Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot begin without paying tribute to the member for Herbert and that contribution. I do not know why we are bothering to engage a Hemsworth to sell this country; we just need to get the member for Herbert out there to sell Townsville to the world.

But I do note a couple of things from that fine speech from the member for Herbert about Townsville—jobs, jobs, jobs. It is a theme across the country. I hear the same thing in Lalor. Also in Lalor, I hear utter sadness in recalling the day that the former Treasurer stood at the dispatch box and we saw the end of the car manufacturing industry in this country. They recall it with sadness because of the number of local jobs that have been lost and will be lost as those things wind back across this country. As empathetic as I am to the member for Herbert, I wonder where he was that day and what conversations he had with the Treasurer about jobs in my electorate, jobs across Melbourne and jobs across Adelaide.

We are supposedly talking tonight about the appropriations bills. But in my office, from where I have been listening, I have heard lectures on the Labor Party's negative gearing policy, which was released, I think, a week ago. I have heard an in-depth discussion about the opposition's policy about negative gearing. I have heard a pitch for Townsville and about an argument Townsville is having with the state government. I have heard very little, however, about MYEFO. I have heard very little about the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook from those opposite in this debate that has ranged for hours. I am not surprised at all that those opposite do not want to mention MYEFO. Our new Prime Minister did not want to come and talk after MYEFO was released either. I think he went into hiding for three or four days around that time.

The reason no-one over on that side wants to talk about MYEFO or wants to talk about the appropriation bills and the spends and the cuts that are in those bills is that it would show up their clear lack of an economic plan. It would show clearly that they are in disarray when it comes to planning for this country's economy, and it would show that this new Prime Minister has a clear penchant for saying one thing and then doing another—on education funding, on marriage equality, on negative gearing, on climate change, on the republic. What this Prime Minister says and what he does are two completely different things. He says one thing and he does another.

These appropriation bills seek to appropriate $2.2 billion in 2015-16, yet I hear very little about what that money will be used for. They reflect the changes to the budget that were shown in the MYEFO which was released by this government on 15 December 2015. It showed a continued deterioration of the budget and the economy under what is now the Abbott-Turnbull government, as well as highlighting the lack of an economic plan. If we have a look at what MYEFO told us, the deficit is higher, a blow-out of $26 billion over the forward estimates. That is $120 million a day between the 2015-16 budget and the 2015-16 MYEFO. Net debt for 2016-17 is nearly $100 billion higher than what was forecast in the 2013 PEFO before these people came into government. I do remember the former Treasurer and how often he said, 'Let me say that number again'. So: $100 billion.

We have gross debt headed to $550 billion by the end of the forward estimates. Economic growth is slashed. And this is on the back of figures that show the deterioration of the economy under this government: living standards, as measured by net disposable income per capita, falling for six consecutive quarters; capital expenditure falling, with a broad-based decline, not just in the mining sector; and consumer and business confidence at levels far lower than what they were when this government took office.

It is a sad state of affairs, so I am not surprised that we have not had a lot of positive contributions on the bills from those opposite. This lack of any kind of economic plan for this country under our new Prime Minister and new Treasurer was also highlighted so dramatically for the Australian public. And the best quote, after last week's Press Club address from Treasurer Morrison—the 46-minute speech at the National Press Club, where most analysts have said very little, if anything at all—came from Laura Tingle's article. She put it this way:

… in his first address to the press club, the Treasurer still seems stuck ... between this reality and the daydream that simply by being in government the Coalition will make things better.

Well, I think it is fair to say that MYEFO has put paid to that. And why has it? Because MYEFO locked in and told us clearly that under Prime Minister Turnbull this government has not changed direction, despite the public completely rejecting the 2014 budget, despite the government's not being able to get most of those measures through the Senate—because they are unfair, because they will send this country backwards, because they will build more inequity and inequality into this country and drain our prosperity at the same time. It locked in $23 billion in cuts to education. It confirmed that the Turnbull government was going to continue down the Abbott road of negating the steps we were taking towards a wonderful education system—the funding that was going to be used to take us back to be leaders internationally in education. It locked those cuts in. It told us clearly and it told the Australian public clearly that despite the review led by David Gonski that said that above all the additional investment needed to implement a schooling resource standard is necessary because without it the high cost of poor educational outcomes will become an even greater drag on Australia's social and economic development in the future. The need for the additional expenditure and the application of what those funds can do is urgent. Australia will only slip further behind unless, as a nation, we act—and we act now.

