Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

No amount of denial, no amount of spin, no amount of pleading, and no amount of fudging the figures or selectively quoting will change the judgement of the Australian people that the Abbott government is indeed a government of broken promises, an arrogant government that treats the Australian people as mugs, a government with wrong priorities driven by extreme right-wing ideology, and a government led by a Prime Minister whom the Australian people simply do not trust because he cannot be trusted.

The polls clearly reflect the feelings and the judgement of the Australian people, and they also reflect the feelings of the people who have spoken to me in my electorate every day since the budget was handed down. In fact, I keep getting their emails on a continual basis, and if time had permitted I would have dearly loved to bring some of those emails into the House and read them out word for word.

No Prime Minister that I can recall has so blatantly breached the trust that was placed in him by the Australian people as has the member for Warringah. Not surprisingly, the member for Wentworth is strikingly quiet. He is not jumping to the Prime Minister's defence; he is just sitting back and smiling.

This is a Prime Minister who prior to September said that the trust of the Australian people had been lost in the previous Prime Minister but that he could be trusted, but nothing could be further from the truth. He promised that taxes would not rise under a coalition government and that health and education spending would not be cut. Those are critical issues for voters at each and every election. If you go to what matters most to people at each and every election, health and education are always at the top of the list, as is the integrity and honesty of the parties that are standing. On both those measures Mr Abbott has failed and he has betrayed the Australian people.

Whilst Australian people generalise about how politicians break promises and cannot be trusted, the truth is that they do not look kindly on politicians who blatantly lie to them and who have conned them. The Abbott government knew all along that they would not keep their election promises but they believed they could talk their way out of breaking their promises by telling another lie. It is common that if you tell one lie then you have to tell a second to try and get out of it, but ultimately you just dig yourself a deeper hole. That lie was to do with the state of the budget and the state of the finances of the federal government. The Abbott government confected a budget crisis through their own policies. When they came into office the budget debt was $58 billion and it rose by another 68 since this government has come to office as a direct result of policies that they have introduced and choices that they made. They made those choices quite deliberately to blow the deficit out so that they could in turn say, 'We have a budget crisis and we need to break the promises that we made to you in the lead-up to the election.' As I said earlier, these were promises they never intended to keep.

The Abbott government's rhetoric about a budget crisis simply does not withstand scrutiny. It is not just our scrutiny on this side of the House, it does not stand the scrutiny of so many others who have looked at it carefully. Firstly, we would not have a AAA credit rating from all three global credit rating agencies if our economy was in crisis. Secondly, we have a low debt of 11.8 per cent of GDP compared to about 65 per cent for the UK, 137 per cent for Japan and the US 81 per cent. They are just three of the countries I compare us with because those are three of our major trading partners.

I say to members opposite, if you genuinely believe there is a crisis, why would you support a very generous paid parental leave scheme that pays people up to $50,000? There is no pressure and no demand for that right now other than from a small sector of society, so why would you do that if there is a budget crisis? And why would you cut company tax by 1.5 per cent if there was a budget crisis? Sure, have that as an aspiration for the future, but why would you do it now? And why would you pay polluters $2.3 billion to keep polluting? When you do not care about the environment and you do not believe in climate change, why would you do that if there was a true budget crisis? The truth is that you would not. Again, if there was a budget crisis, why not close some of the loopholes that allow mining companies to get billions of dollars back in rebates? Why not close the loopholes that allowed some 70-odd millionaires in this country a year or so ago to pay not one red cent of tax? Why not close the other loopholes that allow people to transfer their money offshore and avoid billions of dollars of tax due to the Australian government? That is what you would be doing if you really believed there was a budget crisis. But there isn't, and the government knows there isn't. What there is is a confected narrative in order to bring about the real agenda of this government.

Nothing shows the truth about a government's agenda more than does the budget, because the budget exposes what a government's agenda is and what its blueprint for the future is. You can talk all you like about policies and what you believe in, but what you believe in is then reflected by the dollars that you put on the table, and that in turn reflects the truth of a government. This government's priorities are clearly reflected in this budget. The Commission of Audit appointed by this government has also prepared a blueprint for the future. This audit commission, handpicked by the government, handed down its 62 recommendations and I understand only two of those recommendations have been rejected by the government. That says a lot about the priorities of this government. I suggest that members have a good look at what those 62 recommendations of the audit commission are—they are certainly of concern to me and the people that I represent.

