australia—they are not paper shufflers, and they are not money transfer centres—they actually do things; they dig them up, they make things and they grow things. We are the producers. Cities may sell and buy it, but we make it, we produce it and the world stands still without us.
I would like to mention some of those things which I believe our government has to look at over the next year or so as to what more Calare needs. Industry is not just about the production of physical things. Industry is also very much about tourism and sport, especially when it is international. I have to say that one example is the Bathurst races at the car track on Mount Panorama. There is a plan—and it is going to be quite an expensive plan—to have a second track in Bathurst. As I have already run by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Infrastructure, this will do a lot for the region.
The Bathurst car races are not just the biggest car races in Australia; they are well known throughout the world, and people do come from around the world. The Bathurst 12 Hour, which is probably not as big domestically as the October races, has entrants from all around the world. But the racetrack is limited by an act of parliament, because it is part of the normal road work in the metropolis of Bathurst, so it is only allowed to shut down and run races five times a year. So a second track would actually allow two things: one, to hold events all the time; and two, once again, to have bike races. Apart from Phillip Island, there is no really big bike centre these days. Given how big Bathurst is as a race centre, it would certainly be enormous. So that is something that I think we have to look at.
The other thing is not talked about as being done in Bathurst, but it is very much about the university based in Bathurst. In the Riverina and Wagga, I believe, is the other part. This other thing, which we really want to get going, involves Wagga, it involves Orange and it involves the Victorian university, and it is a new medical school. It will not need a big amount of capital—nothing like the amount that is being put into the new medical school in Perth. What that new medical facility in Perth shows us is that, if it comes to training doctors, the money is there. I am pleased that the announcement was made about the new medical training facility for training doctors in Perth, because it shows that, when necessary, the money is there. What the member for Riverina and I will tell you is that the plan that our university has for training doctors means that those doctors will want to work in the bush, because students will be chosen by interview in the same way as at the veterinary school which CSU has at Wagga. That veterinary school has an enormous success rate—I believe that over 80 per cent of all vets trained there—because it is done the same way. It is done by interview, and the university assures itself that that student wants to work in the bush or outside of the metropolitan area. This plan will work.
I was a big fan of the clinical medical schools, and I have a few of them in my electorate. They are in Orange, they are in Bathurst and they are in Lithgow. They have done good work, but they have not substantially lifted the number of doctors that are working in the bush. In fact, the figure is not all that much different to what it was quite some years ago. I am really pleased, and I congratulate Perth for getting a new medical school. I am so pleased, and I am sure the member for Riverina is too, because it shows that, if the need is there, we will find the money to open a medical school, especially one that will go across three different areas, involve two states and two universities, and have a total of 120 students with 40 students in each location. The money involved is small by comparison. If they go into the hospitals on current numbers, so be it. Between Wagga, Bathurst and Orange, we can find the places, presuming that we can have them. I think has to be a priority over the next year for the next budget.
I was a big fan of the previous Deputy Premier of New South Wales when he picked up on the need for water storage in central western New South Wales. The site for the dam is at Cranky Rock, and it is just below Needles Gap, where the original site that we all wanted was. We wanted that site because it was narrow and it was deep. It was a very good site, it was higher and it would have had less evaporation. However, because of the need for the dam, I will go with Cranky Rock. Let us just make sure that we do it. The reason that I mention that here today is that I think, at the end of the day, the state have worked out how they can do a lot of the building but we will have to come in at the end. This is enormous for the whole region. More water storage means more confidence in urban development and more real estate confidence, but beyond that—which adds to it all—there are untold numbers of mine sites, some of which, I believe, have not started at this time simply because of the cost of getting water to them. This is quite a serious dam: three-quarters or perhaps 70 per cent of the size of our current Lachlan dam. It is a big thing to do. It is a necessary thing to do. I think the past Deputy Premier was a hero for getting it to where it is, and I am sure that Troy Grant, the current Deputy Premier, will make sure that we go ahead with it.
Further west, around Forbes, there are two projects that, over the next year, we have to look very seriously at funding. They have a very good stock exchange. Half of western New South Wales heads to Forbes, Dubbo or, perhaps, Wagga lower down. The Forbes one is a very big, fat lamb one; it is also a big cattle one. They want to expand that. I have to say that some 12 years or so ago—it might have been even longer—we were successful in getting regional partnerships money to help them build it in the first place.
The other thing is once again to do with sport, but it would be a huge thing for people travelling around Australia. There are not many serious drag strips in Australia. For anyone who has been to a serious drag race, let me tell you: when the big guys get out there, they blow you away. Alicia and I went to Western Sydney to the racetrack—the name of it escapes me for the moment. When the big guys get out and you are standing 150 feet away, it is like a flamethrower in front of you and a 747 on top of you—the noise! It makes your eyes water. Let me tell you, the earth does move when they take off!
Those are the sorts of things which would absolutely increase the ability of our region to get up and have a go, quite apart from the things we do so well: our mining, our forestry, our agriculture, our pet-food processing and all the other food things that we do. These are the things that our government needs to look at very seriously to add to the great work that has been done in this budget for rural and regional business and agriculture.
18:09
Mr DREYFUS
HWG
Isaacs
It has been said that history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce. This is certainly true of the Abbott government's two budgets. Their first effort was definitely a tragedy—a catastrophe even. The 2014 budget was without doubt the most extreme, the most unfair, the most disastrous federal budget handed down in living memory. It was bad enough that the government broke the promises it took to the last election. The government promised no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions, and no cuts to the ABC or SBS. Yet in the 2014 budget it delivered all four, and more besides.
However, the community's fierce opposition to the budget was about more than just broken promises. In the 2014 budget, the Australian people got to see what the Abbott government really stood for; what its real agenda was—not just what it would promise in order to win power. They did not like what they saw. In the 2014 budget, the Abbott government showed Australians its vision for our society. They showed us the type of country they want Australia to be: unfair, unequal, uncaring. They want Australia to be the sort of country which taxes the sick, the sort of country where education only goes to those who can pay, the sort of country which humiliates the young and unemployed. Abbott's vision bears no resemblance to the sort of country that most Australians want to live in—and the community's reaction to the 2014 budget bore that out. The Prime Minister and his Treasurer have worn that budget like a millstone around their necks; not because they were poor salesmen, as political commentators sometimes suggest, but because the product was faulty—and the Australian people knew it. Labor stood with the Australian community. We opposed that budget and we defeated the government's extreme and unfair agenda in the parliament.
After that dismal performance in 2014, the Treasurer returned here on 12 May for his encore—and, sure enough, it was a farce. In Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills before the House today we see a foundering Liberal government producing an opportunistic, political budget designed only to keep their own heads above water. This budget is, as the Leader of the Opposition said in his budget reply speech:
… a hoax, a mirage, a smokescreen.
The government desperately hopes that this budget will atone for the excesses of 2014, yet some of the most unfair measures from last year remain in the 2015 budget papers.
As the Leader of the Opposition has said, the Prime Minister has changed his tactics, but he has not changed his mind. This budget still rips $80 billion from schools and hospitals across the country, as was the case in last year's budget. It still inflicts higher fees and bigger debts on Australian kids seeking to further their education. It still withholds help from unemployed young Australians when they need it most. The Prime Minister had said this budget would not hurt families, but a single income family on $65,000 a year will be as much as $6,000 a year worse off. The government wants to kick families off family tax benefit part B when their youngest child turns six and to freeze family tax benefit rates. That cut will hurt more than 9,000 families in my electorate. As always under this government, middle- and lower-income Australians will be hardest hit. The budget also contains cuts to paid parental leave that will make around 80,000 new parents each year up to $11,500 worse off. The introduction of paid parental leave was one of our Labor government's great achievements. The Prime Minister, who had the audacity to appoint himself Minister for Women, is now seeking to tear that scheme apart.
The Liberal Party so often and so arrogantly claim to be the party of family values, but now they will vote to reduce the amount of time that new mothers get to spend with their babies. Australians should not soon forget this. And I do not think they are going to forget that, for five years, we have had this Prime Minister, first as Leader of the Opposition and then as Prime Minister, say over and over and over again that the scheme that Labor introduced from 1 January 2012 was not adequate. That was his position—that there needed to be a more generous paid parental leave scheme. But what have we seen in this year's budget? We have seen the attack on and the reduction of a scheme that, until very recently, this Prime Minister said was not adequate.
Last year's budget had very substantial cuts to the arts, my own portfolio responsibility—more than $100 million. The 2015 budget continues the government's assault on the arts. The government proposes cuts of $13 million through so-called efficiencies to arts and cultural programs run by the Ministry for the Arts, the Australia Council and Screen Australia. These cuts are serious, but what is of much greater concern is that Senator Brandis has taken $105 million from the Australia Council and placed it under his own personal control. Senator Brandis wishes to use this money to set up a so-called National Program for Excellence in the Arts within his Ministry for the Arts. Senator Brandis has appointed himself Australia's art-critic-in-chief. He has dangerously undermined the long-accepted principle that arts funding should be free of political interference and that funding decisions should be made at arm's length from government. That has been the case ever since the Australia Council was established as an independent statutory body by the Whitlam government.
Let no-one think that this is just a question of philosophy, how independent arts funding should be or what amount of peer reviewing is appropriate for arts funding decisions. This decision made by Senator Brandis, announced without any prior consultation in this year's budget, has already seen dramatic impacts on arts funding across Australia. It will directly affect small and medium arts organisations not just in the cities of our country but also in every region and every regional city. Those small and medium organisations are of course the lifeblood of arts activity in our country. It is those small and medium arts organisations that support individual artists. It is those small and medium arts organisations that feed through to the major performing arts groups the talent on which they rely in all aspects of their activities.
So, it was no surprise that on Thursday of last week the Australia Council, having digested the impact on its activities of a cut of $105 million, announced that the six-year funding that has been worked on for many months by hundreds of organisations is now at an end and that the June funding round has been cancelled altogether. You can only imagine the disarray and the uncertainty. It is disarray that has been reported to me by arts organisations across the country, and all of them are now facing uncertainty as to their futures. It will be no surprise if, regrettably, many of those small and medium organisations actually go to the wall as a result of this foolish, destructive, short-sighted decision that has been taken without consultation by Senator Brandis and announced in this budget—and still, two weeks later, Senator Brandis has not explained what he proposes to do with the $105 million.
And so this budget is of a piece with last year's. It persists with many of the cuts presented in the 2014 budget and resoundingly rejected by the community; and it introduces new cuts to parental leave, family payments and the arts, as well as other areas. Yet, in this budget, the government crawl away from the supposed justification for all of the cuts that they inflicted in 2014. You will hear no talk now, from this government, of 'debt and deficit disasters' or 'budget emergencies'; they would not dare. This is the government that has doubled the budget deficit to $35 million. There is no pointing by this government now at some imagined wrongs done by the Labor government, which can now be seen to have managed the economy soundly over our six years of government. There will not be any pointing at the previous, Labor government, not without utter hypocrisy, because this is the government that has doubled the budget deficit to $35 million on its watch. For a Prime Minister who promised a surplus in his first year in office and a surplus for every year of his first term, he has not even come close. He has abandoned that. At the end of the Labor government, the independently produced Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook had the federal budget returning to surplus this year, 2015-16. This budget, by contrast, first forecasts a surplus in 2019-20 and then only on the strength of some heroic economic assumptions.
The government are too weak to take up the mantle of serious reform. They have produced a budget that focuses solely on their own short-term survival. They do not have the guts or the ambition to think seriously about the challenges Australia must address beyond the next election, let alone beyond the next decade. They have rejected the reasonable revenue measures proposed by Labor—measures which would add $21 billion to the Commonwealth's balance sheet over the next decade. They are too short sighted to pursue reforms which are clearly necessary. It is clear that the current tax concession arrangements for superannuation are unsustainable, yet the government has rejected out of hand, without even reflecting on it, Labor's fair and responsible proposal for reform. It is clear that multinationals are not paying their fair share of tax currently, yet the government has rejected Labor's fully costed package of reforms to address this problem. So, this is a weak and unfair budget, but it is also an unimaginative budget, an unambitious budget. The Liberal government has no vision for the future of our country.
The Leader of the Opposition, in his budget reply speech, charted a real vision for the future of this country. He addressed the challenges that will face our country as we transition out of the mining boom. Even in opposition, Labor have shown that we have a plan for our country to thrive in the next decade and in the decades beyond that. This Prime Minister, this Treasurer, this Abbott government, by contrast, have designed a budget aimed merely at surviving the next party-room meeting. The Australian people deserve much better than this government.
18:22
Dr GILLESPIE
72184
Lyne
The bills before us encapsulate fair and reasonable measures to get a sound fiscal situation for our nation. I was going to talk about all the really great initiatives in the budget, but, before I proceed, I cannot let stand the fallacies I have heard from those opposite: that the deficit has doubled and that we have abandoned our stated aim to get our fiscal situation under control. With all due respect, people are ignoring MYEFO, which is independently produced by Treasury. It showed that the claim that the previous Treasurer had left a $17 billion deficit was utterly false—it was in the mid-40s. Our debt trajectory has been almost halved, from $667 billion, by some very hard decisions.
