Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The shadow minister outlined our position in relation to the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. I rise to support what she has to say. I do not propose to go through every single aspect of this omnibus bill, except to say that it is typical of a coalition government that comes into power that it wants to undertake cuts—allegedly for savings measures but, in fact, engaging in cuts which will have an adverse impact on families and individuals around the country.

The coalition cannot help themselves. The moment they get in, whether it is at a federal level or a state level, their instinct—in their DNA, and in their blood and bone—is to undertake cuts which mean that families will struggle with their cost of living. So much for the feigning and the protestations we saw from those opposite, worrying about cost-of-living pressures. This bill, if passed, will result in a terrible reduction in income available for families around the country to feed and clothe themselves, to educate their children, to meet their household needs, and to make sure that their health services are delivered and that they can pay for them. It means that families will have less money available in their household budgets to meet their needs. We see in this bill an example, once again, of those opposite not listening to regional and rural areas, and not listening to the needs of middle-class and working class Australians. We will be opposing a number of aspects of this bill—the interest charges in relation to certain welfare debts, the student start-up loans, and the proposed extension of the annual childcare rebate limit—and we will defend Australian families in relation to this. Speakers on this side, I am certain, will also talk about our legacy.

Last night I spoke in relation to another piece of legislation which was an example of how the coalition works. Like the Howard coalition government, which undertook a five per cent reduction in the funding for the higher education sector the moment they got into power—the imposition of WorkChoices on the higher education sector and the reduction of capital infrastructure in the higher education sector—what the coalition is doing here is making further changes to impact adversely on the higher education sector in this country. I do not know why the coalition are doing this—except that it must be about looking for this fictional 'budget emergency' that they cannot find anywhere. They used to talk about it all the time. I can remember them promising—of course!—that they would have surpluses each and every year of the life of their government. Well, that sort of language does not emanate from those opposite now. I can recall the now Treasurer talking about this. I presume this budget emergency is like the sort of hysteria that they demonstrated many times when they would get up at this dispatch box and wax lyrical about how we were sending the country bankrupt et cetera. That is nonsense. They know it is nonsense. This legislation should not be passed in this form. It will have an adverse impact on Australian families. It is a cruel attack on Australian students. Students are already doing it tough—anyone who goes to university knows it is not easy to get through university—and the application of this charge will do just the opposite of making it easier: it will make it harder for students to make repayments.

I want to talk about one aspect of this bill, and to give the coalition credit in relation to a Cape York issue which is also part of this particular bill. When I was chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, in the course of looking at Indigenous justice around the country the committee examined issues in relation to what was happening up in the Cape. The Cape York Welfare Reform trial was started some years ago. We looked at it in our report, which was called Doing timetime for doing: Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system. We recommended to the Commonwealth government in recommendation 38 'that the Australian Government in partnership with the Queensland Government and the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership extend the funding of the Family Responsibility Commission'. At that stage, we recommended this extension of funding until December 2013, pending further evaluation. In previous budgets we provided funding for the FRC of $16 million or thereabouts until December 2012, and we extended that funding and continued it onwards in relation to those communities, such as Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge. That sort of whole-of-community approach to caring for students, making sure kids got to school, and families being supported with social norms, community support, eldership support and mentoring, started back in July 2008. The purpose of it is to restore socially responsible behaviour, to assist communities to assume responsibility for school attendance, and to improve personal resilience and community and family life. We funded that. We made sure that that was important, and that it would be undertaken. I commend the government for continuing that particular funding. This legislation, I confess and admit, contains provisions in relation to that continuing funding. We have seen significant gains already in Cape York as a result of this. We had committed $24.5 million over two years to December 2015 to improve Indigenous people's lives up on the Cape. I do think it has made an impact.

There was an evaluation undertaken in March 2013 which showed gains had been made in personal responsibility for attending school and in family and community life. I commend the government for undertaking this. Sadly and tragically, we have not seen the same reciprocity of commitment from the Queensland government. In fact, there was a time when the Queensland government said it would dramatically reduce its funding, which it did, but then it was shamed by the public cry in Queensland into making some contribution to that particular trial. The Queensland government needs to restore its funding to previous levels to ensure that this trial continues to operate in the way it needs to. We are calling on the Queensland LNP government to show its commitment to Indigenous people on the Cape to do the right thing and invest in these important reforms. We did so, and I admit that the current government is also doing so at the moment. I commend them for it. It is important work that needs to be done to make sure that Indigenous people get the kind of its assistance they need, particularly in remote areas.

