Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am staying absolutely relevant, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am talking about the carbon tax because it is the motivation for the bill that is before the House right now. This is not an education-related bill. This does not produce better outcomes for parents and their children who are students. It does produce a cash bonus for their pocket which will not necessarily be used on educational outcomes. The reason is the carbon tax. That is the only reason. Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Leigh, you know that there is no job creation in just giving a handout to parents with school-aged children.

The last time this government gave cash bonuses, during the GFC, 16,000 dead people received their $900 bonuses. How many ineligible people will receive this cash bonus? The current scheme, which the coalition strongly supports, is all about giving parents money after they have spent their own hard-earned dollars on education-related expenses and provided the ATO with the receipts at the end of the financial year. That is the current system which we were in favour of improving. Instead, this government has designed to remove that existing system so that it can cushion the pain and the blow of the carbon tax. Deloittes have done studies that have found that over 23,000 people will lose their jobs in my own state of Victoria. Jobs will not be created. Billions of dollars will be sucked out of the economy. I have told you about my own experience with small business and self-funded retirees. They are not going to get this cash bonus—this fictitious schoolkids bonus—but they will be paying higher cost-of-living expenses.

This Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment (Schoolkids Bonus Budget Measures) Bill is part of a rotten budget. It is part of a budget which has forecast an increase in unemployment to 5.5 per cent, which has ripped more than $5 billion out of Defence and which insufficiently supports the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It is part of a budget which has lifted the debt ceiling from $250 billion to $300 billion—four times the amount that existed under the Howard government. It is part of a budget which has told us that last year's budget deficit has ballooned from $22 billion to $44 billion. That is why this educational mechanism, this schoolkids bonus, is so wrong. It is part of a broader budget which fails Australian families. It is a budget which abolishes company tax cuts for small and big business, which makes people pay more for aged care and which will see Australia's debt rise to $145 billion, including an interest bill of $8 billion a year or $22 million a day.

Mr Gonski was talking about an extra $5 billion dollars to provide better educational outcomes. Hang on! Isn't the interest bill for the Australian taxpayer now $8 billion—the cost of an NDIS; the cost of five teaching hospitals; or the cost of real educational change? You get educational change by putting the budget in the black, not by running up massive deficits. In fact, the four largest deficits in the history of the Australian nation have been in the last four years under Wayne Swan—a total of $174 billion.

One of my heroes, Margaret Thatcher, a reformist prime minister, said: 'The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money.' That is what we are seeing from this government. That is why I am against this cash handout, this 'cash splash' which is a desperate bid for votes. It is not designed to boost productivity, it is not designed to create jobs and encourage investment, and it is not designed to improve educational outcomes. We want to go back to responsible fiscal management. We want to look after those students who are at school and whose educational outcomes we care about.

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