Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

A government’s first budget allows it the opportunity to set out its financial agenda for the years to come. It allows it to lay the foundations and to build on those foundations in subsequent budgets. When the member for Higgins stepped up to the dispatch box in 1996, he faced a bleak financial position. He faced a $10 billion budget black hole. He faced $96 billion in government debt. He faced an economy that had lost confidence and, in many cases, lost hope. But his budget was a very strong statement. It was a budget that underpinned strong growth in the years to come. It was a budget that underpinned the creation of a million jobs. It was a budget that took Australia forward and built this country into the confident and self-assured nation that we became.

When the people of Australia listened to that budget, they knew they had a government that was caring as well as economically responsible. They knew they had a government that was going to look after small business. They knew they had a government that was going to look after families. They knew that they had a government that was going to look after carers and pensioners. It was a very strong statement.

When I look at the budget that was put out by this government in this House earlier in May, I find a much different position. I find that we have a government that has inherited a strong surplus. I find that we have had a government that has inherited full employment. I find we have a government that has inherited a confident Australia. But what do we get from this government by way of its budget statement? We get a very confused document. We get a document that does not set out a clear direction for this country. We get a document that does not set out a clear agenda. We get a document that lets this country down. We see a range of promises that were made during the election campaign—a range of promises which this government appears now unlikely to fulfil. This budget certainly does not give us any assurance that those promises and commitments to the Australian people will be fulfilled.

We have to look no further than the debate in this House on fuel to see the shortcomings of this budget. We had a Prime Minister and a Treasurer who walked the length and breadth of this country promising cheaper petrol. The Prime Minister created an illusion to the Australian people that he was the high-octane messiah who was going to deliver cheap fuel. What has happened? What have the people of Australia received in relation to this promise? They certainly have not received cheaper petrol. We have seen petrol rising at a faster rate than at any other time in our history. We see petrol becoming unaffordable to families and pensioners. We see a government that offers little more than rhetoric and false hope.

The government’s answer to the commitment that it made to the Australian people was the discredited Fuelwatch scheme. This budget funds Fuelwatch. This budget throws money at a scheme that is going to push up the cost to motorists. This budget throws money at a scheme that is going to make motoring less affordable, not more affordable. It is a scheme that is based on a lie. It is a scheme that is based on flimsy research. It is a scheme that is not going to deliver outcomes to the people who elected this government. It is a scheme that is going to make fuel much more expensive in regional and rural areas. It is a scheme that is going to take away cheap Tuesdays from those motorists who are price conscious and need to purchase their fuel at the bottom of the fuel cycle. It is a very disappointing budget in relation to this government’s commitment to the Australian people on fuel.

By contrast the Leader of the Opposition, in his budget reply, proposed a solid solution: a reduction in the fuel excise. He proposed a measure that would provide real and immediate benefits to the motoring public and real and immediate benefits to pensioners and families, rather than just a hoax.

I turn to another measure which was very prominent in the election campaign but seems to be slipping below the radar screen, if the government has its way: the issue of groceries. Not only were we going to get cheaper petrol; we were going to get cheaper groceries. We were going to mystically have the Prime Minister and the Treasurer wave a magic wand and suddenly groceries would become more affordable—or so they tried to lead the Australian people to believe. Having introduced the concept of Fuelwatch in relation to their commitment on fuel, they also introduced the notion of ‘grocery watch’—another expenditure which will not provide one cent of savings to the people of Australia. It will not provide cheaper groceries. It is nothing more than yet another stunt, another elaborate hoax and another dashed promise.

The average supermarket has some 25,000 to 30,000 lines. They change in price daily. They change in price hourly. These lines can change in price, in some circumstances, by the minute. Somehow we are going to have a website that is going to miraculously keep consumers up to date with the movements in the price of carrots and the movements in the price of broccoli! Somehow the Australian people are going to benefit from the money spent on this policy! It is money wasted. It is funding in this budget that will not produce real outcomes for consumers or meet the commitments of this government.

I will touch on the issue of health insurance. Labor have always had a pathological hatred for the notion of private health insurance. They begrudgingly allow health insurance to exist only because they know that they would have difficulty eliminating private health insurance from our health system. We have a system that depends on the workings of a public and private system together. We have a system that is very much dependent on those who can afford it paying a substantial proportion of the cost of their own healthcare. But in this budget what do we do? We remove the incentive for more people to take up private health insurance. We encourage people out of private health insurance and into the public system. We encourage further stress on state health systems that are struggling. What is the problem with that? We see right around the country our hospitals bursting at the seams, we see right around the country a public system that is not coping with the strains upon it, yet we see this government discouraging private health care through its changes to the private health insurance measures—the Medicare surcharge. We see this government putting in place measures that are actually going to detract from the likelihood that people are going to maintain their private health insurance.

It is interesting that on the North Coast of New South Wales the area health service has introduced a concept called surge beds. One would think that the notion of surge beds would certainly be an idea of merit: when you have an increase in demand, further beds are opened to meet that increase in demand. But the notion of surge beds is more like an Orwellian concept, because the notion of surge beds does not mean that our already strapped hospitals will get additional beds; it means that the existing beds will be closed and then reopened at crisis points in the health cycle. So, rather than having additional surge beds, we have fewer beds open full time—and they will be open only part time—as the demands placed on the hospital occur at an even more frantic pace than they currently do.

