Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

One thing we need to be mindful of when we vote on budget bills and pass legislation in this House is the impact it will have when each of us are long gone from this place, when other members will be making decisions, future generations of Australians who will be living through the impact of our decisions and, in some cases, as is the case with this budget, paying for it.

We have seen this current government, the Labor Party, spend $10 million an hour for every hour since they were elected, and of course two-thirds of Labor’s debt is a product of their own new spending commitments. They have saddled every man, woman and child with a debt of $9,000. In Victoria, my home state, where the state Labor government has contributed its own debt, that debt for every man, woman and child is $15,000. We have now seen the revised debt figures, and debt is expected to rise to as high as $315 billion. This figure, if recent history is anything to go by, is likely to increase. These are not figures that are just thrown around; these are conservative figures from the farcically self-labelled economic conservative Prime Minister. These are real figures that will have a real impact. They are unprecedented figures.

This says to young Australians, ‘Not only are you going to live through a time of increased unemployment but we are also going to burden you with this debt.’ Why? Because this government panicked. This Prime Minister panicked. He was not experienced enough. He could not find another way to spin his way out of the poor public perception of his management of the economy and so he just threw more money at it. That is what we expect to see from this Prime Minister. If there is another crisis or another problem, he will put even more debt on the credit card.

Madam Deputy Speaker, even though I am not a betting woman, I would wager a significant sum on the fact that it will not be this Prime Minister who will be responsible for making the very difficult and complex decisions that will result in this debt being paid off. We have had a look at the budget papers, and they assume above trend growth for six consecutive years, followed by trend growth for another six years. It is assuming an unprecedented 12 years of uninterrupted growth at or well above the historic trend. This is not believable; most people do not believe this. We want to think the best but we also have to be utterly realistic. The Prime Minister, when questioned in the House, said that all net government debt will be paid off by 2022. Again, that is an extremely optimistic figure and there has been nothing in a very real and professional way to substantiate that particular claim. The government continue to refer to figures that are not in the public domain. That is a key flaw in their whole approach to the budget and to explaining what is in the budget.

There are some groups that are already being hurt as a result of having to pay for the government’s panicked spending. For instance, we have had significant discussion in the House on changes to the youth allowance. The Deputy Prime Minister has mocked the current system and has claimed that the Liberals, as she put it, support the current system and those on salaries of $200,000, $300,000 and $400,000. This is to say that the current system of youth allowance is not needed by those families of young people who are currently taking a gap year and who were relying on the youth allowance. There would not be the protests and the expressions of anxiety and consternation right across rural and regional Australia if this were not a real issue. This has been seriously misjudged by the government and the Deputy Prime Minister, and they ought to look at it again and this punitive policy which is punishing young Australians for the poor economic management of the government and the debt it has incurred in this budget.

But they are not the only ones. Some $908 million, or 32 per cent of funding, will be cut from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry next year and 312 jobs, including 60 graduate research positions, will be lost. Rural and regional members have banded together and lobbied for the extension of exceptional circumstances support for drought affected farmers. I trust that the government will continue this valuable program. If we want to have the capacity to grow our own produce, we need to ensure that whole industries do not close down. It is far too expensive and often almost impossible to restart these industries once they have disappeared. It is in the national economic interest to sustain the agricultural industries through these difficult drought conditions. And some more money has been scrapped. We have seen more than $35 million cut from biosecurity and quarantine, leading to the loss of a further 125 jobs. That means export markets will incur a 70 to 80 per cent increase in fees, and that will have serious applications for those industries.

Water is a key issue about which there has been much discussion. As someone whose electorate contributes significantly to the Murray-Darling Basin, I am always aware of the problems on the ground and keen to see where water policy both nationally and at a state level takes us. The budget reveals that the government will ignore 600 billion litres of annual water savings in Australia. This government has failed to deliver the vital water infrastructure that is needed to improve the health of the Murray-Darling Basin for all those who rely on it. That is a very sad state of affairs. In essence the government is spending vast amounts of money on buyouts rather than on replumbing rural Australia.

We have seen all sorts of supposed commitments to infrastructure. In the limited time remaining to me, I want to mention the Nagambie bypass project in Victoria. The bypass will be 17.4 kilometres in length, and 21 per cent of traffic on this part of the highway is heavy vehicle traffic. In 2007 the coalition pledged $288 million to immediately complete the bypass, which represented 80 per cent of its estimated cost. The Labor Party have followed that with an election commitment of $216 million. So far they have provided funding of $8 million—$5 million for planning in May 2008 and $3 million in December 2008.

After the release of the budget on 12 May, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government put out a media release in which he listed a number of works to be funded across the states. This included a reference to the Nagambie bypass. But there was no mention of the amount of funding to be committed by the government. The only information included was that work would start in 2009-10 and that the project is scheduled for completion in 2012. Minor work has in fact already begun, so in substance the minister’s pledge does not mean much unless he can guarantee that major work will begin this year.

