Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer concluded his budget speech by saying this was a Labor budget, and he was right. This was a typical Labor budget, being the biggest spending budget in Australian history and the biggest taxing budget in Australian history. It was also an occasion for Labor to get square with all of the people that it hates. It was payback time. The people on their hit list included those who had been successful, people in small business, the tourism industry, stay-at-home mums, people who live in rural and regional areas, people who produce ethanol and believe in alternative energy, people who have private health insurance and self-funded retirees. All of these people have long been on Labor’s hit list and they all suffered in Labor’s first budget.

The government spin doctors and circus ringmasters told us that this was going to be a Robin Hood budget that took from the rich and gave to the poor. Is a large family that needs a people mover rich? Is a family living in a remote area and needing a four-wheel drive for the dirt roads rich? Are families who work 80 hours a week to earn $75,001 in six months too rich to need some help with their babies?

The reality is that Labor’s budget did not take from the rich and give to the poor; it will hurt the poor. It will hurt the poor more than anyone. It will hurt the poor when one million people are added to the public hospital queues as a result of Labor’s attack on private health insurance. It will hurt the poor because this budget does nothing to help them pay their mortgage, to lower food prices or to reduce petrol prices. The budget will create 134,000 more unemployed. The budget delivers nothing for pensioners and it takes the seniors card away from self-funded retirees. There were no tax cuts for these people, just longer hospital queues, higher rents and higher food prices.

The reality is that, yes, this is a Labor budget. It has failed the Australian people as Labor budgets have failed them in the past. It has demonstrated yet again that Labor are completely unable to effectively manage an economy. They inherited an enormous surplus. They copied the tax cuts committed by the previous government. They spent a proportion of the heritage that they received from the good management of the previous government, and as budget follows budget under Labor that heritage will be further eroded. As the economy runs down, as it always does under Labor governments, the budget surpluses will turn into deficits. The slush funds that have been put aside will be drawn on to try to keep future Labor budgets afloat.

This was a budget that was very much about spin. We were told that there needed to be a new tax on mixed drinks because that would attack binge drinking. But that has been exposed as the phoney assertion that it is. The reality is that figures as late as today have shown that there has been a 20 per cent increase in the sales of higher alcohol content spirits as a result of these tax changes. People have simply changed their drinking patterns and their purchasing patterns and they will get double the hit for half the tax. This was not a well thought through measure; it was a classic example of Labor’s busy spin doctors suggesting that what was, in fact, about binge taxing was really about binge drinking.

This particular budget will do nothing to address key issues of inflation. I was interested that the Labor Party announced a five-point plan to deal with inflation. One of the key elements of that five-point plan was to build more infrastructure. The reality, of course, is that that, of itself, will be inflationary in the short term and it will take many, many years before the benefits of that increased infrastructure flow through into better pipelines and therefore lower inflation.

We do need to spend more money on infrastructure—I am wholeheartedly supportive of that—but it is surprising, therefore, that in the budget, where I have heard the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government boast about the increased commitment to roads and to rail, Labor between now and 2013 will actually spend only about half as much on roads and rail as the previous government had committed. Labor has only identified $15.5 billion worth of road and rail projects. We had committed over $31 billion. The minister for infrastructure acknowledged as much in the parliament yesterday.

The centrepiece of this budget are three new slush funds: the Building Australia Fund, a health fund and an education fund. The Building Australia Fund steals $2 billion from the Communications Fund set up from the proceeds of the Telstra sale that was to be used to provide new technology in perpetuity in areas where it would otherwise not be profitable or possible. What Labor have effectively done is to steal the money intended for future generations to provide new technology for people living in rural and regional areas and, for that matter, some parts of outer metropolitan areas where it is economically difficult to provide the latest technology. They are stealing that money to provide a replica of existing technology in the cities. Where is the $2 billion actually going to go? They have acknowledged that they need $4.7 billion for their Connecting Australia program, although the latest estimates suggest that to provide fibre to the node to 98 per cent of the Australian population will properly cost closer to $100 billion, not $4.7 billion. The reality is that country people who have had the OPEL contract axed will have no access to high-speed broadband for a minimum of five years even if the Labor Party are ever able to deliver on their promise in relation to fibre to the node. The establishment of this slush fund includes $2 billion put aside for regional Australian telecommunications.

