Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to respond to the budget bills and to talk about their outcomes for Australia’s veteran communities, as well as for the communities in my own electorate of Greenway. I will start by focusing on veterans and how they have fared in the budget. Veterans have every right to feel let down by the budget: they have made little gain by it. The budget reflects the reckless spending of the Rudd Labor government and the disastrous state of the nation’s finances, which have resulted in few new announcements for veterans.

This budget also reflects the government’s disregard for the indirect impact on veterans from the proposed changes to private health insurance, the Medicare safety net, pathology and diagnostic services and from some cuts to Medicare fees to doctors. These are matters that affect the whole community. When the total impact of changes to health, the disincentives in aged care, the erosion of entitlements such as the Partner Service Pension and the bonus payments that exclude some veterans are added to the few new announcements for veterans, the overall result is that the Rudd Labor government is not giving those in the veteran community the priority they deserve and are entitled to.

Prior to the 2007 election, the Rudd Labor government raised expectations within the veteran community. Since that time, the Rudd Labor government embarked on a reckless spending spree. The expectation that outstanding issues will be addressed is highly unlikely and will remain so for a very long time. That is disappointing. Since the election, the Rudd Labor government not only spent the surplus left by the coalition but also increased Commonwealth spending by $124 billion. That is an average of $225 million of new spending every day. The budget reveals the high price all Australians will pay for Labor’s reckless spending spree over the past 18 months: one million unemployed by 2010-11; a record $58 billion deficit; and a record net debt of at least $188 billion by 2012-13. It will cost every man, woman and child $9,000 each to pay back the debt. From November 2007, two-thirds of the debt that will be owed by taxpayers in 2012-13 will be due to new spending decisions taken by the Rudd government over the past 18 months.

During the election campaign, the Rudd Labor government made a lot of promises to the veteran community, but let us look at what the budget has delivered or has not delivered for veterans, war widows, the ex-service community and their families. Key issues of concern such as military superannuation were ignored in the budget, but two reviews were announced: the review into the cost to veterans of pharmaceuticals due to war caused conditions, and the review into the operation of the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004. Both have a time frame of two years, so it will be at least 2011 before any benefits can flow from those reviews.

There are two other reviews that veterans and others in the ex-service community are aware of and are awaiting decisions on: the review into military superannuation and the review into the outstanding recommendations of the Clarke review. Both have been undertaken and submissions have closed but no decisions have been forthcoming. When can the veteran community expect a response?

The coalition is holding the government to account for their reckless spending, but the Rudd Labor government statement that spending will be held to two per cent from 2011 is unbelievable. How will the Labor government be able to deliver that? Australia’s veterans have been let down very badly by the reckless spending decisions and poor economic management of the Rudd Labor government.

There have been only two major spending announcements: $9.5 million in response to the report into suicide in the veteran community; and $10 million to establish the Anzac Trail on the Western Front in Europe. I am particularly concerned about the $9.5 million in response to Professor Dunt’s study into suicide in the ex-service community. This is a very important issue and it needs an appropriate response. It is becoming very critical at this time.

As many people know, before entering parliament I was a social worker in Western Sydney for 25 years. I worked with many veterans and their families and other families in the community who were experiencing mental health issues. From my experience, I have to question how far a bit over $2 million every year will go to addressing the serious mental health issues facing the veteran community. Even the $83 million over four years allocated to the recommendations from the Dunt report into mental health issues in the Defence Force has little to offer veterans. Australia’s veterans have been let down again.

The one other big budget item is the allocation of $10 million over four years to establish the Anzac Trail on the Western Front in Europe. I note that closer to home, $7.7 million is being stripped from the Australian War Memorial. Apart from the response to the Dunt report into suicide in the veteran community and the Anzac Trail in Western Europe, there are only four other new initiatives. Three are basically housekeeping: improving payment arrangements for veterans residing overseas, expanding eligibility for the Defence service home insurance scheme and centralising access to the current assessment process for home front rehabilitation appliances and veterans’ home care programs. The fourth is the closure of a dependent disability pension, which seeks to round off very old payments where no new grants have been issued since 1985.

