Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the second reading amendment to Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2014-15 because it is really clear from the events of this parliamentary sitting week and the first parliamentary sitting week of this year that what is occupying the minds of the frontbench of this government is their own jobs. Last time we were here, two weeks ago, we had the Taylor Swift example of 39 people voting for blank space and one person voting for Taylor Swift for the Hottest 100. This week it has been more like a blooper reel from X factor. We have seen audition after audition from the frontbench for their own jobs and for other people's jobs. We saw the Treasurer this week auditioning for his own job. I suspect it has been an interesting time for him as he stands up to fight off as yet unknown challengers for his position. But of course the person who was really auditioning for his own job this week is the Prime Minister.

All of the people sitting behind the Prime Minister have been hanging their heads and finding something to look at instead of listening to the Prime Minister in question time. You see them sitting over there looking at their phones and reading the paperwork they have got because they want to be anywhere else but backing this Prime Minister. Yesterday's display in question time, for example, was completely unedifying, and that has certainly been a matter of some comment in the newspapers today. So we have seen everyone focusing on their own jobs.

What does it take to get this Prime Minister and this government to scrap the Paid Parental Leave scheme—the famous Paid Parental Leave scheme where the more you earn the more government support you get? You want to talk about middle-class welfare. What does it take to get this government and this Prime Minister to scrap a scheme where people on $100,000 or more would get $50,000 in support from this government when they have a child and the less you earn the less support you get? Does it take calls from business groups saying that they do not support this Paid Parental Leave scheme policy of this Prime Minister? Does it take calls from the opposition saying that this policy is clearly heading in the wrong direction?

Labor's paid parental leave scheme was introduced after proper consideration and after a Productivity Commission report. The member for Jagajaga worked so hard on introducing the paid parental leave scheme—and we ought to paid tribute for her work in that. It was prudent, appropriate and fair, but this government want to replace that with a rolled gold Paid Parental Leave scheme at a massive cost to the taxpayer.

Those things were not enough to get the Prime Minister to retreat. The only thing that got this Prime Minister to retreat from his unpopular Paid Parental Leave scheme, from his unfair, unjust, inequitable Paid Parental Leave scheme that almost everyone in the country was united in opposing was his desire to save his own job. You can see it now. You can see him waiting and wondering what the numbers will be, and when the numbers were not what he thought they should be he blamed the whip. He sacked the Father of the House when the numbers did not turn out to be what he thought they should be, as if for some reason it is the Father of the House's obligation to shore up support for this Prime Minister, who cannot look after himself.

The reason the Prime Minister has lost so much support is that he is so short-sighted, he is so out of touch with the community. It does not take community opposition to get him to move on this paid parental leave scheme, it takes his desire to save his own skin. What about the member for Wentworth? What would he do to take the Prime Minister's job. Would he for example scrap his deeply held conviction on climate change, his rock-solid support for an ETS, a few days before a spill motion was due to occur in the party room? Of course he would. The member for Wentworth will do anything to become Prime Minister. Unfortunately for the current Prime Minister of Australia, there seems to be a growing view, perhaps an inevitable view, that the member for Wentworth will become Prime Minister. If he does, the Labor opposition will not let him forget that he sat around the cabinet table and supported every single unfair measure in last year's federal budget, which is yet to be passed in its entirety—the GP tax, the cuts to the indexation of pensions, the $100,000 degrees, the cuts to family support that will leave a family on $65,000 some $6,000 worse off. All of those were supported by the member for Wentworth and everyone around that table. The Foreign Minister supported those measures, the Minister for Social Security supported those measures and present ministers on the government side supported those measures.

It does not matter what pop culture reference you might want to talk about—whether it is Taylor Swift or TheX Factor. Perhaps I need to go to something further back in time for the Prime Minister to understand this. Perhaps we need to go to Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch or something a little less contemporaneous. When you think about analogies for this government, it is pretty clear that the government is in a world of pain. We are seeing that with the leaking, chaos and dysfunction that this government continues to produce. This week we have seen leaks on so many different issues—such as the lack of support in the cabinet for pension indexation cuts. That is a very serious leak and, of course, there have been many others. Why are there so many leaks? Why is there so much chaos? Why is there so much dysfunction? It is because backbenchers—and apparently seven frontbenchers—know that this government, led by this Prime Minister, is so out of touch and is acting so wrongly that they are losing support all around the country for the things they have done.

One of the reasons I support the second reading amendment is that it is important, in the context of talking about these appropriation bills, to think about the events that have led to these appropriation bills. Of course, these appropriation bills come on the heels of the 2014-15 MYEFO, which showed a $44 billion blow-out in the budget deficit over the forward estimates compared to the government's own 2014-15 budget. Since the coalition came to government the deficit for 2014-15 has been revised and has blown out by $16.4 billion—from $24 billion in the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook to $40.4 billion in the 2014-15 MYEFO. Debt is higher in the most recent MYEFO than it was in the government's own 2014-15 budget, with gross debt over the forward estimates increasing by $100 billion and net debt increasing by $146.3 billion over the same period.

