Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This has been for the Prime Minister a year of underachievement. Every government does have the best intentions when they come to power; they have an agenda that they want to see achieved. I am relieved that this Prime Minister has been an underachiever. I am relieved that his Liberal agenda has not successfully passed the Senate and that we have not seen a number of their nasty measures introduced.

I am relieved that he has been an underachiever, and that the Liberal agenda on his plans for education have so far not been achieved. His plan for education would have seen $100,000 degrees introduced into our universities—therefore cutting a generation of younger people or mature-age students from attending university.

And the Prime Minister, as well as his party, is completely delusional if they do not believe that their plan for higher education would not see fewer people enrolling in university. The simple fact that they have put deregulation on the table and are trying so hard to get this legislation through has already seen universities reporting that enrolments are down. People do not want to be saddled with debt for life, and that is what we will see if this government ever achieves its dream for higher education.

I am relieved that the government has also been an underachiever in achieving its plan—its Liberal agenda—for health. Billions of dollars have been cut from our hospitals. This government has also not achieved the watering-down or weakening—basically breaking the back of—universal healthcare by introducing the GP tax. This tax is designed to do one thing. Do not be fooled by the trickery of this government saying that this money will go towards health research. This government is trying to break Medicare by reducing the incentive for GPs to bulk bill. I know, from talking to doctors in my electorate, that it would mean the closure of a number of urgent care centres in regional hospitals in Victoria. Those hospitals are currently bulk billed by doctors—doctors on call, doing a good thing for their community.

So I am relieved that this government has been an underachiever when it comes to the GP tax and they have failed to have that introduced. I am relieved that this government has been an underachiever when it comes to the area of pensions, and that the Senate and the people on this side of the House have continued to block their cruel measures to cut the real wages of pensioners—people who have worked very hard in this country to make sure that we have the prosperity we have today. Yet all we have seen from this government is attacks on their retirement income.

I am relieved that this government has failed to achieve its dream of attacks on young job seekers, forcing them to live on nothing for six months. I am relieved that this government has been an under achiever in forcing young people to live on nothing, yet still expecting them to look for work. I am relieved that this government has again failed in this House to perpetuate a number of the taxes in their shocking budget. What they have achieved—and this does disappoint me—is cuts in jobs. They have cut jobs in the Public Service, making it almost impossible for a number of areas of the Public Service to function. The fact is that if you want a functioning Public Service you need a certain number of public servants in proportion to the people we have in this country, yet we have seen, through their cuts, that parts of our Public Service have started to become dysfunctional.

It is disappointing that they have achieved that. It is disappointing that we have lost so many good, well-paying jobs in this country because of this government's inability to support innovation in industry. We have seen it in Holden and Toyota, to name just two—and SPC. What the government has achieved, through its failure to support SPC, is another independent being elected at the state level in the area of Shepparton. I congratulate the people of Shepparton for calling the coalition out on their inability to support that community.

This government has also achieved the reunification of the Labor movement. Through their constant attacks on working people, and the unions that represent them, they have achieved the reunification of the Labor movement fighting as one. Dan Andrews, who is the new Victorian Labor Premier said, on election night, 'This election was about working people and it was about unions. And the next election will be about working people and it will be about unions and a Labor vision.'

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