Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

Labor’s high-taxing, high-spending budget is a cruel joke being played on the working families that the Rudd government promised to fight for. The working families in my electorate of Greenway are feeling the effects of incompetence as they experience higher prices at the checkout and the bowsers. Unfortunately, the Rudd government does not understand that this is no joke.

The first budget of the Rudd government is one of arrogance. The members opposite are so smug that they are under the pretence that they do not have a responsibility to working families—the very same working families that elected them. This budget does not deliver on petrol, health, welfare, education or the environment. Put simply: working families have been let down by the Labor Party. This government does not understand the plight of working families in Western Sydney, the Hawkesbury, Penrith, Blacktown, Mount Druitt or Seven Hills—and the list continues.

After getting himself elected by promising the world on petrol prices, the Prime Minister has failed to have any effect on the skyrocketing price of operating a family car. Since being elected and delivering this first budget, the Prime Minister has had zero impact on the price of petrol. He has forgotten what really matters to the electorate. Through inexperience he has been unable to offer anything to the working families in Western Sydney who struggle to get the children to school and drive to work.

Unfortunately, the incompetence of Labor extends beyond this chamber. Toll charges are inequitably disadvantaging working families in Western Sydney because, just like the Rudd government, the Iemma government takes Western Sydney for granted. For a family in Western Sydney to survive the current economic mismanagement of this government, it is not uncommon for both parents to work hard in order to earn enough to pay for increasingly expensive petrol, groceries and health care. Inadequate public transport often necessitates that two parents drive into the city and home again every day. A family is burdened with the cost of petrol and tolls five days a week, costing on average a whopping $270. The average take-home pay of $907 a week does not cut it when the average family spends $270, or 23 per cent of their net income, on getting to and from work.

Mr Rudd simply misses the mark with Fuelwatch. This new spin by the Labor Party will not decrease prices. It merely disadvantages small fuel retailers, who will be the only businesses that are pressured to lower prices. Fuelwatch will undermine competition and ultimately lead to higher fuel prices, something working families cannot afford.

While the Labor Party is busy ‘spinning’ for the media, the coalition has come up with an economically responsible and simple measure to reduce fuel prices in a way that will benefit working families the second it is introduced. Cutting the fuel excise will ease the pressure on working families. It simply makes fuel cheaper without the spin, the committees, the observation and the documentation.

This Labor budget increased taxation for the first time in recent memory. As working families struggle, Mr Rudd needs to reduce the tax on petrol, not watch prices. The budget brought forward by this government is one of hidden spending cuts to vital services in order to contribute to Labor’s ambiguous nation-building slush funds. The budget cuts $67.5 million from the already under resourced immigration department. This funding has been taken away from the critical border security and immigration processing functions, which means longer waiting times for visa processing and less secure borders for Australians. If these cuts were not bad enough, there are immigration officers from key roles in Australia and on overseas postings that will no longer have jobs. This, disguised as efficiency, effectively shows that the speed and accuracy of visa processing are simply not a priority to the Rudd government. A further total of $43.6 million is being cut from areas such as border security, family migration, economic migration, student and temporary visas and even humanitarian programs.

The member for Lilley has underestimated the people of Australia, who can see straight through the Treasurer’s short-term plan to ease the burden by changing the condition of the Medicare levy—the burden that he himself has created for Australian battlers. An increase in the earnings threshold for the Medicare levy is a short-term policy from this cabinet of self-proclaimed ‘nation builders’. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Mark Metherell identified in one sentence the straightforward concept that our Treasurer could not understand: ‘The loss of many young, low-risk members is likely to push up premiums and add to public hospital pressures.’

Private health care will no be longer an option for working families in Western Sydney as premiums for private health care will be pushed out of reach of the average household budget. Any examination of the New South Wales health and hospital system would show the Treasurer why many families are not confident in government health care for their children. These are mums and dads in my electorate of Greenway who previously had the choice to do what was best for their families, mums and dads who will now be forced to rely on the waiting-list prone New South Wales health system administered by the Rudd government’s mates—New South Wales Labor. This is the very same government that requires additional federal funding just to fix their desperate hospitals and other strained medical facilities. The Rudd government’s $10 billion Health and Hospitals Fund has been earmarked to fund the development of health infrastructure and medical equipment, but is rendered useless by the lack of funding for additional healthcare professionals and training, thus highlighting the ineptitude of the Treasurer. We can have all the shiny new buildings and the latest tech gadgets we want, but, as New South Wales Rural Doctors Association President Dr Ken Mackey rightly points out, there is no point in funding this infrastructure in a budget that makes cuts to training programs for enrolled nurses in regional Australia. There is no point in having brand new buildings in regional Australia with waiting lists of up to six months for basic services.

The working families of Greenway urge me to call upon the government to listen to them and to fix the problems they are already facing, such as six- to 12-month waiting lists for a dental check-ups for their children, hours of waiting time in the emergency department when their children need to be seen by a doctor and struggling to find a nurse with time to concentrate on their child’s needs when in a public hospital. The people of Western Sydney simply will not accept this kind of irrelevant government. This high-taxing, high-spending budget delivers successive blows to young families trying to establish a future in an uncertain economic climate. The Treasurer’s plans to exclude some families from receiving family tax benefit B by placing a means test on the family tax benefit demonstrates the government’s ignorance as to the very reason for its existence. The family tax benefit is recognition not only of the communal social value of families to this nation but also that significant expense is incurred on the part of those providing for the social good. The Treasurer does not understand the pressure of a family budget. Mortgages now take up to one-third of most families incomes in repayments, then add to that groceries and petrol costs—they hit harder than ever as mums and dads endeavour to provide opportunities for their children. The family tax benefit is a response to these difficulties that face families and is society’s way of contributing something to the production of social value.

