Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike the previous speaker, I thought this was a very good budget. This will be my 11th budget speech since I have been in this parliament and I would have to say that this year’s budget was one of the most pleasing budgets to me. I stood up in this House for the first nine years I made budget speeches and was unable to find any single line item that actually related to my electorate. Some of the bigger line items applied to people throughout Australia but for people in Shortland electorate—items that were Shortland electorate specific—there was nothing.

One thing that I think is so good about this budget—no matter whether you are a member of this parliament representing a government electorate or someone representing an opposition electorate—is that you will be able to look at the budget and find line items that actually relate to your electorate. The benefits in this budget do flow across electorates. It is not a matter of pork-barrelling and putting everything into Labor electorates. In fact over 50 per cent of the infrastructure funding has gone to coalition seats, which is very different from what happened in the past.

This budget was not an easy budget to formulate. It was a difficult budget because these are difficult times. I do not think that since the Great Depression has a government been confronted by such economic circumstances as the Rudd government faced in the lead-up to this budget with the global financial crisis and the virtual collapse of money markets throughout the world. If you look at the UK, the USA and Europe, you can see the turmoil.

Then you look at Australia and you see that the actions taken here have put Australia in a very good position. We are handling this global financial crisis better than any other country in the world. You could be forgiven for listening to speakers in the opposition and thinking that the stimulus packages and all the initiatives that the Rudd government has taken were taken totally in isolation, that Australia was not only an island, as we are, but an island that has no connection to any other country in the world and that everything that happens in Australia happens in isolation.

That is not the case. What happens in Australia is related to what happens everywhere in the world. The economy of Australia is part of a global economy and it is integrated into the economies of other countries. Because of that, and because of the challenges of the global economic conditions, formulating this budget had to be approached very carefully. On one hand, you had declining income. The resource boom was tapering off and the economy was slowing down. As the mining boom unwound, revenue has been hit and unemployment has risen. That did not happen because there was a Rudd government here in Australia; that happened because we are connected to the rest of the world. It happened to a lesser extent in Australia and I would argue very strongly that that is because of the steps that were taken at the end of last year with the first stimulus package and with the second stimulus package in February.

Within my electorate, the people understand that there is a difference and that we are in difficult times. They appreciate the fact that they have a government that is prepared to make some really hard decisions and that at the same time is investing in the future. The previous government failed to do that. It had great economic times. Everything was booming. But we had a chronic skills shortage in this country. Time and time again I stood up in the parliament calling on the government to do something about the skills shortage. But nothing happened. Now we are in difficult times. Our infrastructure and employment programs are designed not only to meet the economic circumstances of the current time but also to prepare Australia for the future.

As a nation, we will come out of this global financial crisis and out of this downturn in a very strong position. That will be because of the initiatives and the hard and smart decisions that have been taken not only in this budget but through the previous stimulus packages. It is interesting to note that Standard and Poor’s have reaffirmed Australia’s AAA rating. Once again, that says that our economy is strong. Australia has the confidence of Standard and Poor’s and is thought of as being a very strong economy.

I would now like to talk a about the benefits of this budget to my electorate. In 1997, the then Liberal government made a decision to close the Medicare office in Belmont. This Medicare office was one of the busiest Medicare offices in the Hunter and the Central Coast. But it was in a Labor held electorate, so the decision was made to close that office. There was no thought given to the fact that people living in the electorate tended to have lower incomes and were very elderly. The electorate of Shortland has the 10th oldest constituency in the country. To actually obtain their refunds from Medicare and access all the other services from Medicare, pensioners had to travel some distance. Quite a few of those pensioners did not even have their drivers licences and others had restricted licences which prevented them travelling to Charlestown, which would be the Medicare office that they would visit, or to Lake Haven, which is some half-an-hour down the Central Coast. So there was this bloody-minded decision to close that Medicare office because it was in a Labor held electorate.

The staff of the adjacent Medicare office identified that the single biggest issue facing Medicare in the region was the need to reopen that Belmont Medicare office. Year after year, I came to Canberra begging the previous government to have some compassion and to reopen the Medicare office. There were 20,000 signatures submitted to the then Howard government begging—yes, begging—it to reopen that Medicare office, but my words and the words of 20,000 people in Shortland electorate fell on deaf ears. I have been to every election since I have been standing as a member in this parliament saying that a Labor government would reopen the Belmont Medicare office. And guess what—it is happening. In this year’s budget, the money has been allocated to reopen the Belmont Medicare office, and it is probably the most popular announcement that has ever been made in my electorate.