Anyone who thinks that the figures that came from the previous Treasurer are correct—the guru of magic pudding economics, or 'ouzo economics', as my colleague the member for Kooyong has so eloquently outlined—is deluding themselves. In his last budget, at the same time he said there was going to be a $17 deficit, the previous Treasurer said there was going to be surplus after surplus. Anyone who believes that is deluding themselves. MYEFO, not within a year or two of the coalition being given the responsibility of governing but within months, demonstrated that the deficit was actually closer to $45 billion; and we have reduced it considerably. And it would have been reduced even more if the Labor Party had not blocked $30 billion worth of projected savings, including $5 billion that they themselves had prosecuted when they were in government. It is absolute hypocrisy. I cannot believe that people would stand up and say this with a straight face.
This year's budget is fair and reasonable. It is the latest step in getting a stronger economy and getting our books under control. For the last week I have been visiting many small businesses and I have not had anyone criticise the incredible incentives that are there for genuine small businesses—a 1.5 per cent tax reduction for all ABNs and a five per cent tax reduction for unincorporated businesses with a ceiling of $1,000. Whether it is a trailer business, a benchtop business or a motorcycle business, they are all in unison. This is a great initiative. This will help us. There are a few businesses I visited who have a turnover of more than $2 million. They are not going to be the beneficiary of this directly, but they will benefit from it indirectly because most of their customers are the very businesses that this measure is targeted at. With small business doing well, large and medium sized businesses will do well as a consequence.
Most of the agricultural sector in my electorate of Lyne qualifies for these initiatives too. Most family farms have a turnover of under $2 million. Accelerated depreciation for fencing, for water infrastructure and for silos and sheds is greatly appreciated because it will help them cope with drought by giving them the ability to store water in times of plenty for when there is not plenty of food and fodder. These are really good and sensible initiatives. Any business that takes up these initiatives will be doing it not just because it is an opportunity that is good for them; it still has to add up for their business. People are not going to spend money unless it is good for their business and allows it to grow.
In this budget, funding continues for our newly announced Jobs Active program, including an expanded, reactivated and re-energised Work for the Dole program. This program will keep job seekers active and engaged in skill development and the workforce so that they do not transition to a life of long-term dependence on Newstart. All of the other initiatives in this space that have previously been announced will be funded going forward. These include the Restart program for middle aged people who have been unemployed and the relocation assistance grants. In the family space, the new childcare package will make most people who are earning between $60,000 and $120,000 roughly $30 better off every week of the year. That means child care, which will let them get into work or stay in work, will be better supported. We have changed from our previous proposal because what people wanted is childcare support. This budget is delivering a system that will deliver that.
In my electorate of Lyne we have over $1 billion worth of road-building activity happening now, and this budget funds the second tranche of funds delivering that. In other areas of the state, north of the Lyne electorate, a 100-kilometre stretch of road is being funded by this budget. This is wonderful infrastructure that will link the Mid North Coast with the markets of Brisbane with a two-lane highway.
I moved to the Lyne electorate over 23 years ago now. They were talking about the Pacific Highway being finished 23 years ago, and it is finally this Abbott coalition government that is actually delivering the goods on funding to the states on the 80/20 mix to make it happen rapidly. One only has to take a drive between Port Macquarie and Kempsey to see that it is virtually a continuous construction site for up to 30 kilometres. It is wonderful to see it: two bridges spanning the Hastings River, and then another bridge, a couple of bridges to span the Wilson River, and then up into Kempsey and the Macleay.
There is funding—the second tranche going forward—for the work on the Bucketts Way, which was one of my campaign commitments: $8 million each year for two years to Taree Council and Gloucester Council to deliver improvements to the surface of the Bucketts Way, a trade and tourism artery in that part of the Lyne electorate. Not only is that in this budget, but we have delivered $9.6 million for the Nabiac Sands aquifer project, which will deliver water security for the whole Great Lakes and Myall Lakes area as well as the Manning—that is $9.6 million of really important infrastructure spending that will secure residential growth and industry growth in all those areas. Forster, Tuncurry, down towards Nabiac and in the Manning Valley, Wingham, Taree and Gloucester are all going to be benefiting from it.
Pension indexation has reverted back to the best of MTAWE or CPI. So, not only will the pension go up twice a year but it will go up, as most pensioners in my electorate wanted, by the best index available. We are delivering the goods for most pensioners. Pensioners who were on a part pension may even get more support where it is needed most, at the lower end of the scale. They are fair and reasonable, and if we are going to get our budget under control we have to control our spending, and that is what the members on the other side do not seem to understand. The previous speaker finished his dissertation based on fallacies. The deficit when the coalition was entrusted with the Treasury and the government benches was not $17 billion; it was $43 billion or $44 billion. I would have to check the exact number of billions, but it was vastly greater than what the previous Treasurer alluded to. Earlier speakers are still living in this fantasy world thinking they left here with only a $17 billion deficit. It is absolutely ridiculous.
The medical research future fund is still a commitment from this coalition government. The money will not get there as quickly, but it will build to the $20 billion by 2023, out of savings through our general measures inside the Medicare Benefits Schedule review and other efficiencies. And, as the Prime Minister has said on many occasions, our greatest responsibility is to keep our nation secure, to keep citizens of Australia secure in their own home and in their own country. So we have allocated responsibly extra funds to the Australian Defence Force and the Australian Federal Police because of the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism and all sorts of terrorism. It is an ongoing feature of the world we live in now that there is this ugly, ugly phenomenon. An appropriate response is not to run the Australian Federal Police and the security forces down, like the previous government managed to do over the last few years of their tenure. We have actually increased it and got it back on a reasonable level so that they can deliver the security forces and capability that the nation requires.
So, all in all we have a families budget and we have a small business budget. It is encouraging businesses to have a go. I can only vouch for what I found in my own electorate in the last week. People really appreciate that they are out there putting their heart and soul into their small business. They have mortgaged their houses. They have worked like demons for 10, 15 or 20 years getting their family business up and they are seeing some tangible encouragement from their government, and they really appreciate it, because they are employing lots of people. When you are running a small business you get paid last, and your employees get paid first. That is an issue with small business, and to give them sensible, fiscally responsible help through accelerated depreciation and the tax benefits will increase their cash flow.
This is a very fair and reasonable budget. It has made the hard calls, and we are persisting with getting our budget under control so that the mortgage the nation has, which is our debt, gets back into the black. Our debt will take some time to pay off, and we can only do it if we get the deficit under control. The deficit is like the P&L: when there is a deficit we are in the red. The previous government had deficit after deficit after deficit, for as far as the eye could see, and we have had to make the difficult decisions and turn it around. These budget papers put those decisions into effect, and I thoroughly commend them to the House.
18:36
Ms BIRD
DZP
Cunningham
I want to take the opportunity in this cognate debate on the five appropriation bills to make some overall comment about the budget that has recently been brought down and to then talk specifically about my own region and how the budget impacts on us in Cunningham. I think the first thing we have to say about the budget is that it is quite clear that it is not actually a budget of a national government putting in place programs and funding to deliver a stronger future for Australia. In fact, it is really last year's budget. It has been repackaged. There has been an attempt to put some less worrisome aspects into it in order to prepare for an election period. It is very clear that it is a campaigning budget as the government go about attempting to draw all the attention and focus to what initiatives in the budget they hope will be well received in the community, ignoring the fact that it is fundamentally carrying forward everything from the previous budget.
The budget has also failed the government's own test that it set for it. It has failed to deliver on reduced tax, it actually has more debt and unemployment is predicted to be higher. In fact, it is predicted to peak at 6.5 per cent. At this point in time, what our nation actually needed was a vision for the future and a budget to deliver on it. That is far from what the nation has received. In fact, there is one future that I think is very much at the heart of this budget—and that is the Prime Minister's future.
The contrast to that was the budget reply speech delivered by the Leader of the Opposition, which put squarely in focus the challenges we as a nation face and the sorts of investments and considerations we need to be making to provide the jobs for the future, to put the foundation in place for the businesses of the future and to develop the skills and infrastructure we as a nation will need.
Why I feel the budget is so short-sighted is that it has clearly been structured with a short-term impact in mind. I say that because a number of new measures in the budget are funded for only two years. This includes the proposal for universal access to preschool, the small business accelerated depreciation program and the nannies program. These particular initiatives have been funded for only two years, so one can only suspect that the budget was targeted at getting through an election rather than laying the foundations for the future.
The budget also fails the fairness test. The fairness test was very, very important for the previous budget. It was a spectacular achievement of unparalleled failure. We still see, however, that those things that caused us most concern in the last budget because of their intrinsically unfair impacts are still there in this budget. The $80 billion cut from schools and hospitals is still in place. In particular for me that is very frustrating because one of the most important reforms that I think was put in place by the previous Labor government was the Gonski funding reforms—the funding model where, irrespective of the school sector that schools came from, it was based on need. That particular funding program was so well supported that all sectors of the education community supported it. State governments got on board. In fact, the government, who were then the opposition, said that they were on a unity ticket with Labor, that if you voted for the Liberal and National parties you would get exactly the same in school funding as you would have got under the Labor government. Quite clearly, that was not true.
Mr McCormack interjecting —
Ms BIRD
DZP
'Over four years, not six,' the member says. I do not remember that asterisk in the fine print in all the campaigning materials that went out. Importantly, it is something that state governments have reflected their frustration with as well.
We still have the proposal for $100,000 university degrees. Across the country, that has been soundly rejected by communities. People are very worried that the next generation will carry a debt forward that will be so heavy that it will prohibit them from doing things that as Australians we have taken for granted for many generations, such as buying your own home.
The last budget was a spectacular disaster, and initiatives from it are still in this budget. In particular, I want to talk about the cuts to family payments that were in the last budget. Those were not supported by the parliament. What we have in this budget is not just the continuation of banking those cuts to family payments; this budget has now taken them hostage and said that if people want the childcare changes proposed by the government, some of which the shadow minister has said we are keen to look at and which we understand may have positive benefits, they cannot have them unless there are significant and very damaging cuts to family payments. The budget has taken them hostage. We have not only had the unfairness previously; the government have now used that to hold hostage any other changes that might be of benefit to families. Again, the budget comprehensively fails the fairness test. The issue about the family payments is of particular concern in my electorate. I have had quite a lot of contact about this.
I just want to bring members' attention to the fact that the report which was the focus of much discussion in question time today that has been released by NATSEM has indicated that there is a significant hit to Australian families in the budget. The NATSEM research found that nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose under the Abbott government's budget, while nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families benefit.
Mr McCormack
219646
Very reliable!
Ms BIRD
DZP
The member opposite does not think that is very reliable. I would draw his attention to the Prime Minister's own words where he said that NATSEM is one of the most authoritative research and reporting organisations in the country. It should not surprise us, I suppose, that the Prime Minister wants to have it one way when the argument suits him and then completely deny it the next day when it does not suit him. However, the research also shows that families will be slugged thousands of dollars even when the new childcare measures that are predicted to start in 2017 are factored in. So presuming that the government can get the childcare measures through the parliament, given that they have held them hostage to the family tax cuts, this particular modelling shows that they will not have a sufficient enough impact to provide real benefits to working families.
The modelling in particular shows that: a family with a single income of $65,000 and two children would be $6,164 a year worse off by 2018-19; a single mother with an income of $55,000 and two children would be $6,107 a year worse off in the same time frame; and a family with a dual income of $60,000 and two children would be $3,843 a year worse off. When you combine the decision by the government in this budget to talk about child care reforms, hold them hostage to family tax benefits and proceed with those particular cuts, you can see why people in my area might be very concerned.
Added to that, the government then did a complete backflip on it is paid parental leave position. Before the election, under the Labor government, for the first time ever we introduced a universal paid parental leave scheme in this country. Indeed, those opposite who will with us at the time voted for it. The main criticism that those opposite, now the government, made at the time was that it was not generous enough. The Prime Minister went out and said that he had had a road to Damascus conversion on paid parental leave, wanted to be its champion and wanted to introduce to even more generous scheme: his rolled-gold paid parental leave scheme.
What we have now seen with this budget is that not only has the Prime Minister abandoned any attempt to prosecute his own paid parental leave scheme but he has now started to dismantle the universal scheme that Labor put in place and that he voted for at the time. In fact, the women of calibre—as women were described by the Prime Minister when he was talking about his paid parental leave scheme—have apparently now turned into double dippers, rorters and scammers. I think it is a real concern for many, many families out there when they are looking at the combination of all of these factors.
My own local paper is the Illawarra Mercury. I am going to recognise journalists and photographers in my contribution. In a previous contribution today to this parliament, I talked about the fact that Fairfax Media have decided and announced very savage cuts to our regional newspapers across the area. I know, as the member opposite would well know, that other regional flagship papers—which paper was that?
Mr McCormack
219646
The Daily Advertiser.
Ms BIRD
DZP
The Daily Advertiser in Wagga.
Mr McCormack
219646
The Border Mail.
Ms BIRD
DZP
The Border Mail in Albury. Some of my own colleagues have been talking about it in their own areas. We are seeing very savage cuts to these regional papers and to journalists who live in our communities and know our communities. They are very, very sadly being put in a position where the job loss is sad enough but they also know that for their community it is the loss of local stories and local voices as well. We currently face at circumstances the Illawarra. When I refer to articles, I am going to actually acknowledge the journalists and photographers. The photographers are also very significantly hit. I have to say, production staff and commercial staff at many of these papers are hit as well.
