Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In standing to speak in respect of Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and the related bill. I think it is important to remember that there are big challenges ahead for our nation. The coming election of course will be an opportunity for the government and the alternative government to make our pitches to the people. The pitches will obviously be about individual policy measures. Those are very important, but overall the pitch is really about vision and values. It is about what sort of country Australia should be.

For my part, I believe that Australia should be a country where we recognise that everyone deserves a great education, everyone deserves to get the health care they need for their own personal circumstances and people deserve dignity in old age. Old age is getting longer nowadays as life expectancy increases, and of course there are challenges for our nation as population ages. But let us all agree that if you have worked hard your whole life part of the reward for that should be dignity in retirement and old age.

I think everyone would agree that most of all what we want for our country is for it to be the country of the fair go. A fair go means that in a strong and thriving economy, where there is great growth through great productivity and innovation, everyone gets the maximum opportunity to participate in the benefits of that growth and that strong economy. That means having a big and strong and thriving middle-class and making sure that working and middle-class households get to share in the economic benefits—that we do not just see a situation, as is unfortunately happening in some states in the US, where the benefits are largely accruing to the top one per cent of income earners. There was an article earlier this year that indicated that, in 10 states in the US, while the incomes of the top 10 per cent had been increasing there had actually been a decline in incomes in the middle classes.

That is not the sort of thing we want to happen here, and of course I do not mean any disrespect to our American friends, of whom I am a great supporter. And I think it is important to recognise that economies are complex. But when you boil it down there is a question of fairness and of what is a fair go. Whatever your background, whether you were born here or came here as an adult or a child or whether you are a first nations person or a more recent arrival or whatever your postcode is and whatever your cultural background is and whatever your income is, it is about making sure that you get that fair go and those opportunities to benefit and share in all that this nation has to offer. It is about having that sort of country.

To have that sort of country where everyone gets a go, we have to have a strong economy to pay for the services that governments should deliver, like health and education. We have to have a strong economy so that people can get those sustained and increased living standards that Australians have come to expect. That takes not just the right tax settings, although those are obviously important; it takes a lot of other things too. It takes confidence, and we have seen under this Turnbull government unfortunately the battering of consumer and business confidence in the 2½ years that the current government has been in power. We saw that battering of confidence almost immediately after the 2014 budget and in the months since then. But also that growth and strong economy that I was talking about requires the right skills, knowledge and experience for Australians. That in turn depends on the strength of our education system from infancy and right through life. Having a stronger economy really turns on the capacity and culture of Australian firms and managers of Australian firms. It depends on investment in business from both domestic and foreign sources. And to have a strong economy we need a society in which we really take seriously the challenges of disadvantage and poverty and the need to pay attention to living standards for people across the income distribution and across the wealth distribution.

Government alone cannot fix all these things, of course, but it does fall to government to take a leadership role to contribute to a stronger and growing economy and to provide the services that the private sector cannot or will not. For that to happen, we need a strong government. We need a stable government. We need a government that the Australian people can trust and a government that engenders confidence amongst the Australian people. Unfortunately, what we have is the Turnbull government.

The Turnbull government is an utter mess. Between the almost fortnightly frontbench reshuffles, the unicorn protection policies of the Treasurer, ministers contradicting the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister contradicting himself from day to day and the aimless flopping around on tax reform, the Liberals and Nationals have been exposed as a government that is incapable of government—and, if so, what is the point? What is the point of the Turnbull government? What is the point of a government that is incapable of governing?

In sharp and clear contrast, Labor in opposition has been listening, consulting and engaging. We have been developing policies aimed at increasing the prosperity of this nation and making sure that everyone gets an opportunity to fairly share in the benefits of that prosperity. Take education. Before the election, the Liberals promised 'no cuts to health' and 'no cuts to education' in a now infamous commitment that was made. They said that they would be 'on a unity ticket' with us when it came to education funding for schools—the Gonski model. In fact, there were corflute signs put up around the election saying, 'We'll match Labor's funding dollar for dollar.' But it was not true.

After the election, the Liberals decided to just dump the Gonski reforms and rip over $30 billion from Australian schools. Over 10 years, Prime Minister Turnbull's cuts mean over $6.2 billion ripped out from classrooms in my state of Queensland alone. It is over $2.1 billion in schools funding in the Greater Brisbane region. And it is over $236 million in classrooms in my electorate of Griffith, on the south side, alone. These cuts are equivalent to sacking one in seven teachers, and they affect all schools. They affect public schools, they affect independent schools, and they affect Catholic schools—and I have each of those types of schools in my electorate.

In contrast to the reckless gutting of our education system that this government has undertaken, we have announced that we will deliver the most significant improvement in school education in Australia for two generations. A Shorten Labor government will fully implement and fund the Gonski reforms. Labor's 'Your Child. Our Future' plan will see an additional investment in our education system of $4½ billion over the 2018 and 2019 school years and a total provision of $37.3 billion for the package over the decade. That is a massive reformist package. Our policy means a strong focus on every single child's needs. It means more individual attention for students, better training for teachers, more targeted resources, better equipped classrooms and more support for students with learning difficulties. Every Australian school and every Australian child will benefit. Every Australian school and every Australian child will benefit from Labor's education policy.

