Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government's first budget stands perhaps as the single worst budget this country has ever seen. That is a fairly large claim but one I think this budget lives up to. Not only is built upon broken promises and untruths pedalled to the Australian people before the election last year; it is deeply unfair and indeed cruel, pushing the worst of the Treasurer's cuts and tax increases on to those that can least afford it. This so-called 'spreading the burden' is a myth, all to fix a so-called budget emergency—an emergency so severe, so detrimental to this country's future, that the first significant act of the Abbott government was to double the size of the deficit with a spending increase of $68 billion.

This government's barefaced duplicity with the Australian people would be a source of great hilarity if the consequences of its actions were not so dire. After coming into office, the Abbott government has borrowed $68 billion to fund its own decisions and new measures, such as the spending measures associated with the repeal of the carbon tax, which will cost $2.8 billion over four years; funding land transport infrastructure programs, costing $5.6 billion over four years; implementing its cruel border protection policies to the tune of $2.1 billion over four years; and paying an $8.8 billion grant to the Reserve Bank of Australia. This is all new Abbott government spending. It is not Labor spending; it is Liberal spending—fact-checked and verified.

But still they persist with the concoction of a budget emergency, a crisis on our fiscal horizon that will shackle our children for untold generations—and why? Because this concocted budget crisis is being used as a smokescreen to hide the hideous truth of this budget. This budget is not simply about saving money; it is a budget which seeks to fundamentally and permanently change the social structure and programs which keeps this country fair and maintain the living standards of people on low and middle incomes. It is the legislation manifesto of the wish list—or, more accurately, the hit list—drawn up by the faceless men of the Institute of Public Affairs, who have, Medicare, pensions, public education, affordable universities, public broadcasters, government-owned infrastructure, Public Service jobs, government agencies and any meaningful action on climate change all firmly in their sights.

The Prime Minister may not have put the policies of the faceless men of the IPA to the people of the electorate, but he is certainly implementing them now. There are so many injustices and economic fallacies laid out in the Treasurer's first budget that it can be hard to know where to begin. But my electorate is home to two of the biggest university campuses in Victoria, indeed Australia—Monash University at Clayton, and Deakin University in Burwood—so I will begin there.

Despite promising before the election that the coalition had 'no plan to increase university fees' and then in the November last year repeating the pledge: 'We're not going to raise fees. I'm not even considering it, because we promised that we wouldn't. We repeat: we promised that we wouldn't.' This budget has nevertheless pressed ahead with item 11 of the IPA's faceless men hit list—deregulation of university fees. But, of course, why stop there, when at the same time the government can cut its contribution to each student course by 20 per cent, which is exactly what it has done. If young people were not already daunted by the prospect of embarking on a degree which has suddenly become more expensive, despite not offering any more qualifications or outcomes, the government intends on increasing the rate of interest on all HECS and HELP loans, dramatically increasing the cost of a university degree. Let us be clear on this interest-rate increase. Every person who has a HECS or HELP debt, as of 2016, will pay this higher rate of interest. So if you are studying now, it could impact you. Anyone who plans to study, is currently studying or has recently finished studying will pay this increased interest rate of up to six per cent per annum.

Even those who attain their degrees, whose degrees have not changed since graduation and whose degrees offer no extra qualifications today than they did the day they graduated, will pay more for education they have already received. There are people out there who have been looking at the HECS or HELP deductions in their pay packets and are planning and budgeting for the day when these loans are paid and gone. The Treasurer has shifted the goal posts of all these people. Whilst you say it is a debt and you can pay it off, it is a debt. You are carrying that debt. You cannot progress with many of the things you would like to do when you start work—buy a home, maybe even go overseas or buy a car. You are straddled with this debt, and it is growing. Again, the goalposts have been shifted. Many of them will now have families and are already facing increased costs of Medicare, reduced family-assistance payments and cuts to child care.

Consider also the recently graduated student struggling to find work, and facing ballooning debts far beyond what they had originally bargained for and which would have been paid back sooner. Surely all graduates and current students must be asking themselves: how is it fair that a contract I entered into when I began my studies has now been changed? And what of students of tomorrow? They will be paying 80 per cent of the cost of their degrees. These are degrees which the Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University, Professor Glyn Davis, has said will cost students up to 61 per cent more at Melbourne University as a result of the government cuts—not of the deregulation but of the cuts. There is an increased fee of up to 40 per cent for humanitarian and social sciences.

The government excuses its inequities with the claim that only one per cent of all university graduates are unemployed, and graduates earn 75 per cent more than people who do not go to university. Both of these claims are false, and again were repeated by the Minister for Education during question time today. The unemployment rate of university graduates is 3.3 per cent, and a range of studies into the lifetime earnings of university graduates found that graduates are more likely to earn only 30 per cent more—not 75 per cent—than those who do not attend university. This is an average figure and varies widely for many degrees.

A report by the Centre for Labour Market Research, CLMR, found that while males can expect an average rate of return of 15 per cent per year for education it is 12 per cent for women—again, there is the differential, which is a bit sad, seeing as you have the same degree—in some degrees but, and this stat really impressed me, with Arts the annual rate of return is only three per cent for men and nine per cent for women. It is not 75 per cent. This is one differential where women are actually going to earn more than men from their degrees. It is the only time it happens. The report's author, Professor Phil Lewis, said that for the average student the rate of return is quite good. But there is a whole crowd of people where that is not the case. Alarmingly, he said that for about one in every five students their degree is not financially worthwhile at the moment. So they are paying this huge amount that is not giving them the return that everyone in the government says it will.

