Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the appropriations bills. To say this budget is built on broken promises is unfair; that would be quite frankly a gross understatement. This budget was crafted in a sense of fear and panic in the so-called budget emergency.

Before addressing the inherent unfairness in the distribution of pain and punishment inflicted by this budget, I would like to take a look at the true state of the Australian economy. Despite what was said by members opposite, Australia at the moment is one of 10 countries in the OECD that is AAA credit rating. We are AAA rated by the three credible world rating agencies. That is a privilege never before held by this country, and one that we maintain. Our debt to GDP ratio is a tad over 12 per cent. When you compare that to the average debt ratio of the OECD countries, which is 75 per cent, our economy is still buoyant. As a matter of fact, during question time yesterday the Prime Minister conceded that the Australian economy remains strong.

Those opposite keep referring to the budget deficit. But at no stage—whether it be during the Prime Minister's response, or while the Treasurer was introducing the budget, or when they made their contributions during the appropriations debate—has any of those members dared mention the reason why there was a budget deficit. It is true that it fell to Labor to meet the challenges of stimulating the economy to keep the Australian economy out of recession and create thousands of jobs when much of the world was going through the worst financial crisis in over 60 years. I would remind members opposite of the response by Julie Bishop, who at that time was shadow Treasurer. When met with the recommendations of the Australian Treasury being implemented by the Rudd government, her position on behalf of the opposition was that we should 'wait and see what happens' in terms of the world's economies. If we had done that, we would have lost many, many Australian jobs, with the contraction of many of our industries, and that would have made the recession very difficult to recover from. It would have been the same as the recession that hit most other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, most European countries and advanced countries such as Japan and South Korea. Most international economists wrote that Australia deployed the right fiscal stimulation to ensure that our country remained recession-free.

I am very fortunate to represent the most multicultural economy in the whole country, a community with a lot of colour, a lot of vibrancy and a lot of diversity. But, regrettably, my electorate has significant pockets of disadvantage. The median personal income in my electorate is around $20,000—that, by the way, is what the age pension is at the moment. The median household income in my electorate is just a tad over $55,000. So despite being multicultural and all the things we celebrate in my community, my community is not rich. My community has to work hard to make ends meet. Since this budget was announced I have had the opportunity of speaking with many pensioners, families and young people—the most vulnerable people in our community—who are expected to wear the heavy burden flowing from this budget. Frankly, it is quite clear that life will only get tougher for many of these people.

My constituents will have to rethink whether they visit the doctor because they will now be required to pay $7 per visit and $5 for the medications that they need. The co-payment will cost Western Sydney families alone over $100 million each year. They will probably be the hardest hit region in Australia. Seven dollars means a lot to these people. The Treasurer was insensitive when he explained that this was not a huge impost by comparing it to a couple of middies and saying for the price of a packet of cigarettes people could go to the doctor three times. Given the levels of disadvantage that many of us in this place are working hard to overcome, that insensitivity shows elements of a ruling class bringing down a budget like this. We must not allow the quality of health in Australia to depend on wealth. The equity and affordability of our health system is the envy of the world, and those opposite seem intent on destroying it.

Last week I had the honour of attending the National Seniors Association meeting when they met in Cabramatta at their Fairfield-Liverpool branch. They had representatives from various areas throughout the region including their state and federal representatives. The atmosphere at the meeting, I have to say, was tense. Many of the local seniors in attendance expressed fear in not being able to afford the basics of living. They certainly thought that we here in Canberra—putting 'we' collectively—just do not understand the pressures on the elderly. That arose out of a discussion about the change to the indexation rate of the pension.

The purchasing requirements and living requirements of old age pensioners in particular are vastly different than other households. To change the calculation rate from the total average male weekly earnings to the CPI directly impacts on that. If for the last five years pensioners had been calculated on the CPI indexation rate as opposed to the total male average weekly rate, at the moment they would be $1,670 worse off. The government did not just do this because it was a nice neat way of doing a new indexation—just call it the CPI and have consistency across the board—they did it because it saves money. They did it because they calculated out over the estimates that they could save $400 million on this alone. So this is taking money off people who can least afford it and trying to bank that. It is money off people who cannot turn up the next week and say, 'I will work another shift,' or 'I will do a bit of overtime to overcome this.' People living on a $20,000-pension do it tough.

My 85-year-old mum lives with me. I know how often Mum needs to go and visit the doctor because I take her. I know how often I have to go and get medications when medications change and all the rest of it. I know that because I go and get them as well. My mum is lucky; my dad was a police officer so she is on the retired police superannuation. But the vast majority of elderly in my electorate are not superannuants; they are pensioners. They are on $20,000. If the amount of times I have to take my mum to the doctors and all the rest of it had to be paid out by people on $20,000 it will be a significant impost on people who can least bear it in our community. At the National Seniors conference they said, 'Don't people get it in Canberra? Don't they see the reality?' The reality being they need to see doctors more often than young fit people. I have got to say they were properly stating the obvious. The way this budget is crafted, the part about the co-payments and doctors, we say, is quite clearly an attempt to destroy the universality of the health system. The way they have done it puts the major impost on people who need the system more than ever.

By the way, I did attend a meeting of local doctors the other day. They were up in arms because they said, 'Canberra is now treating us as another taxation.' These are bulk-billing doctors who service a working-class community, pensioners and low-income families. This means that all of them can no longer be bulk-billing doctors. They fear that this is going to exacerbate price adjustments within the medical profession. And they also are very fearful for the patients that they service and care for because they know people will have second thoughts about whether to visit a doctor.

I have also got a lot of families in my electorate. As a matter of fact, I have got 15,500 families on family tax benefit part B. They are going to feel the impost of having family tax benefit B withdrawn when their youngest child turns six. They are on family tax benefit B because, again, they are not wealthy families. By the way, when we are talking families, the vast majority of families in my electorate get that family tax benefit. That is not saying they are welfare dependent; they are low-income families. They need a degree of support.

One of my colleagues happens to be a paediatrician and he made some comments about discouraging people or people thinking twice before taking a child to see a doctor. He said that we are coming into winter, the cold and flu season, and it is not uncommon for a child to be sweaty and have a runny nose, high temperature and a headache. If mum and dad just decide: 'Okay. These things happen, so we won't go,' he said that they are also the same symptoms that would present for a child with meningitis. If that goes untreated, it can have a profoundly high death rate. His position was that we should not be doing anything that discourages families—a price disincentive—from seeing a doctor in cases like that. From a person who spends their life treating children, we are hearing: Don't play God and think it is just a high temperature, so go and have a rest. When it is a child, doctors do not muck around because they know the mortality rate when it comes to meningitis.

This budget tries to force those at the lower end to bear the brunt of the heavy lifting as we have been told by the Prime Minister. I spoke a little while ago in terms of the temporary tax relief measures that are being imposed. The increases are going to be applied to those who, fortunately, might earn over $180,000—you will not find too many people in my electorate affected by that; nor will you find too many people affected in my electorate by the impost on the fringe benefits tax. If you are earning $180,000, it is going to be a two per cent tax increase over three years. Similarly, the fringe benefits tax will go from 47 to 49 per cent over a two-year period. It is not permanent. After that period, it reverts back to what it is today.

What is being imposed on pensioners, low-income families, on people who are unemployed—young people who are on Newstart, those under 25 and those who are out of work now at age 30—are significant but permanent adjustments. Whilst these are incentives to get people working, the other thing this budget does is very cruelly cut the finances for many of those organisations that help people find suitable work. This budget is built on lies. It is built on deception and it affects those in my community harshly.

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