Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Today we are debating Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2015-2016, which are budget bills. With budgets come choices, choices a government makes of its priorities. The mid-year fiscal update, which is part of this appropriation bill, is an update of the government's priorities. Our most recent budget was delivered by one Prime Minister and the update is delivered by another Prime Minister, but the details of the priorities have not changed. There are many things, demonstrated in the mid-year fiscal update, which show that despite the rhetoric of the new Prime Minister, despite the overtures he makes, when you look at the detail—and the devil is in the detail—you see there is no change to many of the critical issues facing our nation, no change to the key priorities of this government. I will go through a few that have been outlined in the budget.

The first is paid parental leave. This is of critical importance and something that I am incredibly proud of. It is a measure that our previous Labor government brought in. This affected many families, ensuring that mums and dads could have time off with their children. I was dismayed that in the May budget the Prime Minister and the Treasurer called a lot of these mothers using their workplace entitlements with the government scheme 'double-dippers'. I remember, very clearly, the reaction of my mother's group when many of them were accused of being double-dippers. It was an insult to so many mums and dads around Australia who were doing the best they could to cobble together leave so that they could balance work and family. What did we have from the then Prime Minister and Treasurer? They called these mums and dads double dippers.

You would expect a different approach from the new Prime Minister, but no. The new Prime Minister and his Treasurer are continuing to ensure that 80,000 new mums and dads are worse off. This became clear in Senate estimates. The Prime Minister's so-called compromise still means that new mums will be forced to live on less and spend less and not be able to spend time, necessarily, with their newborn babies.

It is disappointing that MYEFO has confirmed there will still be cuts to paid parental leave. It is time those on the other side listened to the mums and dads of Australia and to the crossbench that has said it will not support these savage cuts. Rather than bring in a new baby bonus—in a desperate bid to appease the National Party—they should continue with a scheme that is working and supporting parents right across this country. Unfortunately, we do not see that from the new Prime Minister. We still see a lack of understanding of what mums and dads out there with new babies are facing. I will continue to advocate this very important issue.

We have also seen, as a result of the budget and update, continued cuts to health care. For a party that said it was not going to get stuck into Medicare, hospitals or health, the evidence is in. There is cut after cut, when it comes to health. I was particularly concerned when we heard reports that the government was not going to fund the Breastfeeding Helpline for a further 12 months. Advocates right across this country stood up and said how outrageous that was. I got feedback from many people in my community who were incredibly upset that this very important service might not be available as a result of government cuts. As someone who recently had a baby and was breastfeeding for some time, I used that helpline when I was unsure about how to proceed. The people on the end of line—the mums and volunteers—helped, enormously, allay my fears and concerns, as they have done for so many other new mums breastfeeding around the country.

Unfortunately, as a result of the $80 million cuts to the Health Flexible Funds, this service was put in jeopardy. It is an outrage that it took so many people to stand up against this cut before the government reversed its decision. But they have only reversed it for 12 months. This leaves us wondering what the future will hold for this service. It is time for the government to properly budget for the service to ensure that the small amount of money that goes into it from government, and leads to so many volunteers jumping on the end of the phone to help mothers with breastfeeding, is not cut. June next year will come around pretty quickly and the Turnbull government must stop this callous cut and ensure there is long-term funding.

The shadow minister for health was right onto this issue. All of us on this side of the House know that she will continue to pursue this very important issue until the government finally acknowledges that the cuts—and this is one example of many health cuts—will have adverse effects out there in the community.

We have also seen many, many more cuts in health. The other cut in the midyear fiscal update was the very significant cut made to pathology and diagnostic services. Slashing bulk-billing for diagnostic imaging and pathology, as well as cuts to crucial workforce training programs, is a significant concern. It also shows, as I said at the beginning, that budgets are about priorities. By slashing bulk-billing for these types of services the government shows that it has no understanding of preventive health care. Not only have they cut significant amounts of money from preventive health care in their previous budgets, but this measure also means that there could well be financial disincentives for women to get Pap smears and for cancer sufferers to get check-ups.

