Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting. If this is such a strong budget and such a strong government, why couldn’t the member for Cowper use the full 20 minutes that he is allocated to discuss the appropriation bills? I will touch a little bit on some of the issues that the previous speaker mentioned in his contribution, but I will approach it from quite a different perspective to the one that he approached it from.

This is an arrogant, out-of-touch government that is pursuing its extreme agenda. It is a government of zealots driven by a philosophy based on individualism. There is no recognition of the fact that people succeed, strive and enjoy happiness more when they live together and are part of a community. Rather, it is a government that promotes winners and losers, in groups and out groups. As such it gains its strength from the fact that it causes great divisions within the community. It is beholden to its masters in big business, and its extreme arrogance is demonstrated by government member after government member coming up here to this House and attacking the state governments.

If this is such a strong budget and if this is a government that is putting forward such a strong budget for the people of Australia—looking after the people of Australia, moving Australia ahead—why is it that the members of that government cannot talk about the achievements of the government? Rather, they focus on the state governments. It seems to me that what they are doing is what they do time and time again in this parliament, and that is pass the blame for their failures on to somebody else: ‘It wasn’t me. I knew nothing about it. It’s the state government. It’s the local government. I will take no responsibility whatsoever for what’s happened.’

When history reviews the achievements of the Howard government I do not believe that it will treat it very kindly. I think it will find a place in history of being a time of great division, a time when Australian has been turned against Australian and when certain groups of people within our community have really been disadvantaged. I look at what has happened over the last 12 months and I see the Australia that I know and care very deeply about changing before my very eyes. Telstra legislation passed through this parliament to privatise Telstra, yet people in my electorate cannot even get mobile phone coverage. People in my electorate have problem after problem with their telecommunications. The workforce that Telstra employs has been downgraded considerably. I believe that this does contribute to the problems that I see in that area.

We had the industrial relations legislation pass through this parliament at the end of last year, legislation that I believe is going to extremely disadvantage many people that I represent in this parliament. The industrial relations legislation and the AWAs that will come into play will be fine if you have got a skill that no-one else has or if you are in a highly paid job. But, if you are a person that does not have that level of skill, your wages are going to be eroded, your conditions are going to be eroded and you will have less time to spend with your family. The government says nothing has happened. The opposition forecasted that there would be these changes, and I stick by that. But it will be slow. It will not happen today. It will not happen tomorrow.

At the weekend I heard of a case of a young guy who is going to university in Sydney and was working as a roadie, setting up for performances. He was told he had to be at work by six o’clock and that if he was not at work by six o’clock he did not have the job. He sat there for two hours, and the work started at eight o’clock. He officially finished at 12 o’clock, but the next two hours was spent tidying up. He was paid for four hours. He complained about it—and he did not get called in again. He needs that money to survive. These are the types of things that this government is allowing to happen.

The Welfare to Work legislation that passed through this parliament late last year is also legislation that I think has the ability to change the face of Australia. This legislation is going to disadvantage people who are on a disability support pension. I believe it will in fact make it harder for them to return to the workforce. As a person who worked for many years with people with disabilities to help them to secure employment, I know that the legislation is not the right way to achieve that. As recently as two weeks ago I had a constituent sitting in my office who had applied for the disability support pension and been rejected. He has quite a severe disability. When he was assessed he was allocated the 20 points he needed to qualify for the disability support pension, but those who make the decisions in Centrelink said no. They said that with some training he would be able to get a job. This gentleman comes from a non-English-speaking background, he cannot read or write, but he is being sent off to train. Added to that, Centrelink have refused to grant him a sickness benefit. They say he has to apply for Newstart and actively job search. I believe that the government will be liable if this constituent obtains a job and then injures himself or those he is working with, because his condition is such that it could jeopardise those people working around him.

Another flow-on from the government’s Welfare to Work legislation is shown by a case I raised in the House last week. An elderly woman, 61 years old, is caring for her mother, who suffers from dementia. Her mother needed to sell her home, which is in an area where the values have skyrocketed. It is a little miner’s cottage, but she received somewhere in excess of $500,000 for that house. That money is with the protective commissioner. The woman who is looking after her cannot draw on it, cannot touch it in any way. Her husband is a pensioner, but because her mother is not eligible for the pension because her assets are too high this woman is unable to get a carer payment. So she is put in the position of either having to look for a job, to actively job search, or having to undertake volunteer work. Her mother requires 24-hour day care because she has severe advanced dementia. This woman is saving the government a considerable amount of money, yet she is being disadvantaged by this government.

