Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

After 18 months of Labor government, the coalition’s $22 billion budget surplus has dropped to a whopping $58 billion deficit. The $70 billion in savings has plunged to a staggering $188 billion worth of debt and the government has now acknowledged that the gross debt figure will reach $315 billion. Unemployment is predicted to double to 8.5 per cent. This budget has to have been one of the great shockers of modern government. Labor’s so-called temporary deficit is predicted to last until at least 2015-16, but even that date is ridiculously optimistic. It will simply require the return of a coalition government for an extended period if this debt is ever to be repaid.

The Prime Minister and Treasurer have proven yet again that Labor simply cannot be trusted to manage money. Give Labor something in good working order and it will soon be broken. They simply lack the competence to manage a national economy. The only budget strategy the Rudd Labor government have unveiled is one of debt, deficit, recession and higher unemployment. Labor lacked discipline and control in the lead-up to their budget and we are now left with a directionless mess that offers little for our regions.

Labor has turned to its usual hit list of victims to fund its budget spending: self-funded retirees, people saving for their retirement, those with private health insurance, people on hospital waiting queues, as well as primary producers and exporters. And of course it is the exporters that we will be expecting to help drag our economy out of the Rudd recession.

At the last election the Prime Minister promised to maintain the private health insurance rebate, but now it will be means tested. His written promises were empty. This will mean that fewer people will have private health insurance and there will be longer hospital queues. People will be waiting longer—poor people will be waiting longer—for necessary hospital treatment because the Rudd Labor government is continuing its vendetta against private health insurance.

The Prime Minister promised to maintain superannuation co-contributions but now they will be cut back. There will be $3 billion in cuts to concessional superannuation arrangements. Mr Rudd promised to maintain the Medicare safety net but the thresholds will be lifted and a means test applied. Labor also plans to implement full cost recovery for export inspection certification services, scrapping the 40 per cent rebate provided by the previous coalition government to exporters.

The increase to the age pension, for which the coalition had campaigned for over a year, will be appreciated by those who receive it, but many people will actually lose some of their pension entitlement because of a tougher means test. In the future, Australians will have to wait until they are 67 to get a pension.

The budget will also deliver belated tax cuts that nearly match the former coalition government’s tax plan, but the effect of the cuts will be eroded by massive rises in fees and charges and cuts to key government services.

The government’s changes to Youth Allowance will cut off the opportunity for a university education, particularly for people who live a long way from a capital city. Those people who have no choice but to move to a city to be able to undertake a tertiary education are particularly adversely affected by the changes Labor has announced in this budget. They are not only making it harder for people to get the independent youth allowance but they have decided to abolish the Commonwealth accommodation scholarships. These Commonwealth scholarships paid $4,500 a year for students to meet some of the extra costs of living away from home. That is being replaced by a relocation allowance of only $4,000 and then $1,000 for the subsequent three years. What is the government’s justification for taking away the opportunity for people in remote and regional parts of Australia to obtain a proper education? They ought to know that country people already have a much lower level of tertiary education. Fewer people living in country areas have a tertiary qualification and now they are implementing measures designed, it seems, to entrench this disadvantage.

Labor talk a lot about sticking up for the battlers but, in reality, they have well and truly lost any interest and concern about people who live over their horizon—and their horizon is the outer suburbs of the capital cities. The last budget saw more than $1 billion stolen from regional Australia, and I heavily criticised the government then for penalising the people who did not vote for it. This budget is no different. In fact, it is worse, and the undeclared war on regional Australia continues.

Last week my colleague the member for Calare and shadow minister for agriculture criticised Labor for an astonishing $908 million cut from the department’s budget for next year. The Treasurer accused the Nationals of not being able to count, but the reality was that in his budget the Treasurer said that there was a special efficiency dividend being required from that department. The figures that the minister criticised us for using came from his own department—they are there in black and white. All the spin that he likes to use is to no avail.

The truth of the matter is that exceptional drought funding disappears next financial year and has not been replaced. In fact, there is a specific statement in the budget saying that drought assistance has been terminated. The government says it will come up with something at some stage in the future, perhaps in 18 months time. But it is quite obvious that the government intends to make it more difficult for farmers to qualify for drought assistance, and therefore many of those people who have endured the toughest and longest drought in memory can expect to have their support from the government terminated. Of course, if the government is going to introduce a new drought assistance program it will cost money—and it is money that is not in the forward estimates. That means the budget predictions will blow out even further. If there is even one more dollar of expenditure than has so far been acknowledged by the government—and who could believe that the Prime Minister will be able to go a single day without spending more money—that will add to the $315 billion government debt which has to be paid for by the Australian taxpayers.