We also gave a commitment to finish off the Fernleigh Track. That was included in last year’s budget. This year’s budget has allocated $35 million to the Hunter Medical Research Institute. It is a fine research institution doing cutting-edge research. It is thought of very highly within the Hunter region. This will allow for a state-of-the-art facility to be built to house the HMRI. The first time I visited HMRI was quite some time ago and it was operating out of a little back room at the back of the university. The institute now operates out of the John Hunter Hospital. The research that it has undertaken has received worldwide recognition. That was really great news in this budget.

This budget also allocated $1.5 billion for the extension of the F3 freeway, which is quite a significant amount of money. The residents of the Hunter have been agitating for a very long time to have that extension. The previous government always talked about it and always talked about undertaking plans. The member for Paterson was a great advocate for this extension, but unfortunately he was unable to secure the money. In this year’s budget, the money was allocated, and that is going to be of great economic advantage to the Hunter region.

I would have to say that in the Shortland electorate, given even those two big allocations of money, the single most popular announcement in this budget was the reopening of the Belmont Medicare office. I thank the Treasurer and the Prime Minister for delivering on that commitment that we made in the lead-up to the last election. It is a commitment that the people of Shortland will never forget. They will never forget the fact that their Medicare office was taken away from them and it was the Rudd government that gave it back to them.

That makes this budget so important to me, apart from all the other very important allocations of money that are included in it, such as investment in nation building with the infrastructure fund: the $4.6 billion for road networks and the $3.4 billion for upgrading highways. In question time today the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government was talking about the Pacific Highway at Cowper. I grew up in Cowper. My mother and my sister live in Cowper. I know how important the upgrade of the Pacific Highway around Kempsey and those areas is to people living in that region.

There is $3.2 billion for public hospital infrastructure. There is $1.5 billion for new solar technology. That is a very significant budget item, particularly given that we will be debating the CPRS in parliament this week. The National Broadband Network will put Australia in a very competitive position. It will enable us to access the high-speed broadband that we need to be an important player on the global scene. There is $389 million to expand infrastructure, and the port is very important in the Hunter region. There is also the school infrastructure package.

As I mentioned earlier, in the past I always found it difficult to find any budget items that referred to the Shortland electorate. With the funding in this budget for the stimulus package we have received $28,745,000. That is a lot of money. There are 720 projects. In 49 schools there are 64 projects. In the first round of funding there were 38 schools and 48 projects and in the second round there were 11 schools and 11 projects.

Seventeen social housing units in Shortland have been approved, to the value of $4.3 million. Construction will start this year. Six hundred and thirty-one social housing units will undergo repair and maintenance. That is very important. Basically 100 per cent of housing in Windale, a suburb in the Shortland electorate, is by the Department of Housing. The people living in that area will now be able to have much-needed repairs done to their houses. That will be greatly appreciated.

There is $1½ million for the Black Spot Program and nearly $4 million for the Community Infrastructure Program. These programs are all so important to the people I represent in this parliament. They can see that they are considered as being important enough to have projects funded in their area. They no longer feel that, because they are in a Labor area and there is a coalition government, they are being ignored. I am really hopeful that people in coalition electorates also note that we are not ignoring them either. It is not pork-barrelling and just spending money in Labor electorates; it is about spending money where it is needed across the whole of Australia. A person should be able to expect that, regardless of whether they are in a Labor electorate or a coalition electorate, their needs will be taken care of.

I will quickly mention the increase for pensioners. As I have mentioned, there are many older people in the Shortland electorate. The benefit for single pensioners is much greater, with the budget taking it up to two-thirds of the couple rate, level-pegging it with countries throughout the world. The budget also provides a smaller increase to couple pensioners. It also streamlines the way bonuses and allowances are paid. They will be paid fortnightly, which I think is a better way for people to be able to plan and to access their money.

Finally, I would like to touch on what this budget delivers to small business, because small business is so important to the Australian economy. The small business tax break has been very, very widely accepted and appreciated within my electorate. It was only last week that I had a small business person come in to my electorate office and say it was one of the best decisions they have seen any government make. They are also very pleased with the research and development tax credit. I could talk at some length about the benefits to small business that are in this budget, but I will just say that this government recognises the vital role that small business plays in our economy and that is why we have directed so many budget initiatives towards them. I commend this budget to the House.

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