Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

by the person who is now the Prime Minister but who was then the Leader of the Opposition. The Australian people have seen through the false promises of the Leader of the Opposition, who is now the Prime Minister, before the election. They have seen through the false promises made by the gang with whom he made all sorts of promises to the Australian people. They have seen through them because, far from there being no cuts to education and health, there is an $80 billion cut to education and health. And this have been recognised as such by the Premier of Queensland, the Premier of New South Wales and the Premier of Victoria—all of whom are Liberal premiers. That is why the Liberal Premier of New South Wales said in response to the budget that it is a kick in the guts to New South Wales. That is not the Labor Party talking; it is the Liberal colleagues of the member for Moore and the federal Liberal Party saying that it is a 'kick in the guts to the people of New South Wales'. Well might a senior Liberal, who was quoted in the media on Monday, have said that this budget is a 'stinking carcass' around the neck of this government. It is a stinking carcass around the neck of this government and it is going to remain a stinking carcass around the neck of this government right through to the next election, which cannot come soon enough.

I want to say a few things about the disgraceful cuts in the two portfolio areas that I have responsibility for, which are the Attorney-General's portfolio and the Arts portfolio. I am not by any means hoping to achieve in the six minutes which remain to me a comprehensive list of all the disgraceful cuts we see in both these portfolio areas in this budget, but I want to start with the further cuts to legal assistance—how disgraceful at a time when there is rising demand for legal assistance. I am talking about the services provided by the eight legal aid commissions of the states and territories; the legal services provided by the 138 community legal centres that are funded by the Commonwealth of Australia; the environmental defenders offices, which have been defunded by this government; and the legal services that are provided by the eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services and the 14 family violence centres, all of which are wholly funded by the Commonwealth of Australia because they serve the Indigenous community of our country. All legal aid services suffered cuts in the Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook in the face of the current Attorney-General having said in the lead-up to the election how much he supported the legal assistance sector.

Well, the legal assistance sector now understand just how much that implied promise of support meant. They understand only too well the attitude of this government to legal assistance. This is an Attorney-General who has not even deigned to visit community legal centres across Australia. He went to Caxton Community Legal Centre, in Brisbane, to do a book launch and then said at the last Senate estimates that he thought that it had a large Indigenous practice—which it does not. That is how much he knows. He has declined to meet with the peak bodies in the legal assistance sector—the National Association of Community Legal Centres and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services—because he is not interested. And that has been reflected in this budget by a further cut of $15 million from the state and territory legal aid commissions. This is an extraordinary policy decision at a time when all people associated with the legal assistance sector or the legal profession, or any clients of the legal profession—which of course is potentially all Australians—know that there is unmet legal need. Everybody knows that there is a rising demand for legal services and everybody knows that the disgraceful changes to criminal laws by conservative state governments across Australia have increased the need for legal services. That is not the time to be cutting the legal assistance sector; it is a time to be increasing the services which are provided to Australians.

I will not dwell at length on some of the other cuts and some of the other agencies that are going to be abolished in the proposals that we see in this budget. The government has ripped $10 million out of privacy and freedom of information services and announced that it is going to abolish the Office of the Information Commissioner and, with it, the Freedom of Information Commissioner. Apparently those functions henceforth are going to be provided by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal as to merits review, the advice function is going to be handled by the Attorney-General's Department and the complaints function is going to be handled by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, none of which has been given any additional funding. That tells you all you need to know about the attitude of this government to freedom of information and, dare I say it, to privacy. The Privacy Commissioner has survived the axe but is to be sent off to work somehow at the Human Rights Commission, which has also received no additional funding; in fact, it has received less funding in this budget. We have learnt that not only is there to be a full-time Human Rights Commissioner—Mr Tim Wilson, who was appointed by this government before Christmas without any advertising and without any search process—but the commission has been told that it is to receive no new funding in this budget; in fact, there is a cut of $1.7 million. So the Privacy Commissioner is being sent to the Human Rights Commission, which has been told that it has to make do with less.

Part of that, disgracefully, is that there is no longer going to be a full-time Disability Discrimination Commissioner, a role which has been filled by Graham Innes with such distinction over many years. He has done an outstanding job over the last several years as Australia's first ever full-time Disability Discrimination Commissioner. I record the thanks of the people of Australia to Graeme Innis for that good work he has done for so long. He has been an extremely powerful advocate for people with a disability. He has worked hard every day to ensure that people with a disability have access to the same rights and opportunities as all Australians.

In the 1½ minutes which remain to me—I am going to be speaking about this elsewhere, and I already have—I come to the slashing of the arts budget in this budget. Senator Brandis has had the gall to suggest that the arts budget and the arts community of Australia in fact did very well—that is the way he put it—out of this budget. His Prime Minister tried to back him up with this at the publisher's dinner last Friday night in Sydney, saying also that if it had not been for George Brandis's advocacy for the arts sector then the cuts would have been worse. Contemplate that. That is what this Prime Minister wants to do to the arts community of Australia. He wants to make more cuts, and he is saying that George Brandis held him back. I do not thank Senator George Brandis for his efforts in this regard.

Labor provided an additional $200 million to the arts in the 2013 budget to accompany the first national cultural policy that we had seen in this country for 20 years, something that was welcomed by arts communities across Australia, and the response of this new government is to slash and burn. We have seen cuts to the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, a cut of $25 million from Screen Australia, the complete abolition of the Australian Interactive Games Fund—how shortsighted is that—the abolition of the Get Reading! program and the abolition of the Indigenous Languages Support program. What a disgrace. (Time expired)

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