This is a story in the Illawarra Mercury written by Michelle Webster, accompanied by a photo by Sylvia Liber. They talked to a Fairy Meadow mum. She was particularly concerned about the impacts of the announced decision on the paid parental leave. Fairy Meadow mum Lindsey Whitford had looked at the Joe Hockey's plan to crack down on paper parental leave and the so-called double dipping. She said that she was outraged. At present, parents can access the government's scheme for their base and then, if they are able to negotiate additional leave through their enterprise agreement, they can add on to that. By doing that, parents are creating a much more reasonable time frame of paid leave out of the workplace to raise their children. Under the planned changes, if you have an enterprise agreement based paid parental leave entitlement, you will lose the government one.
Mrs Whitford is pregnant with her second child and she said that the phrase double-dipping was misleading. I will use own words:
"I just felt it was really unfair," she said. "For me, I work for a private company, it's not taxpayer-funded so it's not double dipping at all. It's actually an employer's way of hopefully retaining good employees and getting them to return to work."
The article went on to say:
"It's just such a backflip from what the government was previously offering … I was quite happy with just the 18 weeks at minimum wage, I thought anything else they were offering was good, but now that they're taking that away, it's not fair at all."
With her first child, 22-month-old Zoe, Mrs Whitfield was able to take 12 weeks of leave from her employer and then 18 weeks from the government at half pay, stretching the time at home with her new daughter to almost 12 months.
This is an example of the impact on a real family.
Finally, I want to say that in the Illawarra region as well we have been particularly hit by unemployment. Not long after the budget, the Illawarra Mercuryran another story, written by Kate McIlwain, entitled 'Illawarra jobless figures hit a high'. Very sadly, the unemployment rate for the Illawarra had hit 9.4 per cent. That is up from 4.5 per cent only 12 months ago, in April of last year. For us, it is the issue of ongoing unemployment being above the national average. It is a significant and ongoing issue. It is particularly frustrating not to see anything in the budget to actually address the opportunity for investment in both skills and infrastructure in our region.
In contrast, while Labor was in government, there was $865 million invested in our region to support jobs, growth and investment. That included $135 million in capital works for the University of Wollongong, $13 million in new infrastructure and equipment for TAFEs, a record investment of $99.3 million in facilities for schools, $140 million for a steel adjustment package with BlueScope Steel and $75 million in funding to commence the Maldon-Dombarton rail link. We have seen nothing like that—in fact, absolutely nothing at all—in either of the Abbott government's budgets for our region. That is creating serious concern for people across our area.
On investing in skills, I obviously have a bias as the shadow minister for that area. But it is a really important thing to do. There has been $2 billion in skills funding cut from last year's budget and there is nothing new in this year's budget. It is an absolute failure to do what should be a really important task for a national government; that is, to invest in the skills and opportunities for education for the future.
18:51
Mr HOGAN
218019
Page
It is with great pleasure that I speak on these appropriation bills, because there are some very exciting aspects to these bills, especially for my electorate of Page. I have mentioned it once or twice before in this chamber, but I certainly want to acknowledge in these appropriation bills the commitment that this government has made to the Pacific Highway. You may well be aware that one of the distinctions between us and the previous government at the last election was the difference in the commitment that we were making to the Pacific Highway. The previous government wanted to reverse its funding commitment to the Pacific Highway from 80 per cent federal and 20 per cent state back to fifty-fifty. This meant they were taking off the table over $2 billion of federal money to complete the duplication of the Pacific Highway. It was with great pleasure when, in my conversations with the then opposition Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, we made an election commitment that, if elected as a coalition government, we would put that $2 billion back on the table. So the federal funds going towards the duplication of the Pacific Highway are actually over $5 billion—not a large amount of money—and when you add in the state contribution the total is over $7 billion. It is great to see that this commitment is in the budget and that it will happen.
Deputy Speaker, as you would know, there are a number of aspects to this that are very important. The primary reason that we are doing this is for the safety of people driving on that road. Fatalities on the Pacific Highway are at low levels that we have not seen in decades—which is wonderful. When the duplication is completed that figure will even go lower, because statistically it is very well proven that when you have a duplication highway the fatalities drop enormously. That is obviously the main reason, but there are other side benefits. One of them is the construction activity that will be generated when you are building it and another is that post-construction there is the ease for transport, the ease of travel, and the advantages that that brings to those areas.
The good news for my community is that the major section that is not completed is between Ballina in the north and Woolgoolga in the south. It is a stretch of about 155 kilometres and a lot of that is in my electorate. As the work on that is about to begin, there will be up to 4,000 people who will be employed directly in the construction phase of this. When you add in the indirect jobs—as we know, there is a multiple that is created when you have direct jobs—there will be over 10,000 jobs created. The people who are working on the highway need to eat somewhere, they need to sleep somewhere, they need to have their haircut and they need to do everything else that they do at home. So the indirect jobs that it will create are enormous—let alone the quarries, the truck transport and all the associated things that go into that.
I am not an engineer but I know that there are some enormous engineering feats that are going to have to be undertaken, such as the Harwood Bridge over the Clarence River. I do not know if you have seen the Clarence River, Deputy Speaker, but it is a pretty impressive river. That bridge alone is going to cost in the multiple-hundreds-of-millions of dollars to complete and it will be a major engineering feat on its own as one small section of that highway. Last month I had the absolute pleasure of having the Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, in the electorate, and we announced that Pacific Complete had won the tender to complete this last section of the highway. As a small part of this project, Pacific Complete are going to base themselves in Grafton and they will immediately need almost 80 people to be put into an office block in Grafton to start to coordinate and administer this scheme. At their peak, they think they will have 200 people working in their head office in Grafton administering this multibillion dollar program. The day the Deputy Prime Minister visited I organised what we call the Clarence Valley Ready to Work Forum, after we announced that Pacific Complete had won the tender. We had a great turnout. What I wanted to do was to have our community leverage off this. We want local companies to win tenders and we want to leverage every cent possible that is spent constructing this highway to be retained in our local community Very importantly, post-construction of this highway, we want to envisage where our community will be post-2020—what type of community, what type of infrastructure will be built in parallel with this highway so that we can keep growing and moving on afterwards.
I would like to acknowledge some of the people who came to that forum. The Grafton Chamber of Commerce, some real estate agents, the Mayor and some staff from the Clarence Valley council and the New South Wales Business Chamber were there. John Murray, the head of that organisation in our region, and everyone who attended the forum came up with some great suggestions and great practical things that we can do to make sure we leverage this right. Others who attended were C-BEAS—a local business incubator—NORTEC, Epic Employment and some training providers and some employment and job service providers. They can tell us how we can educate our people and what skills they need so that they can be the people who get the type of jobs that we need for this project. They were there giving us their ideas as well.
This is obviously not just the Clarence Valley, though; this highway is going to move directly through or just bypass communities such as Yamba and Iluka, Weddell, Broadwater, Woodburn and many others. I am working with all these communities on how we do this and how we leverage this for all the communities along the route and obviously the ones off it not only during construction but post-construction as well. It is a very exciting part of the appropriation bills that we are talking about.
The other thing that struck me about this budget and these appropriation bills was the small business package, which, Mr Deputy Speaker, I know you would be aware of. There are over 10,000 small businesses, as there are in every electorate. Every time someone gets up and talks about small business in their community, they will mention a figure somewhere in excess of 10,000. We know that small businesses are the biggest employer in our country. They are the lifeblood of commerce, especially in many rural and regional areas. If there is one projection that I think might be wrong in the budget, it is the amount that we think this $20,000 deduction or write-off of taxable income for capital investments in our businesses. In fact, that night I had some businesses from my community here in Parliament House and they were telling me that that was fantastic news. I had two or three unsolicited calls the next day from people who said: 'Kevin, that is the best thing that we have heard in a budget for many, many years.' Like everyone in this chamber, last week I had the absolute pleasure of being home in my community, and every day people were telling me that already they had started to invest money. I spoke to many, whether they were IT companies, hardware stores or machinery companies, who had orders on their books that were looking very promising because of this initiative.
The one thing that this side of politics gets is that every public sector dollar, every taxpayer dollar, that you want to spend on many worthy causes has to come from a healthy private sector. This measure, combined with the tax cuts that we also gave small business—which means that small businesses now have the lowest tax rate in 50 years—is again a matter of us walking our talk. We say that we are the political parties for small business and we are walking the talk through this $20,000 write-off and the cut in the company tax rate for small businesses. This will improve cash flow. We have also, though not necessarily as part of these bills, got on with reducing red tape for small businesses. Already there is anecdotal evidence that small business is going to be driving this economy forward in the next 12 months because of this budget and this appropriation bill initiative. I applaud it and know it is going to be a great success.
In my maiden speech I made much of the Australian colloquialism 'have a go'. We encourage everyone in this country to have a go, because this country has been built on the have a go philosophy. It is essential if we want to succeed as a country and if we want to succeed as individuals. And how do we talk to our children? For those of us who are lucky enough to be parents, what is the one thing that we want to encourage in our own children? If they have a dream or if they want to do something in life, what is the one thing we tell them? As good parents, as good mentors, we tell them to have a go. This budget is about that same philosophy—we want small business people and everyone in this country to have a go so that they can succeed and, by default, the country can succeed so there is more employment and the benefits that go with that.
I know my local councils are very happy with the doubling of the Roads to Recovery funding in this 12-month period. Almost $9 million will be going to the five local councils in my area. Ballina is getting over $1 million, Clarence Valley nearly $3 million, Kyogle $1½ billion dollars, Lismore nearly $2 million and Richmond Valley nearly $1½ million dollars in specific funds through Roads to Recovery. Again, it was very much a Nationals initiative a number of governments ago to allocate federal funding to local councils because those of us who live in rural and regional Australia know the importance of that infrastructure. This is on top of Black Spot funding, and I recently announced almost $3 million of funding to fix seven dangerous black spots on local roads across my community. We know that targeting dangerous roads saves lives—much like the duplication of the highway, it is safer for motorists.
I would like to finish on the philosophy of the budget. There is much made of spending and there is much made of income when we debate these issues. There is not one politician, not just in this chamber but in any level of government across this country, who does not want to spend money. Spending money is nice for a politician; it is a very easy thing to do because of the pats on the back you get from where that money goes. But a budget always has to be crafted with balance—we need our economy to grow. If we are going to spend money, we need to get the money from somewhere. As I continually say, governments do not create money—we are simply a redistributor of money. We are taking money from someone and giving it to someone else. While we always like to fund government programs and public programs to the best of our ability, we have to be conscious that we have to physically take that money from someone else and that someone else is the private sector. We have to make sure they are flourishing, because if we take too much from them they will become noncompetitive. A lot of businesses have global competitors now, especially with the internet, and everyone is competing at some level, no matter what their business, on a global scale. We have to be very conscious of that as well and we have to get the balance right. We are fostering the private sector, almost like a small child, to make sure they grow each year and have the conditions in which to survive and flourish. That can obviously then feed into the public sector.
We talk about sustainability—we talk about sustainability in the environmental field; we talk about sustainability in lots of different areas. We have to be sustainable economically, as much as that might mean that sometimes we do not spend as much money as we would like. Especially in recent times, some European countries are having imposed on them some quite stringent controls because they are in a state that is not sustainable. While we would always like to give more, we have to act the same as we do with our own family budgets—what can we afford, what can we do, how can we protect our income flows while also looking after those areas that we should. We should, as a government, look after those who need support and government money. I commend the bills to the House.
19:06
Ms BRODTMANN
30540
Canberra
The appropriation bills reflect the changes made in the 2015-16 budget. And what a budget it is. It is a budget that preaches spending, even though just 12 months ago Australia was facing a budget emergency. It is a budget that sees tax up, spending at global financial crisis levels, the deficit doubled and growth projections bordering on the heroic. It is a budget that repackages all the unfair elements of last year's budget. The $80 billion in cuts to schools and hospitals remains. The $600 million cut to ACT health funding remains. The $100,000 university degrees remain. The cuts to family payments remain. The GP tax by stealth remains. The $125.6 million cuts to child dental services have now been introduced, and there is another $1 million cut for the seatbelts in school buses. We have seen new modelling from NATSEM and ACOSS that shows the poorest Australian families will be hit by this budget. Nine out of 10 of the poorest families with children will lose out under the budget, while nine in 10 of the richest with children will benefit.
At the core of this budget is the unfairness of last year's absolute stinker of a budget, and, true to form, it is a budget that attacks Canberra and the Public Service. What does this mean for Canberra? Put simply, this budget is just bad news—continued bad news—for Canberra. Eight federal government departments have been earmarked for functional reviews, including the Department of the Environment, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Social Services, the Attorney-General's Department and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as well as the Australian Taxation Office. We all know that 'functional reviews' are essentially code for even more job cuts.
The National Film and Sound Archive, the National Archives, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library and the National Museum of Australia will also see more jobs go, and they are all pretty much lean and mean already, so I do not know where these jobs are going to come from. It is definitely going to affect the services that these cultural institutions provide to the nation. The National Gallery of Australia will also lose $400,000 over the next four years.
The Australian Federal Police will lose $220 million by 2017-18 as well as more than 100 jobs. They will go. The Bureau of Meteorology will lose 102 jobs. And the Department of Defence will lose a further 1,150 jobs. That is on top of the 2,400 Defence civilian jobs already axed since the Abbott government came to office.
