Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and cognate bills. Including my year as a candidate for the seat of Parramatta, this is my third budget. During the first budget I was in the electorate; I was not in the parliament. I was there the day after the budget was announced. I was out in the streets of Parramatta early the next morning, hearing first-hand the views of people in my electorate. In the second budget, I was here, but there were a considerable number of phone calls into my office in Parramatta, so I was able to get a fairly clear picture of my community’s response to the budget. It was quite disconcerting this time around—my third time—to find myself, after three days in Canberra, having had only one phone call into the office about the budget, and feeling really disconnected from my electorate. I was saying to my colleagues, even the night after, that I felt the desperate need to get back to my electorate and stand around in the shopping centres to find out just what people were thinking about this budget that appeared, at first blush, to be an extremely generous throwing of confetti around the electorate.

What I found when I returned was that, even though I doorknocked for three days and had four mobile officers out in the shopping centres the following week, virtually nobody raised this budget. It was as if it sunk without a trace. I really had to do some talking to people to find out why that was, because that was incredibly unusual compared with the others of the three budgets that I have experienced. What I found was that people saw it as more of the same—a complete lack of solutions to the problems that had developed over time. Pressure on families and constraints on business are not new problems. Most people that I talked to knew something was wrong in the last election.

People have been aware for quite some time that these issues have been growing and getting worse, and they are well and truly now looking for solutions. They are looking for solutions to the pressure on families; our hospital system; our health system; our education system, particularly universities, TAFE and skills training; the environment, particularly water; skills shortages; affordable access to child care; and, underneath all of that, the incredibly stretched budget both in terms of money and time. Our families are finding themselves under incredible pressure due to both financial constraints and time constraints. They are well and truly looking for answers now. They are sick of the blame shifting. They have been sick of that for some time. They are sick of inaction. They are sick of endless talking. They want real, substantial action on the basic infrastructure that under this federal government has been allowed to run down to such an extent that everybody—and I do mean everybody out there—gets the problem and is waiting for very real answers.

The Treasurer has not delivered answers in this budget. In fact, one could be forgiven for thinking he did not even hear the question. This is a budget absolutely for yesterday. It does not look to tomorrow. It does not facilitate growth. It does not look to the needs of the community—of either families or business—and it is an absolutely wasted opportunity, given the extraordinary boom times that Australia and in fact the world finds itself in. This is a once in a lifetime—or, one could argue, once in several lifetimes—boom. A very small part of our economy, the commodities sector, is doing so well because of the booming of China and India—which represents around 85 per cent of the world—that it is sweeping us all along at a rate which the Treasurer underestimated by 50 per cent. It is sweeping us along at unprecedented levels. There are only 20 countries that did not grow over the last two years. The world is growing. A drover’s dog could bring in a surplus at a time like this. But it takes more than a drover’s dog to make the most of it—that is, to use this windfall gain, to make sure that we are in the best possible position, to improve the potential of the rest of the economy, to invest in the future, to invest in our future.

This is not a budget for the future of the country, nor for the future economy, nor for small business growth over the next 10 years, nor for families, nor for community cohesion, nor for the environment. There is something in it for those who have done well over recent years—and the tax cuts are deserved—but there is nothing there to set the ground for future prosperity or for our children’s prosperity. It does not give my community what it needs. My area of Parramatta and its surrounds is one of extraordinary potential. In a lot of ways, it is a place of beginnings. It is the place where people come, where they can afford to buy a house with a yard that is close to a CBD. There are lots of new families moving into the area. New migrants move into the Harris Park and Westmead areas initially before they can afford to buy elsewhere, and they tend to move further west then. But they start here. This is their first place. It is a place of beginnings. It is a major CBD area and it is an extraordinary place for new business, because of the support of the local CBD and the extraordinary number of people who pass through that CBD every day.

I expect from the Treasurer a budget which provides the groundwork and the foundations to allow the people and the businesses of Parramatta to get about doing what they are doing. I will say here that there is a difference between what a conservative sees when they look at Parramatta and what a progressive sees when they look at Parramatta. It is clear from legislation that we have seen over the last years that, when the conservative government looks at Parramatta, it sees what people are doing bad and it introduces regulation to try and stop it. The Welfare to Work program is an example of that. The assumption is that people are doing the wrong thing and that they have to be beaten up or forced to do the right thing.

I see something quite different. I see the vast majority of people doing in their daily lives exactly what the community needs them to do. I see families that are setting about trying to raise their children well, get them a good education and turn them into productive members of society. They are trying to save for their retirement, trying to build relationships with each other, trying to juggle the competing demands of workplace and family—essentially trying to do everything that the community needs them to do so that the taxpayer does not have to pick up the cost later in life. When a family fails, that is what happens: the taxpayer does pick up the cost at some point. We all need families to do well, and what I see is the vast majority of families trying to do exactly what we need them to do. I see the same things from small business, where people are trying to grow their small business and trying to do the right thing by the community, and from employers, in the main, trying to do for themselves exactly what we as a community need them to do.

