Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The matter of public importance today is about the Howard government’s refusal to acknowledge and address the huge rises in the cost of living. Having listened to the member for Dickson, I can only say that his understanding of the rising cost of living is very lame and pitiful indeed. I welcome the opportunity to speak to this matter of public importance. I am frequently asked by residents living in my electorate of Calwell—and I imagine that the same holds true for all members in this place, including the member for Dickson; I am certain that he gets asked this question as well—why it is that, at a time when Australia is supposedly experiencing strong economic growth, more and more Australians are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. If the Australian economy is doing so well, why are so many working families struggling just to keep their heads above water?

The Howard government never tires of telling us that Australia’s economy has never been in better shape—a message that it repeats here on a daily basis and will certainly take to the next federal election. But at a time when Australia has supposedly become more prosperous as a nation, what this government continues to overlook is that many working families are finding themselves under growing financial pressure and are just simply managing to get by. The reason for this is simple yet entrenched: the cost of living today has far outstripped any growth in household disposable income, and the Howard government has proven itself either unable or unwilling to do anything about this. Everything today has become more expensive. Petrol prices have risen by over 40 per cent since December 2001, biting into household budgets in a way that is simply unsustainable for working families. Instead of giving the ACCC the teeth it needs to get to the bottom of petrol pricing in Australia by directing it to conduct a formal price inquiry into petrol prices, the Howard government has been content to go along with a ‘name and shame’ campaign that has gone nowhere and has all but been forgotten.

Like petrol, the price of basic groceries has gone up sharply. Taking a trip to the supermarket is more expensive now that it ever has been. The cost of buying food continues to rise daily. Child care, health care and dental care are all less affordable. Personal debt levels are at record highs. Of course interest rates have risen despite John Howard’s promise to keep them low. Job security is disappearing as the Australian workforce undergoes casualisation and as Work Choices takes effect. First-home buyers are spending on average more than 30 per cent of their disposable income on mortgage repayments. House repossessions are soaring and there is a housing affordability crisis continuing for new homebuyers. The list goes on. All of this has happened under John Howard’s watch, and all of this has made life close to impossible for many working families across Australia.

Following on from the member for Sydney, who spoke about housing, I would like to concentrate on the rising costs of child care, dental care and education. The degree to which working families are able to afford basic services like child care and health care gives us a strong indication of the level of social prosperity in Australia. Measuring social prosperity is a way of determining whether all Australians are sharing in the dividends of a healthy economy. Access to affordable and adequate health care, to quality child care and education for our children, and to other services like these plays a crucial role in supporting the quality of life that every Australian wants both for themselves and for their children. How affordable and accessible services like child care and health care are tells us how well the Howard government is doing when it comes to converting Australia’s economic prosperity into social prosperity, and whether our strong economy is making life easier for working families across Australia.

To build social prosperity you need to reinvest money back into the community and into those community services that help support our standard of living. Without social prosperity, economic prosperity begins to sound very hollow indeed. Statistics suggest that the Howard government’s record is less than exemplary on this matter. Over the last decade, the cost of child care has risen by 126 per cent in my home state of Victoria. Each year, childcare costs rise by an average of over 12 per cent. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, since December 2001 alone childcare costs have increased by a massive 82.5 per cent. To put this in perspective, this increase in the cost of child care over the last six years is nearly six times the consumer price index average of 14.8 per cent over the same period. Today, the average cost for child care in Victoria is somewhere in the vicinity of $240 a week, with many parents having to pay a lot more. The net result of all of this is that increases in childcare expenses are far outstripping any growth in household disposable income, pricing many families out of the childcare market altogether. Since 2001 childcare affordability has plummeted by over 50 per cent. Despite all logic, the Howard government continues to deny that there is a childcare crisis in Australia, and it has done very little to fix the problem. As working families continue to raid their household budgets to pay for child care, the Howard government is telling those working families that they have never had it so good.

When it comes to dental care, the picture is even bleaker. The Howard government has had 11 years to fix Australia’s public dental health system. All the government has done in that time is to play the blame game—pointing the finger of responsibility at state governments in an attempt to wash its hands of any responsibility for the state of Australia’s failing public dental health system. We have not forgotten back in 1996 that it was John Howard who ripped $100 million of Commonwealth funding out of Australia’s public dental health system when it scrapped the Commonwealth dental health program. It was a Labor government that introduced the Commonwealth dental health program in order to channel much needed Commonwealth funds into Australia’s public dental health system, and it was John Howard who decided to scrap this program. After 11 years of neglect and chronic underfunding by the Howard government, there are now over 650,000 Australians on public dental waiting lists across the country.

In my own electorate of Calwell, waiting lists for public dental care have blown out to over 30 months. Nationwide, up to one in 10 visits to a GP are related to dental problems and more than one in five Australians are going without recommended dental treatment because it is too expensive. Dental conditions account for a quarter of all hospitalisations for children and in the vicinity of 50,000 Australians are now hospitalised each year for preventable dental conditions. Why is this so? Because going to the dentist today means raiding the bank for an overwhelming majority of Australians. Families simply cannot afford to pay for regular dental health checkups or expensive dental work and they have absolutely no hope of accessing subsidised public dental care services in a timely fashion.

Education does not fare much better under this government. Whilst education spending has increased on average by 48 per cent among OECD countries, in Australia it has fallen by seven per cent since John Howard became Prime Minister. Similarly, whereas higher education spending per student has gone up on average by six per cent among OECD countries, in Australia it has fallen by six per cent. Under John Howard’s watch, Australia has tumbled to last place among OECD countries when it comes to investing in early childhood education. Commonwealth recurrent funding for Australian universities stood at 0.9 per cent of GDP in 1996. Even after factoring in the education announcements made in this year’s budget, recurrent funding to universities will still only make up 0.6 per cent of our GDP. This gives some indication of how bad the Howard government’s funding record for education has been over the last decade.

The point of all this is that working families, especially young students, have had to take up the slack for the Howard government’s negligence. Today education costs and it often costs an arm and a leg for many young Australians and for many families. Students face rising HECS fees and record levels of HECS debt. In my electorate of Calwell alone, students owe a staggering $58.5 million in HECS debt. After the budget, HECS fees for students studying accounting, economics or commerce will climb even higher. There was no reprieve in the budget this year for students in their HECS fees.

The 2007 budget provided the government with an important opportunity to make a significant investment in services such as aged care, child care and health care that are crucial to maintaining living standards in Australia and to find ways to help working families fight the burden of today’s rising cost of living, but the Howard government missed this opportunity. It has failed to provide any real or sustainable long-term relief for countless working families who are struggling to keep their heads above water and the basic cost of living continues to rise unchecked. (Time expired)

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