I just wonder how many of those opposite in the chamber here tonight would feel if they had had 8,500 jobs ripped from their electorate since this government was elected. Eight thousand, five hundred Public Service jobs in Canberra have gone since this government was elected in 2013. That adds to a total of 17,300 Public Service jobs across Australia that have been axed by this government since it came into power. That also includes close to 10,000 jobs in 2014-15 alone, which is a 5.6 per cent cut to the public sector.
Not only are the public servants, these proud servants of democracy, fearing job cuts; the government's campaign to reduce their pay and conditions continues. Protected industrial action is underway at a large number of federal departments including the Bureau of Meteorology, Agriculture, Defence, Veterans' Affairs and even the employment minister's own department.
Canberrans have had a gutful, and I have had a gutful. I have had a gutful of the sustained attack on the proud people who serve our nation. I have had a gutful of the plans to relocate agencies to centres outside our nation's capital, despite Sir Robert Menzies's vision for Canberra: to 'build up Canberra as a capital in the eyes and minds of the Australian people'. I have had a gutful of public servants being described as 'rorters' and 'double dippers' and 'fraudsters' and treated as costs rather than people with families and mortgages and car loans and hopes and dreams like every other Australian. I have had a gutful of the Abbott government's demonisation of its own workforce. And I have had a gutful of the government's sustained attack on the integrity of the people who serve our nation.
It was absolutely astonishing to see the Prime Minister, almost two weeks ago, accuse hardworking public servants who had accessed the government's Paid Parental Leave scheme as well as their own workplace scheme of doing wrong, of rorting, of committing fraud—it was suggested that they had committed fraud—of double dipping. The fact of the matter is that the Abbott government's change to Paid Parental Leave will leave thousands of Canberra women, and 80,000 across Australia, worse off. That includes public servants. That includes Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police personnel, teachers, nurses, private sector workers and anyone on an employer funded scheme.
In addition to their pay and conditions being continually attacked, in addition to their reputations being constantly sullied by this government, in addition to the jobs being cut—17,300 since this government was elected, with 8½ thousand here in the ACT alone—I am tired, as are public servants themselves, of public servants being constantly berated and used as political pawns by this government. I would like to read from an email I received in the last week from a public servant in my electorate. To ensure that her identity is protected, I will only use her first name, because so many public servants are afraid to speak out at the moment for fear of losing their job. The environment is particularly toxic here in terms of job security, and people are frightened about speaking out against this government's sustained attacks on the Public Service, the sustained attacks on its integrity, the sustained attacks on their job security and the sustained attacks on them as individuals and the pay and conditions that they have fought so hard for over many years. They are frightened. They are frightened to speak out. So, in reading this email from one of my constituents, I will only use her first name out of fear that she will be hindered professionally. Alex has written to me:
I did really want to talk to you about how frustrating it is to be a public servant at the moment. I know we're supposed to be politically neutral but we're also effectively gagged. It's a horrible feeling to go to work every day and have zero respect for your 'big boss' and his leadership team. I feel like I'm able to see both sides of the story most of the time, but the way the government constantly lambasts us and publicly disrespects us (particularly women!) is both mortifying and infuriating when we can't stand up for ourselves. I know I'm not the only public servant who feels disempowered in this way, but what can we do short of joining the union (which I've done)? Any sage advice gladly received …
This is the story across the board here in Canberra. I will now read from another email, also received in the last week. Again, I will mention the person's first name only, to protect their identity. This is from Kelly:
l am a public servant, have always been proud of my role. The current pressures and job cuts are destroying me and everyone around me. We work incredibly long hours, under enormous pressure. The demands continue and the resources continue to be cut. The lack of job certainty and career prospects breeds a toxic environment of fear and back stabbing. This is unsustainable. Yet, the job market outside of govt is also strained and employment is hard to find. This govt is having the worst impact on society that I have seen in my adult life.
And another, received today:
I too have had a gutful of the Abbott Government's attack on the Public Service and the lower end of town. When I was a Public Servant I suffered under the Howard Government's attack and was given the big push back in '89. Fortunately at that time both my children were working and my wife still had a job so the stress of losing my job was not a major problem. But my Daughter does work for the Dept of Health, has 2 daughters in High School and is the major bread winner in their family and my wife and I worry about the prospects of her losing her job under the reign of Captain Tony.
Eight and a half thousand Canberrans have been sacked by this government, and thousands of others now have little to no job security and certainty. These are the people that defend our nation and that secure our borders. These are the people that educate our children, that care for us when we are sick, that keep us safe at night and that support us when times are tough. These are the people that advance our interests overseas, that research, develop, implement and communicate the government's policies, that brief the government, that write its submissions, that prepare the government for question time. These are our proud servants of democracy, and their treatment by this government is appalling.
Before I went into business, I was a public servant. Before I came into this life I had my own business, and before that I was a proud public servant. Like all public servants, I joined the Public Service to make a difference and improve the lives of Australians. Public servants in Canberra and right across the country sign up to make a difference to their country and to improve the lives of Australians. I was immensely proud of the work I did in policy making, in communication, in researching and writing submissions and briefs, in representing our country overseas. Like Alex and Kelly, I took my job seriously, because, as I said, it was about making a difference to our nation and improving the lives of Australians. And, like the 17,300 public servants who have lost their job since this government was elected, in 1996 I also lost my job. That was when the last coalition government was in. The coalition has form on the Public Service. It has complete disdain for the Public Service, for Canberra, the nation's capital, and for Sir Robert Menzies's vision for the capital. It has complete disdain for these people who work to ensure that the government can achieve its goals, who take their job seriously, who treat it professionally.
As I said, coalition governments have form. Back in 1996 the coalition government promised to get rid of 2,500 Public Service jobs through natural attrition. That ended up being 15,000 jobs here in Canberra and 30,000 jobs nationally. The impact on Canberra was extraordinary. It was phenomenal. It was frightening. People left town. We went into an economic slump for five years. House prices plummeted and businesses went under. Bankruptcies, both business and nonbusiness, went up to historic levels. Our population fell. Our local shops closed down. It had a devastating effect. If 15,000 jobs are taken from one city, it cannot but help have a devastating effect on the city. That was then. It took five years for Canberra to get out of that slump. During that time, not only were those jobs cut, including mine, but the Public Service and Canberra were completely derided, denigrated and demonised by a coalition government. We are seeing all that repeated now by this government—demonisation, derision and denigration of the Public Service, of the proud servants of democracy, of the people who serve our nation, of our nation's capital, Canberra.
I have had an absolute gutful of the way that coalition governments use Canberra as a political punching bag. Shame on you. Shame on you for what you do to this capital every time you get into government. I want Canberrans and public servants to know that they may feel as if they are gagged, and I know that they do. We have heard those letters from Alex and Kelly. I want Canberrans and public servants to know that I am listening. I hear your concerns. I will stand up to you. I will defend you when the Prime Minister denigrates you, when he derides you, when he demonises you and when you are accused—to use his own words—of being a rorter, a fraudster and a double-dipper. I will defend the important work that you do every single day. I will defend your pay and conditions. I will defend you, the proud servants of democracy, and I will defend this city, our nation's capital, that I love. I will defend it from this terrible government and this terrible budget.
19:21
Mr O'DOWD
139441
Flynn
I would like to start off on a different note to that where the member for Canberra left off. I am excited about this budget. I would like to start by thanking the Treasurer for delivering a budget that does not benefit certain sections of the community, but benefits all Australians. If we have a strong small business sector, we have a strong economy and then all Australians benefit. Keep in mind that small business employs the bulk of our workforce and, without them profiting, we will go nowhere. That has been the case for the last few years. We lacked confidence in the business sector and in employing more Australians; we lacked confidence in the overall theme of getting up and having a go. I feel that this budget will turn that around immensely. I congratulate the Treasurer for putting in place the mechanism so that business will have a go to get the country going once again.
There are many initiatives in this budget that directly affect my electorate. Flynn has a large population of small business owners. We have fly-in workers and we have farmers. I would specifically like to congratulate the Treasurer on his attitude towards these groups and for allocating a large portion of the budget to improving infrastructure in regional areas. This current government will attend to roads and rail. In my electorate alone, there is about 400 kilometres of the Bruce Highway. This week more passing lanes and the elimination of more black spots were announced. The general surface of the road is also to improve. We now have the ability to put a white strip a metre wide down the middle of our highway to keep the cars separated. That is in place of a white strip that was four inches wide that allowed 20-tonne or 60-tonne trucks to come within two feet of a small car. This is how we are improving our highways. Having a dividing line up the middle of the Bruce Highway is a step in the right direction. When trucks are coming at each other and all they need is a bump in the road to throw the truck or the trailer across the path of the other vehicle and this is where accidents happen. The road toll is already coming down because of improved roads.
Any business with a turnover of $2 million will have the ability to write off their purchases of less than $20,000. This is a great thing for business. It reminds me of the time back in the 1980s, when I was in business, and under the Fraser and Hawke governments there was an investment allowance, which allowed a 40 per cent write-off on any particular business item you had to purchase. This was very good for the economy back in the 80s, but unfortunately it was whittled down to nothing. I say this is a similar project—it worked then, and there is no reason it should not work now. For businesses that are not incorporated, instead of 1.5 per cent decrease in tax, they will have five per cent that they can write off to reduce their tax. You can either have one and a half per cent less—back to 28.5 per cent tax—or write off the five per cent if you are unincorporated. This has got to be good for business. There is no doubt about that and, with the money saved there, they can invest in equipment and more staff. They can develop their business to a point where they make more money and, if they make more money, then the government makes more money. It is a very simple philosophy that the Treasurer has employed. He wants to see vibrant businesses so that we reduce Work for the Dole; we get people off the dole into the workforce and it comes together nicely.
There is, of course, $1.8 billion in savings over the next four years but this will go to deserving people, and there will be more money for people to join in with the workers. There is no substitute for working to do away with a lot of ills of today's society. The zone tax allowance, which was offered in the past to people who, say, lived in Brisbane but worked in Emerald in the coalfields, has been removed. That has to be good, too. I want to see people who work in Emerald live in Emerald, because that helps our hospital systems and our general community in places like Blackwater and Biloela. That is a move in the right direction. If you work in the coalfields or the gasfields or on properties in your own area, that is where you live and where you bring up your family. We want to encourage people to come back to live in the towns where they work. When there are doctors who reside in towns, that makes for a very strong health system. When you have to rely on locums in these small towns—fly in, fly out doctors who could come from anywhere in Australia or New Zealand—it does not add to the strength of the health committees who work diligently. All it does is set up two sorts of doctors. One is a local who struggles; he has a building; he has permanent staff. The other is a locum. He tends to fly in, get paid a set amount for a day's work—which is sometimes about $2,500—and then fly out with no care and no responsibility. It is then left up to the local doctors to fill the short gaps when he is not there. So having this zonal tax offset taken away is going to be good for regional towns in my electorate.
As we go on, the drought package that has been offered to farmers is very welcome. Whilst the drought does not have a stranglehold in my electorate, it does just to the west in places like Maranoa. There are about 24 shire areas in Queensland and four in New South Wales that are in dire straits; in some places, it has not rained for four years. These particular people are still in there, hanging on. They have sold a lot of their livestock off. Some are hanging on to a few breeders in order to get going again when the rains come, and they will come some day, but they need something to start from. The price of cattle, in the areas that have rain, has actually gone up, and that is probably because of our free trade agreements. The demand for our beef in Central Queensland is rising all the time. There are about 16 foreign countries looking to Australia to supply them with beef as they become more affluent in their own living standards. They are looking at places like Australia, and Central Queensland, to provide them with red meat.
As they have had such a tough time, a lot of these farmers and graziers have not had a turnover of $2 million, and they will benefit immensely from these new tax arrangements. I might add that the buying of assets under $20,000 comes under three financial years: the remainder of this year, then next year, and then the year ending 30 June 2017. So there are a two and a bit years to buy your goods and assets, and that starts as of budget night last week. The opportunity is there for small business to get out and take advantage of what the government has offered. I do hope that they are in a situation where they have a taxable income and can use these benefits over the next two years and two months.
The budget, overall, is very good. You will see the black spots on our major highways disappear. You will see the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program launched. For instance, the Emerald to Clermont road is going to have a $25 million upgrade. There will be work on the black spot at Benaraby, on the Bruce Highway just outside Gladstone. It is a good program. It is a problem area that I have nominated on the highway for a long time, and it is great to see that come off.
Last year, we delivered a tough but necessary budget for the times. No-one likes to have a budget deficit year after year after year. Our government was trying to rein it in.
Mr Frydenberg
FKL
Sure was.
Dr Chalmers
37998
You're not anymore? You've given up?
Mr O'DOWD
139441
Well, you people do not even know what a surplus looks like. You were not even born when Labor had the last surplus budget. I am sorry to tell the member for Rankin: you have not made a positive budget since 1989. He had a very close connection to the former Treasurer, so he should know that.
Dr Chalmers
37998
Proudly so.
Mr O'DOWD
139441
Yes, I know. So he was very proud to be rolling along with the member for Lilley, not caring about ever having a surplus budget—just deficit after deficit. 'Debt and deficit' was their call.
Dr Chalmers interjecting—
Mr O'DOWD
139441
Yes. Anyway, that is the story.
I think that it is a very good budget—good for small business, good for jobs and good for everything. We will see this budget come to hand, and next year will be even better because we will have the return of small business and the return of jobs. We will get that figure down from 6.3 per cent down to around about five per cent by this time next year, hopefully.
