Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I speak tonight on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Family Measures) Bill 2015. Labor will not oppose the measures in this bill. We do accept the task of budget repair and of course we always have. But what we on this side of the House believe is that budget repair needs to be done in a fair and equitable way. We think this task can be pursued without punishing those Australians who are already struggling to make ends meet. This has been our fundamental guiding principle since the Liberals handed down their disastrous 2014 budget.

Since then, we have agreed to sensible savings where they do not offend the fundamental principles of fairness. We agreed to reduce the cut-off for family tax benefit B from $150,000 to $100,000 a year. More recently, we agreed to changes to family tax benefits when we thought they were fair, and we opposed the government's reckless attempt to reintroduce the baby bonus as part of the Prime Minister's deal with the National Party. Today, we will agree to some further savings. In fact, in total, since the 2013 election, there are more than $9 billion in savings that Labor have supported—$9 billion in the area of social services and child care. These savings have not been easy, but we do understand that they are necessary and we will take them, as I said, when we think they are fair.

The task of spending restraint is one that we do take seriously. It is the case, of course, that we differ from the government in a fundamental way: we do not agree that the cuts should hurt vulnerable people, and we make no apology for that. So we will continue to fight the government's unfair cuts to families, their harsh and unfair cuts to pensioners and their cruel cuts to young job seekers. I am sorry to say these cuts are still in the parliament and they are still in the budget.

Just today, two other bills in the social services portfolio are before the House, and Labor will not be supporting those bills. We are strenuously opposed to the very harsh cuts to family payments that will leave some Australian families around $5,000 a year worse off—cuts that will leave around 1.6 million families and three million children worse off. We are also opposed to the government's cuts to pensioners, its scrapping of the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. These cuts are harsh, they are unfair, and we will fight them all the way to the next election. But, as I said, we are prepared to accept the more than $200 million in savings outlined in this bill today.

This bill does two things. Firstly, it will reduce from 56 to six weeks the period during which family tax benefits can be paid to an individual who is outside of Australia or in respect of a child who is outside of Australia, starting from 1 January. This will deliver a saving to the budget bottom line of around $42.1 million. It is important to note—and I know some people have been concerned about this—that portability extension and exemption provisions that allow longer portability under special circumstances will continue to apply. This includes, for example, situations of illness or accident that prevent people from returning to Australia.

Secondly, this bill will abolish the large-family supplement from 1 July

The supplement is part of family tax benefit part A and is currently paid at the rate of $324.85 a year, or $12.46 a fortnight, for the fourth and each subsequent FTB child in the family. This represents a saving of $177.3 million over the forward estimates. Cessation of the supplement is consistent with reports from NATSEM and recommendations from the Henry tax review in 2010.

Those opposite like to say with some regularity that Labor never cooperates with them when they propose changes that are in the national interest.

Mr Whiteley interjecting—

We hear, right on cue, from the member for Braddon, who says that repeatedly. I will remind him, yet again—I know he does not like to listen to facts, but these are the facts—Labor has actually supported around $9 billion in savings in the social services and childcare portfolios, so any argument that we are not up for sensible conversations about fair savings is wrong.

We should not forget the Abbott-Turnbull Government's record on budget repair. The deficit has doubled on their watch over the last 2½ years, despite all the rhetoric about a budget emergency, which most of them do not mention any more, but which we heard so much about in the early period of their government. Despite all the harsh cuts, this government under Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull have actually doubled the deficit. That is an extraordinary outcome. For the purposes of this bill, we will support these changes and, as I said, we will support other changes where we see them to be fair.

Our economics team has been leading the debate on tax reform, laying out fair, responsible plans to tax multinationals fairly, reduce unfair superannuation tax concessions and increase the tobacco excise. These are responsible measure, and we have been debating them for some time.

Opposite, in their so-called tax debate, we see only complete disarray when it comes to tax reform. They do not seem to know what they stand for or what to do. They, especially the current Treasurer, spent all last year arguing against changes to superannuation. Now it looks like they might even embrace what we are doing. We know they desperately want to increase the GST, although they do seem to have got the wobbles on that change as well. The government is in complete and total chaos when it comes to tax reform. So much for the new economic leadership that the Prime Minister promised the Australian people when he knifed the member for Warringah.

In summary, Labor will support this bill today but we will not compromise on fairness, particularly when it comes to Australian families. We want to put people first. It is because of Labor that the Turnbull government has backed down on two harsh cuts that would have hurt families. We protected families from their plan to freeze family tax benefit rates and certain eligibility thresholds, and because of Labor's pressure the Turnbull government finally scrapped its appalling cuts to grandparent carers. We have managed to protect those people so far, and we will keep up the pressure to protect families from further unfair cuts.

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