Another example I would like to bring to the attention of the House is that of a number of gentlemen who are working for a Meals on Wheels group within my electorate. The week after the legislation passed through the parliament my office was inundated with calls from these gentlemen who were undertaking their mutual obligation by working 15 hours a week for Meals on Wheels. They were all in excess of 60 years of age, but the Centrelink officer in question had advised them that now this legislation was through they had to actively job search. I am sure that members in the House know that that is not correct; that is not a requirement of the legislation. But the point I am making here is that the government did not even get the information to their Centrelink officers so they could administer the changes properly. In fact, I had to provide the Centrelink officers with the information so they could take it back to their offices and educate their staff as to what the requirements of the legislation were. I think that is a disgrace.

Today the Minister for Human Services said that there had been 24,000 days of unplanned staff leave in Centrelink over the last 12 months and that he has been able to reduce it. He also said that the Centrelink lines were shorter. I suggest that maybe the minister could put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and stand in one of those Centrelink lines. I actually did that in January. I went to pick up a carers allowance package for a constituent, and I stood in that line for 45 minutes before I could get some papers to take home to that constituent, who was housebound. If that is improving a system and making the Centrelink line shorter, I would hate to see what will happen if this minister is allowed to be in control of Centrelink for too much longer. I fear that those lines will extend outside the door.

Also, at that particular time people were contacting my office because they were being told that they needed to wait for between two to three weeks for an appointment. These were people who had absolutely no money at all. It is hardly what you would expect from a department that this minister has made twice as efficient! I suggest it takes more than getting rid of those 24,000 days unplanned leave to enable Centrelink officers to do their job a lot better than they have in recent times. Maybe providing them with the information that I provided to the Centrelink officers on Welfare to Work might help them.

Other legislation that has passed through this House includes the voluntary student unionism legislation. That has cost the University of Newcastle $6 million. I hardly see that that will benefit the people whom I represent in this House.

That brings me to the issue of health. Last night in the House I raised the issue of doctor shortages. I believe what the member for Cowper believes: we should have equity of access to health care and health services. But, unfortunately, in Shortland we do not have that equity of access. We are not considered to be regional or rural in the sense that the people living in the electorate of the member for Cowper are. The area that I represent is identified as an area of labour force shortage. The area that I represent has a number of doctors, all of whom have closed their books. The area that I represent in this parliament has a doctor who has just retired and left 2,000 patients without any access to medical treatment.

Unfortunately, because the government’s policies are geared towards supporting people in electorates like the member for Cowper, the people of Shortland are disadvantaged. It is not equity of access for all; rather, it is equity of access for those few who members on the other side of the House seek to represent. I find that an absolute disgrace. Within health, we still have an inordinate waiting list for public dental services. This government continually refuses to reintroduce the Commonwealth dental health scheme that it abolished when it was elected in 1996.

In the Shortland electorate, we are still trying to get our Medicare office in Belmont back, but the government ignores us. In Shortland, all the elderly people—people like the Swansea pensioners who visited me here in Parliament House today—have to pay more under the PBS and are unable to get their calcium tablets on the PBS, all because of the actions of this government. The Minister for Health and Ageing gave that ‘rock-solid, ironclad guarantee’ that he would not lift the Medicare safety net before the last election, and we all saw what he did there. Women in the Shortland electorate who are outside the breast-screening target group aged 50 to 69 are still unable to have their mammograms done in the public system. Adding insult to injury, the amount of money available to them as a refund under the Medicare schedule is nowhere near what it costs. This government has made a practice of disadvantaging all those people, but not its mates in big business, the high-flyers that it sees can give it an advantage.

If you look at education, you see the government’s approach to the skills shortage is: ‘Let’s bring more people in from overseas. Let’s bring doctors in from overseas. Let’s bring apprentices in from overseas.’ How about investing in apprentices here and in the young people of Australia? When we debate TAFE and university legislation, for the government it is about linking funding for those institutions to workplace relations, requiring the staff that work there to sign AWAs. It is an absolute disgrace.

Whilst the government is cutting back on these vital services to people that I represent and people that the member for Ballarat represents, moving to privatise Telstra and doing scoping studies in preparation for privatising Medibank Private, it is spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on advertising. In the lead-up to the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill, it spent $55 million on its propaganda campaign. Add to that the $152,000 that it spent on booklets that were to be sent to households throughout Australia. There were 458,000 booklets, but the government decided that it did not like the wording, so it just pulped them. And it is interesting that $120,000 of the money for printing those booklets went to Howard government mates: they were printed by Salmac, a company that is very closely aligned with the Liberal Party. And now I see that the government is all set to spend another $143 million on more propaganda. The government is arrogantly planning to spend at least another $143 million on advertising in the lead-up to the next election.

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