Ms Macklin
PG6
The budget says it's going up.
Mr O'DOWD
139441
That's under your plan. Under our plan—
Ms Macklin
PG6
That's not what your budget says.
Mr O'DOWD
139441
That is if you let it go through the Senate. We are calling on Labor to pass this through the Senate, and you will see how it can work. Thank you very much.
19:36
Ms MACKLIN
PG6
Jagajaga
One thing is for sure: the government has no idea how bad this budget is. They are doubling the deficit and unemployment is going up, and I find it extraordinary that the member for Flynn clearly has not read the budget papers, where that is clearly set out.
Looking back on it now, a year after last year's horror budget, you have to realise that very little has actually changed. A year ago I said the Abbott government's first budget confirmed:
… the worst for all Australians who believe in a fair, tolerant and compassionate Australia.
A year on, the Abbott government's second budget confirms that unfairness is still at the very heart of this Liberal government. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Abbott government's approach to families. Just three days before this year's budget, the Prime Minister said:
We know it will be good for families.
Before that, just a few months ago, the Prime Minister said:
We, the coalition government, are not going to repair our budget this year at the expense of your family budget.
These were the assurances that the Prime Minister gave Australian families in the lead-up to the second budget. Then, on budget night, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer handed down a budget that includes the same massive cuts to family tax benefits that were in last year's budget—kicking families off family tax benefit part B when their youngest child turns six, freezes to the rates of family tax benefits. Labor understands just how devastating this government's cuts are to families.
New research from NATSEM confirms the worst for families already battling to make ends meet. I will give you a couple of examples. A single-income family, where one of the parents is working, on $65,000 a year, with two school-age children, will lose over $6,000 a year. I ask each of the government members in the parliament today: have you been out and told those single-income families in your electorates that your government is going to take $6,000 off them? Because that is exactly what you will be voting for. That is around 10 per cent of their entire family budget that this Liberal government wants to take off those families. The cumulative financial impact on these families is enormous. Another example is a single-parent family, where the parent is working, with two children—one in primary school, one in secondary school—with an income of $55,000. That parent will lose $6,000 a year, each and every year, by 2018-19. These losses will increase every year. It is abundantly clear that this year's budget is just as unfair on Australian families as last year's horror budget.
It is not just the NATSEM modelling that supports this argument. Professor Peter Whiteford from the ANU said:
So overall, the Budget proposals would take far more out of assistance for families than it puts in.
Over this weekend we saw new analysis from the Australian Council of Social Service showing that $15 billion will be stripped from Australian families because of this government's unfair budget. This is what this government wants to take straight out of the pockets of families. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Social Services have not come clean with their own modelling. I have asked again and again for the government to present their own modelling of the impact of the government's changes on families—and they refuse. This budget means that families will be worse off. Labor will continue to oppose these unfair cuts to family tax benefits, as we have over the last year.
The attack on families is not limited to cuts to family tax benefits. This year's budget includes, quite extraordinarily, cuts to paid parental leave—cuts that will leave 80,000 new mothers worse off; cuts that will see new parents forced back into the workforce earlier. In the mother of all insults, the Treasurer announced these cuts to paid parental leave on Mother's Day! The Treasurer agreed that it is, according to Laurie Oakes's question, 'fraud' if women take paid parental leave from their employer and the government scheme. The Minister for Social Services described women claiming both employer and government paid parental leave as being part of a 'rort'. The Treasurer and the wannabe Treasurer, the Minister for Social Services, also approved the use of that appalling language—it is actually in the budget papers—of 'double dipping'. All of the ministers on the ERC, including the Assistant Treasurer, who is at the table, approved the use of this language. The torrent of scorn following this decision has been unrelenting.
We have seen businesses come out and criticise the cuts to paid parental leave, saying that the cuts will undermine their own schemes to support parents. The chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry indicated that employers would shift payments to other benefits. Kate Carnell said:
It's hard to see why employers would continue to pay parental leave if it meant the government stopped paying and they were simply footing the bill for the government.
This is exactly what the government said it would not do, according to the previous Minister for Social Services. But you cannot believe anything these people opposite say, especially on family payments or paid parental leave.
The criticism has not just come from business. Unions have been strong in their condemnation of the government's cuts to paid parental leave as well. Ged Kearney from the ACTU said:
There's an early agreement that employers and the unions will get together and discuss how this can be changed. … It just won't work the way it has been announced.
There has been criticism as well from the government's own backbench. Last week the member for Murray urged the government to go 'back to the drawing board' on paid parental leave. As the member for Murray said: as a result of these cuts, women had been left with 'the worst of all worlds'.
The most appalling behaviour in this whole saga has come from the Prime Minister himself. This was the man who said, quite a few years ago now, that paid parental leave would happen in this country over his dead body. Then all of you opposite went to the last election and the one before that saying that you would deliver a gold-plated paid parental leave scheme that would have given $75,000 a year to wealthy women. That was the policy you took to the last election. Mr Abbott likened his paid parental leave scheme to his Nixon-going-to-China moment. That is what he said. Of course, he eventually dumped that unaffordable and unfair scheme.
Now, in this budget, the Prime Minister has a third view. He has decided to cut paid parental leave to around 80,000 new mothers because, apparently, the scheme that he once mocked as being inadequate is all of a sudden too generous. So now he wants to cut $1 billion from paid parental leave. That is what is in this budget. Australian families now know beyond any doubt that they cannot believe a single word that this Prime Minister says. He has taken three different views to different elections, and now we have the view in this budget. This Prime Minister has absolutely no credibility when it comes to Australian families, and Labor will firmly oppose this government's cuts to paid parental leave, as well as the cuts to family tax benefits.
You might be surprised to know that there are a couple of things in this bill that I do welcome and do support. I do welcome the continued rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme that will see, in total, 460,000 Australians with disability getting the care and support that they need and deserve. We were pleased to see the money for this scheme, particularly to see funded, in the bill we are currently debating, a new ICT system to support the NDIS. I am also very pleased to see the continued funding of many microfinance initiatives that were established by the previous, Labor government, as of course the National Disability Insurance Scheme was. These microfinance initiatives have been very important in helping people, particularly those trying to get out of poverty, to start little businesses, or helping with their education, and it is a very positive thing to see that in this bill.
With regard to pensions, however, I am very, very concerned. It is true that, after a year of relentless campaigning by pensioners and by Labor members right around Australia, we have shamed this government into scrapping its unfair cuts to pension indexation for now, cuts to the pension that would have seen pensioners cop an $80 a week cut to their pension over the next decade. Each and every one of the members opposite, Liberal and National party members, voted for that cut, and we will certainly be reminding each and every one of your electors in the lead-up to the next election that you voted for a cut to pension indexation. Of course, this is the Prime Minister that said there would be no changes to pensions, so pensioners were understandably extraordinarily angry about that.
Labor opposed these cuts the night they were announced in last year's budget and we opposed them because we knew that cuts to pension indexation were fundamentally unfair. For a year, the Prime Minister, in question time after question time, kept repeating that pensions were not going to be cut, that pensions would keep going up and up. But Australian pensioners are smarter than that—
Mr O'Dowd
139441
They are going up.
Ms MACKLIN
PG6
I am glad to hear the member for Flynn is still defending them! Keep going! Go out there and tell that to your pensioners, because one thing is for sure: pensioners are not fooled. They are not fooled by the member for Flynn and they are not fooled by the Prime Minister. They know how important it is to have a fair indexation rate. The pension is benchmarked to wages for a reason. It is so that pensioners' standard of living actually keeps pace with the standard of living of the working population more broadly, and governments of both political persuasions have understood this in the past. John Howard understood it; the former, Labor government understood it—but not this Liberal government. It was $23 billion that you wanted to take out of the pockets of pensioners, and none of you can deny it. That is what last year's budget would have done. We know that this fight is not over and we will continue to remind pensioners that this is what you really want to do.
The government wants to increase the age pension age to 70 and still wants to stand by its $1.3 billion in cuts to concessions for pensioners and seniors. And so the list goes on. There are more cuts to pensions in this year's budget which we will need to consider very, very carefully to make sure that whatever this government comes up with meets the fairness test.
I want to finish on what this government wants to do to the young employed, because there was nothing crueller than that in last year's budget, when each Liberal and National party member wanted to leave young unemployed people with absolutely nothing to live on for six months. They have changed that now; they just want to leave young unemployed people with nothing to live on for one month! For one month, you want to leave them with nothing to live on. I can tell you that we will not be supporting this punitive measure, which is patently unfair. We need to help young Australians into work, not leave them homeless and with absolutely nothing to eat.
This government cannot be trusted. Families know they cannot trust this government, pensioners know they cannot trust this government and young Australians know that they cannot trust this government. Australians know that, every time this government looks for a change in its budget, it will be unfair.
19:50
Mr PITT
148150
Hinkler
We should get back to the main event, which is creating jobs and a strong economy in Australia. Whilst I am pleased to be able to make a contribution tonight, it was very tough to sit through the one from the member for Jagga Jagga. We have the member for Rankin here, who was more than happy to jump in with an interjection at any time. I am sure, if they want to come up to my electorate, they would find out about living in the real world, and that is that in regional Queensland things are fairly tough. Certainly, the important thing for people in my electorate is creating jobs: creating employment and providing opportunities for our youth. That is what they want us to do and that is what we are getting on with.
This has been a good budget for business confidence, and I will give you really simple example. On the weekend, I went into one of the local gas providers and had a bit of a chat with the owner-operator, who said he had been doing it relatively tough. He had two staff he was considering retrenching because he simply did not have enough work. In the last two weeks, he has been absolutely flat out and, last week, he had a record week—in a business that has been in place for four years. Business is starting to pick up. The economy is strengthening. Confidence is what is important, and it is on the way up as well.
But it is important that we, as elected members of electorates across Australia, have a vision for our electorate. For me, that is an electorate where our economy is strong and resilient, an electorate where we can produce jobs for our youth. There are a number of projects on the list—certainly on my wish list, on the whiteboard and everywhere else—that we are trying to get over the line. The first one is the provision of a dive wreck at Hervey Bay. HMAS Tobruk is one of the Navy's great vessels which has been in service for many years. It was in Vanuatu not that long ago to provide relief to the people of Vanuatu. However, it is coming to the end of its useful life. In Hervey Bay, where we have a very strong recreational dive group and a very strong whaling group, we have all the infrastructure we require to expand. HMAS Brisbane, when it was sunk at Caloundra, lifted the local economy by some $5 million a year—$5 million worth of economic activity. The beautiful waters of Hervey Bay are warm all year round—and the sharks are certainly not that bad. I know we have competition. I know of a number of other areas that would like HMAS Tobruk for a dive wreck. But the water in the south is very cold and very deep—and, I am sure, full of Noahs. However, in Hervey Bay we have the infrastructure to make use of a vessel like HMAS Tobruk. I am very pleased that a local group has got together to put together all of the technical details for an application. We are working with our local councils, including the Bundaberg Regional Council and the Fraser Coast Regional Council. Like all things, there are always arguments about location: 'Location, location, location! Where should we put the vessel?'
Dr Chalmers
37998
The Logan River.
Mr PITT
148150
The suggestion from the floor is the Logan River. Unfortunately, the Logan River is full of all sorts of other things! I would like to thank Nicky Shulz, from Urangan Fisheries, for the advice that he has given to the group. He has identified a spot where the tide speed is only 1½ knots maximum, which would mean you could dive on this wreck all day and all night long. It is an opportunity for my region which will build jobs; it will provide additional people who can actually work. They can get out and do a job every single day and look after themselves without support from government. Certainly HMAS Tobruk has got strong ties to the Bundaberg region. We have the Rats of Tobruk Memorial in Bundaberg. There is a very strong group that looks after the memorial up there, which is, of course, a replica of the original Rats of Tobruk Memorial. So it is important that we look to the future. If that opportunity comes up, I would like to encourage the Minister for Defence to consider my electorate as the No. 1 location where we could put the ship. It could go on to serve the people of Australia as a dive wreck and tourist attraction for the rest of its life.
Unfortunately, under the Stronger Regions program, we missed out on an application for Bundaberg Regional Council. However, like all applications, you need to meet the criteria. The difficulty was that the application was put in under the previous state government, with support. The Stronger Regions Fund requires 50 per cent as a co-contribution on top of what is asked for from the federal government. Unfortunately, the change to a Labor state government meant that that other part of that funding was not forthcoming. So we only had 30 per cent in the tin, which, of course, meant the project was ineligible. That was very disappointing. However, this is what happens when you change to a Labor government: you miss out on infrastructure projects.
But I congratulate them on making a good decision to maintain the gas infrastructure project in Bundaberg. By 2017 we will have a gas line that runs into the Bundaberg port. It will support industry and create jobs. We already have a commitment from a company called Knauf Australia to build a $70 billion plasterboard manufacturing plant at Port Bundaberg. That will create some 200 jobs in construction and some 65 permanent positions, and it will, of course, add to our GDP. Knauf have told me they will also build a pelletising plant so that we can use gypsum from that plant in our agricultural endeavours. For those of you who know the Bundaberg region, Wide Bay is one of the largest horticultural producing areas of Australia. We are the biggest producer of heavy vegetables in this country, so to have someone who can facilitate the direct import of lime into a pelletised product for our farmers to use at a much reduced cost will, of course, lift farm-gate returns. That will make people more viable and hence they can employ more people, which is exactly what we need in my electorate.
