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

This is a budget based on wrong choices, wrong priorities. There are nine million families in this country, and they make choices every day, in their budgets, on how to spend money on what they need and want—on school fees and school expenses for their kids, on whether to send their kids to soccer or basketball, on what shoes they need, on the cost of IT, on how to feed their families and whether to shop at IGA or Woolworths or Coles, on what car to purchase, on where to live, on how to pay the rant, on mortgages, on holidays, with those precious few dollars that they have left over. They know that those decisions are based on their values, their morals and their ethics. They make choices every day. This government has made choices in this budget. This government demonstrates its character by the priorities it has taken in this budget and the decisions it has made.

We will see, and we are seeing, the destruction of universal health care in this country. We see a massive amount of cuts in education and health—$80 billion, according to the budget papers. They said there would be no new taxes, and there are new taxes. They said there would be no cuts to the ABC and SBS, and there are. They said there would be no changes to pensions, and, of course, there are—the freezing of indexation, the savage cuts in the future. They claim in here during question time that pensions will go up on the basis of CPI—and yet they had the temerity to run arguments, all over the country, that the indexation based on CPI for DFRDB and DFRB recipients was not fair. They had the temerity to run that campaign, and yet they are saying to pensioners and veterans that, in the future, they will see the true value of their pension—and their capacity to make those choices I referred to—diminished. If that is not the case, why in the budget are they talking about these decisions they have made actually being savings? So, in terms of decisions that they have made, they have demonstrated their character and their choices.

Every time a person gets into their car and goes to the service station, they will pay an increased tax. When they take their sick child to the doctor, they will pay a GP tax payment. That is what they will do. And the debt levy the government are talking about here, in the legislation before this chamber, the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Budget Repair Levy) Bill 2014, is yet another broken promise. All across Australia, the candidates for the opposition, successful or otherwise, took around their Real Solutions booklet, their blue book. They carried it round like a bible, a badge of honour—the charter to put Australia back on track. And guess what: on no page will you find an indication at all that they would increase taxes or put in a deficit levy for people earning over $180,000 a year. There were going to put it, of course, on people earning $80,000 a year or more, until the public hue and cry was so great that they had to back down on that.

I would have more respect for those opposite, in relation to the choices they made, if the money from the GP tax, the co-payment, were to go back into health directly, to pay for Medicare. But it will not. By sleight of hand, it is going into a medical research fund. Medical research is a great idea, but you should not do it this way because you are making people who are sick and vulnerable now make choices in relation to their priorities, in relation to their children. If those opposite do not believe that that is price sensitive, they do not believe in a market. Of course there is a market. Of course it is price sensitive. People will make choices as to whether they can afford to take their sick child or themselves to the doctor. The government cannot get their story straight across this area, whether it be the Prime Minister, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer or indeed the Treasurer himself. They cannot get it right whenever they do interviews. These are choices they have made. We understand these are challenging times but there is no budget crisis or budget emergency. That is simply fiction.

I had a look at the budget papers and at the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Neither the Treasury nor any other body looking at this is affiliated with the Labor Party. I had a look at the state of the books before the election. One of the best things we have done in this country is the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. PEFO outlines the state of the budget before the election. So no-one can come in here and say, 'We didn't know the books. We now have come in and seen them. They're terrible. We have to junk all our policies. We have to junk all our policies. We have to junk all our promises and do something very different.' In this country, those days should be gone.

The Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook indicated one thing—that the deficit for 2013-14 under the Labor government was $30.1 billion. I had a look at the budget papers for this year to see what it is like under the coalition, having won the election in September last year. It is $49.9 billion, nearly $20 billion more under the coalition than it was under Labor just before the election. I had a look also at PEFO in relation to 2016-17. Those opposite say they have made decisions to pay down debt and to reduce deficit. They say they have done that, but according to PEFO, in 2016-17 there will be a budget surplus under Labor of $4.2 billion; under the coalition, according to the budget papers—I am not making it up—it will be $10.6 billion in the red. So do not come into this place and tell us what you are doing is bringing down debt and deficit when the Treasury figures do not say that at all. They do not reveal the narrative those opposite, one after another, have been saying in this place. I do not think they have seen the budget papers. I certainly do not think they have seen PEFO, which does not show that what they are saying is true.

Those opposite have made choices to increase the debt and deficit in this country with the decisions they have made. They have also made choices of how the money will be spent this year and across the forward estimates. We would not spend $2.6 billion on a direct action policy. We also brought in a paid parental leave scheme in this country to cover 95 per cent of working women. Hundreds of thousands of them have accessed that scheme already, paid for by taxes and consolidated revenue. We would not bring in a paid parental leave scheme which gives millionaires up to $50,000 to have babies at a cost to the taxpayers, according to the budget, of $5.3 billion. They claim there is a budget crisis, yet they splurge money on these things.

We also would not have given superannuation concessions to millionaires of $360 million, but those opposite did in one of the first acts when they came to government. We also would not have forgone $7.4 billion in relation to revenue that comes in, according to the budget papers, from the MMRT and the carbon pricing mechanism. They asked us, 'What would you have done about it?' We would not have spent the money; we would have kept the revenue. We did not also give $9 billion, unwarranted and not asked for, to the Reserve Bank. We would not have changed the assumptions to dodgy-up the figures in MYEFO and we would not have cut funding commitments across the length and breadth of the electorates of those opposite—Regional Development Australia, building multicultural communities and a host of areas which they cut in MYEFO.

When it comes to decisions, do not come into this place and give us lectures. Those opposite know that the budget crisis did not occur. This week, I had the benefit of Senator Barry O'Farrell come to debate me at the Ipswich Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

See this speech in context