Adding $7 to the cost of each doctor's visit or pathology test or X-ray, adding $5.80 to the cost of prescriptions, cutting $50 million from our health funding into the future, cutting $30 billion of our education funding into the future, transferring young unemployed from Newstart to youth allowance and thereby cutting some $48 a week from their very low support in the first place, and making the under 30s wait six months before they receive Newstart and then after they are on it for six months taking it away from them so they have to start the cycle again are not the acts of a government that truly cares about the people who are doing it tough in this country. Changing the family tax benefit B so that the benefit cuts out when the youngest child turns six years old and indexing pensions by a lower rate than has been the case are measures that hurt the people who are the most dependent on government. In question time the minister talks about how they are not cutting pensions and how they simply used the CPI for the last increase. If that is what they believe, that the CPI is what they are going to use, why are they making the changes? The government is making the changes because it believes that by doing so it will save money because it will cut costs. If it is cutting costs, what it is really saying is that it is cutting the amount of money that goes into the households of pensioners. In my state of South Australia, some 200,000 pensioners are going to be directly affected by that.

As I have a specific responsibility for manufacturing on behalf my party, I note that this government does absolutely nothing to support Australia's manufacturing sector—a sector that has been abandoned by the Abbott government. The government has turned its back on the automotive industry and the 200,000-odd workers that directly or indirectly benefit from that industry in this country. It has turned its back on the fruit processing industry, and we saw what happened with SPC Ardmona—the state government had to support them. It has turned its back on the steel and aluminium industries right across the country. It has now done even more, by cutting industry support, to the extent of $845 billion, to programs such as the Australian Industry Participation Program, Commercialisation Australia, Enterprise Solutions, the Innovation Investment Fund, industry innovation councils, Enterprise Connect, industry innovation precincts, support for the textiles, clothing and footwear industries and small business, and Building Innovative Capability. These were all programs put together on advice, in most cases, from industry groups because they were of direct benefit and assistance to those industries. They have all been cut.

These are the industries that in most cases underpinned and supported the manufacturing sector of this country. They were not industries that the previous government had simply plucked out of the air and said, 'We will throw some money this way and we will throw some money that way.' This support arose out of industry groupings and industry need that had been demonstrated and highlighted and, in turn, those funds would help those industries grow their businesses, export their products, work together in a collaborative way and, where possible, even get management expertise and advice on how they should run their businesses. That has all been cut. There has been some attempt to reinstate a couple of other programs but, quite frankly, why would you cut programs which have been working effectively and well and then say you will substitute them with others? Just like the government turned its back on the automotive industry, the government is now doing the same thing across the board to so many other sectors. It is clear that this government believes there is no future for the manufacturing sector in Australia. I disagree with that view. I believe there is a strong future for the manufacturing sector in Australia and I will continue to support the manufacturing sector in any way I possibly can.

In a similar vein, cutting $1.3 billion from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency also directly affects manufacturing in this country. This agency has created thousands of jobs as a result of the projects that it has funded and been involved in. When the money is cut we will lose those jobs, we will those skills and we will lose the know-how and expertise that went with them. At a time when every other country is investing more in renewable energy and the associated support facilities that are required, Australia is going in the opposite direction. This does not make sense. The people who work in this sector have every right to be concerned not only about their jobs but also about the loss of the expertise and know-how as a result of these cuts.

The member for Parkes spoke a moment ago about apprentices. I just want to talk very briefly about the cuts to the apprenticeship scheme. Yes, there has been a program to fund apprentices. That program has come at a time when the cost for apprenticeships is likely to go up by 40, 50 or 60 per cent as a result of the cuts by this government to the higher education services in this country. So, yes, you will give them a loan, but you are increasing their fees and cutting $5,500 which they were otherwise entitled to—and then you say that they are on a good thing! Those apprentices are no fools. They will understand that they have also been dudded.

The other matter that I want to touch on very briefly is the cuts to science and research: $146 million worth of cuts to the CSIRO and similar institutions; $80 million worth of cuts to cooperative research centres; and $74.9 million worth of cuts to the Australian research councils. With those cuts, we will lose about 1,000 jobs—1,000 experts in the science and research area who have done great things for this country. Science and innovation equals competitiveness for us in a global environment. Science underpins the future sustainability of so many Australian industries, and that includes Australian manufacturing industries. Australian industry supports and creates Australian jobs. By cutting funding from science and research organisations, we cut our productivity and, in turn, Australia becomes less competitive in a global environment. It simply does not make economic sense to do so. Even if you want to do it for ideological reasons, it does not make economic sense. No smart company will tell you that they do not invest in research and development.

The last matter that I will quickly touch on, because it pertains to South Australia, is road funding. For years South Australia has been getting supplementary local road funding. We have been getting it because we have 11 per cent of the nation's roads and seven per cent of the population. We get about 5½ per cent of the national pool for road funding. This is as a result of a flaw that was implemented years ago and that has never been corrected. This government has now seen fit to cut that supplementary local road funding to South Australia after years of it being there, including by previous coalition governments. In addition, by freezing federal assistance grants to local government, local councils get even less money because most of the road funding goes to local councils. This cut will directly hit local communities right around Australia. The Australian people have already passed their judgement on this budget and the Abbott government, and it has failed their test of honesty and fairness.

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