Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to contribute to this debate on the appropriation bills. I start by saying: this is not a budget that is beneficial for families of the North Coast. In fact, it is a budget that will hurt the people of my electorate. The families, the seniors and the young people are all going to be negatively impacted by this budget. The Abbott government's cruel cuts, dishonesty and incompetence continue to hurt people in my electorate of Richmond as they hurt people in rural and regional areas. In fact, in those rural and regional areas it is the National Party that will be held responsible for all of these unfair measures that are really severely hurting people in country areas.

This year's budget contains many of the ongoing savage and cruel cuts from last year's budget and some new cuts as well. The fact is that the attacks on health, education, age pensioners and families continue with this budget. The Prime Minister and the Liberal-National Party broke their election commitment when they said there would be no cuts but, in fact, that is exactly what happened. Some of the unfair measures include the $100,000 university degrees, the $80 billion in cuts to our schools and hospitals, the cuts to family payments, the $2 billion worth of hidden cuts to health and aged care and the fact that our pensioners will have to pay more for transport, gas, electricity and council rates.

This government has unfairness at its very core and its very heart. On top of all of that, there is nothing in this budget about Australia's future. We needed a budget for the next decade. We did not get that; we got a budget of continuing unfairness. The budget is particularly unfair to families, most of whom will be worse off. In fact, new analysis recently released by the Australian Council of Social Services, ACOSS, shows that this year's budget is just as unfair as last year's, with families set to lose $15 billion over the next four years.

New independent analysis from NATSEM has found that this year's budget contains a hidden hit on Australian families. Nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose under the Abbott government's budget. It also shows that families will be slugged thousands of dollars even when the government's new childcare measures, which start in 2017, are factored in. This is why it is important to look at some of the statistics. A family with a single income of $65,000 and two children will be $6,164 a year worse off by 2018-19. A single mother with an income of $55,000 and two children will be $6,107 worse off a year by 2018-19. A family with a dual income of $60,000 and two children will be $3,843 dollars a year worse off by 2018-19. That is a major impact on those families.

Of course, the budget also includes a new cut to paid parental leave which will see as many as 80,000 women lose as much as $11,500 a year. What is particularly disturbing in relation to the paid parental leave is some of the language from the government around this initiative. It does show how out of touch they are with the concerns that many people in our community have. Labelling women as 'rorters' or 'fraudsters', or employers who want to support their staff as 'scammers' is, quite frankly, insulting. Calling women who access their agreed workplace conditions from their employers 'double dippers' is rude and insulting and, quite frankly, it is unacceptable to be using such language. It does go to the heart of the fact that the government are out of touch. It seems that the Abbott government's only approach to any sort of reform is just to demonise particular groups and then take something away or have a particular cut that impacts them. We saw it last year with those on the disability support pension, with the young job seekers, and with the pensioners.

This year it seems to be families. The government seem to be making sure these are cruel cuts, and then they turn around and demonise them. The fact is that families should not have to be choosing between quality child care, paid parental leave and support with the costs of raising their children through family payments. They should not be in that position of having to choose. Nor should they be subjected to very harsh and cruel, what I think is really hurtful, language from this government. They should stop the divisive language and they should drop these cuts immediately because they are impacting families. They are severely impacting families more so in regional areas like mine.

Also in the budget we saw the government continue their attack upon pensioners. In fact, the Treasurer continues to deceive pensioners when it comes to concessions. In his budget speech the Treasurer said:

… anyone who currently has a pensioner concession card will continue to receive a concession card that provides the same benefits, such as subsidised utilities …

Yet, the government have not provided a cent of extra money for the expansion of these concessions. In fact, they have actually stuck by the $1.3 billion cut to pension concessions contained in last year's budget, which really impacts our seniors. An analysis by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia suggests that pensioners could lose some $1,500 in concessions, including their discounts on car registration, council rates, gas and electricity—a huge amount for a pensioner. Of course, this is all on top of abolishing the Seniors Supplement. These cuts all have huge impacts in my electorate where I have over 20,000 seniors on the age pension. They will be severely impacted by the Abbott government's cuts.

We have certainly seen some very cruel cuts from the government in relation to health, particularly with their many versions of the GP tax. I think we are up to about version 4 by now, and no doubt it will come up again. One of the nastiest health cuts in this budget that we have seen is the cut to the IEM grants, which are in the broad area of metabolism program grants. This funding provides financial support for special low-protein foods for those with metabolic protein disorders. These individuals are unable to properly metabolise one of the amino acids in protein.

I would like to speak now about a young man in my electorate. He is a local teenager from Bexhill and his name is Jayden Driussi. He suffers from such an illness. Jayden is now 13 and at just nine months old he was diagnosed with this rare disease. He is treated with a very restricted low-protein diet using specially medically modified foods and a prescribed medical dietary supplement, which is designed to replace protein and nutrients that most people get from food. As well, he has prescribed medication. The fact is, his diet is also severely restricted.