Looking again at the department of agriculture, 312 departmental jobs are to go. The respected Land and Water Australia is to be abolished, so there will be no funding available anymore for critical research into conservation and environmental issues in rural areas. Labor only want one sort of funding in that area, and that is to deal with their agenda for climate change and emissions trading. They do not want any kind of independent advice, and the loss of Land and Water Australia is a critical blow to the research capabilities that support industry and life in regional areas. The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation has had its funding slashed as well. I felt sorry for the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry at the rural women’s awards dinner last night, a function hosted and sponsored by the RIRDC—he was there only a few days after he had slashed the funding. He stood up and expressed his interest in women’s issues but, in reality, he has slashed the funding to the very organisation that sponsors those awards. Also, I am told that 60 graduates will not be taken on by the department of agriculture this year, so the staff renewal which is so important in any department will not occur.

The minister for agriculture, who represents the least agricultural electorate in the country, must stand up for his department. He cannot expect others to do it for him. He cannot expect the opposition to save the jobs of people who work in the department of agriculture or the rural programs. He has got to stand up to his city mates and the union heavies and say that there are other people in Australia and there are worthwhile programs that need to be maintained. The last time I checked, the Land’s FarmOnline was running a poll that rated the minister’s performance. A mere 5.5 per cent thought he was doing an excellent job, while 26 per cent said his performance was poor and 34.3 per cent said it was terrible. There were more than 700 votes, so it was a much larger poll than many we read about in the newspapers.

The government’s priorities for agriculture were well and truly spelt out when it announced on budget night a new $460 million program that will support farmers in other parts of the world as part of its foreign aid program. This $460 million program is to support food and agricultural programs overseas while the government is cutting double that amount from the department of agriculture in Australia. This precious UN seat that the Prime Minister wants for himself is costing Australians dearly. At a time when there are cuts right across the board in the Australian budget, one area that has had a substantial increase is foreign aid. Why are we going to spend a significant amount more on programs overseas, including in areas such as the Caribbean and Africa, where our aid program has not been strong in the past? Why are we cutting programs in Australia so that we can fund this kind of activity in other parts of the world? The reason is simple: Labor want a seat on the UN Security Council and they are prepared to pay any price, and then they want a job for the PM after he has outlived his welcome in Australia. The cost of that will be simply enormous. It seems a seat at the UN is more important than a hospital bed in Australia when it comes to this government’s priorities.

I want to turn to the activities of the minister for regional development. In fact, I do not think he has got a right anymore to be called the minister ‘for’ regional development; he is the minister ‘against’ regional development. Again, he is a minister who comes from the centre of Sydney. I thought his idea of the regions was well and truly explained when he provided $3.4 billion for a ‘regional rail project’ in Melbourne. The definition of a regional rail project in Melbourne was out to Bacchus Marsh and to Werribee. That is this federal government’s definition of the regions. The Labor government has failed in this budget to deliver on its election promise that there would be a new regional development program. At the last election Labor committed to expanding the role of the area consultative committees and rebranding them as Regional Development Australia. According to Labor’s election policy, the ACCs were to play a leading role in facilitating development in the regions. However, the federal government will no longer have any direct or specific responsibility for regional development as the entire ACC network is to be closed down from 30 June. There are no continuing arrangements yet negotiated for a number of states, but the doors are going to shut on 30 June, the leases are not being renewed and 150 employees do not know what their future will be. This is in spite of the fact that the minister personally stood in front of these employees and assured them that their jobs were safe. His words were not worth the time he spent to deliver them.

This whole network is to close and, in fact, the government will no longer have any direct connection with the regions or any mechanism so that advice can come direct from the regions to the federal government. They are going to be absorbed into the state government structure. In the case of Western Australia, where the agreement, the MOU, is reasonably public, the state government is to take over complete control. They will get the money and they will make all the appointments and the Commonwealth will simply have no role. We understand that the situation is broadly similar in other states. I feel sorry for the parliamentary secretary because obviously he has been held out to dry. I think he has genuinely tried to come up with a good solution. He has tried hard, but it is obvious that Minister Albanese has stomped over the top and decided that the area consultative committees and the regional elements of his department are to be wound back. The state offices are largely closed and, to add insult to the injury of regional communities, the government has set up a new Better Cities unit in Sydney. That is now going to be one of the major policy advice bureaus for this government.