This is what this government does not seem to understand: preventive health care actually saves the budget money, because if people are not getting sick it costs a lot less. This is the type of thinking that we never saw from the previous Prime Minister. We never saw any attempt to understand that investing in preventive health care, by preventing people from getting sicker and sicker, is actually good for the budget. It is not just good for health—of course it is that—and good for communities; it is good for the budget.

Unfortunately, there is a $650 million cut in MYEFO. This is a very short-sighted decision that will mean that there will be those who fall through the cracks. We saw this type of user-pays attitude constantly from those opposite. If you can afford health care you can get the best health care possible. If you cannot—if you are of modest means and cannot afford to pay these gaps—then bad luck. This is disappointing, but it is not surprising. The Prime Minister has tried to suggest that he is a different type of Prime Minister, but MYEFO shows the truth. It shows that this Prime Minister is no different to the previous Prime Minister when it comes to cutting essential health services.

I will get to education. There are so many cruel cuts that are short-sighted for our nation. Take the higher education cuts. When the Prime Minister became Prime Minister I think there was hope in the community that he would walk away from the savage 20 per cent cuts to our universities. But MYEFO clearly demonstrates that those 20 per cent cuts are still on the table. It is still a priority for this government to cut our universities. Twenty per cent is such a significant amount. The education minister has indicated that deregulation is still on the agenda. That means $100,000 degrees. I am incredibly surprised that we have seen member after member in this place come up and defend $100,000 degrees. It is disappointing, especially, that those in the Nationals, who often represent students in rural and regional areas that have found it more difficult to access higher education, have not been stamping their feet and sending a clear message about these cuts, which will disproportionately affect rural and regional universities that do not have the philanthropic support that other universities have. But they have not said boo. Once again, it is disappointing but not surprising that this Prime Minister and this new education minister are absolutely committed to these cuts, not only to our universities but to our schools.

Schools, as well as higher education, will be an important debating point at the next election. There will be a clear difference between Labor and Liberal when it comes to education. In MYEFO, the midyear update, we saw clearly once again that the Liberal Party is committed to ripping $30 billion out of our schools. Of course the Prime Minister tried to allay fears around this and tried to pretend that he was not really going to do it by announcing that he was good friends with Mr David Gonski and that somehow he understood what was happening in our schools. He needs to actually show that he understands the work that Mr Gonski did. The work that Mr Gonski did clearly demonstrated that to lift attainment right across the country we need a needs-based funding model, a model that is not historic, unchanged since the seventies and not transparent. Instead, he made it very clear that a needs-based funding model would ensure that we can lift attainment right across the country.

Once again, there was silence from the National Party. This needs-based funding model would be about ensuring that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and from rural and regional areas, Indigenous students and students with a disability got extra resources to ensure that they could succeed as well. The Nationals pretend to be a party of rural and regional people, but when they do not stand up for rural and regional higher education opportunities, rural and regional schools or access to rural and regional health care, you wonder what they actually stand up for in terms of rural and regional communities. I think a lot of communities out there would be scratching their heads and saying, 'Why do you want to rip this money out of our schools?' The education minister, quite soon after MYEFO was released—he thought it was a quiet period and no-one would notice—did acknowledge that the government was committed to $30 billion worth of cuts to schools.

Quite frankly, this election will be about trust. We hear the Prime Minister talking about trust a lot. Well, there was a party that went to the election and said that they would match Labor's schools funding dollar for dollar. That was the Liberal Party and the Nationals. Then they got into government and they cut it. They also said they would not change the funding arrangements for universities. Then they got into government and cut it. It does not matter whether it was the previous Prime Minister or the current Prime Minister, the budget is clear and the budget update is clear. There is a commitment to gutting our health care, gutting our higher education system and gutting our school system.

It is time that the Prime Minister listened to the Australian people and actually stopped these cruel cuts that will not deliver to the Australian people. But I do not have a lot of hope. There will be an election sometime this year, and the choice will be clear: Labor stands up for health and education.

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