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

It is with great sadness that I stand to make my contribution to this debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills. I believe that this budget, more than any other budget that this parliament has considered, is, unfortunately, a budget of lost opportunity. Many of my colleagues on this side of the House have highlighted the fact that this is a budget of lost opportunity, a budget that lacks vision and a budget that lacks planning for the future. Never has there been a time in Australia when a government has had such an opportunity in a budget to make investments and change the face of Australia as it had in this particular budget.

Booming coal and mineral prices have poured $160 billion into the government’s coffers, and what have we seen for it? We have seen tax cuts that passed through the House of Representatives this morning. They were well and truly long overdue, but they will barely address the losses that average Australians and Australian families—people who struggle each and every day to make ends meet—have suffered with increased petrol prices, increased interest rates and ever more impost on their general savings.

I thought this budget would be one that offered some solutions—a plan, a map or a structure for the future—but when I assess the budget against that, unfortunately, it gets a big F for fail. The government must be condemned for not putting in place strategies to address the chronic skills shortage that exists within Australia today. The Australian Industry Group has been one of the big supporters of this government. In the lead-up to the budget, it was asking the government to do something to address the current skills shortage Australia is facing in its industry, but this budget delivers a big zero when it comes to addressing the skills shortage.

I could not help but compare the speech the Treasurer made and the speech the Leader of the Opposition made. Mr Beazley put out there for the Australian people a map, a plan for the future for the Australian people—something different. The government made announcements about new child-care places. Come on. All they did was lift the cap on family day care, where there are vacancies already, and lift the cap on out-of-hours school care. I highlighted the problems of child care in my most recent letter to my electorate. As a result, schools and centres that provide out of school hours care contacted my office and said, ‘We’ve got places here.’ But the places are not needed in the out of school hours care; the places are needed in the zero-to-five age group, and particularly in the under-two age group, where there are lengthy waiting lists throughout the electorate.

The $200 million and the 260 new child-care centres that the Leader of the Opposition committed to in his reply to the budget would be something that addressed this area of shortage, that addressed the problems. I suggest the government look towards the statements of the Leader of the Opposition. We really do not mind if they want to take some of those suggestions. Why don’t we mind? Because it would be good for the Australian people, it would be good for those mothers and single parents who have been forced back into the workforce through the government’s Welfare to Work changes. These mothers are going to find it very difficult to find child-care places for their children.

With the skills shortage that I highlighted earlier, the Leader of the Opposition stated that Labor would abolish up-front TAFE fees for traditional apprenticeships, as opposed to some of the actions of the government recently. This government is philosophically opposed—

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