Indeed, the government seem to have an active campaign to strike the word ‘regional’ out of as many programs as they possibly can. We know that what was once the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program is now just the Community Infrastructure Program. As well, there is legislation before the House to strike the word ‘Regional’ out of the name of the Regional Strategic Roads Program. The Black Spot Program is to have its funding redirected to national highways. These sorts of changes are specifically designed to ensure that there is a shift of funding away from regional areas and into the cities. That has been classically illustrated by the announcements by the Infrastructure Australia Fund and Labor’s commitments under AusLink 2. There is a substantial shift in funding away from roads in regional areas, and I note that one of the members sitting in this room comes from a comparatively regional area. He needs to be aware of the fact that funding in his sort of area is going to be cut so that more money can be spent especially on urban public transport projects. I know that urban public transport is important but it is being funded by stripping away a range of significant projects that were committed for regional areas so that Labor can fund what it proposes for the cities.

Labor have developed their own regional development program, called Better Regions—rorts personified. This program, as I said earlier today, has never been open for public nominations. The only projects to be funded are those that were announced by Labor candidates at the last election. It is exclusively set up to fund projects that Labor announced in marginal electorates around the country. No-one else should even bother to apply. There is no assessment as to whether the projects are worthy. Indeed some of the projects funded had been specifically refused by the previous government because they lacked merit, but Labor promised them and those are the projects to be funded. Let me say I am looking forward to the Auditor-General’s report on the Better Regions program. If the Auditor-General was critical of the former government’s Regional Partnerships program, then the administration and choice of projects under the Better Regions program is a national scandal. The minister, who has spent so much time in this House on personal attacks on and criticism of me and the other members on this side of the House, should be ashamed of himself for introducing a program that is a rort beyond rort and has no scrutiny and no public accountability whatsoever.

While I am talking about public accountability, I will note the choice of road projects by Infrastructure Australia. We were told that Infrastructure Australia was set up to be independent so that it would make a separate and independent judgment about the projects to be funded. However, the government will not release any of the reports done by Infrastructure Australia or any of its costings or any of its assessments. They are all secret . We are asked to believe that it is an open and transparent process except nobody is allowed to see any of the documents. It is a sham from beginning to end. We all know that Labor mates were appointed to Infrastructure Australia and Labor’s projects were chosen. They were not chosen on the basis of merit; they were chosen for political reasons. It is quite appalling that the minister would come into this place and try to pretend that he is on some kind of high moral ground on the basis of having a transparent and open process when it is clear that exactly the opposite is happening.

This budget also fails to address a number of other significantly important issues in rural and regional areas. The appalling state of rural health needs to be fixed. The Prime Minister said that the buck would stop with him by 1 July, but changes to his means tested private health insurance rebate will increase the pressure on the already overburdened public health system and there are simply no measures in the budget which are likely to lead to improved health services for people who live outside the capital cities. Some of the changes to the Medicare benefit schedule for things such as cataract surgery will mean that country people will no longer be able to have that kind of operation in their regional city. They will have to go to mass clinics somewhere or other in the city because that is the only place where this kind of surgery will occur. Even Labor’s decision to quarantine losses from unprofitable businesses for people with higher incomes will have a significant, adverse effect on regional communities, particularly poor communities. It has often been those so-called hobby farmers who have done a lot of the spending that has kept little country towns alive and has made those regional communities stronger. Some of these hobby farmers have also been the most innovative of farmers, and they have employed people. So this attempt to try to stamp out investment by wealthy individuals in country areas will affect poor people in country towns just as much as it will affect the lawyers and wealthy business people in the capital cities.

I also mention Labor’s decision to axe the en-route charges subsidy scheme for aviation services. It is tough enough as it is for country air services to survive but Labor are now going to take away this support for aviation services. This is a vendetta against regional Australia that seems to know no end. If you want any further evidence, let me finally mention the broadband scheme. Two million country Australians have now been left out of the promise that the government made at the last election. Two million Australians are not worthy of the same level of broadband coverage as is occurring in the cities. Country people have to pay their share of the debts but they do not get the services. (Time expired)

See this speech in context