The questions for me are: does this budget facilitate the good intentions and good work of families and businesses—and the community at large, for that matter—or does it make things more difficult? Does it simply let the status quo apply and let things get worse from here? Does this budget address the needs of small business, for example? Does it address the growing skills crisis? Does it address the infrastructure issues that small business is facing? Does it address our appalling R&D record over the last 10 years? Does it help develop export markets? These are all issues for thriving CBDs like the one that I represent, the Parramatta CBD and its surrounds. Does it ease the path? Does it give anyone a push? Does it open new doors? Does it look ahead? Does it identify barriers and try to break them down? The answer must be an unequivocal, ‘No, it doesn’t.’

Similarly, looking at families: does it assist families in their efforts to educate their children well, particularly those families who do not have a choice between sending their children to state schools or the more expensive private schools? Does this budget ease the path that parents are on? Does it make it easier for them to educate their children well or does it make it more difficult? Does it make it easier for parents to prepare for their retirement? The answer has to be no. With HECS debts rising yet again and people entering their 30s with substantial debts and without a first mortgage, one has to answer, ‘Absolutely not; this budget does nothing to assist families to prepare for retirement.’

The budget absolutely fails to deliver the fundamentals with which families, businesses and communities flourish over the long term. It is a wasted opportunity. This sort of windfall comes along once in a century if we are lucky. This government has absolutely failed in this budget to capitalise on it.

Parramatta is one of the major CBDs in Sydney, certainly the second biggest, and it is the main one in Western Sydney, a community of around two million people—one of the largest communities in Australia and one of the largest economies in Australia. It is a major employment and business hub. It has been going through a bit of a boom recently, largely due to the property boom, with very large construction companies working in Parramatta—and construction represents a very large part of Parramatta’s GDP. There has also been some very strong state investment in large construction with the building of the new legal precinct, the police centre and the new Civic Place. And the support services for that large influx of government business have been driving a lot of the growth in the inner CBD. But, like all businesses in this country, businesses in and surrounding Parramatta face constraints. They face very real skill shortages, and I hear about those every day. They face transport problems, and we know of course that this government withdrew federal interest in transport when they were first elected in 1996. There is a serious lack of investment in R&D, and poor export performances.

Even a friend of the government, the Business Council of Australia, usually a strong supporter of the government, has had something to say about this in its prebudget submission. Michael Chaney of the Business Council of Australia warned that serious constraints and imbalances are emerging within the economy that, in the absence of reform in key areas, will slow growth, limit opportunities and undermine the economy’s capacity to deal with longer term challenges. In spite of this and warnings from many other credible economic experts, we find once again that the government has failed to act in this area.

The community is stronger if people live where they work. My community is stronger if people can spend 10, 15 or even 30 minutes travelling to work. It leaves them with more time at home, before and after work, and more opportunities to socialise with work colleagues and others. It is particularly true when a second parent returns to work and it is particularly true for part-time work. That means that it is particularly true for women returning to the workforce—women trying to squeeze their working hours in between the time they drop their children to child care or school and pick them up later in the afternoon. These are parents who really cannot afford to spend an hour and a half travelling to and from the city to work.

For my community, the strength of the local business community is absolutely essential not just for the growth of business but also because business is about family and community. Local business forms an incredibly important social cohesion role by providing workplaces such that people work and live in the suburbs and know and socialise with people outside the work environment. We in Sydney have all experienced living in one suburb and working in another, and our friends can be so separated by geographical distances that it can be extremely difficult to maintain those social connections. It is incredibly important to our community that the local Parramatta businesses and the businesses surrounding them continue to flourish, and that means that they need to be competitive in this globalised world. That means that we as a nation have to invest in our skills and R&D, and concern ourselves with how we are competing with China.

China is not going to remain a low-skilled workforce for very long; in fact, it is not now. China is spending so much more—21 per cent of its GDP—on training at the moment. We are down in the bottom 15 in the OECD in terms of our training. We are one of the only countries in the OECD that is spending less on education every year, rather than more. If my local businesses are going to compete then this country needs to remember that our competitive advantage is in our minds. It is in our skills, our imaginations and our innate ability to innovate. It is about time this government invested in that. Communities like mine, where a CBD supports an incredibly vibrant, high-density and rapidly growing community, can only do well if they are able to compete in the global market.

Mining, incidentally, does not take place in Parramatta. Parramatta is not directly benefiting from the commodities boom. The other 95 per cent of the economy is found in Parramatta. The other 95 per cent of the economy is being completely ignored in this budget. This budget rides on five per cent of the economy and ignores the other 95 per cent. It certainly ignores the future of the other 95 per cent. I, too, will cut my remarks short because I know there are a lot of other speakers. But I say to the government that it is another year of wasted opportunities and another year of completely throwing away one of the greatest opportunities Australia has even had to invest in its future and get its fundamentals right. This is a profound opportunity and it is incredibly sad that we have seen it wasted. We know as families and individuals, in our own lives, that when something happens that gives you a windfall gain, you use it to invest in the future. You use it to make sure that that prosperity continues. I urge the government to take my concerns seriously and consider the needs of the other 95 per cent of the economy.

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