Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

Last week the Prime Minister came into the House and said that he had been Prime Minister for 141 days and, to quote his words, 'nothing seems to have changed'. I can tell the Prime Minister that he has now been the Prime Minister for 147 days and, again, nothing seems to have changed. If you look at the policies that have been brought before this parliament in the form of legislation it is very clear that, while we might have a new Prime Minister and while the deck chairs might have been moved around, the fundamentally unfair, harsh policies that were introduced immediately the Abbott government was elected in 2013 are still on the table—sometimes rebadged, sometimes just with minor changes having been made to them. However, the same harsh policies are still before us in this parliament, and that is why we on this side of the House will continue to oppose those harsh policies, such as the ones related to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Family Payments Structural Reform and Participation Measures) Bill (No. 2) 2015, which we are currently debating.

I have listened to the contributions to this debate by members opposite and almost universally they have come into the chamber and simply tried to justify why these cuts are necessary. Very few of them have given any good reasons as to why this is good policy. They simply try to justify it, knowing full well that they are perhaps arguing an unarguable case. In fact, every one of them came in and talked about how it was all Labor's fault that the country was in this financial 'mess', as they put it. None of them at any point in time acknowledged that, under a Labor government, we had to work through the global financial crisis and that we did so with this country keeping its head above water, with a strong economy. Indeed, we have had 25 years of consecutive growth, and those 25 years included the period in time when we went through the global financial crisis; but, again, members opposite seem to conveniently forget all about that when they talk about the country's deficit.

I acknowledge that there is a deficit. We had a plan in place at the time we lost office to try and manage that deficit and slowly reduce it—and we would have done that. But, since coming into government, members opposite, the coalition government, have actually increased the deficit. We know that this year it will hit almost $38 billion—twice what they originally anticipated it would do. The truth is that much of the deficit blow-out has occurred under their watch because of their policies. The coalition government came into office and were not even able to contain the deficit they inherited. They have actually doubled it since coming into offic Rather than continuously trying to blame the previous Labor government for the financial state of the country, coalition members should perhaps have a much closer look at their own policies and how much they have contributed to the budget deficit, which they are now in charge of and which is their responsibility. Similarly, they cannot continuously say, 'Look, it is not our fault; it is the commodity prices that have crashed and therefore the income would otherwise have been coming to government is no longer there.' It is as much their foolish policies that have caused a drop in taxation revenue and in turn put the government in the mess they are in.

I want to touch on another point which members opposite have again consistently made when they come into the chamber to argue the merits of this legislation. They continuously say that Labor has not supported any of the cuts that are required in order to get the budget back into the black. That is simply not true. Labor has already supported nearly $9 billion of cuts to family payments and child care payments which have been proposed by the Turnbull government and which have, as I understand it, got through the parliament. So where the cuts are at least reasonable, we have been able to support them, but clearly where the cuts are very harsh and unfair we will not.

Having argued that we have a major budget crisis and therefore we have to look for cuts in the budget, none of the members opposite has come in and responded to this very simple question: if there is a budget deficit to be managed, then why not look at other areas where the government could perhaps raise additional taxes or, for that matter, perhaps even make cuts that would not hit families so hard? Why do we only look at hitting the lower income earners of this country—families, single householders and single income earning families—when we are looking to make cuts? Those are the policies of the current Turnbull government; it was the same when Prime Minister Abbott was in control. They are the policies that we will oppose, because we believe that there are other options should the government wished to look at them. We have articulated those other options time and time again. In fact we have talked about tax avoidance across this country and across the world that could be tackled and that is currently robbing governments around the world of billions and billions of tax, including the government of Australia. We also know that there are very generous tax breaks for the very wealthy people of this nation, and again some of those wealthy tax breaks could be looked at. We have in fact put forward propositions in respect of these tax breaks for the very wealthy and their superannuation accounts.

There are other options and, if those other options had all been exhausted and there was nothing left, then you might at least think, 'Well, perhaps they have run out of ideas and options and therefore this is their last resort.' The foolishness of all this is, in my view, that if you want to balance your budget your best option is to grow the economy. If you grow the economy, then you can ultimately balance the budget without inflicting the pain on families that this government is prepared to do and is doing. And yet by cutting payments to families the government is doing the exact opposite; in this case by cutting payments to families we are talking about a total cut of $4.2 billion over the next four years. My understanding is that it runs to about $10 billion, and perhaps even more, in years to come. That is money that is being cut from the budgets of ordinary Australians; money that they will not spend; and if they do not spend it then the economy slips backwards rather than grows. My view is that cutting those payments in the long term will do the budget more damage than good.

