Kelly Hoare (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to speak on this year’s appropriation bills that were introduced by the Treasurer in the budget. This budget was big on tax cuts and big on superannuation changes. As has been indicated by the Leader of the Opposition and other members on this side—and the member for Casey just alluded to it—the tax cuts are not going to be opposed by Labor. These tax cuts, which work out at about $10 a week for the average family, have already been eaten up, and families have not received them yet. They have already been eaten up by the increase in the cost for a family to fill their car with petrol. They have already been eaten up with increased interest rates. They have already been eaten up with the lower take-home wages that families are receiving because of this government’s attack on industrial relations and the attack on the working conditions, penalty rates and overtime rates of Australian working people.

The superannuation changes, which everybody has been speaking about as though they have already been accepted, have not been accepted, as I understand it. The proposed changes the Treasurer put forward are subject to a consultation period, which will allow people to make submissions and comment on those proposed changes. That is why we in the Labor Party have not said whether we will support those changes, because we do not definitely know what those changes will be. It is quite misleading for government members to stand up and say, ‘Our government has provided these changes in superannuation taxes for people once they turn 60.’ We do not know what those changes definitely will be and we do not know how they are going to affect people. Until we are much clearer on the detail of that, we will be reserving our position.

There are a lot of areas in this budget that have not been addressed. One of those is Australia’s current account deficit and foreign debt. Our foreign debt at the moment is a massive $500 billion. That amount of foreign debt is absolutely and utterly unsustainable. There is no other large OECD commodity-exporting country with a current account deficit as high as Australia’s. The other major issue that this budget does not address is Australia’s trade deficit. We heard today that we now have a trade deficit that is in its 49th month—that is, four years and one month of trade deficits—and that has reached $1.5 billion. While the Minister for Trade and Deputy Prime Minister is trying to patch up problems in his own party, he really should be doing the job that he gets paid for and addressing some of these major issues that this government has presided over for the past 10 long years.

There was a lot of talk and promotion in the budget about uncapping child-care places. Of course, we all know in our own electorates that child-care issues are huge. There are long waiting lists and problems with accessibility and affordability. Families cannot access the type of child care they need where they need it, at the times they need it and for prices they can afford. In this budget, in uncapping child-care places, the Treasurer has put it out to the market, saying to the private providers, ‘If you want to build a child-care centre, you’ll be eligible for child-care subsidies.’ However, this provides more out of school hours and family day care places, of which there are already a surplus, but they are in the wrong places and they are unaffordable. The areas that need to be addressed have not been addressed by this. This budget has not created one extra child-care place for the people in my electorate who are trying to find it.

At the moment there is already talk about a surplus in this area of about 100,000 places. The shortages are in the long day care area for babies from nought to two or three years old, from six or seven in the morning until six or seven at night. When my children were babies and I was a career public servant and my partner was working full time as well, we required long day care for our babies. They were in child care from seven in the morning until six o’clock at night. It was very good quality child care in an industry which attracted very good quality workers. However, under this government over the past 10 long years, the child-care industry has been run down. Child-care workers’ wages have not kept up with average wages. There is not a lot of incentive—other than the passion of the people who go into the industry—in the form of pay and conditions to go into child care. So those areas need to be addressed and have not been addressed by this particular budget.

However, Kim Beazley in his budget reply speech committed Labor, with $200 million, to 260 new child-care centres to be built on school grounds. That is a huge bonus for working families, particularly working families who might have a child at school and a child who is not yet at school, where they may require long day care for the child who is not at school and maybe before and after school care at that same centre for the child who is at school. It stops the double drop-off, where you might have to take one child to a long day care centre and another child to an out of school hours care centre and then arrange for that child to go to school and back to care in the afternoon, and then you have to pick them both up from separate places that evening. The child-care centres in school grounds would stop that double drop-off. There will be 260 of these child-care centres in places where they are needed. We have estimated that, under this commitment, 25,000 new places will be created in areas of shortage.

Another area where the government has had its head in the sand for 10 long years and that has not been addressed in this budget is in relation to skills shortages. Labor has been out there listening to manufacturers and business communities, and we understand the problem and the need for this major crisis to be addressed. It has not been addressed for the past 10 years. It has not been addressed under this budget. Since 1996 we have had 300,000 young Australians turned away from TAFE. Between 2000 and 2004, the number of students undertaking vocational education and training has fallen by 6.6 per cent.

Labor’s position is to address this problem, and Labor in government would. As Kim Beazley outlined in his budget reply speech, a Labor government would introduce skills accounts which would pay TAFE fees for 60,000 traditional apprentices, with an $800 government deposit per year. Where the TAFE fee is less than that, the skills account can go towards buying textbooks and other things that people need to continue their education. The skills accounts will also pay TAFE fees for child-care workers in training, which will address the issue that I was just discussing.

