Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to take the interjection. People say, 'It's not coming from the taxpayer, because the paid parental leave scheme is coming from an extra tax on companies.' But it is a revenue measure foregone. It is money that is collected by the Commonwealth which could be spent elsewhere. This is the point they do not seem to understand.

There are two things that really set this budget apart from many others. First of all, the groundwork for this budget was this. This is a government which, before the election, promised anything and everything to the Australian electorate, and of course denied there would be any cuts: 'No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to pensions'—those were almost exactly the words of the now Prime Minister, on the eve of the election. And a lot of people relied on those words.

I am happy to concede that a lot of people voted for the coalition in my electorate—more than ever before. Of course, it is complex and there are many reasons for that, no doubt. But, more than anything, they were relying on a Prime Minister who gave them very solid commitments, and they are commitments that now he has reneged on. So they are angry. The baseball bats, to use the political vernacular, are well and truly out.

So who is angry? Well, it is pretty hard to find someone who is not angry. The list is very, very long.

Talking of voters in my own electorate, my National Party opponent in the last three elections, who happens to be the Mayor of the Upper Hunter Shire, is out there defending the government's budget in his electorate. In other words, he is putting the interests of his party ahead of the interests of those who live in his local government area.

So that list is long. The elderly are upset because they were promised there would not be changes to pensions, and there are—a whole range of them, all the way from the indexation to the rebates they may not now get from councils and water authorities et cetera. Low-income families are upset because their income support is being slashed. Families generally are worried about the future of their children's education, partly because Gonski—the schools education reform put in place by the Labor government—is being cut, and partly because of the changes to universities, and, in particular, what will be happening with HECS debts. Young people are angry, partly because of education but also because assistance is being pulled out from under them. Unemployed people—people looking for work—will be forced to struggle on much less money. Labour market programs are being pulled out from under them—some very good labour market programs, some of which I spoke about in the House earlier this week. Local government is upset because the money from the states is going to be reduced because the money from the Commonwealth to the states is going to be reduced. The states are upset because their money is being reduced, and the deals they had done through the COAG process with the Labor government are being torn up.

Just about all of us, if not all of us, are concerned about the health system. People are concerned about the GP tax. They are concerned about what is going to happen with the public hospital system. One thing Kevin Rudd did as Prime Minister which he gets very little credit for is the deal on hospitals. Kevin Rudd could see that, with the diminishing revenue bases of the states, almost all of their budgets were going to be taken up by the public health system in the years ahead. So he went out there and gave them a deal and a commitment to fund 60 per cent of public hospital costs in the states. That has just been torn up. So, given that the problem the former Prime Minister identified was real and remains real, how are the states going to fund the public hospital system? I can tell those in this chamber with an interest in rural and regional Australia that the hospitals that will be hit hardest and first will be those in rural and regional Australia, if the past form of state governments generally is followed in the future.

So this is a bad budget for everyone, and of course it is based on a lie—this confected lie that we have a budget emergency, notwithstanding the fact that we have a AAA rating from each of the international credit rating agencies. Of course we need to consolidate the budget. There is a thing called the budget cycle, where you go into debt and spend money when things are tough—and I remind the chamber that we are one of the few Western nations that did not go into recession—and then you start saving again as things improve, which was exactly the former Labor government's plan. There is no budget emergency. Budget consolidation can take place without perverse priorities and without hurting people in society who can least afford these cuts.

In the last six years, prior to the election of the Abbott government that is, my electorate enjoyed record levels of infrastructure funding. The list is very long and I do not have time to go through it. The biggest example is the $1.7 billion Hunter Expressway, which has made an extraordinary difference in the Hunter. It has been transformational, providing a bypass for many towns, improving transport safety, improving economic efficiency, bringing investment to the valley and improving travel times for commuters everywhere. Another example is the new $28 million bridge over the Hunter River in Aberdeen. This was a project fully funded by the Commonwealth, an important project in economic efficiency terms. You can imagine my astonishment when on Wednesday afternoon of this week, I received an invitation from Duncan Gay, the New South Wales transport minister, to the official opening of that bridge to be held at 11 am this Friday in Aberdeen. I do not expect everyone in this chamber to understand the geography, but that is an hour and a half north from my electorate office in my home town of Cessnock.