Looking to the broader economy, it is in very difficult shape at the moment, particularly when you think about what has happened with unemployment. Unemployment is at 6.4 per cent, a 13-year high unemployment rate unmatched in recent history since the current Prime Minister was the employment minister. What is this government doing about unemployment? Are they focusing on the 100,000 extra people on the unemployment lines? Are they worried about the fact that there are 795,000 Australians unemployed in this country at the moment? Or are their own jobs the only ones they really care about? The only jobs that this frontbench cares about are their own jobs. It is an absolute disgrace.

Since the 2014 budget we have seen a significant fall in confidence in this country. Consumer confidence is nine per cent lower now than it was at the time of the 2013 federal election and business confidence is still below the long-run averages. So we know the effect that the 2014 federal budget has had on our economy more broadly. We know that Australians are very concerned about their future. We know that, in an environment of high unemployment, people are very concerned about security. This is compounded by the fact that wages growth is at its lowest rate since the wage price index commenced being kept in the 1990s.

People are hurting and they are worried. Their concerns about the economy are feeding into the anxiety, stress and pressure on households. People are sitting around their kitchen table thinking about the bills they have got to pay. They are thinking about how they are going to fund the cost of their kids going to school. They are thinking about the cost of health care. They are thinking about the cost of utilities. People are worried about those real household pressures, the things people have to think about every single day. With these Liberal government led attacks on the federal budget and the consequential effects on our economy—the drop in confidence, the effect of which has been slower than expected GDP growth—people are anxious. They have real cost-of-living pressure. It is something that a lot of people on the frontbench of the Liberal government just do not understand. They do not get it because they are so out of touch with the real concerns facing people every day.

Despite the fact that before the 2014 budget the IMF warned this government against making too many cuts too deeply and too quickly, we are seeing yet more cuts. For example, we are seeing a further $3.7 billion cut in foreign aid in addition to the $7.6 billion cut in the 2014-15 budget. Aid is important not just as a matter of altruism but because Australians domestically have an interest in having less poverty in the world and having nations being able to stand on their own two feet. Similarly, a multinational tax evasion crackdown is important, not only for our domestic revenue situation but so that developing countries get their fair share of taxation as well. These are things that this government just does not seem to understand. But I digress.

Back to MYEFO: there is also a $250 million cut to the ABC and the SBS, despite the Prime Minister promising before the 2013 federal election that there would be no cuts to the ABC and the SBS. He said there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to the pension, no changes to the GST and no cuts to the ABC and the SBS. On the GST, watch this space, but every single one of those other promises has been broken. And of course we have seen this government continuing to push, just this week, with its higher education package—the $100,000 degree package—and the so-called reform of the GP tax.

The GP tax is a terrible policy. It is unsupported by evidence. It has been admitted by the department, during committee hearings, that no substantial research has gone into this policy measure. It was an ideologically driven policy measure that this government dreamed up before the 2014 federal budget on the back of the Commission of Audit report, which had heard from a submitter who, in his own submission about the proposal for a GP tax, admitted that research needed to be done to find out whether people were actually going to the doctor unnecessarily.

Of course, that is the point of the GP tax. It has been called several things. I hear they are now calling it a 'value signal', in a sort of Orwellian attempt to change the framing of what it is, but the fact is: it is a GP tax and its whole purpose is to dissuade people from going to the GP. What could be more reckless than trying to dissuade people from getting primary health care when they need it, not just for those individuals' health but for the pressure that it will inevitably put onto our public health system?

And let us not forget, on top of the higher education changes and the GP tax, the cuts to pension indexation, which are estimated to mean that pensioners face an $80 a week cut to their pension, and, as I said earlier, the family payment support changes that will leave a family on $65,000 a year $6,000 a year worse off. It is atrocious.

All of these things reveal the ideological nature of the government's first budget and of the government's recent MYEFO. The thing about these ideologically driven changes is that the coalition MPs are well aware of the problems with these policies and the fact that they are unsupported by evidence. For example, as I say, the department admitted, during a Senate Select Committee on Health hearing recently, that the GP tax is not backed by substantive research. The acting secretary said:

I am unaware of any authoritative research in Australia specifically about the impact of something like Medicare co-payments or a reduction in the rebate.

The AMA and the College of General Practitioners have both explained that they have not been consulted about these GP tax changes. There is so much research that demonstrates the utter ridiculousness of the claims of unsustainability when it comes to Medicare—like the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare research. If you look at the OECD comparators, if you look at the work that has been done to see what our spending is on health care, we are on the OECD average for spending on health care, as this government well knows. If there is to be real reform when it comes to Medicare, it ought to be considered based on an evidence and not a thought bubble that someone dreamed up before the federal budget to satisfy their ideological urgings.

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