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

I welcome the opportunity to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017. I understand that this bill, which is part of a package, is required to ensure that the ordinary functions of government continue for the remainder of the 2016-17 financial year. I understand this bill will appropriate some $58 billion for the 2016-17 financial year, which is in addition to some $41 billion that was appropriated in the supply acts earlier this year. Labor have always made it clear that we will not block supply bills.

The reality is that the government has mismanaged the economy. The facts speak for themselves. We have a deficit that the government projected to be $10.6 billion this year but that is going to hit $37 billion or perhaps $38 billion. Net debt has increased by $100 billion since 2013 and is expected to reach $326 billion this year. Foreign debt has gone up from $976 billion last year to $1,045 billion as at June this year. Spending is at a nearly all-time high at 25.8 per cent of GDP—just slightly under the figure of 26 per cent at the height of the GFC, when spending was higher in order to keep Australia's economy strong. We know that, as a result of those figures, Australia's AAA credit rating is at risk of being downgraded. If that happens, when the Australian government borrows money it will borrow it at a higher interest rate and that, in turn, will simply add to the mounting debt of this country. The reality is that debt is up and the deficit is up, but wages and the living standards of Australians are down.

We have a government that is trying to spin its way out of all of this and has been doing so for over three years now. One day it says that we have a spending problem in this country; the next day it says that we have an income problem. The reality is that it lies somewhere in between, and perhaps we have a problem with both. But it is clear that the government does not know what it is doing if it is jumping from one argument to another in order to try to defend its position when it comes to managing the economy and, in turn, the budget.

We saw in 2014 an austerity budget which the Australian people clearly rejected. In fact, it was as a result of the Australian people clearly rejecting the austerity budget of the Abbott government at the time that the Prime Minister found himself in great difficulty. His personal following and support throughout the community dropped markedly. We saw the Treasurer effectively lose his job because of mismanagement of the Australian economy. Some could say that he actually secured himself a better job, depending on what you prefer to do in life, but clearly at the time the Treasurer was under pressure and had lost control of the Australian economy.

Yet whilst we have all of these things happening and the government telling everybody that it has a plan for the future—jobs and growth—and that it will control and manage the Australian economy wisely, prudently and so on, it is prepared to give $50 billion back to the big corporates of this country. At a time when it is trying to squeeze the last dollar out of low-income households, this is a government that is saying, 'You, the low-income earners of Australia, need to just tighten your belts a little further. But, for the corporate into town, we are happy to give them an additional $50 billion or close to it.' Most of the $50 billion of tax cuts that the government was proposing was going to go to the big corporates, including the four big banks, which again this year together collectively made billions of dollars in profits. That is not to mention that those same corporates are paying their CEOs tens of millions of dollars for their work whilst Australians on perhaps $200 or $300 a week are being told that they have to squeeze their belts.

The government's mismanagement goes further. Just like the previous Treasurer that I referred to lost his job over the economy of this country, the current Treasurer is just as incompetent. We have seen in the last 12 to 18 months a series of backflips, the most recent being the backflips in respect of the superannuation policy of this government, going from one side to another. He was ultimately rolled by his own backbenchers and had to cave into their demands. We saw another backflip only last week, or perhaps a week or so ago, in respect to the backpacker's tax. Again, it is not the outcome that everybody wanted, but the government had to compromise in order to get something through. But, clearly, it was a compromise that the Treasurer never set out to achieve when he proposed the backpacker's tax.

Then we have the debacle about negative gearing, which this side of politics put forward. We know full well that it was a policy that the Treasurer and perhaps the Prime Minister personally supported. I understand that they were rolled within their own party room over it. We also have the debacle—that is the best way I could describe it—in respect to the public GST debate about a year or so ago. Again, that has got nowhere as well. We even had the Prime Minister talking about empowering the states to levy their own income tax. Nothing has come of that also. Clearly, this is a government that does not know which way to jump whenever there is a problem.

What this government does know is that it is only policies are policies that bring more austerity measures to people on low incomes in this country. It is a government that continuously looks at trying to cut social spending. Prudent management of the economy and preventing abuse and rorts is one thing; austerity policies that simply punish already struggling families is another. Low-income households spend all of their income on consumables and within their local economy. They keep their local economies going. When their income is cut, so is their spending. There is then a flow-on effect right through their local communities and, in turn, it is felt by the local communities and the small business operators within them in particular. As one business person in my community once told me, and he has been in business pretty much all of his life: whenever Labor is in government, his business does better.