The federal government had assisted families with a monthly food grant, the IEM grant, to help cover the cost of sustaining the complex and quite expensive diet that includes specialised low-protein foods. Until recently, individuals with these conditions were entitled to a modest but extremely helpful government grant of around $250 a month to help with these costs. That is around $3,000 a year. But that was cut in this budget. As a result of the budget cuts this funding has just been totally slashed. It brings a saving of just $3 million a year to cut what is really important funding for families, like the family of Jayden. Jayden's family has been calling on the federal government to urgently reconsider their decision. I join with them in asking the Abbott government to please reconsider these cuts to the IEM grants.

I was very disappointed yesterday in question time when the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister specifically about these grants and the Prime Minister ruled out bringing these grants back in. In fact, I found it quite insulting when the Prime Minister said, 'Well, the cost of some of these foods has gone down.' That is completely untrue. These foods are very expensive due to the complex nature of what is required to be purchased for people who suffer from these illnesses. It was very disappointing to hear those words from the Prime Minister.

As I recently told the local newspaper, the Northern Star, the slashing of the IEM grant is a pathetic and cruel funding cut. It is that, and I implore the government to rethink this. It is important to those families that they have access to this funding to be able to provide for children like Jayden, who have these very complex conditions.

So we continue to see many cuts from the government that do impact regional areas. Some of the other cuts are those to the Financial Assistance Grant program to our local councils. In last year's budget we saw a cut of around $1 billion. This year's budget showed the government's decision to freeze the indexation of these payments will continue to hit councils very hard over the next two years. The cuts include $680 million out of councils in regional areas, more than twice the impost being placed upon metropolitan councils. I can tell you that for councils in my electorate of Richmond this is a very severe cut. It makes it very difficult for them to provide services to those of us in rural and regional areas. Forcing those rural and regional ratepayers to carry the larger share of that almost $1 billion cut will only put our struggling communities even further behind, because those financial assistance grants provide very important funding to provide services to our communities.

Another cruel measure we continue to see from this government is the continued attack upon young people and the services they require, particularly some of those programs that they cut last year in the budget: Youth Connections, Partnership Brokers and National Career Development programs. These programs were delivering excellent results. I particularly want to speak about the Youth Connections program, because in my electorate we have a wonderful service called the Byron Youth Service. It provides great support, mentoring, and guidance to younger people within the regions. The fact that valuable funding was cut through Youth Connections means that the Byron Youth Service is now potentially at risk of closure. Cuts like this mean that those young people just will not be able to access those important services. There is no funding program to replace Youth Connections, and it had a truly impressive success rate in finding alternative ways to help people finish year 12, with over 80 per cent of participants in work or study 18 months after completing this very specific program. So I would implore the government to reinstate programs like that. We cannot see services like the Byron Youth Service close. Younger people have to be able to access an important support.

When it comes to harsh cuts that impact younger people, one of the major ones is the $100,000 university degrees, which potentially could be a reality under this government. I think it was one of the most ruthless cuts in the first budget. It was part of the government's agenda to Americanise our higher education system. This remains firmly in place and the government is committed to it. The deregulation of university fees, and the proposed 20 per cent cut in funding of undergraduate places means that we will end up with $100,000 university degrees. Locals in my electorate totally oppose this move, because it means that children from rural and regional areas will not be able to access universities. We see this sentiment reflected in so many of the polls right across the country, which shows an overwhelming majority of Australians opposing this position. They do not want to see this Americanisation of our universities put in place. They want to make sure that people can access universities.

There are a couple of other points I want to mention about the government's cuts, particularly their cuts to Pacific Highway funding. Investment in the Pacific Highway in New South Wales has continued to decline under the Abbott government. In Labor's last year in office, $1 billion was invested as part of our $7.6 billion commitment. This was reduced by 65 per cent in the current financial year to just $357 million—a huge decrease. In my electorate of Richmond, the Labor government committed, funded and delivered on major Pacific Highway upgrades, including, particularly, the Banora Point upgrade—about $350 million for that—and also the funding for the Tintenbar to Ewingsdale section of the Pacific Highway. Over $550 million was allocated for that, which is the single biggest ever infrastructure project on the north coast of New South Wales. I was very proud, as the local MP and as part of the then Labor government, to have delivered that important funding for our area. It was the federal Labor government that delivered in those incredibly important areas.

When it comes to matters surrounding transport, I too have concerns that the budget scrapped the Seatbelts on Regional School Buses program, which was created by the former Labor government to improve safety for regional students who travel long distances to and from school. Yet this government decided to cut that really important program, which I feel does endanger the lives of those students in our regional areas. We have to make sure that we have that program in place and that there is enough funding for those seatbelts on regional school buses programs. It shows again how out of touch the government are when it comes to the needs of regional Australia when they cut programs like that.

What we see from this government in this budget is a continuation of the cuts from last year's budget. We see the attack on families. We see the attack on younger people. We see the attack on our seniors, our pensioners. We see the attack particularly on regional and rural Australia. The harsh cuts continue to impact, particularly in areas of health and education. I know many locals in my electorate are just as concerned, angry and disappointed as they were with the last budget, because they were told that there would be no cuts to any of those areas; yet we see from last year's budget and this year's budget that the cuts and the attacks continue. Many in my electorate reject the government's harsh cuts. The cuts are impacting severely, particularly on our families, our pensioners and our younger people. All of those in rural and regional Australia are worse off because of the National Party's cuts. That is the reality.

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