Kim Wilkie (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government has been asleep at the wheel on this issue. They have failed to recognise that a world-class broadband network will underpin the next stage in Australia’s economic expansion when the mining boom inevitably wanes. The government is so out of touch, it refuses to admit there is even a problem.

Take the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Helen Coonan, who says that our levels of broadband access are ‘okay’. She also says that no-one is complaining about the speeds of broadband in metropolitan areas. The member opposite, Mr Ciobo, said a minute ago that these problems are fabricated, that they are not real. I can tell the chamber that these problems are real and that the minister is demonstrating she is out of touch because of the countless people who have contacted my office and complained about their inability to access broadband or the woeful speed provided by the current provider.

The name Peter Bull may not mean anything to the minister for communications or the member opposite, but he is one of my constituents living in the suburb of East Cannington. He and many more like him have been appallingly affected by the government’s failure on broadband policy. Mr Bull is a small business owner who works from home and relies on the internet as a vital business tool. He and his partner recently moved to East Cannington after they received an assurance from Optus that broadband would be available at their new address, but it was not. What should have been a simple procedure for a small business owner like Mr Bull turned into a drama of endless phone calls and misleading information. On further investigation, Mr Bull discovered that the problem is due to insufficient copper wires between his house and the telephone exchange. Telstra said it has no plans to upgrade the cabling any time in the future. What Mr Bull and so many other Australians want to know is this: when will they have access to world class broadband services? I can tell them that a Labor government, in partnership with private enterprise, will deliver a national fibre-to-the-node broadband network that will deliver the level of service necessary for Australia’s future economic growth.

A second example of the effect of this government’s broadband policy is that of another of my constituents, Kewdale resident Ainslee Arnott. On 29 December 2006, Mr Arnott requested a broadband connection from his internet service provider, Amcom. He writes:

All I want is ADSL Broadband in Kewdale. I am a hardworking taxpayer who wants a fair go and some answers. We live eight minutes from the heart of the city and cannot get ADSL because we are too far from the Ascot exchange.

The response which Mr Arnott received from Amcom was not good reading. It states:

Ainslee, in regards to your query as to whether you can get broadband, I have performed a check and it is not possible to get broadband in your area due to transmission loss being too high. Regrettably, there is nothing we can do about this, as we do not hold the authority over the cables that the connections run through, so it is not possible to provide you with an ADSL service.

Australians deserve better than this. If Australia is to remain a competitive player in the 21st century, this sorry state of affairs cannot continue. Under a Rudd Labor government it will not. Under a Rudd Labor government, the people of Swan will no longer be forced to relocate their homes and businesses simply for the privilege of decent access to a broadband network. We are determined to deliver a better broadband network for Australia and we are determined to lay out the policies that will create Australia’s future prosperity.

I would now like to discuss another matter of urgent economic importance and that is aged care. Aged care is a matter of paramount concern to me, given that senior Australians make up 20 per cent of the constituents of my electorate of Swan. I welcome the $500 one-off bonus for those senior Australians on pensions and the $1,000 one-off carers bonus. However, budget expenditure from this government has always been far less than what has been needed to address aged care issues. This government has failed dismally in providing a sustainable funding model for residential aged care and in keeping up with the real costs of providing aged care.

According to the aged care council, there are now 160,000 Australians living in residential care and this figure is set to grow by 215 per cent to 504,000 by 2045. Many of our senior residents are missing out on receiving aged care services and those who do get them find those services are rationed. There is an increasing gap between aged care costs and government funding that has resulted in declining levels of aged care services. We need to ensure that our senior residents receive the proper measures of care that will enable them to live out their remaining years in comfort and with the dignity that they deserve.

The housing crisis has had a particularly harsh impact upon senior Australians and pensioners. Here, again, the Treasurer has left pensioners, particularly those living in rental accommodation, well and truly out in the cold. I outline here the details of two cases that demonstrate this government’s failure to support the housing needs of senior Australians. A constituent in my electorate, an 81-year-old pensioner from East Victoria Park, has lived at the same address for seven years. In May last year he renegotiated his rental agreement with his agent at $120 a week. In November last year his rent was increased to $170 a week. In March 2007 his agent notified him that rent was to be increased a further $20 a week, effective from 22 May, making his total rent $190. As of 4 April this man’s total pension, including rent assistance, will be $634 a fortnight, of which $380 he has paid in rent. This leaves him a meagre $264 with which to support himself.