As always, the other big issue in regional Australia is roads. This government has committed $6.7 billion towards the Bruce Highway, some $500 million of which is available in 2015-16. I thank the Minister for Infrastructure, Warren Truss, who is, of course, the Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Nationals. A lot of work has already been undertaken in my electorate. We have completed the Goodwood-Childers Road intersection. We have completed overtaking lanes to the north of Howard. Work on overtaking lanes to the south is underway. There has been work at Booyal and Aldershot. I do not have as much highway in my electorate as the member for Flynn has in his, but it is in much better condition than it was under the previous federal Labor government. We are getting on with the job. We need the Bruce Highway to be open regardless of the weather conditions so that we can provide produce from our electorate to the people of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and everywhere else. So I am very pleased that we are getting on with that.
However, there are a number of roads that do need upgrades which were committed to by the previous Liberal-National Party government in Queensland. Unfortunately, with the state Labor government taking over, those projects are now gone. One of those projects is the Hervey Bay-Maryborough Road-Urraween Road intersection. This is a very dangerous crossing. A number of school buses go across the intersection in the morning and the afternoon. It is a crossing that needs to be upgraded. It is on my list of things that we need to get over the line. The second project is the Torbanlea crossing upgrade. This is a road that floods regularly and, of course, cuts off the people in Tugun, which makes it very difficult for them to get in and out whenever there is some weather around. I have some personal experience with the Torbanlea crossing. I managed to hit it at relatively high speed in a vehicle late at night; it is hard to see. Fortunately, we got out of that without too much trouble. The third project is the extension of Kay McDuff Drive in Bundaberg. This will provide opportunities to direct traffic away from one of the largest high schools of the district, with 1,500 students, onto the Bundaberg ring road. Unfortunately, under the new state Labor government, those projects are all gone. However, we will continue to work with the local members and our federal minister to try and get those projects up and running.
While I am talking about development in the regions, I would like to congratulate Scott Rowe, the new CEO of RDA. Scott has certainly taken that under his wing and got on with the job. And Bill Trevor, their new chairman, is certainly making inroads into what we need—that is, economic activity for the Hinkler electorate. The biggest issues outside of jobs are electricity pricing and the cost of living. Electricity pricing is absolutely destroying our farm sector. It is making it very difficult for people who have no money with which to pay. We need to ensure that, whatever we do in this place, it does not increase the cost of energy; they simply cannot afford to pay more than they are paying now. We are up some 300 per cent on mandatory disconnections for nonpayment in the state of Queensland. We cannot continue to go down the road we are on. We must address this, and we must do it fast.
But, back to the budget: the budget does contain, of course, measures that will help deliver jobs, opportunities and economic growth in a way that is responsible, measured and fair, unlike what those opposite would put forward. It is the next step in the coalition's long-term economic plan to build a stronger, safer and more prosperous future for all Australians. But while we know that there are economic challenges, our economic and budget position has improved as a direct result of the coalition's strong financial management. Now, unfortunately the contribution from the member for Jagajaga would have you believe that we all live in a land of fairy floss, that we live in a house made of chocolate and someone will send you a cheque every week if that is what you need. You will simply roll up and someone will give you money, and you can survive. Out in the real world, if you live in the regions you know you have to go to work; you have to create your own wealth and provide your own opportunities. That has always been the case, and I am sure the people of regional Australia will continue to do that.
But we are helping them on the way, particularly small business. Small companies that have an annual turnover of less than $2 million will have their tax rate lowered from 30 per cent to 28½ per cent. As someone who owned a small business previously, I know that anything you can do to lift the bottom line helps you to employ. And I have to say, most of the employers I know at the moment are doing everything they can not to employ people. It is simply too complicated and too difficult, and there is too much red and green tape. But we are acting on that, and we are certainly getting it out of the way as soon as possible. Small businesses can claim an immediate tax deduction for each and every item they purchase, up to $20,000, and I can tell you that in the local region the tills are starting to ring. Small businesses are getting on with it. I would continue to encourage them to buy local: wherever possible, get down to your local supplier and purchase locally, because it is local businesses that employ. There is not a lot of employment on the internet; people are employed locally. So, wherever possible, go down and buy that new pump, buy that new car, buy that new piece of equipment—whatever it may be that you need for your business—but try to buy it from local providers, because that way the kids of the future will have employment.
We have an annual five per cent discount for businesses that are unincorporated, up to $1,000 a year, and in agriculture we have added $300 million to the drought relief package. For those of us who get out and about in regional Queensland and regional New South Wales, the drought is absolutely devastating. Of course there are a lot of tragic stories to go with it, but we are trying to assist those people as much as possible. All farmers will get an immediate tax deduction for new investment in water facilities and will be able to fully deduct the cost of new fencing from their tax bill. I have heard it said quite a few times in this place that not a lot of new fences appear to get put up for capital reduction; it tends to be maintenance all around, which I can certainly understand. And of course inside families and child care we have $38 billion to support families, including a $4.4 billion families package aimed at giving parents more choice and opportunity to work.
I have to say, I was one of those people who was knocking on the Prime Minister's door about this, because the people who come to me tell me that the issue for them is the ability to go back to work. It is as simple as that. It does not matter how much you have in your paid parental leave scheme; at the end of that period of time, if you cannot afford child care you simply cannot return. If your childcare bill is $49,000 annually and you earn only $48,000, then the likelihood of your returning to work is zero. So, I am very pleased that we have made those adjustments and we are getting on with helping people to get back to work if they choose to do so.
We have $330 million to help young and disadvantaged Australian job seekers to get their start. In my electorate this is incredibly important. I have a very high youth unemployment rate. We have any number of people who need assistance. I have some 4,000 who are multigenerational welfare dependent. For them, the key issue is to have a driver's licence, because if you live in regional Australia and you do not have a driver's licence then your ability to get a job is decreased significantly. It is very difficult to get employment if you cannot drive a car and you do not have a licence. I am hopeful that some of these packages will help to train some of our youth to get those basic skills, those soft skills. They need to show up on time. They need to be dressed. They need to be ready. And they need to be able to go to work for the whole day and, if necessary, leave their phone in the car. I know that is a challenge for some of our youth. However, those are generally the requirements of most employers.
For retirees and pensioners there will be no new taxes on superannuation, because when you look at superannuation the absolute key issue is stability. You need to be able to plan for retirement. You need to know that the government of the day is not going to pull the rug out from under you when you get within a year of retirement or a year after retirement. So, we have committed to no new taxes on superannuation in this term of government, and I am very comfortable with that decision. The age pension will continue to increase. Unlike what has been mentioned by the member for Jagajaga, the age pension will go up—and has gone up in the last couple of weeks, I believe. More than 170,000 pensioners with modest assets will have their pensions increased by an average of more than $30 a fortnight. For those opposite who are thinking about blocking the budget, who just want to vote no, these are the types of things that the people in my electorate need.
In my electorate the median income is under $500 a week. Most of the people in my electorate are poor: $30 is a substantial change for them, and they need every single bit of it. Those who no longer receive a pension will remain eligible for a Commonwealth concession card, and that certainly helps out. Ever-increasing rates, ever-increasing electricity costs—these things are absolutely spiralling, and we need to get them under control. As a government that is certainly our role, because people expect their elected representatives to do what they need, and what they need is to control the cost of living, to ensure that they can pay their bills every day. They are not that concerned about what will happen in 100 years. They are very concerned about what will happen tomorrow and next week. And a 300 per cent increase in disconnections for failure to pay your electricity bill is unacceptable to me. I commend the budget; I commend the appropriations bills to the House.
20:06
Dr CHALMERS
37998
Rankin
Around this time 13 nights ago, at this time of the evening, a lot of Australian families would have gathered around the television waiting for a plan from the Treasurer for the future of this country. And a lot of them, at the end of the Treasurer's speech, would have been scratching their heads, because this was a backward-looking, divisive and politically motivated budget from a backward-looking, divisive and politically motivated government.
It is said so often in this place that budgets are about priorities, but I do not think it is completely understood among some of the members in this place just how damaging this budget is for this country and, more importantly, what it says about their view of Australia—because the kind of budget we have go towards what kind of country we want for the future. There is so much going on around the world that impacts on our nation, and budgets are an opportunity to announce to the country what the priorities for Australia are as we try to make the most of the future and all of the challenges and opportunities that the future brings.
The McKinsey Global Institute report called No ordinary disruption said that there are all kinds of forces, in the institute's opinion, that will impact on countries such as ours—the rise of emerging markets, the accelerating pace of technological innovation, an ageing world population and the accelerating flows of trades, capital, people and data. All of that impacts on our nation.
I will give you one example of what I think is a stunning fact. Around the world in the next 10 years there will be 100 million more unskilled workers than unskilled jobs at the same time as we are expecting to see 40 million more skilled jobs than we have skilled workers. For a country such as ours and communities such as mine and others right around the country, this is our big chance. This is our big chance to set up the next generation of workers, contributors and thinkers to succeed in the economy of the future. If there is one thing above all that will determine the success of the next generation of workers, it will be the ability to benefit from technological change. That means mastering the necessary skills.
I know, having grown up in the community that I now represent proudly, how crucial it is to give kids the skills and opportunities to get great jobs when they finish school. The sum total of the effort that goes in to our education system—whether it be in primary school, high school, vocational training or higher ed—will determine whether Australia rises or falls in the most dynamic part of a global economy. One of the most chilling things I have read is by an American author called Tyler Cowen. He warns that the world risks being divided into two camps—those who are good at working with machines and those who will be replaced by them. We in this place need to make the choice via our budgets, investments and policies that our kids will be skilled at working with machines and not replaced by them.
That is why the initiatives announced by the Leader of the Opposition two Thursday nights ago are so crucial. They are also why I was so pleased to visit Springwood Central State School in my electorate, a school which is already doing, in its code club, some of the coding and computational thinking that the Leader of the Opposition announced in that Thursday night budget reply that he wanted to see in all of our schools. The leader's budget reply ranged across all the STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—education investments we want to make for the future of this country. It was all about the jobs that will come for us down the track if we make sure that our young people can fill them.
Unfortunately, when the country needed a plan like this, instead we got a political strategy from those opposite. When we as a country were crying out for a plan for the future, we got a grab bag of political fixes, half-baked ideas and last year's cuts. Australia faces significant social and economic challenges that will seriously influence our standard of living in the decades ahead, but, instead of focusing on the issues that concern ordinary Australians the most, this government seems lost and confused, dazed, running around in circles and taking us nowhere. My community have looked at this budget and they wonder whether the Prime Minister is as concerned as they are about the obvious issues facing our nation or is even aware of them at all.
Australians are not stupid. They know that the real intentions of this government were revealed in the first budget, and they know that if you scratch the surface of the second budget those real intentions are still there. The government's political strategy is designed to mask at the core of this budget some of the really damaging policies that the public rejected in the first failed budget attempt last year. The government was hoping for an extreme makeover; instead they have been caught making it up as they go along.
If you do not believe me, check out the interview that the Treasurer did with Laurie Oakes on the night of the budget where, by repeatedly saying, 'Still on the table, still on the table,' the Treasurer confirmed $80 billion in cuts from schools and hospitals. He confirmed big cuts to family payments, which my colleague the member for Jagajaga referred to, and he confirmed the $100,000 degrees and the education policies and education cuts of the first budget are still on the table. He confirmed that on the public record for everyone to see. We also know that the GP tax is, in another version, still on the table, as well as all the other cuts, such as to the ABC, the SBS, community legal services, homelessness and domestic violence programs—the list goes on and on.
It is also clear that the unfairness at the core of the first budget is still on the table. We have heard at length today about the NATSEM independent figures that show that this budget continues the unfairness of the first one. My colleagues have run through some of those stats that show that the government again, unfortunately, are asking the most vulnerable in our community to carry the heaviest burden of their budget and their cuts in particular. That means very real out-of-pocket expensive to wear for some of the most vulnerable and poorest people in our community.
We have seen their real intentions. The mask slipped during question time today. I thought the Prime Minister used the type of language that would make even Mitt Romney blush when he was talking about people on welfare in the usual sneering and snobby way that he goes about that. Something that Mitt Romney would say only in private, caught on a secret camera, the Prime Minister says in the parliament of our nation. I think that speaks volumes about his character. So too does the fact that, at the same time as the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and all those opposite say they care about unemployment, debt, deficit and tax, if you look at their own budget and go through the actual pages you see that on all four of those tests they have failed.
Let me read into the record some of these facts. These are not opinions; these are facts in the pages of the government's own budget. The last time the current Treasurer stood before us to deliver a budget, a year ago, the deficit was $17 billion. It is now $35.1 billion. It has more than doubled in the last year, and it is projected to increase right across the forward estimates. If you look at the gross debt numbers—again, these are in the budget and are not an opinion but facts—you will see that gross debt will now reach $573 billion by 2025-26, up from $499 billion the last time the Treasurer reported it. Again, if you look right across the forward estimates, you can see that debt is increasing. These guys opposite stand up all the time and say they care about debt and deficit at the same time as they are blowing out both. They have been in government for 20 months now; the time has come to take responsibility and to fess up that that was nothing more than political rhetoric in opposition. It has now been tested in government and they have been found wanting.
