Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

In the weeks leading up to the budget, a conservative Treasurer—not just any Treasurer but a conservative Treasurer—Joe Hockey, started talking about the year 2050. For a moment, I thought we might be about to hear something quite interesting. There are so many countries to our north and around the world that are actively building their nations for long-term growth and prosperity. There are happily talking in decades, even 50-year plans, in terms of their education and infrastructure spends. We need to be considering our long-term objectives. Much of the talk about the budget challenge, the actual challenge—that is, the talk from economists, not the political spin of the government—is in the changes in the world. Growth and increasing sophistication of our neighbours, new competition coming from nations as they develop, not just low-skilled manufacturing jobs but competition for higher skilled jobs, tourism, education, services, innovation, R&D, leaps in technology, challenges in climate change and change itself are at a speed which is unimaginable. We will not have the historical advantages of high skills and technological superiority for long. The advantages that we have had will slip away unless we act. Every year that we fritter away our talent for the new is a year lost.

Unfortunately, when the Treasurer was looking forward to 2050, it was only to demand that we cut pensions. He looked ahead and did not see the challenges of climate change and the possibilities of renewable energy. He did not see an explosion of innovation and skills among emerging economies, with all the opportunities and threats that brings. He did not see the inevitable slowing down of Australia's advantage in mining. He did not see the real need to innovate in agriculture. He did not see the opportunities that grow an economy. He saw only threats and the simplest of threats. He saw a threat to the government's bottom line: if the government did nothing for the next 35 years and if the trajectory remained the same, the bottom line would be in serious difficulty.

He showed an extraordinary lack of imagination and in almost every case, every area he dealt with, he made the problem worse. He tried to fix his own bottom line by attacking the bottom line of families and households around the country and those that are least able to sustain such an attack. He thinks there are too many people on the pension or that there will be by 2050. Well, if you think there are too many people on the pension, one of things you can do is try to reduce the number of people that need it by 2050. Superannuation, for example, is one solution. But no, they slowed the rate of the increase in superannuation and, in doing so, have made it more likely that by 2050 people will need the pension And then they cut it. They make it more likely that you will need the pension and then they cut it.

We remember what CPI adjustments were like in the 10 years of the Howard government. Last time we had CPI adjustments, we saw pensioners struggling in the last years of the Howard government and it is hard to believe that this change in indexation is a permanent change. In 10 years' time we will once again see pensioners struggling and there will be remedial action without doubt.

He saw too many young people unemployed but rather than help them get work, he cut the programs that helped them get jobs. He cut Youth Connections, for example, and industry partnerships. And then, having made it less likely that they would get jobs, he made it harder for them to get unemployment benefits by requiring that they wait six months for Newstart. Undoubtedly, these changes for people under 30 and the changes in the pensions will lead to a greater need for social housing. Did we see an increase in social housing funding? No. We saw an increase in the need for it and we saw a cut to affordable housing. We saw public transport and infrastructure projects all around the country cut, making it more likely that you would have to drive and then they raised the cost of petrol—not good for most of us but good for the government because if you drive, you have to pay. It is good for the government's bottom line but bad for families and households.

They were concerned about the rising cost of hospitals but, rather than try and find ways to have fewer people need those hospitals, they have actually cut preventative health funding. They have cut $703,000 from Holroyd City Council's health programs, for example. Holroyd has: incredibly high obesity rates of 19 per cent; 52 per cent of people are overweight; and 10 per cent of the population of Holroyd has diabetes. They are preventable illnesses but they have cut funding to preventative health and they are cutting funding to the preventative health agency. In doing these things, they are making it more likely that you will need to go to a doctor and when you do need to go to a doctor, they hit you with a $7 per visit GP tax.

They have deregulated university fees so that there will be more places. But, in doing so, they have made it less likely that people will be able to afford them. They have done it, supposedly, to raise standards but it will undoubtedly hollow out our newer and our regional universities and lead to a drop in standards in some universities. But, hey, it improves the government's bottom line and that seems to be what this conservative Treasurer cares most about. If you graduate from university as a doctor, for example, you will have higher fees with a bigger debt. You will find that the Abbott-Hockey government has cut funding to clinical placements so you will be less likely to get a job that you trained for. It is not such a problem for the government because they made it easier for people to bring in people on 457 visas, so we will have more foreign doctors coming in. But if you trained as a doctor, you will be less likely to get a job. And then, of course, every year that you do not get a job, there will be a six per cent compound interest on your HECS so your debt will go up—good for the government, more money for the government but more debt for the community. Less debt for the government means more for the community. It is almost a transfer of debt.

