Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What an instructive debate this has been! What an instructive half-hour or so we have had from government members, who have failed to engage with the basic challenge of government in setting out what they have been doing to maintain and secure the living standards of Australians! It is telling, not for the first time, that this is a government entirely concerned with looking in the rear-view mirror, looking at the past, instead of dealing with its responsibilities today and, more fundamentally, its responsibilities into the future.

Perhaps for the member for Casey there can be some excuse. He shares a couple of burdens. One is that he is a Carlton supporter, and that must be very dispiriting! I know how dispiriting that is. I can only imagine how dispiriting it must be for him to sit on the backbenches of this government as it fails to grapple with the fundamental challenges of maintaining the living standards of Australians.

The government's failure that this matter of public importance sets out is failure at two levels. It is a failure to have a credible plan for the economy. At one level this might be excusable, because the government does not seem to have any understanding of the state of Australia's economy. Are we in an emergency? Or are these times made for dullness? Perhaps I will come back to that theme of chaos and confusion in a minute. Also, the government and its members have no understanding of—and, perhaps worse, no concern about—the pressures on households, particularly those of low- and middle-income Australians. To add insult to injury, this is in a context where the Prime Minister has said: 'We are not going to repair our budget at the expense of your family budget.'

Well, let's add that to the roll call of misleading statements he has made from the time he was the opposition leader to the present day. The present debate around child care and paid parental leave exemplifies this. It shows this chaotic and dysfunctional government building on that background to have an incoherent and inconsistent approach to these fundamental policy challenges—an incoherent and inconsistent approach which is adding to the anxieties of working families in my electorate and right around Australia. And this is a government that is not really engaging with the policy challenges.

The new minister—the sometime Acting Treasurer or the Treasurer-in-waiting—looks very pleased with himself but can he answer the fundamental questions going to the three challenges in this area of social and economic policy he should be grappling with? How is he going to boost our participation rates to the level, for example, that Canada has? It is a really critical part in safeguarding our economic future. How is he going to support the needs of working families, particularly low- and middle-income families? And fundamentally—and this seems to be a point lost on members opposite—how is he going to engage with boosting the early learning of our children? How is he going to engage with that? We know that 90 per cent of brain development happens before the age of five yet the activity test which has been floated is going to put some of our most vulnerable kids at an extraordinary disadvantage before they even start primary school. This is a fundamental failing that will impact not only living standards today through the pressure on families and parents but will fundamentally undermine so many young Australians' chances of living life to their full potential.

This government is all over the shop on paid parental leave and childcare policy. The Prime Minister moved once and quickly from 'over my dead body' on PPL to it becoming his signature. And now he seems to have invented a notion of double-dipping—a notion that was clearly foreign to him this time last year when we entered this debate in very different circumstances. Of course, let's not forget that this supposed good news story on child care is to be funded by way of blackmail—the ransom note that is the cuts to family payments. It is a key part of the unfair budget that is still sitting in the Senate from this time last year, a budget that the member for Chisholm reminded us is unique in that it continues to dominate discussion in this place and in the communities we represent one year after it was introduced. It is an albatross around the Treasurer's neck and around the neck for all government members.

While members opposite talk about the failure of Labor to evidence a plan, let us be clear about this. Labor is engaging with the community on these issues around living standards. We have been listening to community members, particularly those on low- and middle-incomes—that is, not $185,000 a year, Prime Minister. We understand their concerns, particularly those on pensions and other fixed incomes, about a fair superannuation system, their concerns around managing out-of-pocket costs in health care and their concerns in family support more generally. We know and they know that fairness is not simply a four-letter word; it is about a values approach, it is about priorities and it is about having a vision of economic management that supports the concerns of families today and supports their living standards into the future. (Time expired)

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