Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

'Hear, hear!' says the member for Herbert up there. These young people are concerned, too, about the cuts to the climate change programs that would mean Australia was contributing to reducing the likelihood of global warming passing that critical two degree benchmark that scientists tell us is so important. So, despite what the Treasurer says, the angry reaction to this budget is not because Australians are selfish: it is the exact opposite. Of course they are concerned for their own family budgets, but they are concerned for all of the people who are hit hardest by this budget as well. They do not want to see Australia become a two-tier system—a user-pays, American-style, 'you're fine if you're wealthy but God help you if you're not' style system. We will have a system that condemns kids who are born poor to grow up poor and to be sent to school in second-rate schools. We will have a health system that is world-class if you are wealthy and unattainable if you are not. Australians do not want a society of haves and have-nots. They value our way of life and that is why, while they want a strong economy, they want a fair society too. This budget fails on both counts.

I have had so many individual constituents stop me in the street to talk to me about the issues that will affect them. There are hundreds of little changes, as they come out over coming days and weeks, that will really impact them. A woman with cerebral palsy, who has managed to get back into the workforce with the help of the disability support pension, is terrified about what the changes mean for her in the future. A 23-year-old who has been saving up for his first home, using a first home saver account, says he feels cheated that the scheme has been cut. What is really scary about this is that it is not clear whether the members opposite really know what this budget is doing. You would think the Prime Minister would know, but we have had the Prime Minister say on Melbourne radio recently that an average person would only have to pay the $7 GP co-payment the first 10 times they went to the doctor: uh-uh! There is a safety net for people who are concession card holders and children but there is no safety net for ordinary working people, so mum's and dad's family budget will be under pressure. You know who will not be going to the doctor. You would think the Minister for Education would know: uh-uh! He said that the new arrangements for HECS debts and deregulated fees apply only for new students enrolling from 1 January 2016, but it seems the budget papers say the changes apply to all students enrolling from 14 May 2014 who will be studying in 2016, and to all people with a current HECS or HELP debt. It is not very reassuring, is it? The cuts are so deep and so brutal but the people who are supposed to be coming up with them and implementing them do not actually understand them.

As well as the values deficit, the economic arguments of this budget just do not stack up. The coalition's hysteria is built on a confected budget emergency. They hope that if they say often enough that the end is nigh, people will come to believe it. The most astonishing thing, given this hysteria around the confected budget emergency, is that they have actually managed to deliver bigger deficits. They have done a deal with the Greens for 'debt unlimited'. The deficits in the first three years, from 2014-15, are actually larger than the ones that were predicted in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook statement—which was prepared not by us but by Treasury and Finance, before the election. It is worth reminding people that this Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook is a Peter Costello, Charter of Budget Honesty innovation and sets the benchmark for each party's election commitments going into the election. Why has that happened? Because they have added $68 billion to the deficit in just a few months by giving almost $9 billion—unasked for and unneeded—to the Reserve Bank by changing a number of economic parameters and by spending.

If there is a budget emergency, what should we do? Should we find $22 billion for a gold-plated paid parental leave scheme? It just shows how wrong the priorities of this budget are. Pensioners who are surviving on around $22,000 a year get a cut so people who are earning $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 or $1,000,000 a year can get $50,000 to have a baby. They cut superannuation support for low- and middle-income workers so that they could leave in place measures that allow the highest-income workers to benefit most from super tax concessions. They will bring back petrol taxes that will hit everyone who drives but will hit those living in outer suburbs and in regional areas the worst. They are going to hit them with petrol taxes and then float the notion of a higher or broader GST at the same time as knocking back corporate tax avoidance and profit-shifting prevention measures that would have raised $1.1 billion. How on earth can anyone justify these priorities?

Then there is the abolition of the carbon tax and the minerals resource rent tax in favour of taxes that hit the family budget. There is the $80 billion cut from education and health. I always knew that many on those benches opposite were big supporters of outsourcing; well, they have really done well in this instance. They have outsourced $80 billion of hospital and education cuts to the states. They are not prepared to do it themselves. They have just snatched that money from the states. It is extraordinary to just say that the states can deal with it—'This thing that has always been a shared responsibility is no longer a shared responsibility. We are just going to shove it onto the states and they can deal with the longer waiting lists for elective surgery, they can deal with the longer waiting times in emergency departments and they can deal with the cuts to our schools.'

We met the budget rule of keeping real average spending growth to less than two per cent a year—the lowest four-year result in 23 years. We saved 200,000 jobs during the global financial crisis. We prevented Australia from falling into recession and we did it in a way that saw Australia coming back to surplus over the economic cycle because we agree that it is important that over time we do that. We delivered $180 billion in savings while we were in government. In fact, as health minister I delivered billions of dollars in savings but I did it by means testing the private health insurance rebate—opposed by those opposite—and by finding savings in the cost of generic medicines, by paying less for medicines as they came off patents. There were billions of dollars of savings that were opposed by those opposite.

The government's cuts to the health budget make no sense. Why would you cut prevention programs if you want to keep people out of hospital, where it is expensive to look after them? Why cut prevention when the greatest health challenges—smoking, obesity and excessive alcohol consumption—cost us so much as a community? How does it make sense to cut health costs by reducing access to the cheapest part of the health system, general practice, knowing that the outcome will be sicker people and more strain on the hospital system? These are health cuts designed by someone who does not care about patients, just about short-term cuts. They will cost us all in the long run. You can cut costs in the health system by keeping people healthy and out of hospital or you can cut costs by rationing the access that sick people have to medical treatment. Guess which this government has chosen?

I spoke earlier today about the massive cuts to foreign aid and what they will mean to the world's poorest people. I think it is so important to say that again that is a stark example of just how different our values are. John Howard knew that Australia should be a nation of lifters not leaners when it came to international development assistance. John Howard knew that, but Tony Abbott does not. It is worth saying also that, if you are talking about our role in the world community, nations everywhere are looking at us now and asking: 'Why are you cutting an effective and cost-effective program to reduce air pollution, carbon pollution? Why are you cutting, for example, billions of dollars from environmental programs while finding $2.6 billion to pay big polluters to keep polluting? Why are you cutting from grassroots environmental programs, CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and renewable energy initiatives?' Then there is the broken promise on Landcare funding, ripping $483 million out of Landcare and conservation programs; the $2.8 million cut from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority; the scrapping of climate change research across government agencies; and the abolition of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which actually makes money for the government. The world community is asking, 'Why are you doing these things at a time when everybody else is moving in the other direction, moving to tackle climate change?'

There is another broken promise on Landcare and another broken promise on the ABC and SBS. There are cuts of $43.5 billion over four years to the ABC and SBS and a cut of almost $200 million to the Australia Network. This is a budget of broken promises. It is a budget of wrong priorities. It is a budget that hurts the poorest the most. It is a budget that shows very clearly the values deficit of this government.

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