A further slap in the face to working families is the restrictions to the childcare benefits. The Rudd government is once again all spin and no substance as it publicises the increased childcare rebate but fails to mention the new restrictions in place. Working families only have access to the childcare rebate if they are both working. To be eligible for the rebate, parents must be either single working parents or working a combined total of more than 1.5 times a full-time workload. For example, the childcare rebate is only available to caretaker parents working 25 hours or more. This is a discriminatory practice against stay-at-home mums. The primary caregiver parent is given the options of working 25 hours—more than three days a week—or going without a rebate. This is no choice at all.

The next step in this government’s grudge on families is the new payment arrangement and means test for the baby bonus. The payment of the baby bonus was introduced by the Howard government to coincide with the expenses incurred by expecting parents. The initial capital required for a new pram, a larger car, changing tables and many other large baby requirements is too much for working Australian families, covering bills for two to three months that the second income would have covered. The average family does not have a spare $5,000 to finance their expenses while they wait for the baby bonus to be drip-fed to them over a six-month period. I completely support the Democrats’ Senate private member’s bill to extend the baby bonus to adopted children over the age of two. This bill takes action to stop the discrimination against those who wish to adopt from overseas. Adoption is a benefit to the child and a benefit to society and as such adoptive parents deserve the same recognition as others. It is necessary to remember that the baby bonus exists to reimburse the parents for the investment that they make in society. To not extend the reimbursement is to deny that an adopted child has the same potential and ability to contribute to society as a child that is born in Australia.

The Rudd Labor government have not delivered for the residents of Greenway on the Prime Minister’s promises for the education revolution. Importantly, as a growth area in Western Sydney, Greenway has many working families with young children, and parents are legitimately concerned about their children’s future. The Rudd government promised an education revolution, but the parents of Greenway are experiencing nothing but the same old, same old. Labor have not delivered an education revolution. They have failed to deliver anything to primary schools at all—another let-down.

There is no education revolution. All that has happened is that there will be extra computers for high schools that lack the infrastructure to make use of them. Local primary school age children again missed out because funding for local community sporting infrastructure grants, introduced by the coalition government, has been terminated, and the upgrade of sporting fields in Greenway has been left to already underfunded local governments. The residents of Greenway are still waiting on the education revolution that this budget does not deliver.

The Hawkesbury River has not been allocated the funding agreed to under the previous government—$132.5 million. The Rudd government are clearly not committed to environmental management or sustainability. The river is in desperate need of the funding package promised by the Howard government, which included amounts for recycling and maintaining the health and sustainability of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River catchment system. This funding has not been allocated by the Rudd government. They are convinced they can ignore Western Sydney. The newly elected member for Lindsay has not spoken of the river since his maiden speech. Has the member for Lindsay forgotten the existence of the river, is he ignorant of its poor health and its significance or does he lack the courage to stand up to his government’s neglect?

The member for Parramatta is a part of the same government that snuck through reforms to the Solar Cities program. The Minister for Climate Change and Water introduced a means test to the solar panels program, which effectively renders the Solar Cities program useless. The means test has had an instant effect, with many companies reporting an 80 per cent reduction in contracts. Experts predict further decreases in the number of people using the scheme. On 16 May Hamish Wall, the General Manager of Business Development with Nicholls Solar, a company that installs solar panels, said on The World Today:

... we had one household which consisted of a nurse and a teacher and obviously under the Federal Government’s policy, they’re rich and therefore they are no longer eligible for the rebate.

The minister admitted that the decision to means test the solar rebate was based on the opinion that the program had been too successful, with too many people taking it up. This skin-deep level of commitment to tackling climate change does not sit well with the people who chose the party championing the environment or with the people who chose the party of self-decreed economic conservatism, people who now watch the solar industry crumble and hear the minister’s lack of concern as she describes the loss of livelihoods as merely ‘disappointing’.

Despite being economic trainees, the government are expert at disguising cuts to environment spending by renaming, moving and rebundling old schemes. Areas like the Riverstone storm corridor, the Windsor-Richmond lowlands, Wollemi National Park and Windsor Downs Nature Reserve were all to benefit from funding for the Bureau of Meteorology, but staff cuts will affect how these areas are managed. However, there was no consultation with me or my Western Sydney coalition colleagues, who could have told the minister of the risks. We have no guarantee of the safety of the people and property in Western Sydney, and we have heard of no justification for the cuts. This is just another example of a Labor government sneaking through spending cuts to vital services in order to fund their ambiguous nation-building slush funds.

The members for Parramatta and Lindsay are not committed to the environment at all. In this budget, they confirmed what the environment minister pre-empted—he just got in and changed it all. Working families in Western Sydney are struggling, and I regrettably have to inform the families in my electorate that the Rudd government seem not to care. They are economic novices who have hurt families and seem determined to merely watch petrol prices instead of act on them.

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