Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The minister at the table would know that some other state roads were identified for funding. It seems to be one rule for one and not one rule for all. I acknowledge that the local councils and organisations in the area have been working with the federal MPs—myself, Jennie George and Jo Gash—to look at other ways in which we can access funding for that road, but it was disappointing that it was treated differently from some other state roads.

The Treasurer has presented a budget which is significant in what it does not achieve rather than in what it does. For a mid-term budget, the budget is surprisingly short term in its outlook. It appears more like a campaign budget—one you might expect to see in an election year. Perhaps this is explained if we look at it in terms of a leadership campaign budget, but it was a surprising mid-term budget. It certainly does not look like a nation building budget, and this is what is so clearly needed at this time. That was reflected in the comments by organisations around the country, including my own business chamber in the Illawarra.

It is true that we are in the midst of a mineral boom driven by the demands of the rapid economic modernisation of industry and construction growth in China and India. It is also true that this boom does not provide the foundation for a secure long-term program for growth and prosperity in Australia. What such a boom does provide is a unique opportunity for Australia to utilise this wealth to invest in the areas that will provide the foundation for the future—specifically to tackle the expensive but critical physical infrastructure blockages in transport and information technology.

Just as importantly, investment should be made in the human potential of our population. One of our great historical strengths has always been the skill, initiative and innovation of our researchers, tradespeople and educators. Significant export capacity and performance have been built from the work of these groups and have allowed us to regularly punch above our weight on the international scene.

It is highly likely that each of us has examples of businesses—small, medium or large—in our electorates that have developed high-quality niche products and services that are finding growing international markets. It is important for government at all levels to support and foster such growth. One of the foundations for this is a high-quality education and training program that expands those skills from the very earliest years of education through to the decisions that adults make about where they will specialise in their working life. We do not need flagpoles, values posters or tool boxes but training places—not turning people away; 300,000 from TAFE—job schemes and incentives in pay, work conditions and taxation to encourage participation and productivity. This budget goes a very small way in its taxation changes in addressing one of these issues—that is, taxation. But it is almost silent on infrastructure, knowledge and skills growth, despite nearly all players from industry and business identifying these issues as critical to future prosperity.

It is probably just my observation but it appears that the Treasurer’s budget has had a very short shelf life. This year’s budget has been received in the general community in a very lukewarm way, because people in the community know that the tax changes may go some way to pay for the recent interest rate increase on their mortgage or credit card debt, to cover the recent increase in their private health insurance premium, to cover the recent spiralling costs of putting petrol in the family car and to cover the potential loss of overtime and penalty rates, but it certainly will not cover all the growing pressures on family budgets. While the Treasurer has been travelling around the country trying to convince anybody who will listen that his budget has been well received, the published opinion polls tell a very different story. Australians are onto this Treasurer. They know this sleight of hand. Indeed, in discussing it with my colleagues from other regional areas, I have found that many regional papers reflected very common feedback from the ordinary people in the street when they do their vox pop type polls. The people are saying, ‘It’s welcome but it’s a very small drop in the ocean for helping me deal with balancing my family budget.’

In 10 long years the Treasurer’s methods have never changed. He gives with one hand and takes with the other. The Treasurer’s hands have been in every Australians’ pockets and purses for a decade. Nothing has ever changed. The budget figures still confirm that the Howard-Costello government is high taxing. The Centre for Independent Studies has been explosively critical of the government on this issue. Revenue—taxes—will creep into the Treasurer’s pocket every year. There will be $230.8 billion in the 2006-07 year and another increase of nearly $9 billion in 2007-08. There will be a further climb to $250.6 billion in 2008-09 and, by 2010, revenue will hit a projected $264 billion.

Much has been made of the tax cuts in this budget. I welcome the fact that the Treasurer has finally conceded that working families and low-income families need some tax relief. Last year he gave $6. Labor argued that he could have been more generous and fairer, so this year the Treasurer is giving $10. However, Australians—certainly in my electorate—have not been dancing in the streets. They took their $6 last year and they will take their $10 this year, but it does not compensate for the increasing financial pressures they have experienced and the growing difficulty they have in balancing the family budget.

For all the talk of tax cuts, the facts are that the vast majority of working families in my electorate will still pay an unchanged tax rate of 30c. The average wage and salary income in my electorate is $37,516. The average total income is $39,557. It is no wonder that my constituents have not greeted this budget with applause. The financial pressure on the family budget in my electorate has not been relieved, because of interest rate increases—when the Prime Minister and the Treasurer promised they would remain low—higher fees for private health insurance and increasing prices at the pump and the supermarket.

To rub salt into the wound, this budget will once again pick up the advertising bill of at least $52 million to ‘increase consumer awareness of the incentives and benefits associated with private health insurance’. Over $2 billion in subsidies is handed over to the private health insurance industry each year, and now the taxpayer also picks up the subsidy of advertising the industry’s products. It is no wonder they need an advertising campaign, because each year, when the rubber stamp is applied to the increase in private health insurance premiums, it is one of the things that generates the most unsolicited contact with my electorate office. People are infuriated by the high rises in the costs of their private health insurance premiums and the resultant lack of balance with any increase in service for the cost. In fact, it is often quite the opposite: what they are able to claim has gone backwards. Indeed, this year for the first time, quite a lot of people were saying that they were pulling out of private health insurance. No wonder it needs advertising, but surely that is a cost for the industry and not a cost for taxpayers. This is but one example of how the government has lost touch with working families.