A very large percentage of apprentices do not complete their apprenticeships, so a Beazley Labor government would provide a $2,000 trade completion bonus for traditional apprentices on completion of their training. We will double the number of skill based trade apprenticeships and we will establish new trade schools. There also needs to be a total overhaul of the New Apprenticeship scheme, which has obviously failed, or we would not have found ourselves in the position that we are in at the moment. We would also increase incentive payments and build new trade facilities.

What really caught my eye was the trade taster program for year 9 and 10 students to experience trade options. A similar program is currently run by the local service clubs in my area. In March this year I was at Morisset showground, where various high schools from around the region had bussed in year 10 students. The local business community had got together with the local Rotary Club, put their hands up and said, ‘We will donate a day of our business to come to the showground and set up our particular trade.’ There was hairdressing, my local gym, the mechanics and the spray painters. About 70 different trades and traineeships were there, and the students had an opportunity to be exposed to about half a dozen of them during the day to see what was required of them to fulfil training, to see what job opportunities were out there and to see whether they were the types of jobs for them. I congratulate Toronto Rotary Sunrise and the other service clubs which were involved as well as the schools that sent their students and the students who came along and actively participated in the program. We would be pleased to see that as a nationwide program to benefit year 9 and 10 students right across our country.

What has been the government’s response to this major economic crisis? It has been to give apprentices a new toolbox when they start their apprenticeship and to import foreign workers to take their jobs. It is an absolute disgrace and says a lot about what this government thinks about trying to support our young people, particularly those young people who are not necessarily going to go to university or even on to year 12. I have a son in that position. He is not obviously going to go to year 12 or university, but I would like for him, like every other mother and father in this country would like for their child, to have the option of going into a trade, getting a job and having the support of the government for that.

The other announcement that I particularly welcomed in Kim Beazley’s budget reply speech was the commitment to superfast broadband being made available to the majority of Australians over a five-year period. It is something that I have been a strong advocate for. Citizens of comparable OECD countries have a broadband speed up to 25 times faster than Australia’s current available broadband speed. From that, we would get all the flow-on effects. We would get education advantages for young people and benefits to the economy, to businesspeople in transacting their business, to the entertainment industry, to government services, to the health industry and the list goes on. It would be a huge advantage to have a communications system through the internet that is that fast.

Over the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of focus—and so there should be—on domestic violence, particularly in our Indigenous communities. There was nothing in this budget to address some of the major issues that go along with that. One of the major issues is the inability of women, particularly, to access well funded community legal centres, and particularly women’s Aboriginal legal services. You can just imagine a woman in a domestic violence situation—maybe her child is being abused as well—crying out for help and just not having access to those legal services. It is a daunting process for any one of us to go through the legal system, but for somebody who has been under such attack and who has been under attack for so long it is very difficult to even take that first step. When they do take that first step, they need to have those services available to them.

I will quote from the National Association of Community Legal Centres, in relation to this budget. Their media release of 11 May 2006 said:

Our lawyers, with over 20 years experience, earn the same as the average first year legal graduate. Without more funds, staff will be lost and services will have to be cut.

To give you a bit of an idea about community legal centres, it says:

Community legal centres have been providing free legal services to the Australian community for over 30 years. 180 centres in urban, regional, rural and remote Australia provide help with family law, housing, credit & debt, income support, etc. 2.5million Australians have been assisted in the last 10 years with these bread and butter legal problems.

But it goes on to say:

Community legal centres last year turned away 40,000 people.

I dread to imagine what circumstances those people were in then and what their circumstances are now since they have not have access to those legal services.

In conclusion and in summary, Kim Beazley’s budget reply to Peter Costello’s 11th budget outlined and emphasised the gaping holes in the budget and drew on policy areas and directions in which a Labor government would take Australia. The government had a $15 billion surplus at its disposal to make some real changes, but what we saw was a political exercise to shore up the vote of the so-called baby boomers with tax cuts now and for superannuation. These tax cuts will be eaten away by rising petrol prices, increased mortgage interest rates and declining take-home pay under the Prime Minister’s industrial relations regime. Kim Beazley also pointed to the three major areas in need of reform which a Labor government would implement. I have mentioned the areas of the skills shortages in relation to vocational education and training and in relation to child-care places, as well as the commitment to high-speed broadband. The statement delivered by Kim Beazley forms a strong basis on which to further develop to ensure that to take Australia in the direction that we believe we need to go in—that is, economic prosperity with fairness, justice and equal opportunity for all Australians—the next government of this country will be a Labor government with Kim Beazley as Prime Minister.

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