That was in 2011. It is now 2016, and all we are getting from those opposite is, 'Throwing money at education won't fix it,' dismissing everything that review found. And this government and this Prime Minister and this Treasurer have locked that in. Labor's plan would see us implement, continuing into the future, needs-based funding, evidence-based practices and improvement. On superannuation, again, we have seen a cut to the low-income superannuation contribution that would have given a majority of women and low-income earners a boost to their superannuation. Instead, what do we get this week? We get a kite being flown—I hope it's a kite!—to suggest that this government is going to undermine Australia's superannuation scheme.

Then we had today one after the other in here talking about Labor's negative gearing plan. On this side of the chamber we have over 50 policies on the floor going into this election, and in this chamber today I have not heard anybody stand up on the other side and defend the economic plan of those opposite—because there is no economic plan. Interestingly, while they talk about Labor's negative gearing policy, they forget to mention the grandfathering. They leave that part of the story outside the door. The facts about Labor's negative gearing plan are that it will raise revenue and, at the same time, it will ensure that we get new housing stock without impacting on those who already use those investment practices and negative-gearing practices and without any negative impact on those Australians who are already involved in those ways.

What we have seen from this Prime Minister is simply that there are no new ideas on the table. He talks about everything being on the table but very little is being said about any of those things on the table. And we see a MYEFO that locks in cuts to education. The other thing it locked in was the $57 billion cut to health. In Victoria that means $73 million is ripped away from Victorian public hospital patients on top of the $17.7 billion to the Victorian hospitals over the next 10 years. This is going to impact on people's lives on the ground. What does that translate to for emergency department visits? What impact is that going to have on our hospitals? This is after a failed attempt to undermine Medicare through the GP tax. Of course, still on the table and still being discussed are cuts to Medicare through pathology and imaging.

This is a government that wants to take the shortcuts, the easy ways, to solve what they perceive to be economic problems, but all of their answers come down to dividing this country, to hurting the most vulnerable and to putting more onus on low- and middle-income earners—taxpayers in this country—to do with less, without touching the top-end of town. Australians have seen through this and this debate today has highlighted that for Australians. Yesterday's headlines about the proposition that we could allow low-income earners to opt out of superannuation—well it's a game, isn't it? We have families losing up to $5,000, some more, from the changes this government wants to see in family tax benefits—$100 a week out of your hand but that's okay because we will give you $63 back by saying you can opt out of superannuation. There is a $40 difference between $100 and $60 and, long-term, those low-income workers would see themselves without superannuation into the future.

In my electorate we already have a lot of people in their 50s looking for work. If you project that, a young person today who says, 'I don't want super; I want that $60 in my hand, today,' where will they be when they are 55? A retirement age of 70 and you have lost your job at 55 and you have no superannuation. Where are they going to be? It is short-sighted, it is an easy option, it sounds good on a front page but the bottom line is that this government is too lazy to do the hard work on the economy, to do the hard things in the economy, to find the solutions and to have the real conversation with the Australian public. Instead of that, they say everything is on the table until things become too political or too hard to leave them on the table and then they throw them off the table and come up with something else to put on the table.

We know, and this debate has highlighted it, that this Prime Minister says one thing and does another. We know because he has locked in the $23 billion cuts to education and yet stands at the despatch box day after day and talks about innovation. You cannot have innovation without funding education. It just won't work; it defies logic. We hear words like 'agile'. Well, they are very agile at throwing things off the table when they become politically hard but they are not very agile when it comes to getting together and thinking through hard economic decisions and putting a plan forward. We have a government without a jobs plan, without a plan for this country's economic future, and we have a government that wants to always talk about the past but, conveniently, denies a global financial crisis in that past. We have a government that doubled the deficit, in the first instance, and has wreaked havoc on the economy, since. That is what MYEFO told us. Although Labor will not block supply and will support the appropriation bills, those opposite need to start thinking about what those bills mean.

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