They do not like debt, they say. They rail against debt but they have cut funding for a tool allowance for apprentices and instead brag in parliament about providing them with $20,000 of debt. Take away the funding for tools; give them debt instead. Debt is bad for government. It is really good, this government thinks, if they transfer it to families and to the community. If you put off having children until your 30s because you have been carrying the extra HECS debt that the government has given you, you will discover in your 60s, when you are eight to 10 years off Abbott's new retirement age, that your late 20-something children have lost their jobs and are moving home because they are not eligible for Newstart. You really will have to work til you are 70 under this government's plans for you.

If we prosper in 2050, it will not be on the back of cuts to vulnerable families in our communities; it will be on the back of people born today who go to school today, get a university education and graduate. It will be highly skilled people that will drive this economy in 2050.

We will prosper on the back of two great strengths: our minds and our diversity. We have the world within us. There is not a language we do not speak. We had the stuff in the ground in the era when that was important and we have an extraordinary capacity to think and innovate at a time when that will be the driver of growth. Coal will not be king in 2050. It is assets that are created from the mind that will drive prosperity.

We have to ensure that our young people and those to come have the best possible opportunity to own part of the new economies growing through, for example, action on climate change, through renewable energy, through all those technologies—yet the government cuts that. The government cuts the possibility of Australia being at the forefront of the exponentially growing field of renewable energy—knowing full well that every year delayed is a lost opportunity to cash in on the new and raises the cost of acting on climate change. We have to ensure that our young people, from the day of their birth, have the best opportunity to develop their minds, their capacity and their strengths, yet the government cuts funding to early childhood support, it slashes money to schools, it rips money out of universities and it reduces the number of people who will be able to access university.

The world will be connected in 2050 in ways that we cannot imagine. We need the best cutting-edge communications technology and we need it now—so that our young inventors and entrepreneurs can own the very way that things will be done in the future. Copper will not be king in 2050; copper is not king now. To pull back from investments in things like renewable energy and fibre to the home puts this country back. It sets us back and it does not serve well the people who will drive this country's prosperity in 2050. We need serious investment in R&D and innovation and funds to commercialise the intellectual property of Australians. Yet the government cuts billions from innovation, R&D and science and withdraws the very funds that Commercialisation Australia should be using to assist Australians to commercialise their work.

This government is about the government's bottom line today. It is not about Australians, it is not about growth and it is not about prosperity. The government protects its bottom line by tearing away at the bottom line of Australians now and in the future. You think there are too many pensioners? You stop them from finding ways to avoid needing the pension, then you cut the pension. Do you think there are too many young unemployed? You make it more difficult for them to get a job, then you cut support through Newstart. You cut funding to public transport, making it more necessary for people to drive, then you raise the cost of petrol. You deregulate university fees, then you make it harder for people to afford those fees. You cut funding to preventative health, then you charge people more to go to the doctor.

But perhaps the biggest contradiction in all of this, in everything we have heard from the government in the last few weeks since the budget, is on the issue of debt itself. They claim that they have made these terribly harsh cuts—which they accept are harsh—right across the Australian landscape. They claim they have done this to fix what they call the 'debt and deficit disaster'. Unfortunately for them, anybody who actually pays attention to this—and I know a number of economists have—knows that they have not actually reduced the projected debt and deficit. In fact, the 2014-15 debt is actually higher than in the pre-election projections. The debt in 2017-18 is also higher than was projected. In fact, the projections through PEFO were for a sliver of a surplus. Remember how they used to get up and say that there would be a sliver of a surplus in 2017-18? Now there is a sliver of a deficit. So the debt in 2014-15 is bigger than the PEFO projections and the level in 2017-18 is also bigger—and so is the deficit.

The reason I go back to PEFO rather than MYEFO is a simple one. When Joe talks about MYEFO, as in the midyear economic forecast, he is really talking about Joe's EFO. It is based on figures that the Treasurer has had a hand in. He increased spending by $10 billion between the election and the midyear economic forecast, or Joe's EFO. He increased it by $10 billion and changed a whole range—

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