That schools policy stands alongside our plans for a stronger vocational education sector through our TAFE funding guarantee, and a quality university system without Prime Minister Turnbull's $100,000 degrees. Quality education is so important to our nation's future economic prosperity. The government's work on innovation and entrepreneurialism—a lot of which I very happily support, not just because it owes a debt of gratitude to Labor's earlier detailed and comprehensive policy—is, sadly, completely undermined by the government's failures, in their cuts and the effect that their cuts will have on the education system, to equip Australians with the skills, knowledge and experience they need, through the education system in this country.

In speaking about education as an economic benefit, of course I do not want to ignore its inherent value as an end in itself, not just as a means to other ends. But in this debate it is appropriate for me to talk about the wider ramifications for the economy of individual policy measures.

More broadly, I want to make some observations about Labor as the best party to ensure that the actions of government contribute to a strong national economy with benefits in which people across our nation can share. Labor has a strong economic record. We constantly hear claims from the Liberals and the Nationals that they are the superior economic managers, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is Labor that has had the courage and foresight to embark on the important economic reforms that have driven a quarter century of economic growth, that have ensured quality access to education and health care and that have helped to maintain and secure the jobs and living standards of Australians.

Prime Minister Whitlam's university reforms provided access to higher education to a much broader range of Australians, setting this country up to be the high-wage, high-skills nation we are today. It was Prime Minister Whitlam, for example, who had the fortitude to establish diplomatic relations with China, of course now one of our most important trading partners. And it was him who established Medicare—again something that those opposite opposed, and it is still at risk from them.

If you want to talk about the clear difference between what the conservatives, the Liberal and National parties, think and stand for and what we on the Labor side believe in and seek for the Australian people, take Medicare as an example. Over there you have a government that want to cut Medicare. It is not just the $80 billion worth of cuts in health and education funding to the states over the decade from their first budget papers, which are still going ahead, but the cuts to Medicare.

During my by-election, they sort of floated the idea of a GP tax. The candidate who was running against me thought it was a good idea. The Prime Minister came to town and suggested that I was running a scare campaign about the GP tax and said that there would not be one. Of course, five minutes later there was going to be a GP tax. It was our advocacy that stopped that from being made a reality in Australia, and I am very proud of that. It is also Labor that is standing up against the cuts to Medicare, the attacks on Medicare and the attempts to privatise Medicare that are the stock-in-trade of the Liberal and National parties.

I have spoken a bit about our historical legacy, and I have spoken about Prime Minister Whitlam. Of course, I would also add that Prime Minister Hawke and Prime Minister Keating really modernised this country's economy by reducing tariffs and by opening us up for international trade and investment. They were a couple of guys who knew good international trade and investment when they saw it. They really opened up opportunities for trade in our nation. I would also add to those people our most recent Labor Prime Ministers—Rudd and Gillard. They are two people who oversaw the sort of economic management we really needed in a time of crisis. Think back to the global financial crisis and what Prime Minister Rudd did not just with the stimulus but with the bank guarantee. Imagine if there had been a run on our banks in that crisis.

Frankly, it was the bold, strong and resolute response of the Labor government during that period that was so important for allowing Australia to come out of it. We were the 12th largest economy in the world and had a AAA credit rating. Unemployment was lower in the GFC than it is under this government. It was that management that was so important to Australia weathering that serious storm. But you will not hear the Liberals and the Nationals speak of it of course. You will not hear them paying the tribute I have just paid.

The government have had an opportunity in the past 2½ years to really show some stewardship and leadership on the Australian economy, but what have they done? What have they actually delivered for the Australian economy? They have doubled the deficit and have increased the debt. Unemployment is at six per cent, which, as I said, is higher than it was during the global financial crisis. They have been unable to articulate a coherent tax reform plan let alone execute one. They have flopped around on reform and on tax reform. The question for the Australian people at the election has to be: they have had this period of time in which to act and they have been unable to show anything for it, so why on earth would you continue with this government? Why on earth would you let them wreak more damage?

In strong contrast, we are a party that stands ready to govern. We have a strong and clear policy package. I spoke about education. We have strong policies on, for example, the revenue issues in this country. We want to close the tax loopholes for multinational corporations. The mob over there talk about it. They wanted us to agree to a bill that was going to reduce transparency for private firms with $100 million in turnover. As if we would vote for that. We want meaningful action on multinational tax evasion. We want to close superannuation loopholes that accrue to people at the top of the income distribution and not to people in the middle.

Negative gearing and capital gains tax actually make it very difficult for our country to manage housing affordability, and they do so at great cost to the budget. That is why we have announced a bold negative gearing and CGT policy. Listen to the reaction from the Australian people. We are hearing grave disappointment—the puncturing of the expectations that the Liberals built under new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his rhetoric—and at the same time an overwhelmingly positive response to not just our policy package on improvements to schools, health and dignity in retirement but also our general economic policies that will stand this country in good stead for the future.

See this speech in context