Obviously, parliament is sitting this week and we will be here till five o'clock this afternoon. I have commitments tonight, tomorrow morning and tomorrow afternoon, and it would be impossible for me to get to Aberdeen at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning. Duncan Gay says, 'I note parliament is not sitting on Friday.' I do have a diary and it is constantly pretty full and I need a little more notice than Wednesday afternoon. Not only would I have to get to Aberdeen by 11 o'clock; I have to get back south for other things in the afternoon as well. As I pointed out, it is a long way back. I just cannot get to Aberdeen tomorrow. I think it is very disappointing and extraordinarily discourteous for the New South Wales government to do this. I am not going to fight to have the date changed. I am not going to delay the opening to traffic on that bridge. That would be childish of me. I will not do that. But I am going to express my disbelief and anger at this decision. Duncan Gay, whom I wrote to yesterday, says, 'It's the Commonwealth's decision when it opens.' That is not true. The Commonwealth minister approves the date put forward by the RMS through him. The RMS and the minister in New South Wales would have known for weeks, if not months, when this opening was going to occur. Why has this happened? I do not know. But if it is a political game, it is a very childish one. I think my electorate will stand by me and agreeing with that comment.

This is a New South Wales government which put $200 million into the $1.7 billion Hunter Expressway. Yet there was Duncan Gay cutting the ribbon with the Commonwealth minister, with me in the background. I was not offended by that either; I do not care. The people of the Hunter know who takes responsibility for the success of the Hunter Expressway. And here we have an even worse example of political games being played where the former Labor government was the primary deliverer of these infrastructure programs, and in the case of Aberdeen the only funder of the program. This takes me to the New South Wales government and its performance. It is not in a position to play games, I would suggest. This is a New South Wales government which is making a very bad decision on the location of a new hospital it had promised, denying services to my people in the upper Hunter and some parts of the lower Hunter. This is a government that is selling the port of Newcastle. It originally said it would get about $700 million for it and said it would give Hunter half the money from the sale for infrastructure in the Hunter region. But now the government tells us it is going to get $1.7 billion but we are still only going to get $340 million of the proceeds. That is a disgrace. This is a government that failed to deliver a reasonably priced electricity contract to the Hydro aluminium smelter, which could have saved that smelter in the face of a high Australian dollar and dramatically falling metal prices.

This is a government that says it has a resources to regions program, yet denies the Cessnock and Maitland LGAs designation of a mining affected region. It is just ridiculous. This week it has reversed that decision but two years have now passed. Cessnock and Maitland have missed out on two years of funding under the Resources for Regions program. This is a government which reacted to the mining tax by raising its royalties against an agreement. This is a government that is not doing enough to assist the coalmining industry generally, at a time when prices are plummeting in that area. This is a government that is not doing very well out there. It has better things to do, surely, than play political games like not inviting me, with sufficient notice, to a bridge opening in my electorate—a bridge which was fully funded by the Commonwealth. It is childish at best.

I congratulate the Victorian government, which is not something that I do all that often. I want to congratulate it on its $2 million program for cattle underpasses in Victoria. These underpasses take dairy cattle, for example, off our roads. It is enormously helpful to the farmers; and, of course, it is very important in safety terms. It is not a lot of money at all, but it will provide big outcomes. I appeal to both the federal government and the state government in New South Wales, if they can get anything right, to look at that program and consider doing the same in New South Wales. I have situations in my own electorate where this would be very helpful, including around the Jerrys Plains area. I appeal to New South Wales to have a look at this program and to consider replicating it in New South Wales.

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