What equally concerns me and should be of concern to all Australians is the way that this government, whilst it is focused on low-income Australians, has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to many of the government programs. I refer to in particular the VET courses, the VET course operators and the childcare centre operators who have rorted this government out of billions of dollars. Indeed, in respect to some of the rorting, I cannot understand how any government could not have seen what was going on. I cannot understand how the alarm bells did not ring for any minister when some of the payments were being made. It is beyond comprehension.

Whilst the government now talks about fixing the problem, changing their VET scheme and following up on those people who rorted the scheme, the reality is that it is too late. Much of the money that was rorted, from my understanding, will never be recovered. Indeed, I understand that some of it has already left Australia and been sent offshore. When you look at the figures again with respect to the VET FEE-HELP costings, the figures speak for themselves. According to one report, the Department of Finance paid out $325 million in 2012. In 2014, the figure was $1.8 billion. In 2015, the figure had blown out to $2.9 billion. Surely, that kind of trend should have rung alarm bells much, much earlier. There were members in this place—including the member for Bendigo, who is at the table, and myself—who spoke months and months ago about the rorting that was taking place. It took so long for the government to actually do something about it. This is a government that was prepared to turn a blind eye to that rorting but say to low-income Australians, 'You have to forgo another $5 out of the measly amount of money we are already giving to you.'

Again, we saw this with respect to the omnibus bill. It was only after Labor's responsible amendments to the bill that the government was able to get those measures through the parliament. I am pleased to see that at least the government was not able to totally close down the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and that $800 million has been preserved for that agency to do the good work that it has been doing and that it will continue to do. I am also pleased to see that the energy supplement for low-income earners was also preserved as a result of Labor's stance on it. In particular, I see that the Child Dental Benefits Schedule has been put to one side. At least it was taken out of the omnibus bill. It has not been saved at this point in time, but Labor will do all it can to ensure it will be saved, because this is another example of a government trying to disguise a new scheme as better than the scheme currently in place. The reality is the disguise is so that the government can cover for the cuts it wants to make to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.

My understanding is that some one million eligible Australian children accessed that scheme over recent years. That is about 32 per cent of those people that could have accessed it. The government says that those figures are too low and the scheme was not working. What the government does not say is that it did nothing to try and publicise the scheme at all. But it is the alternative that the government has in mind that is of more concern to me. The government wants to reduce the scheme so that public dental services will only be available through public dental service providers—in other words, through government funded dental service providers. There are a couple of problems with that. The first is that public dental services are not located evenly around Australia. The second problem is that there is already a waiting list ranging, depending on which state you live in, from several months to several years before you can get in to a public dental service. So people wanting to access this service will be waiting a long time before they can, and if you add more people to it then of course that is going to make the waiting lists even longer.

For regional and remote Australians this is another cruel blow. We already know that regional and remote Australians cost the government some 60 per cent less for health services than their counterparts in the city. For them, if they have to access a public dental service, it could mean driving two, three or four hours to get to it. If the service is further away from them—and just bear in mind that some half a million Australians live in remote Australia—then clearly they are less likely to ever access the service at all. So it is simply going to disadvantage them even more. Remote Australians are already grossly disadvantaged with respect to the health services they can access. Not surprisingly, the statistics will show that their health is much, much worse compared to Australians in major cities—across every statistical area you can go to, the health of people living in remote and regional Australia is worse. Here is an example of a government trying to penny pinch its way out so that it can save a few more dollars at the expense of the people who are already doing it the hardest.

The last point I want to make is this: we recently had both the census and the federal election. In my view, both were the worst managed of their kind that I can recall. With respect to the federal election, for almost eight weeks my office became a de facto Australian Electoral Commission office, fielding questions and queries that people in my community could not get answers to anywhere else and so ultimately came to my office for answers on. That is what my staff did almost full-time for the eight weeks after the election was called. On election day, there were people waiting at many booths in my electorate for not one hour but for two hours or even longer. That is simply unacceptable. With respect to the census, the whole thing was a debacle and I think it was a public embarrassment for the government.

The point I make about all that is this: I suspect the reason why both the federal election and the census were so badly managed was cost cutting. I suspect both departments were under-resourced. I suspect both departments had their funding cut and I suspect both departments had fewer staff to deal with both matters. I am not blaming the staff. I am suggesting that the government again ought to think carefully about where it makes its cost cutting, because the Australian voters are no fools and ultimately the government will wear the wroth of their anger when they have to go and vote or fill out census forms.

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