We are told that the balance of the money is to be spent over a range of infrastructure projects. However, during the election Labor made a whole range of promises to build roads—the previous speaker referred to one—and we were told that all of those were going to be funded without question. Labor have set up Infrastructure Australia, which is supposed to assess projects on their merits and ensure that the very best value is obtained for the available money. Yet every project that Labor promised during the election campaign is going to be immune from the Building Australia assessment. That money will therefore be committed to and taken out of the Building Australia slush fund before they have even done the assessment process.

The reality is that the only real funding provided for roads in this budget is for planning, studies and examinations. A classic case is the F3 to Branxton in the Hunter Valley, where Labor are about to fund the 28th study into the traffic needs of the area rather than getting on with the project upon which $100 million has already been spent to acquire land and to plan and ensure that that vital piece of road infrastructure can be built.

Labor are taking $500 million from the funding of the Bruce Highway, much of which is in my own electorate, to spend on other projects, even though they know that this project has been classified by the Automobile Association and, indeed, the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics as the highest priority road project in Queensland. There have been more than 30 fatalities on this road in recent times, yet Labor have taken money away from the project to spend on others without any scrutiny from the Building Australia Fund or any other independent assessment. They have simply moved off in their own direction.

Of course, not all this money is going to be spent on roads and rail. The Building Australia Fund—if there is any money left in it after Labor has fulfilled its election promises—is going to be shared around amongst all kinds of infrastructure projects. The reality is that it will not go around. It will take a year or more, probably two years, before any commitments are made as to how this money will be spent and that will be on the eve of the next federal election. Those who describe this fund, the health fund and the education fund as Sussex Street slush funds have got it right. The reality is that this is money that is being put aside to fund Labor’s next election campaign. It has nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Australia; it is all about a desperate attempt by Labor to get itself re-elected whenever the next election is held.

I refer also to the education fund. More than half of the money in the education fund has actually been taken from our universities endowment fund. It is not Labor’s new money at all. It is closing down a fund that was to provide money in perpetuity to build infrastructure at our universities. It is going to spend the capital as well as the interest for a range of pre-election commitments. This is classic Labor governance: do nothing year after year, talk about planning and studies—more than 100 reviews have already been commissioned—then just on the eve of an election suddenly get the bulldozers to move or provide some money for a grant in a key marginal electorate. That is the way Labor governments operate at state level. The photocopier for the plan has been moved to Canberra and we are seeing exactly the same kind of strategy here. It is a government about spin and about the image of the Prime Minister—making sure that his ties are correctly chosen by the right butler; making sure that he moves with appropriate entourages around the world, with a fleet of aircraft to meet his every need. Labor creates that kind of image rather than actually doing constructive things for the Australian people.

Country Australia took a particularly savage hit in this budget. In the first announcements of budget cuts by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, more than three-quarters of the cuts were to rural and regional Australia. One-third of the people got three-quarters of the cuts; the cities were left largely untouched. Country people are always on Labor’s hit list. Kevin Rudd said on election night that Labor would govern for all Australians, but seven million Australians who live outside the capital cities found in the very first budget that they do not count in Labor’s eyes. In three key areas alone—regional development, communications and agriculture—Labor stripped $1 billion from regional and rural Australia. Labor abolished the Regional Partnerships and Growing Regions programs, saving $436 million. But it only put $176 million back for regional development, and nearly all of that money has been committed for Labor’s election promises—projects like the Fort Street school rort and the respringing of the Canberra dance hall, which would never have stacked up under any kind of proper scrutiny or independent assessment.