But it goes further than just these cuts, because this government has torn down industry in this country by abandoning many of the funding programs that we had in place to support industry and by turning its back on the automotive industry—one of the biggest industry sectors in the country. We have also seen them do exactly the same thing to research funding across the country. Right now we are seeing the CSIRO and the climate scientists up in arms because their jobs are being threatened due to the cuts to CSIRO, and the CSIRO is just one of the valuable research institutions of this country that has had funding cuts. My understanding is that about $1 billion has been cut from all of those institutions together.

The truth of the matter is that the government members who come in here and talk about fixing the budget mess should perhaps look to fixing the Turnbull government's budget mess by adopting different policies to those they have adopted. This legislation hits struggling families the hardest and it is quite frankly unfair. For a Prime Minister who continuously talks about fairness, this legislation does the exact opposite. The Prime Minister—I think the Australian public is slowly waking up to this—is perhaps not the person that he portrays himself to be through the words he utters in this parliament. It is not what he says that matters any more; it is actually what he does. I made the point earlier that this particular proposition will take $4.2 billion over the next four years out of the pockets of Australian families and over the next 10 years—I will correct the figure I gave earlier—it is $16 billion. It is not $10 billion; it is $16 billion. The member of Jagajaga quite clearly outlined the effects that these cuts will have on Australian families. I am pleased to say, as other members from this side of the House have made clear, that at least we have seen the 4,000 grandparents who would have lost about $2½ thousand in here protected because of the stands that Labor talk on this legislation.

I want to go through this proposition to show what it does. It increases the standard child rate of Family Tax Benefit Part A by $10 a fortnight for all families receiving the base rate. I understand that about 140,000 families will be better off. It also introduces a new rate of payment for Family Tax Benefit Part B for families with a child under the age of one. I understand 1.2 million families may be affected by that change.

Those are the pluses, perhaps the wins. However, it comes at a huge cost. There will be a reduction in family tax benefit part B for single-parent families with children aged between 13 and 16, and the legislation will abolish the payment for single-parent families whose youngest child is aged between 17 and 19 and in full-time secondary school. Some 136,000 single parents with children aged 13 to 16 will have their family tax benefit part B reduced to $1,000 in 2016. That is a cut of $1,700. Single parents with children aged over 16 will have their family tax benefit part B cut entirely in 2016, and that is a cut of more than $3,100. Family tax benefit parts A and B end-of-year supplements will also be phased out over the next two years. Family tax benefit part A supplement will be reduced to $602.25 from 1 July 2016 and to $302.95 from 1 July 2017 and then abolished entirely from 1 July 2018. Family tax benefit part B supplement will be reduced to $302.95 from 1 July 2016 and to $153.30 from 1 July 2017 and then be abolished entirely from 1 July 2018.

Some 1.5 million families will lose family tax benefit part A supplements of $726 per child. Around 650,000 of those families are single parents; around 500,000 of these families are on the maximum rate, meaning they have a combined family income of less than $51,000; and 300,000 of those families will not get the increase to the family tax benefit part A per-child amount, which does not start until 2018—that is, two years after the supplement starts to be reduced. And 1.3 million families will lose their family tax benefit part B supplement of $354 per family.

If those cuts were made in isolation, a skerrick of an argument might be able to be made in support of them. But the truth is that they come on top of a range of other cuts being made by this government, including the cut to the schoolkids bonus of $430 for a primary school student and $850 for a secondary school student. That comes on top of the $30 billion of cuts to schools around the country. That inevitably means school fees will go up. So again parents will have to fork out more money for their children to go to school. That comes on top of the $60 billion in cuts that we talked about in the MPI today that this government is also trying to push through the parliament. These cuts will affect the cost of GPs, pathology tests and diagnostic imaging. And the cost of private health insurance has also gone up. These are all costs that directly impact on families.

On top of that, families are either losing their job because of the cuts being made in the public service and industry around the country or losing hours of work and not getting the same amount of income at the end of the week—in other words, their take-home pay is going down. Their take-home pay is going down and the cost of keeping their family is going up. That is making life incredibly hard for them. That is why this legislation is unfair and unjust. Frankly, members opposite should be ashamed of coming into the chamber and supporting legislation which hits families so hard.

Debate adjourned.

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