A second example is that of an elderly constituent from the suburb of Como who receives an Australian age pension and has recently been advised of her landlord’s intention to sell the property. Four hundred and eighty dollars of her fortnightly pension is paid on rent. Naturally she is very concerned for her future and fears that given the escalating rental and property market in Western Australia her pension will not sustain her in her subsequent dwelling.

These examples highlight the woeful inadequacy of the government’s rent assistance policies, in particular the plight of elderly pensioners who find themselves at the mercy of unforgiving market forces. It is unfair to expect Western Australian pensioners and low-income earners to survive on the government’s one-size-fits-all rent assistance policy given the escalating property and rental markets in Perth. Senior Australians deserve better. This budget fails to meet the basic needs of senior Australians for quality affordable aged care and affordable housing.

The failures on infrastructure, broadband and aged care that I have outlined here exemplify how this government has dropped the ball on economic reform. Instead, we see evidence of a government full of complacency and contempt that has abandoned the principles of good policy making. I refer to Ken Henry’s speech on 13 March when he tossed a political hand grenade which demolished the government’s economic credentials and exposed their economic policies for what they really are: a sham. Here we have one of our top public servants, the country’s most senior economic bureaucrat, embarrassing the government by making unprecedented comments on how Treasury’s policy approach to tackling climate change and water reform would be far superior to that hastily cobbled together by cabinet over summer without input from Treasury or the finance department. Ken Henry reveals the reality of a government no longer concerned with economic reform or productivity growth or preparing Australia for the challenges of the future. Instead of reform, the Treasurer merely delivers repackaged spending from previous years.

George Megalogenis in the Weekend Australian hit the nail on the head in his article on 12 May. He likened the government’s budget to the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine catches out her dentist ‘regifting’ a present she has given him by recycling it to someone else. Megalogenis wrote:

Every pre-election budget contains an element of regifting, in which money that was supposed to pay for an old policy is pinched to fund a new one.

This budgetary sleight-of-hand is the work of a mean and tricky Treasurer. He has given up on economic reform. He is only concerned with his own party’s re-election. As Dr Henry argued, measures to increase productivity are urgently needed, yet what does the Treasurer deliver: merely another budget of clever election year handouts and political spending.

Education is the best example of how this budget is comprised of clever or tricky policies designed only to get the government re-elected. Under this government national investment in education will have declined from two per cent of GDP in 1995-96 to 1.6 per cent of GDP in 2007-08, and indications are that Australia’s productivity growth will decline from the end of the next financial year. The Treasurer’s smirking self-congratulation over the creation of the endowment fund for higher education cannot hide the black mark of shame that this government wears for presiding over a decade of decline in federal investment in education. The government’s belated discovery of the value of education investment is a decade too late. While the endowment fund is a welcome support for our beleaguered university sector, it does not address the fundamental deficiencies in university funding. It does not provide the real increases to recurrent funding that our universities require. It does nothing to address student-teacher ratios and overcrowded university lectures. It does nothing to address the fact that university students are forced to take on more paid employment and more debt to support themselves through university. It does nothing to address the funding shortfall that has resulted in $100,000 degrees for Australian students.

The government’s answer to these problems is not to invest in universities, not to invest in an education revolution, but rather to deregulate fees so that the cost of a university education rises even higher. Budget measures reveal the true intentions of the government in their failure to invest in our universities. The Prime Minister who said that Australia would never see a $100,000 degree has instead presided over an ever-growing number of full-fee degrees for Australian students, many that cost much more than $100,000. It is only the Labor Party that has a commitment to implement an education revolution which will underpin Australia’s future prosperity and restore the fair go to our schools, colleges and universities. What Australia needs is fresh thinking and a fresh commitment to making the economic reforms that will lay the foundations for Australia’s next stage of economic prosperity.

What does this budget offer? Nothing more than the stale ideas of a government that has passed its use by date. It is only Labor that has a plan to build Australia’s future economic prosperity, a plan based on investing in vital national infrastructure, building a world-class broadband network, investing in aged care and implementing an education revolution— (Time expired).

See this speech in context