While the above savings amount to around $6 million, the real question is: why have these been put forward as key initiatives when issues of concern to veterans remain outstanding? These issues include military superannuation, the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefit Fund and the level of litigation, with the department fighting veterans over entitlements or compensation. There is carry over funding from last year’s budget, but nothing new to address the need for more resources and training in entitlements and services for ex-service organisations so that they can be more effective in helping the wider veteran community. There were significant staff cuts to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs last year and another 91 this year, which will impact on services. This was raised with me a number of times by individual veterans and ex-service organisations.

Perhaps the reason that these issues were not addressed is because the Prime Minister and his spin addicted government are probably too busy working out how to explain to the Australian people the size of the debt and deficit—the largest since World War II. Or perhaps he is trying to work out what his response will be when working families are told that it would cost them $9,000 each—every man, woman and child—to pay back a debt that they did not create, but a debt that this government wilfully and recklessly racked up.

The challenge, with Australia’s budget now in serious deficit, is how veterans’ issues will be resolved. To understand the impact on veterans, we have to look beyond the immediate announcements and line items for veterans and look at the bigger picture. The proposed changes to private health insurance will reduce the rebate for higher income earners, which will indirectly result in higher premiums for all Australians. The government is breaking its election promise that it would not make changes to the private health insurance rebate.

Throughout the budget papers, the Rudd Labor government continually talk about early and decisive action. They continually link Australia’s debt to the rest of the world. This is strategic spin, designed to downplay the seriousness of the debt and deficit. Australian may experience a milder downturn compared to the problems in Europe, the US and other parts of the world—and I hope that that is the case. But Labor gloss over the fact that Australia’s debt is the biggest ever faced in the history of this nation. The only swift and decisive action that the Rudd government has taken is to spend the surplus within a year and to plunge this country into world record debt and deficit. This was certainly swift. As for decisive action, Mr Rudd and his Labor government decided to spend recklessly and to take this country into the worst debt and deficit in this nation’s history. The Prime Minister cannot deny that two-thirds of the debt that will have to be paid back by taxpayers will be due to spending decisions taken by his government over the past 18 months. The Australian people and the coalition have a very different view of what is swift and decisive.

In my electorate of Greenway, there will be many people and organisations affected by this budget: small businesses, wage and salary earners, schools, pensioners and self-funded retirees. This budget will have an impact on them all. In 2007, there were 5,081 in the electorate of Greenway, the majority being small business employing 20 people or less. Business, especially small business, will bear the biggest burden due to Labor’s debt and deficits, such as through the increase in fees and charges by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The small business tax break will not help businesses struggling with falling sales and tighter cash flows. The $10 million small business online initiative is only funded for two years. Small businesses are Australia’s biggest employers and we should be doing everything to ensure their viability. Only the coalition has a plan for recovery that recognises that private enterprise and small business must be supported as the drivers of economic growth.

In Greenway in 2008 there were 47 primary schools, 14 secondary schools and one special school. There are also a number of TAFE facilities and the University of Western Sydney has a couple of campuses. What has the budget given to those schools and to education in Greenway? The education revolution has been a failure. Forget the spin and look at what Labor does and not what it says. Look at the massive cost blowout for computers in schools and the debacle of computers but no electronic infrastructure. Look at the mismanagement of the school hall program and the instances where schools are told what to build even though those schools want to build something else. Their priorities are different. The disconnect between what is being forced upon the school communities and what the school communities see as their priority is becoming very apparent. In the budget there is nothing for Australian schools.