Existing agriculture programs worth $334 million have been replaced with climate change programs worth just $220 million. Labor has provided no funding at all for an alternative to the scrapped OPEL contract—$959 million essentially taken directly from regional Australians. Broadband is unlikely to be available to people for at least five years and probably longer. Labor did extend the coalition’s Broadband Guarantee, at a cost of $271 million. That is welcome but it does not meet the hopes and aspirations of people in rural and regional areas who had expected that by now, under the OPEL contract, they would be starting to get the broadband speeds that city people take for granted. So this has been a devastating budget for people who live outside the capital cities. Once more, they know that there is no hope that their concerns and legitimate interests will ever be taken seriously by this government.

Labor’s long list of hates extended through to people in small businesses and  to people in the tourist industry, where programs were slashed substantially. New taxes have been imposed, particularly taxes on people leaving and arriving in Australia. We desperately need to encourage people to come to Australia to keep our tourism industry strong, especially at a time when world fuel prices are high. Labor’s response to that is to increase taxes on people coming to Australia and then also to slash support for the tourist industry in its promotion and in its support programs for Australians in those industries.

They have also attacked a number of important social programs. Stay-at-home mums have never been considered a priority by Labor, and this budget has really demonstrated Labor’s priorities. Rich families who put their children into child care will get an increased tax rebate. They will get an increased tax rebate as long as they put their children into a childcare centre. However, the changes to the family tax benefit income test mean that a mother who earns no income at all and stays at home will get nothing. So a stay-at-home mum who earns nothing will get a significant cut in this budget, but a rich family which puts their children in a childcare centre will get significant tax benefits. This is typical of Labor’s approach to social policy. They believe that children should be raised in childcare centres and that families who take the decision to raise their children within their own environment should be penalised. I think it is an ill-thought-out and very foolish policy. I know that childcare centres do a good job and, to the best of their ability, provide care and support for children, but families which choose to make the sacrifice to be a one-income family and families where the mother or the father spends their full time raising the children also need support. They should not be penalised by a deliberate budget strategy. The coalition’s policy was to try to make that choice possible for families and to make it as taxation neutral as possible. What this government has done is to ensure that families who want to stay at home and look after their children are going to be seriously adversely affected.

This particular budget does nothing for people who were expecting the government to do something about petrol prices, after promising it would. It does nothing to provide any confidence that the government was sincere when it said it would put downward pressure on grocery prices. The reality is in fact that this government is putting upward pressure on grocery prices. Its proposals to introduce new taxes on the transport industry are quite incredible. At a time when fuel prices are going up, this government actually wants to increase the taxation on the transport industry. That will flow through to every item on every shelf in every store around the country. It will have a particular impact on the manufacturing industry outside the capital cities because of the extra cost of transporting products to the marketplace. It will also have a radical impact on industries such as tourism, where people will have to pay more to visit Australia’s leading tourist attractions.

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has produced a budget of confusion. Labor says that it will fight inflation, but it introduces a whole range of new inflationary taxes. It is a budget that Labor says will build new infrastructure, but decisions will not be made for years and, in reality, the total expenditure on infrastructure will actually be less. It is meant to be the budget that addresses skills shortages, yet skills-building programs have been cut or abolished. Regional programs that have created and maintained jobs in some of the nation’s most hard-pressed communities have been abolished. Labor has inherited an economy that is the envy of the world, but it is so caught up with its short-term slogans, its slick spin, its vendettas and its hit lists that it has created a visionless mess.

Some taxes go up, some go down, but the losers in this budget will be the very people who Labor claims it supports. The losers in this budget will be successful people, small businesses, the tourism industry and, as I said earlier, stay-at-home mums and people who live in regional areas. The government have attacked key new industries in the ethanol sector. They have axed programs like the remote renewable energy program, which provided opportunities for people who live in remote communities to switch to renewable sources of energy. They have slashed all the support for the ethanol industry to try to drive out of business those who might seek to provide alternatives to expensive oil imports into Australia. And, of course, they have mercilessly attacked private health insurance, which will put an enormous burden on the public hospital system and indeed those people who are already waiting for essential care. This is a budget that attacks the poor. It hurts people in regional Australia, it is a disaster for this country but it is indeed, as the Treasurer said, a true Labor budget.

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