The government's changes to university fees will possibly bring that figure to one in three—or worse. So that is one in three students, not getting a benefit, who are the spending a small fortune on their education. Labor made it easier to access university education, increasing student numbers by 750,000 and boosting revenue by 10 per cent per student. The Abbott Liberal government—at the behest of the faceless men of the IPA—is hell-bent on a path that will radically change our higher-education system and entrench a two-tiered system similar to the United States.

I have two very large universities in my electorate. I can envisage going back to pre-Dawkins days and seeing one as a very intensive university of research and one as a teaching centre. Some people may say that is a good thing—and I am getting looks from across the chamber that it may be a good thing—but that is not a university education. A university education is about embracing all aspects of going to university: research, learning and progressing. Maybe even going to a tute, where somebody might actually engage with you on something, which I am not sure many university students do anymore—or are allowed to because the class sizes are already impinging on universities. This is going to make that experience of a university degree that much worse.

And why do we want to have a two-tiered system? Why do we actually want to entrench this system again—going back to the days where my mother did not get to go to university and my father-in-law had to sit his leaving exam twice to get the results that would give him the full scholarship to go to university? I do not want to see those days entrenched again. I do not want to be here in generations hence hearing about others being the first generation of university graduates in their families because people choose not to go to university because it will be far too expensive and they will be saddled with too much debt. It will be a system where access to education will depend on your bank balance, and the low-income students will struggle to find an affordable degree in the field they want to pursue. It will be a system where people must choose their course based solely on the financial return they hope to achieve, leaving low-paid and in demand professions such as social work and teaching in long-term and systematic decline. This is a situation the Labor Party can never support. Australia's strength as a future economy depends on achieving world-class standards of education, encouraging innovation and ensuring that all our citizens are able to access the transformative opportunities that affordable education provides.

Where will we be left in a future global economy where cutting edge research and innovation has become the benchmark of economies like ours?    This brings us to item 21 on the hit list of our faceless friends at the IPA, which seeks to reduce government investment in research. The budget cuts $114 million out of CSIRO, which will see whole research programs slashed, departments removed and 500 researchers put out of their jobs. I have no doubt many of these jobs will be lost from the CSIRO facility in Clayton in my electorate—again, one of the largest facilities that CSIRO operates in Australia. These cuts will force CSIRO to cut funding for research into geothermal energy, marine biodiversity, liquid fuels and radio astronomy. It was the radio astronomy section of CSIRO that discovered wi-fi, a patent which has earned CSIRO well over $230 million and counting and makes my children very happy. It makes my children very unhappy when the wi-fi goes down. Let us understand the benefit to all of our communities of wi-fi. And this is only one of the decreased departments. These are cuts to profitable government agencies that develop sustainable technologies for all Australians. CSIRO is not only our peak scientific body but also a flagship for Australian innovation and development. A properly funded CSIRO is a critically important tool in making sure that we are thoroughly investigating ways to reduce carbon pollution and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Australia is one of only a handful of OECD countries to maintain a AAA credit rating. Yet to maintain the fiction of a budget emergency, the government will sacrifice funding to the CSIRO—funding which could lead to greater revenue. And in this day and age of decline in manufacturing, it is CSIRO that will lead the charge to the jobs of tomorrow—jobs that are being lost in my electorate today. These cuts to CSIRO, with further cuts to research and development, are not only detrimental for the pursuit of science they are also detractors to economic growth and will inhibit private investment as much as they do government investment.

In its response to the budget, NAB expressed its view about the cuts to CSIRO. It said it would 'detract from the agency's ability to assist with industry-enhancing innovation'. And Jennifer Westacott, CEO of the Business Council of Australia, said:

Growing the economy requires Australia to adopt a more global mindset and an unprecedented focus on innovation and knowledge infrastructure.

Some of the cuts to research and development and industry assistance programs are not consistent with this imperative, nor is the constant chopping and changing in the R&D funding arrangements which by their nature need to be long term and predictable.

That is the problem: there is no predictability.

It is clear that this budget, and, indeed, this government's whole approach to research investment, is simply not capable of delivering Australia the dividends we need from research investment. Australian science, innovation and research will go backwards and we will fall behind competing countries, placing our industries at a disadvantage and robbing us of future opportunities. The government will still argue they are committed to research, citing the $20 billion research endowment fund built from taxes of the sick. Can there be a more unethical way to increase funding to medical research than taxing the sick? I would think that, based on the Australian public's reaction to this atrocious budget, the government already has the answer to the question.

This is a budget that breaks every promise the Prime Minister made to the Australian people, a budget with so many appalling injustices and inequalities there is simply not enough time allotted to cover them all, but that does not mean those cuts and inequities have gone unnoticed. I will still be speaking about the terrible cuts to foreign aid, the cuts to community services and emergency system funds, and other hidden cruelties in this budget at other opportunities in this place.

This is a budget that cuts $80 billion from health and education. It makes universities more expensive and less accessible. It destroys the very foundation of our universal healthcare system and increases the cost of living for very low and middle income earners in the country. And it is not because the government really believes they have a budget emergency. It is because they believe that right now they can change the fundamental social structure of life in Australia and tick most of the boxes of the hit list of the faceless men of the IPA.

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