However, I cannot say the same for the rest of the bill. There are aspects of this particular bill we will not agree to—especially the conversion of the student start-up scholarships to income-contingent loans. We think it is unfair and puts a burden on the higher education sector. Labor really supported the tertiary sector: in 2007, when we came to power, investment in the sector stood at $8.1 billion and had increased to $14 billion in 2013. That stands in stark contrast to those opposite. When many of their ministers were sitting in the cabinet room with Prime Minister John Howard, they cut funding to tertiary education. In Labor's term we saw a massive increase in participation rates of tertiary students. There are 190,000 more students at university today as a result of Labor's reforms, along with a 73 per cent increase in funding. We also made massive investment in capital infrastructure for universities. Unlike the billions of dollars ripped out of the system through neglect by those opposite when they were in power post-1996, we made sure that we invested. Real funding per student increased from $16,277 to $18,000 under the federal Labor government. Commonwealth funded places increased by 35 per cent. We also saw in my shadow portfolio of Indigenous affairs an increase of 26 per cent in the number of Indigenous students attending university—up from 9,329 in 2007 to 12,595 students in 2012.

The coalition government is risking all of that by what it is doing to support for families and for students. The real risk is posed by the review David Kemp will be leading at the request of the Minister for Education. It will see demand-driven, uncapped placements for universities put at risk through cuts in the name of quality, because that is what the minister talks about all the time. I predict that we will see a different system brought in as a result of this review. They will make changes for one purpose only: to create elitist universities, and people from low socioeconomic backgrounds will not get the support they need to enter. We will oppose this position. The coalition is seeking to cut $2.3 billion from higher education.

In government we said we would make changes to the higher education system to slow the rate of funding growth to ensure that our Better Schools plan—which would have cost a total of $14.6 billion—was embraced. It was a way of enhancing the whole education system, from primary through to tertiary, by having students with better literacy and numeracy, better teacher development, better capital infrastructure and better ICT. We believe it was a great plan, but the coalition walked away from that unity ticket, and now we will not support them on this issue. We had one specific purpose before the election, and it was to fund our Better Schools plan, but the coalition will not support it.

On issues such as the extension of the annual childcare rebate limit, the coalition has once again betrayed families. The government will not support middle- and lower-income families. The best example of that must be the changes they intend to paid parental leave. We will see wealthy families enhanced by an extravagant and ridiculous paid parental scheme that comes at the expense of battling families in my electorate of Blair and elsewhere. We introduced a paid-parental-leave scheme in this country. Famously, the then Leader of the Opposition and now the Prime Minister said that our scheme would come in over his dead body. It was a sensible, moderate scheme which gave the average minimum wage for 18 weeks and which operated jointly with the baby bonus. The payments would have been periodic rather than the lump sum John Howard and Peter Costello insisted on.

Those opposite feigned concern for the cost-of-living pressures on families, yet one of their first acts in this parliament will be to get rid of the schoolkids bonus—$410 for a primary school student and $820 for a high school student. That means that a family living in Flinders View in my electorate with two kids, one going to Raceview State School and one to Bremer State High School, loses $15,000. What are the government doing here? They are pausing indexation rates. They are impacting on the cost-of-living pressures on families. In relation to other aspects of support for families, what they have done cannot be ignored. They are getting rid of the low-income superannuation contribution, affecting 20,900 low-income families, mainly women, in my electorate. As I mentioned before, 15,900 families in my electorate will be adversely affected by the loss of the schoolkids bonus.

Legislation like this adversely impacts not just Labor held electorates but electorates of those opposite. There are plenty of new people in this place who will have to go back to their electorate offices in their communities and explain why they voted to make life harder for struggling families. As I have said before, there are consequences to the way you vote in this place, and people will not forget it. At the next election, when members opposite look people in the eye and say, 'I made it harder for you to pay your school fees, to send your kids to school, to meet your HELP costs and to meet your grocery and household costs,' they will be asking for their vote. There are consequences to the way they vote. I ask them to reconsider their position. This is pernicious and punishing legislation and it should be opposed. (Time expired)

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