Specifically, to be very parochial, the budget failed to allocate an MRI licence to Wollongong Hospital, which has been a key demand of my constituents for four years. Nearly 17,000 constituents signed a petition to the Minister for Health and Ageing asking for a licence for the machine. A licence for the Wollongong Hospital is particularly important, because it is the major referral hospital. People suffering chronic debilitating illnesses, often life-threatening illnesses, need regular scans. For example, if someone has a brain tumour and a specialist is monitoring the progress of the tumour, they need to have a scan every four to six weeks. However, they are unable to access a licensed machine at the hospital to which the specialist is connected. All that would be needed for this licence is a modest $1 million of the $52 million to be used for advertising private health insurance. I say to the government: rather than spending the $52 million on advertising for the industry, let them do it themselves and find 52 other projects, like my MRI licence, which could be much more effectively serviced by that money. It is another example of squandering prosperity and ignoring local community needs.

Australia confronts serious challenges to current prosperity—declining and outdated infrastructure, a skills crisis, an ageing population, a current account deficit and an unsustainable $500 billion foreign debt. The government has received ample warning on these challenges and their implications, if unaddressed, from peak organisations, private economic forecasters, the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Productivity Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the OECD. But nothing can or will shake the government out of its complacent disregard for the future.

The Treasury, as usual, underestimated the growth in revenue to the budget this year, which was largely the result of company tax receipts, taking advantage of the resources, minerals and energy boom from a hungry China and India. But, again, many economic commentators warn that this budget has a structural defect. To quote:

The budget is terribly vulnerable to a downturn ...

said Stephen Bartos, a former Treasury official, in the Weekend Australian of 6 May 2006. Mr Bartos further stated:

We have high levels of government spending and there is very little room for discretionary cutbacks because all programs are very much locked in.

The same article revealed that Treasury had modelled a scenario confirming that a slowdown in commodity prices and a downturn in the economy in 2009-10 would plunge the budget into deficit. That deficit would be of a long-lasting structural character, making it hard for government to either raise additional revenue or make the necessary cutbacks. Every editorial in the major newspapers after the budget highlighted the same issue. The Sydney Morning Herald said:

Don’t start thinking about tomorrow ... because the Treasurer isn’t ...

The Canberra Times said:

Cute, clever budget masks real worries ...

The Australian Financial Review said:

Nice try but only half right ...

This budget is a throw of the dice. However, it does not deal with the future and it does nothing to guard against a turn in the terms of trade or a downturn in the domestic economy. It fails to safeguard the country’s prosperity.

We on this side have a plan to tackle the constraints facing Australia’s economic future. Our plan involves investment in education, training and skills. The government relies on the so-called Australian technical colleges to deliver skills. The college planned for the Illawarra, despite all the talk, has yet to materialise—and we are not alone in that. The proponents are stuck in a red tape debacle with the bureaucrats in Canberra.

The government relies on the New Apprenticeships scheme, which—as an answer to a question on notice from me to the minister confirms—provides incentives to businesses and industries in the Illawarra that do not need them; they are not suffering skills shortages. However, the sectors that do require such incentives are ignored. In the MPI today, my colleague the member for Throsby outlined an excellent initiative for getting young people into trades, which has been constantly at threat of de-funding by the federal government, despite that initiative having placed 200 young people into apprenticeships.

The government now tries to add a third leg to its skills policy by forgetting about training and skilling Australians; instead, it prefers to import skills from overseas as an alternative, rather than a supplement, to training Australians. But the catch is that the migrant must come ready, willing and able to sign on to the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda. Labor will train Australians and we will train them now. In particular, we will abolish the importing of unskilled migrant apprentices. I have teenage sons; many of their friends—I know from talking with them—would be desperately happy to take on an apprenticeship. But apprenticeships are very difficult to access. If apprenticeships are on offer in places in Australia that claim they cannot get young people, it would be far more productive for us to look at areas of high youth unemployment and develop schemes to allow those young people to access those jobs, before looking overseas for cheap labour.

Labor will also abolish TAFE fees for those wishing to study traditional trades apprenticeships. We will offer the opportunity to study at specialised trades schools, without the pointless ideology of the anti public education views constantly espoused by the government, particularly by the Minister for Vocational Education and Training—although he does not mind being present at TAFE awards nights. I note that the New South Wales Labor government  has earmarked nearly $20 million for 10 trades schools, in moving in that direction. Instead of trying to create a whole new system, it is looking at expanding what occurs in the current schools across the regions.

Labor will invest in Australia’s creaking infrastructure—our ports, roads, rail and telecommunications. We will not slice off billions to service pork-barrelling escapades. As the opposition leader made clear in his budget reply speech, Labor will determine the infrastructure investments required by assessing the national interest—not the National Party’s interest. Labor will use a program to invest in the economic development of regional Australia to create jobs and expand existing businesses. We will invest in the most important technological infrastructure needed by all Australians today—high-speed broadband. From schools to businesses, Labor will ensure that we are technologically competitive with the rest of the world.

Most importantly, we will also invest in child-care facilities for working families. Recently I put a survey out to my community and I have been not surprised by the size of the problem but impressed by the number of people who were so moved by the issue of access, availability and costs of child care that they took the time to attach additional commentary to their response to that survey about the problems they faced. I was quite bemused, to be honest, to see the Treasurer, in his role as the Acting Prime Minister in question time today, appear to present an argument that it was all some sort of smoke and mirrors; there was no problem with child care and it was cheap and easily available. Indeed, I would be more than happy for him to come and explain that to the people in my area who, in one of the largest commuter corridors in Australia and in trying to access work in Sydney, find it extraordinarily difficult to get suitable child care at a reasonable cost. Indeed, it is prohibiting many women and many families from not only participating in the workforce productively but also, most importantly, meeting the requirements that they have for caring responsibilities in their families. I am hearing that it is not only for children; many of them also have dual caring responsibilities for ageing parents. (Time expired)

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