If you look at the economic forecast, the member for Flynn—who is a great guy; I have got a lot of time for the member for Flynn—did not seem to be aware, when he was talking about jobs before, that the budget actually forecasts an increase in the unemployment rate. It has been revised up in this budget. Incorporating all of the government's policies, it has been revised up. If you look at the black and white of the budget papers, unemployment will be higher for longer than previously thought. Again, the government has been in government for 20 months now. They need to take responsibility for that record.
It is the same with growth. They banged on about growth and unemployment in opposition. They have now been tested in government. The growth figures have been revised down. What about tax? It is the same thing again. Tax increases both in real terms and as a proportion of the economy are in every single year of the forward estimates. Tax, as a proportion of the economy and in dollar figures, is higher every single year under this government than it was in any single year under the previous government. That is the stunning fact that they should front up to. The government is collecting more tax than ever before. This budget contains 17 new taxes and charges. That is tax. So we have done debt, deficit, tax and employment. On all of the tests that the government has set for itself, it has failed in this budget. Again, that is not opinion, but fact. It is black and white in the government's own budget papers.
It is true, as some of the other speakers on my side have mentioned, that there are aspects of the budget that we will do our best to support. I think it is worth noting when it comes to small business that I am tremendous supporter of small business not just in my community but right around the country. I know the contribution that small business people make to our economy and to our society. I have got the utmost respect for that contribution. I think we should shout from the mountain tops about the successes of our small business sector. I know that both sides the House agree on that point.
It does speak volumes that a government that has been in power for 20 months is so bereft of its own ideas that the best new aspect of this budget was an idea they restored from Labor. It does need to be on the record that the instant asset write-off, which is a tremendous initiative that I support, is something that was abolished in the last budget by this government. The best thing about this budget is a Labor idea that this government abolished last year and they are now reinstating. They are reinstating it temporarily, which is not ideal; but the principle and the policy of instant asset write-off is a good one. It is one that I was proud to have worked on in another role in this place. We do support that.
We have also indicated that we intend to play a constructive role when it comes to some of the savings measures in the budget. The shadow Treasurer at the National Press Club last Wednesday outlined that we will play a constructive role where we can when it comes to some of the measures proposed by the government. That is because—even though we disagree on some fundamental issues, particularly around the cuts to family payments and other payments—we do want to play our part in improving the bottom line. We have got our own suggestions around superannuation and multinational tax. But where we can find common ground with the government, we intend to find that common ground. We have indicated where that bipartisanship extends to about five measures that the shadow Treasurer particularly mentioned last Wednesday at the National Press Club.
For evidence that this government is incapable of looking forward into the future, look no further that their cuts to education and their failure to embrace our ideas around STEM education, our ideas around computational thinking in schools and our ideas around higher education and training in particular. For more evidence even than that that the government does not have any ideas of its own about the future of this country, just listen to them in question time. This political strategy they have—no matter what they are asked—is that they try to answer as if it is something to do with the former Labor government; that is, the last six years of Labor rather than the next decades of the country's future, in particular as it relates to the economy.
We have, as I mentioned, offered bipartisanship on small business, crowd funding and multinational tax avoidance. We are interested in finding and shaping the future of this country. It is a future built on a workforce that is geared up, taught and trained to speak the language of the future. Again, I commend the Leader of the Opposition for his foresight in the policies that he announced, which were some of the alternative approaches to the budget that we would take. We did think that the budget was geared towards the next election and not the next wave of prosperity in Australia. It was a strategy to win an election and it was a strategy to win the politics of the day on the six o'clock news, but not a plan to win the future of Australia in the economy of Asia.
In this budget, we did get—unfortunately for the country—a strategy for short-term political survival. We did not get the long-term vision that Australia needs when it comes to job security, affordable education or succeeding in the economy of the future. If we are serious about succeeding, we do need proper investment in our workers of the future. We do need proper investment in our kids, science, technology, engineering, maths, the education that they need and computational thinking, which is the language of future. We do not need this sort of short-sightedness, the cuts or the mean-spirited unfairness which are still at the core of the government's second budget, just like it was at the core of the first.
20:20
Mr BRUCE SCOTT
YT4
Maranoa
I rise tonight to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and related bills, which relate to the budget that was brought down by the honourable Treasurer on budget night. I have got to say that we often in this place talk about the budget following the announcement by the Treasurer of the day, the budget and what it means. What this budget really means is that it is a setting for the future. I think too often we look at 12-month periods. We have got to look beyond the next 12 months when we are looking at a budget. I believe that this budget does exactly that. It looks beyond the next 12 months, it looks into the future and it puts financial structures within the budget settings that are about the future. It looks at how we get the budget trajectory back into balance to deal with the massive debt that we inherited from the outside the House and the deficit budgets, which are just not sustainable.
This budget is a very positive budget. It is a very positive budget for small business. It is a very positive budget in relation to agriculture in my electorate. The announcements made by the Prime Minister in Longreach, four days before the budget was brought down by the Treasurer, certainly were ones that I had worked on for a long time. I know that the agriculture minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, who were both there for the announcement, were involved in that process. The announcement in Longreach was very well received.
I would not be doing my job as the federal member for Maranoa if I did not touch on the ongoing impact of the drought in the central-west and the northwest Queensland parts of my electorate. In the last two to three years and particularly leading up to this year with the failure of yet another wet season, we have seen the impact this drought is having not only on the landholders but also on the towns and the communities and the business sectors of those communities. This pastoral zone is going to take a long time to recover from the impact of the drought when the rains do come, because the pastoral sector relies firstly on getting the rain to grow the grass, secondly on being able to restock and thirdly on getting production going with the reproductive side of things, whether they are sheep or whether they are cattle. It always takes time before you start to get the first cash flow emerging, once you are able to restock properties—unlike the grain enterprise. Once the rains come, grains can be planted and within six months you can see a cash flow return to those farmers. We received the news only a few weeks ago that we are perhaps on the edge of another El Nino event, which means we are going to go into a drier than average period, rather than the prospect of a La Nina event, which means wetter weather than average. That news was certainly devastating in many ways to those people out there and to me as the federal member.
Whilst we have a package that is going to do some immediate good—it was announced in the budget and by the Prime Minister four days before the budget—the longer we go without rain the more we have to be prepared to make sure that we look after the business community of our towns, the very fabric and fibre of our communities. I will be reporting to the Prime Minister on this as we go through this year. When there is no money out of town—and there is no money out of town—properties are destocked and put into mothballs. It is like mothballing a factory; it is not generating any income. There are no jobs so there is no money circulating in the town. I will certainly be wanting to make sure that the money that has been made available by us through local government is spent wisely, that it employs local people and that where materials are required they are bought locally. That is what we have to do. We have to make sure it happens so that we can start to get some economic activity back into the towns.
One element of the package that was particularly important to me was the Roads to Recovery money being doubled for local government across Australia. Once again it goes into our local councils and they spend it on roads of their choosing. It is a local roads package. It is not designed or administered by state governments or by the federal government. All the federal government have done is double the Roads to Recovery money available to local government. I know that the local governments in the electorate of Maranoa will be getting something like $150 million in the forthcoming 12-month period just for roads—that is quite separate from the financial assistance grants that they use for measures other than for roads. That was terrific news in the budget.
The other element of the budget that I was very interested in was the changes to the Youth Allowance. When it comes to completing year 12, many students from rural Australia who want to go on to post-secondary education have to leave home, whether it is from the town or whether it is from out of town. Whether those students live in the business sector of western Queensland towns or on the land, they have to leave home. If those students are able to get Youth Allowance, it will certainly be of great benefit to them because it will take financial pressure off their parents. The changes will mean that they will not be income or asset tested. I better not quote the numbers as I do not have them accurately in my head, but more students will now be able to access Youth Allowance, providing the bill is passed by the Senate. I put the challenge out to the other side of the House and to the crossbenchers in the Senate to support the changes to the Youth Allowance, because it is going to be of enormous benefit to those students who have to leave home to get access to further education.
Tomorrow I will be meeting with the executive and members of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association, who come to Canberra every year. They come well equipped, they never ask for anything that is unreasonable, they have done their homework and their submissions are always good. I had the opportunity last Friday to meet with one or two members of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association in my own electorate and they reiterated what I have just said: they think the changes to the Youth Allowance will be of enormous benefit. It is something they have been fighting for and that we on this side of the House have been fighting for for many, many years. We want to get some greater fairness here. We want to get some recognition of the fact that, when you have to leave home from a rural area, when you have to leave your town to gain access to post-secondary education, it is important that we support those families, that we take the financial pressure off parents' capacity to pay and that we give those students an opportunity to go on to post-secondary education.
If you live in a city—if you live in this great city of Canberra—you do not have to leave home to gain access to post-secondary education. You can live at home and go to university, you can do further education such as technical training or whatever. You also might have a part-time job and still live at home. That is why the Youth Allowance change is going to be so beneficial and so important to the people I represent. I am certainly looking forward to being with the Isolated Children's Parents' Association people, who I know will be here for question time tomorrow as well.
I want to talk about the future of agriculture. We all talk about the great opportunities for agriculture, and there are those opportunities. In my own electorate of Maranoa, when it does rain they will be out there investing again in agriculture. Our agricultural sector produces food and fibre that is not only for our own domestic consumption and wellbeing but that also drives export dollars and earnings for this great country of ours. I was with the Queensland Murray-Darling Committee in Millmerran last Friday, and we announced some $6.96 million for Landcare projects—initiatives that have been driven by local farmers doing something about the environment in their own area. Whether the projects involve weeds or erosion, they are driven by the farmers themselves. Landcare is in its 26th year in Australia—it is a great movement that we now recognise as an integral part of most of our communities. It is important that we care for our land so that we pass it on to the next generations better than it is today. There is a Landcare symbol—the two hands and 'Landcare'. It is very well recognised. I said it would be great if we could have that Landcare symbol attached to the work that these people do on their land—in other words, their properties could be certified as being involved in Landcare and dealing with land care issues. Unfortunately the Landcare symbol is available to those who sponsor Landcare. We need to look at this.
Consuming countries overseas demand clean and green produce. They want to know a little more about the product they are buying. I was recently at Beef 2015 in Rockhampton. There were over 1,000 delegates from many parts of the world, including international chefs from the Middle East and Indonesia. There were even delegates from Cuba, in the Caribbean, who came to look at our genetics and our food. Whether they are consumers of food or breeders or involved in agriculture in some other way, they all have iPhones—they all have mobile information technology. This will be increasingly important into the future. It was said at Beef 2015 that 300 million Chinese consumers have an iPhone and buy online. Maybe they want to look at a product on their iPhone, maybe at home or at a coffee shop, and then order online. They want to know more than just whether our food is clean and green—they want to know whether it is organic and they want to see certification. They want to know about land care or animal welfare—all those things are going to be increasingly important to the way we are able to deliver a message, whether it is through the producers or through Australia as the exporter. We are going to have to deliver more and more information about our products, and our farmers and food producers are going to be called on through consumer demand to provide that information.
I said to the Queensland Murray-Darling Committee and the farmers at Millmerran on Friday that it is important that we move to this next step—after 26 years of Landcare, they need to sell the message that they are involved in responsible land care. Rather than just accepting what they have done and what we as a Commonwealth have invested in through taxpayer dollars, we need to sell the message with a symbol that certifies that the land care they are involved in is responsible and benefiting the land, increasing its sustainability into the future.
I also want to touch quickly on organic food. We need to make the most of our clean and green and organic status, which is growing year by year as shown by demand from overseas—that was very evident at Beef 2015, as it has been in the work I have witnessed over time. We have various symbols and various accreditations for organics. If you want to export organic food to the United States of America, you have to have USDA organic certification. It is time that we in Australia looked at how we can not only describe our product but also give it a certification that has an Australia wide-standard. There may be different brands that go with it, whether it is King Island or Margaret River in Western Australia or wherever it might be, but we need to have an international 14001 standard. Consumers are going to demand it in future, and it is one of the things that I will be working on in the weeks and months ahead, talking with producers on how we can make the most of our clean, green image and sell more information on these products to our consumers overseas. (Time expired)
20:35
Mr THISTLETHWAITE
182468
Kingsford Smith
Woolworths is one of Australia's largest employers. Woolworths has a paid parental leave scheme through which full-time and part-time employees can access eight weeks of paid parental leave after they have completed two years of service. The World Health Organization recommends that new mothers should spend a minimum of six months with their new baby to nurture development. That is not only a World Health Organization recommendation; it is common sense that new mothers spend some time with their babies. In our community, the cost of living is increasing. Housing, in particular, is becoming ridiculously expensive. Families need two incomes simply to get by in our community. For a mother who spends six months with her newborn baby, with an employer that only offers eight weeks paid parental leave, the question needs to be asked: how do families get by? How do families get by when an employer provides eight weeks paid parental leave? How do they fund the remaining 18 weeks that the World Health Organization recommends that a mother should spend with a newborn?
That is the question that the previous Labor government answered when we implemented a government Paid Parental Leave scheme of 18 weeks at the minimum wage to ensure that mothers could top up the 18 weeks with whatever their workplace scheme was—in this case, Woolworths, eight weeks—to get to the 26 weeks, to get to the six months that is recommended by the World Health Organization, to support families at one of the most vulnerable times in a family's life, when a new baby is born. It was to help mums spend that vital first six months with their babies but still be able to pay the bills.
