Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Rudd government campaigned on a fresh approach before the last election. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister offered something called new leadership to Australians and so-called hope for working families across our nation. They spoke about things like petrol prices, grocery prices, interest rates and housing pressures. They campaigned on solving emotive issues that were facing the Australian people. This government, the then opposition, portrayed themselves as the saviour of those facing escalating petrol prices and grocery prices and unaffordable housing. Yet, despite those promises, the Rudd government has failed to deliver. It has provided a visionless budget. It is a budget that has not set an agenda for the future and is simply another case of politics as a substitute for substance.

The main component of this budget is in fact a tax cut package that was directly lifted from Liberal Party policy. This has been correctly identified by Ross Gittins in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. He has drawn attention to the fact that the claim made by the Treasurer on budget night that this is a Labor budget is absolutely untrue. This is a half-Liberal budget, as Ross Gittins correctly identifies. It is a half-Liberal budget but—like the USSR, who used to steal technology from the USA and then attempt to use it, not understanding what it was or how it worked—the Labor Party has lifted half the Liberal Party policy but forgotten the other half.

Ross Gittins also highlights that the Treasurer has attempted to argue to the Australian people that he is delivering for people on average weekly earnings a tax cut of $20. Conveniently, the Treasurer has failed to mention that he has cited average earnings of $48,000—which indeed they are when you include part-time workers and all kinds of employees—but adult full-time employee average earnings are actually $60,000 in Australia. Those people will only receive a tax cut of $11.50, not the $20 cited by the Treasurer. It was a very insightful article in theSydney Morning Herald, I remind members here in the chamber. I encourage people to read it.

The spin of the government continues. It is absolutely incredible. They are trying to convince workers on average incomes that they will be getting bigger tax cuts than they actually will. In my electorate of Mitchell, hardworking families will certainly be worse off from this budget. The budget set aside $75 million to tackle urban congestion and begin planning for transport infrastructure in the neediest areas of Australia. There is no place in Western Sydney that is more in need of transport infrastructure than my own electorate of Mitchell, in north-western Sydney. It is one of the fastest growing electorates in the country, but there is no train line and there is no public bus system; there are just 10 years of New South Wales Labor’s broken promises to build a heavy rail line in the north-west of Sydney.

While the most recent reannouncement of the north-west rail line—now repackaged as the North West Metro line—was met with severe scepticism throughout Mitchell, in the local media and in the state media, the federal government had an opportunity to do something about it. What did they do? Absolutely nothing. There was not one transport dollar for people in north-western Sydney and not one transport or infrastructure dollar for anyone in the outer suburbs of Sydney.

When I read the budget, my first impression was the opposite. I saw a line item: the Western Metro link. I could not find any reference to the Western Metro link online. I thought they must certainly be referring to the North West Metro link, which was announced by the state government. It is the only area in suburban New South Wales without access to public transport. But I was wrong. This is a new Western Metro line, a metro line that runs alongside the heavy rail line that already exists in the inner city suburbs of Newtown, Lewisham, Ashfield and Burwood. It is a transport alternative for those in the inner west, while the working families in the north-west and south-west of Sydney are left with no means of transport and no real hope that anything will be done about it.

Two days after the announcement in the budget, it was back to what Labor is all about: all spin and no substance. In an attempt to avoid scrutiny on the issue, Morris Iemma and the state Labor government came out after the budget and pronounced that the North West Metro line was likely to be delivered early and that it would be accompanied by the new Western Metro line, which they announced. The announcement of the Western Metro line was met with the headline ‘Promised north-west metro could arrive early’. This week, only two weeks later, internal documents leaked to the newspaper show that the metro is more than $700 million over budget. It will struggle to be built on time. It will not be able to carry the passengers the Labor government has claimed it will.

With no hope or direction in sight for the transport needs of working families in north-west and south-west Sydney, the Rudd government decided to fund a Western Metro line running alongside the heavy rail line in the suburbs I have mentioned. Where are these suburbs? Whose electorate do those suburbs fall into in the inner city where this duplication of already existing public transport is going to occur? I will tell you: this new Western Metro line duplicates public transport in Grayndler, the electorate of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. This is an example of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government carving up the pork, putting it in a barrel, jumping on it and rolling it down the rail line from Lewisham to the city. Mr Albanese, the member for Grayndler, states:

There is nothing more inefficient than a car on the road with the engine on going nowhere.

It is comments like these that show how out of touch the government is. Seventy per cent of the dwellings in my electorate of Mitchell have two or more cars, the highest number of cars per dwelling in Australia. Why? For the reason I have outlined—there is no access to public transport. Every adult in my electorate has to have a car. The electorate of the minister for infrastructure and transport has the third lowest number of cars per dwelling in Australia. Seventy per cent of dwellings in my electorate have two or more cars, compared to 26 per cent of dwellings in the minister for infrastructure and transport’s electorate. But this budget is outlining a new public transport expansion in the electorate of the minister for infrastructure and transport, duplicating an already existing heavy rail line from Lewisham to the city.

For those not from New South Wales here today, let me just say that it is 20 minutes from the trendy, spivvy inner city suburbs of Petersham and Lewisham to the city, and it is two hours for the working families of my electorate, south-west Sydney, Penrith and Macarthur to travel to work every day, facing tolls, traffic and time away from their family. As I said, this is pork-barrelling in Grayndler and the inner city while the people of north-western Sydney and Western Sydney are crying out for one single dollar of transport funding and infrastructure funding. The member for Grayndler, the minister for infrastructure, decides to put more funding for transport services in his own transport-rich seat.

But the pork-barrelling does not stop there. While north-west Sydney barely received a cent in this budget, the member for Grayndler, the minister for infrastructure, also found $14.5 million for a local school in his electorate—a local school, I might add, which over the last four years had on one of the busiest roads of Sydney a ‘No Howard’ banner flying from the school premises. Let me just reiterate that for the benefit of the chamber: they flew a ‘No Howard’ banner from a public school on the busiest road in Sydney, and then in this budget, when the Labor government is elected, they receive a $14.5 million grant. Every year the school holds something called a Tampa day, where students and teachers wear black armbands in recognition of the Tampa being turned around by the previous government.

I want to draw to the attention of this House that public schools are not the political playthings of members in this chamber. They ought not to be politicised. Education is not indoctrination and ought not to be political indoctrination. Education should be impartial and education should be fair, and the funding in this budget—

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