I would like to quote a gentleman who wrote to me. He said: ‘My wife and I are both 77. We live on the age pension. Even with the government rebate, we pay 14 per cent of our income for health insurance.’ The man told me: ‘We cannot afford not to have private health insurance but we can no longer afford this insurance.’ What is the government going to do for these people? If we have a mass exodus from the private health insurance system, if we have a great many people leaving private health insurance and piling onto the public system, we will have an increase in premiums and we will have an increase in the demand for public hospitals. What we are going to see is more expensive premiums for those who wish to stay in the private system and longer waiting lists for those who are dependent on the public system. For those who are seriously ill, it potentially means much longer waiting lists. It potentially means an even more stressed public hospital system.

I now turn to seniors. I do not recall in my time in this place that any budget in the past ever engendered a demonstration in Melbourne where seniors took off their clothes to highlight their objection to the shoddy way in which the needs of seniors were attended to. Certainly, it shows neglect of our senior citizens. It shows a failure to recognise their needs in the budget at a time when our country is prosperous, at a time when so many people are doing well, at a time when some people are struggling quite clearly—and our pensioners are in that group. They are in a group that needs to be supported, and this budget fails to deliver to them the sort of support that they need.

I would also like to concentrate on the issues for regional Australia. What we see in this budget is the cancelling of the Regional Partnerships program. What we see in this budget is the cancelling of the Sustainable Regions Program. There is a wide range of community groups which have been left in the lurch by this budget. If it were not for the backflip by the responsible minister, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, they would still be left in the lurch. If it were not for the media pressure, they would not be able to participate in their projects. I think it set a very poor precedent that community groups received letters of offer that were not executed and community groups received contracts that were not executed. One would think that a group who had received a contract from the government of the Commonwealth of Australia would be on fairly solid ground to assume that the incoming government would honour the terms and conditions upon which that contract was based. But, no, this government was adamant that it was not going to honour those contracts. This government was going to leave a range of community groups in the lurch. This government was going to basically let all of the hard work by those hardworking volunteers go down the drain because of a matter of ideology. It was not concerned by the loss of many very fine projects.

Sportz Central in my local electorate is an excellent example. It was a project that had achieved funding from local government. It was a project that had achieved funding from the state government. But somehow the minister was able to declare that Sportz Central, a very important sports facility for Coffs Harbour, was a rort. Why would the state government advance funding for a rort? Why would the local council advance funding for a rort?

It is the same with the Valla Community Hall, for instance. The Valla hall committee worked very hard to get their project up. They jumped through hoops, they provided all the information that the department required and at the last minute—at the eleventh hour—the funding was cut in this budget. The people of Valla were very disappointed. The people of Valla felt they had been snubbed by this government. The people of Valla deserve better. If it were not for the pressure on the responsible minister, if it were not for his absolute embarrassment on the Sunrise program, the funding for those projects would not have been reinstated.

There is another range of fine projects that are not being funded. The Sustainable Regions Program is an important one. It funded projects to deliver more jobs in regional areas. We have higher levels of unemployment along the coast and we have less opportunity along the coast. These projects were sorely needed, but what did this government do? It cut the funding. On its own projections, there will be 134,000 fewer jobs across the country. That figure is alarming enough, but when you break it down on an electorate-by-electorate basis there will be well on the way to 1,000 fewer jobs in every electorate in the country. I can tell you that I do not want to see close to 1,000 more people without work in the area I represent. I want to see 1,000 more people in work. I want to see the sorts of projects that were funded by the Sustainable Regions Program going ahead. That means projects like those involving Biodental, Pacific Vetcare and Faircloth and Reynolds in Coffs Harbour. Those organisations were going to put on more people. Those organisations were busy generating jobs and providing goods and services for the region, and they have been left in the lurch by this government. I think it sets a very poor precedent. Contracts had been sent out, discussions were underway, negotiations were taking place and at the eleventh hour in this budget the funding was cut.

I would like to read to you a piece of correspondence I got from Comet Windmills, a company that decentralised from Sydney and is involved in the environmentally sustainable business of building windmills for pumping water and generating and storing electricity. The company is very much at the leading edge of environmentally friendly technology. The letter to me of 15 May said:

We were devastated to learn that the Sustainable Regions Program has been scrapped. This is ridiculous, since the program officially ends on 30 June 2008.

Comet Windmills was striving to get a grant under the Sustainable Regions Program. Comet Windmills wanted to expand and employ more people. Comet Windmills was playing its role in working towards a low-carbon world. It is just one small company in a regional area that is employing people, and it has been cut down and disappointed by this budget.

This budget has come as a great disappointment to the people of regional and rural Australia. It has come as a great disappointment to those who want to grow their businesses. It has come as a great disappointment to those who strive to get ahead. It is a budget that lacks direction. It is a budget that is not going to take us forward in the way we desire. We are living in a country that is a lot less self-assured than it was just six months ago. We live in a country where the confidence that existed under the previous government is evaporating fast. We live in a country that is not going to benefit greatly from this budget.

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