Well, for anyone that is accessing the government scheme and then topping it up with their employer's scheme, these are the people that the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has described as undertaking basic fraud. These are the people that Scott Morrison, the Minister for Social Services, has said are undertaking 'a rort'. How dare they? How dare two senior ministers in this government tell new mothers on low to middle incomes who are struggling to make ends meet, who are doing the right thing by World Health Organization standards, staying home with their kids for the first six months, accessing a government scheme and topping it up with their employer based scheme—how dare this government tell those people—that they are rorters, that they are engaging in fraud?
This scenario perfectly sums up this government's approach to this year's budget: the well-off in our community are protected, but middle- to low-income Australians will struggle to make ends meet and will be worse off because of the changes that are proposed in this year's budget. The government is proposing to stop working mothers accessing both the government Paid Parental Leave scheme and any top-up scheme that their employer may be providing. It will force families to make a wicked choice: the choice of spending more time with their newborn or going back to work to make ends meet before those six months are up.
I am not intending to single out Woolworths. Woolworths actually provides a paid parental leave scheme, and it was one of the first employers within the retail industry to do so. But Woolworths is a large Australian employer. It provides a lot of jobs in our community as well. If people who are working for employers like Woolworths are faced with this choice, they are no doubt going to be worse off. What this will do is that it will force new mums to make that choice. Many of them will choose the government scheme, and workplace schemes will become redundant. They will eventually be phased out.
That is not only my view. That is the view of experts who work in this field every day. Indeed, it is the view of some employer associations in this country. Kate Carnell, the Chief Executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has said of what the government is proposing with Paid Parental Leave:
It's hard to see why employers would continue to pay parental leave if it meant the government stopped paying and they were simply footing the bill for the government …
That is the view of the chief executive of one of Australia's largest employer associations: employers will eventually phase out paid parental leave. That is not in the interests of Australia. That is not fair for families, as the Prime Minister claims this budget will be.
An analysis has been done by The West Australian newspaper, which looks at exactly how much working mothers in the retail sector will be worse off. They have found out that checkout operators at Woolworths will be $6,550 worse off and Coles checkout operators $6,376 worse off. IKEA workers will be, remarkably, $11,539 worse off if this government's intention of stopping working mothers topping up the government scheme through paid parental leave is delivered through this budget. That is why this element of the budget must be opposed, and that is why I will fight on behalf of the people of Kingsford Smith to ensure that this element of the budget is not passed.
The government has also introduced some new changes to child care. It proposes a new activity test so that anyone who works less than eight hours per week will now no longer be able to access the government subsidy. I say to the government: what about those mothers who are trying to get more than eight hours a week of work who cannot access more than eight hours? Perhaps they may have a disability. Perhaps they may be unable to get work because they are in a region where there is high unemployment. Does that mean that they should be denied the right to access child care? I think not.
The income thresholds for the subsidies associated with the childcare rebate have also been changed. The great shame about this change is that it is not additional funding to pay for the changes; it is coming off the back of cuts to family tax benefit B. When a child turns six, family tax benefit B will now cut out. I say to the government: what about the single mum who lives in my community who may be studying, who may be just about to finish a degree, who works two jobs to make ends meet and who has a kid in the later years of primary school or high school? She is struggling to make ends meet and now faces the prospect of losing family tax benefit B. What does that working mother do? Does she stop her studies that she is just about to complete and go and get more work to make up for the difference that she is going to lose?
These are the wicked choices that this government is foisting upon working families in this country. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul. But Peter is middle-income Australia; Peter is the vulnerable, those on low incomes and middle incomes in Australia. Paul is some of the wealthiest corporations and individuals in our society. If these changes are implemented, we will see an increase in poverty in Australia, without a doubt. In a modern context that is not something Australia should be encouraging. Families will be the big losers in this budget. NATSEM modelling that was released today shows that a single-parent family with two children will lose $3,715 this financial year under the government's budget. That will increase to $6,108 in 2018-19. Take-out No. 1 from this budget: Australian families will be worse off. That is what we can guarantee from what is contained in the government's budget.
In health, this budget continues the dastardly cuts to hospitals funding in the last budget, with $57 billion cut from public hospital funding. The Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick in our community is under stress, with $30 million having recently been cut from its operating budget—a whole ward closed, nurses not being replaced when they leave, two physiotherapists sacked and the perinatal mental health unit under pressure. This is how some of these cuts manifest themselves in our community. This budget continues the four-year freeze on the Medicare rebate, which will force doctors in our community to charge a co-payment or, perhaps in some cases, to undertake longer consultations. The budget cuts $125 million over four years from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.
In our community, we are again facing cuts to and closures of health services. I have been informed by the Minister for Human Services that the Medicare office at Eastgardens will close over the coming months. That office will be transferred to the local Centrelink office at Maroubra. Anyone who has been to the Centrelink office at Maroubra would know that the waits there are at least two hours long. The parking is not as convenient as it is at Eastgardens. For elderly people, this will mean a greater impost. Let's face it: most of those who access Medicare office services are the elderly, because they cannot access some of those services online. These people will be worse off because of this government's budget cuts that manifest themselves in the closure of our local Medicare office at Eastgardens. This comes on top of the New South Wales government announcing that the RTA office at Maroubra will also close. What is the lesson from this? Liberals cut services and they hurt our community.
In education, parents know that the key to a good job, to a stable income and to good living standards for their kids is a good education. That is why Labor invested much more money in the Gonski reforms. That is why Labor invested in trade training centres—to provide kids who may not be academically minded with a pathway to employment through providing trade training while still at school. Champagnat Catholic College in Pagewood recently opened their brand-new trade training facility, having received $1 million from the Gillard government to assist those kids to get the beginning of a trade in the automotive, construction and hospitality industries. Those kids will now finish year 12 having completed the first year of their apprenticeship. What a wonderful opportunity for an education pathway for kids. What has happened to the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program? It has gone. It was completely cut by the Abbott government. There is no support for education for those kids in our community. Also in this budget, we have seen $30 billion cut from the final two years of the Gonski reforms.
University fee deregulation remains in this budget. It may not have got much media attention, but the government still plans to try to implement deregulation of university fees to force kids to pay $100,000 for degrees. Universities like the University of New South Wales, where many courses are in high demand—engineering, medicine, commerce, law and the like—will be able to charge whatever they like because the demand is there. Kids from working-class backgrounds in our community will not have access to the education that they need for a good job. This budget also makes changes to pensions, but what remains is the pension age increasing to 70 years.
In terms of the economy, this budget forecasts that unemployment will rise to 6.5 per cent. The reality of this budget is that tax as a proportion of GDP increases from 21.4 per cent to 22.3 per cent. So this fallacy that the Abbott government will be a lower taxing government is a complete farce. It is a lie to the Australian people, because tax increases as a proportion of GDP. Net debt also increases from $250 billion to $285 billion. So not only is this budget bad for the economy; it is definitely bad for working families and for kids in terms of support for education. The one thing we can say about this budget is that Australians will be worse off.
20:51
Mrs McNAMARA
241589
Dobell
Over the past 20 months since my election, I have been working on behalf the people of Dobell to deliver a stronger economy, more opportunity and greater investment in our region. Since September 2013 I have delivered approximately $80 million worth of federal projects and programs. Investment in Dobell demonstrates our commitment to families, senior Australians and small business. I am pleased to say that major infrastructure commitments, such as the upgrade of the Ridgeway, Jensens Road and Norah Head boat ramp, are complete. For Central Coast motorists, work on the NorthConnex linking the M1 and M2 is now underway and is scheduled for completion in 2019. This will mean safer and faster travel times for our commuters, allowing them to spend more time at home with their families and loved ones.
The planning stages of the Tuggerah Sports Precinct—envisaged to become the Central Coast's largest sports complex and capable of holding regional, state and international tournaments—have commenced. This project, along with the recently completed Lisarow Sports Precinct, is delivering a real boost to the Central Coast's sports-tourism prospects. As I said in my maiden speech, I want to see the Central Coast develop into the sports-tourism capital of New South Wales. I believe we are well on our way to achieving this goal.
Our youth are receiving enhanced support through our $3.3 million Youth Skills and Employment Centre, and there is even more support on the way with stage 2 of this development—a trade skills centre with a $2 million contract for construction in Dobell's north later this year. The government's Work for the Dole and Green Army programs are providing greater opportunities for local job seekers. These programs are helping young job seekers gain the practical knowledge and experience necessary to secure employment. We are looking after our environment with real practical work underway on Tuggerah Lakes. The foreshore at Canton Beach has been restored, and immediately the local community has seen the benefits through increased the risk. All this has been achieved since the last election.
I acknowledge that there is more work to be done. We must continue to strive towards a better future, complete with more opportunity and greater reward. A stronger economy is the key to almost everything we wish for as a community. If we want more stable jobs that provide meaningful work, we need to support stronger small business, provide better childcare arrangements and ensure that all of this is underpinned by a strong national economy. This budget does exactly that. We are repairing Labor's debt and deficit disaster and have set the budget on a path to surplus. Over the next four years the deficit will reduce each and every year from $35.1 billion in 2015-16 to $6.9 billion in 2018-19. Any new spending in this budget meets the government's commitment to redirect funding to investments that boost Australia's productivity and participation. We are committed to returning the budget to surplus as soon as possible. If families and businesses must live within their means, then it is only right and proper that the government does the same.
We are building on our strong foundations with a responsible budget focused on small business, better child care and measures that improve fairness. This budget is about helping Australians have a go. It is about helping mums and dads get back into the workforce after starting a family; it is about support for those who want to start a new small business; it is about security for our senior Australians in retirement who have worked hard in their entire lives to build our great nation. It is about building a stronger economy so that everyone can get ahead; it is about a safe and secure Australia where we can go about our daily lives without fear of attack from those who disagree with our freedoms, ideals and way of life.
This year's budget delivers on our commitment to support families by making child care more simple, affordable, accessible and flexible. One of the many highlights in my role as the federal representative is meeting our youngest Australians. From childcare centres to high schools, I support measures to ensure that our children have the opportunity to achieve what they want out of life. For many Australian families, especially those on the Central Coast, the decision to go back to work after having a child is not a choice, but a necessity. Stable jobs and accessible child care is essential in ensuring that families have the tools to provide for their families. This is why supporting early education and opportunities for young Australians to learn is essential.
This government is investing an additional $3.5 billion over five years on childcare assistance, including a new childcare subsidy. The childcare subsidy will provide assistance to meet the cost of childcare for parents who are working, looking for work, training, studying or undertaking any other recognised activity, such as volunteering. Families earning approximately $65,000 or less will receive a subsidy of 85 per cent of their childcare fees with subsidy gradually reducing the 50 per cent for families earning around $170,000 or more. These new arrangements will result in approximately 5000 families in Dobell receiving a subsidy of 85 per cent of their childcare fees. Furthermore, between 9000 and 10,000 local families will receive a subsidy of between 50 and 85 per cent of their childcare fees. Importantly for families earning less than $185,000, there will be no annual cap on the childcare subsidy they can receive. This means that 95 per cent of Dobell's families who access childcare services will receive a childcare subsidy. In addition to these measures, the government is also implementing flexible childcare options. A total of $250 million will be spent on interim home based carer pilot program to extend support to eligible families using home based carers. This will benefit shift workers, including nurses, police, fire fighters and ambulance officers, who are unable to access traditional government supported child care because of the unpredictable nature and hours of their work. This is particularly important for families on the Central Coast who are required to commute out of the region for work. Again, for many locals such travel is a necessity. It is important that we as a government provide a range of flexible childcare options to support families in varying positions of employment.
On top of greater support for families, this budget also supports job growth in small business. This will be particularly important in regions such as the Central Coast, where we are highly dependent upon small business to deliver local employment opportunities. Our Jobs and Small Business package will create the right conditions for Australian small businesses to prosper and grow. It will also encourage employers to create new jobs and assist Australia's unemployed to access these new opportunities. The $5.5 billion Jobs and Small Businesses package is the biggest small business package in our nation's history. It will assist Dobell's 8707 businesses invest more, grow more and employ more. We are reducing the tax rate for more than 90 per cent of incorporated businesses with an annual turnover of under $2 million. The company rate for these businesses will be reduced by 1.5 per cent to 28.5 per cent. In addition small businesses with an annual turnover of under $2 million will be able to immediately deduct each and every asset costing less than $20,000 that they purchase between now and the end of June 2017. This will benefit 8283 businesses in Dobell, and this represents 95 per cent of all businesses in Dobell.
Our support for small business is matched with support for job seekers. The ability to work and earn an income is a foundation of Australian life. This is why we are helping all Australians participate with over $330 million in targeted spending on new job initiatives. This is targeted at employers and young job seekers to support the transition to work. We have also introduced incentives for employers to help mature-age job seekers back into work. Last week I hosted the Hon. Luke Hartsuyker, the Assistant Minister for Employment, in Dobell. The minister's visit demonstrates our commitment to improving job prospects on Central Coast. The minister and I visited the Better Futures Hub to meet with their Work for the Dole team. This is a unique Work for the Dole project, which is teaching young job seekers administration and marketing skills. The minister and I heard how the program has instilled confidence in these young job seekers and provides them with the opportunity to develop marketing projects. It is wonderful to know that two of these job seekers have now secured employment.
Debate interrupted.