When my office asked what commitments have been made by the government for subsequent years, the minister’s office refused to ‘speculate’. They said the $37 million for this financial year is all that has been published. The government have forward budgeted for other projects. They have included paid parental leave in this year’s budget even though they are delaying it. The people of Nagambie have been waiting long enough. They deserve a cast-iron assurance from the federal government that the money will be provided so that major works can begin. Either the minister’s office has given inaccurate information to my office and there has been forwarded budgeting, or the government has not forward budgeted for the Nagambie bypass. I ask the government to clarify this.

We have seen other announcements by the government, and they fall short of actually fulfilling some of the government’s infrastructure commitments for rural and regional Australia. We have had significant debate on private health insurance rebates, and the government knows full well it has broken its promise; it knows full well that its changes to the private health insurance rebate will have significant impacts on the public health system and, overall, will reduce the quality and availability of health care right across Australia. Even in my electorate of Indi, just over 33,000 people have private health insurance—37 per cent of the population. We have seen that 56 per cent of all surgical procedures are performed in private hospitals, and it is estimated—the government can dispute it to cover its decision and its broken promise—that premiums will increase. For many who are on the margin, that will have a further impact on the affordability of private health insurance.

At this point, in the limited time available, I would like to focus on a few key portfolio matters relating to my shadow ministerial responsibilities. We have seen in this year’s budget the Labor Party’s failure to deliver on its promise to build 260 new childcare centres. Their plan for early childhood promised to ‘make child care more accessible by establishing 260 new long day care centres on school, TAFE, university and community sites’. But after 18 months the government has budgeted, at a cost of $114½ million, for 38 centres. Of those 38 centres, five or six are at any type of planning stage and not one is yet completed. We on this side of the House have repeatedly called on the Rudd government to answer these questions: who is going to pay for the other 222 centres. Where will they be built? How much will they cost? Will they contribute to the problem of oversupply? And exactly when will the promise be delivered in full? These are very pertinent questions. We found out on budget night, on page 24 of the Deputy Prime Minister’s ministerial statement, that:

The remaining up to 222 early learning and care centres will be considered when the childcare market is settled and based on the experience of the priority centres.

For an issue which formed such a significant part of their early childhood policy, it is certainly an important backflip and an admission that the assumptions on which the policy was based were incomplete and flawed.

The government’s unwillingness to release childcare vacancy data to provide real information and direction to the industry is absolutely inexcusable. The reason the government gives for not delivering its promise to build 260 childcare centres is that it wants to wait, as the Deputy Prime Minister said, until ‘when the childcare market is settled’. The collapse of ABC Learning has highlighted all sorts of demand and supply issues within the childcare industry. In order to have some certainty in the childcare market, the industry’s main requirement now is to have some idea where demand hotspots and chronic undersupply are actually located. The government has itself contributed to this uncertainty by refusing to release the childcare vacancy data. This data was last released publicly in April 2007, under the previous government.

So the government will reconsider this promise to build the remaining 222 childcare centres when there is greater certainty in the childcare market. But it is the action of the government itself, by refusing to release the vacancy data, that is actually contributing to uncertainty and instability. The mind boggles about which direction the government is taking child care and early childhood development, because there is a lack of transparency. You have ask why there is a lack of transparency; why will the government not ask the questions. It is because it is all turning into a big bureaucratic mess.

It gives me no pleasure to have to raise these issues, but as the shadow spokesman it is my responsibility to do so. The paid parental leave scheme to which the government has committed is supposed to provide 18 weeks leave at the adult federal minimum wage and commence in January 2011. The minister for families, housing and community services said on 11 May:

We’ll put the legislation into the Parliament before the next election.

I ask the question: how can Australian families have confidence that the government will fulfil this commitment when it has squibbed out of so many other commitments, when it has squibbed on the private health insurance rebate, when it has squibbed on the promise to deliver 260 childcare centres. The Prime Minister provided an out clause when he said in his press release on 10 May:

The scheme will come into effect when the economy is expected to be recovering and the economic outlook improved.

With all economic indicators pointing towards the country slipping deeper into recession by the time this scheme is due to commence, Australian families have to question whether this election commitment will fall by the wayside too. We have seen the budget papers show that by 2010-11 there will be one million people unemployed, there will be a record deficit and the interest bill will keep piling up to $8 billion in 2012-13. Families, individuals, older people, seniors in our community are paying and will be paying for Labor’s reckless spending. In two years time who is to say that Labor will not renege on this promise, in just the same way as previous Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating reneged on his L-A-W law tax cuts, which were legislated for but never delivered.

My time is coming to a close. In concluding I would like to say to the people of my electorate and to the people of Australia that we are living in difficult times, unprecedented levels of debt, as a direct result of the actions of this government that will burden future generations. I hold serious concerns, particularly for the younger people of this nation. Recalling the impacts on youth unemployment of the last Labor recession we had to have, which effectively put young people’s lives on hold for many years, I certainly hope that is not the result of this recession.

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