In higher education the rules have changed from a threshold of 15 working hours per week to 30 working hours per week plus a combined parental income of less than $43,000 before students are eligible. Not content with changing the goalposts for the more than 1,700 students aged 17 to 22 years in higher education, the Rudd Labor government has turned on universities. One of the greatest initiatives introduced by the coalition was the establishment of the Higher Education Endowment Fund to provide an ongoing revenue source to pay for university infrastructure into the 21st century. In the 2007-08 budget the Rudd Labor government renamed it the Education Investment Fund and expanded it to include vocational education and training institutions. He then boosted it by $2.5 billion taken from the Howard surplus to create a fund of $6.2 billion. This year, one year later, the Rudd Labor government has raided the Education Investment Fund for a range of unrelated projects including $400 million towards solar energy and carbon capture energy projects. The question is: is anything safe?

In addition there is no 10 per cent increase in funding to make up for the shortfall created last year when the government abolished all full-fee places for Australian students, a private revenue stream for universities that had been providing universities with economic security into the future. Rather than improving Australia’s education and training institutions, Labor is only interested in using them to disguise unemployment figures, because they do not have any idea how to create new jobs. In fact Labor has abolished the Australian technical colleges which set up real partnerships between schools and businesses.

If the Rudd Labor government is not raiding the piggybank, it is hurting people who are working hard, are saving, and are prepared to sacrifice to build a superannuation nest egg for their retirement. Cutting money out of superannuation is the height of intergenerational irresponsibility. Given our ageing population and the burden of paying the Rudd Labor government’s debt and deficit by the next generation, it is irresponsible to cut money out of super. Salary sacrificing is one of the most effective ways of saving for the future, but the prospect of the huge debt burden of paying back for the Rudd Labor government’s reckless spending will diminish the ability of people to adequately save for their retirement. No Australian has been spared the regressive attack on super. Low- and medium-income earners have been particularly affected through the slashing by a third of the co-contribution scheme.

There are other people affected by the Rudd Labor government’s reckless spending, but they are affected in other ways. People waiting for aged-care accommodation; people who have private health insurance, as I have already mentioned; and people who play sport are all affected. In Greenway there are approximately 8,384 age pensioners not counting over a thousand veterans receiving treatment of some kind. I can only hope that none of these 8,384 age pensioners or the close to 1,000 veterans need to enter aged care, though I am afraid to say that most of them will.

There is an accommodation crisis in aged care. The Rudd Labor government has cut the indexation of the conditional adjustment payment subsidy which now makes it harder for aged care providers, and will contribute to their finding it more difficult, to close the wages gap for their staff. If aged care is unviable, no new providers will enter the industry and no new facilities will be built. It is as simple as that. I have three aged care facilities in Greenway but as the population ages there is a need for more. With our ageing population, the Rudd Labor government has no answers and no plans to address the crisis in aged care accommodation.

Finally, I would like to talk about roads. Feeder roads, arterial roads, links to major freeways, suburban backstreets in neighbourhood suburbs and local roads like Richmond Road and Boundary Road and half-a-dozen other roads in and around Greenway need urgent upgrading as a whole—not piecemeal—so that tragic accidents can be minimised. This is urgent work and is now unlikely to take place. Labor has chosen to move billions of dollars of funding away from local roads. The Rudd Labor government’s decision to re-brand area consultative committees as Regional Development Australia means the local voice on local road infrastructure will be absorbed or amalgamated into state responsibilities, meaning the federal government will no longer have a direct responsibility for regional development. With no specific local roads funding and with the New South Wales state Labor government’s disastrous economic management, there appears little joy for local roads or users in the foreseeable future.

There are major issues facing this nation. The challenge is how to address those issues under the huge debt and deficit burden caused by the reckless spending and poor economic management of the Rudd Labor government. The Australian people have every right to feel betrayed by a big spending, reckless government which was left an outstanding economic legacy courtesy of the coalition. It is distressing indeed to see that in such a short time the surplus has been spent, the future funds have been raided and Labor have racked up a debt and deficit that will take generations to repay.

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