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

I rise to join the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2016-2017 and cognate bills. It has been some time since I stood in this chamber to join a legislative debate, some time indeed.

I have been thinking a bit about time today and asking myself the question: how long is it since we heard our now Prime Minister, in a press conference on the lawn just out here, say that he needed to challenge the member for Warringah because this country needed economic leadership? How long ago was that? How long ago was it since we had the 2016-17 budget? It seems like an absolute age since the budget. Why would it be such a long time for us in between a budget, a budget reply and me being in my place, making my contribution? I remember. It is because we had an eight-week election campaign—a double dissolution election that those in government determined, with a bit of help from their mates in the Greens, that we needed to have. They determined that we had to have this double dissolution election; that we had to have an eight-week campaign—the longest campaign in most people's memory—and a winter campaign; and that after the election we needed to be away from this chamber, the people's House, for another three months before we returned to this House to get on with the business that the Australian people pay us to do. They send us here to represent them.

Months later I am standing here making a contribution on the appropriation bills. I strongly suggest that the government be condemned for the time wasting that has occurred this year. Our Prime Minister should ask every day when he looks in the mirror: 'Where is the man who was going to deliver economic leadership? Where has he gone?' That is what the public are asking. The public are asking, 'Where is that man?' We know from the 2016-17 budget, we know from the change in leadership for those opposite and we know from the eight-week election campaign that nothing has changed. Nothing has changed with the change in the leader. Nothing has changed with the change of members in the seats previously held by that side. A lot has changed on this side because we have a lot more members, and I look at my colleagues around this room. The other thing the Prime Minister said was that he has got a working majority. Of course, in the first week back at work he found out what a working majority should look like—but it did not look like that late on Thursday afternoon.

We also know that nothing has changed. We have got a work-shy government. We have got a government that does not want to show up and sit on the benches opposite and be held accountable to the public of Australia. They want to run the country from inside a shock jock's studio or inside Sky News. They do not want to be in this space and run this government. They do not want to answer questions at question time. It is not a surprise because, let us face it, straight after the election we saw the Prime Minister's battle plan and 23 of the 25 points in that battle plan were Abbott policy. Nothing has changed.

In the PM's battle plan there was no mention of climate change policy—no mention at all. We heard about it last week though when they hijacked and politicised a natural disaster for political ends. The coalition are usually hot on the tail of anyone who tries to politicise a national disaster and suggest that climate change is real. Suddenly they found a disaster that they could leap off the back of, but they did not mention doing anything about climate change. They used it as a wedge to suggest that renewable energy is a threat to energy security.

In that 25-point plan there was no mention of the NBN—surprise, surprise! Call the police. Every time we on this side mention the NBN we are going to call for the police, because the things that have been happening with the NBN are indefensible. We have had another backflip on the NBN of late. In our communities and in the electorate of Lalor the public know. The people in my community know that what they are getting with this government's second-rate NBN is entrenched digital divide. I have emails from people in the country who cannot believe that so close to the city of Melbourne, so close to the CBD, we have people on ADSL1 and ADSL2 and have people who can access neither ADSL1 nor ADSL2 and who cannot get the NBN. There was no mention of that because that is not a good news story.

There was no mention of protecting Medicare in this 25-point plan. Today in this House those opposite came in and voted not to defend Medicare. There is no new vision from this Prime Minister because he is being held captive by his coalition friends. He is being held captive and he cannot do anything without first checking with the member for Dawson. The member for Dawson is actually running the country. That is what we on this side are coming to understand every day.

The worst part of this is that we know that, since this Prime Minister came to office after the election, he has been intent on continuing the unfairness of the last government. He is still planning to give tax cuts to big business rather than assist the most vulnerable. You have got the education minister, Minister Birmingham, with his fishing rod throwing out the bait in the education debate and suggesting that there are very wealthy schools that are overfunded. Well, hello, John Howard! Very wealthy schools have been overfunded by those opposite for a long time. They are seeking to divide the community around school education because they refuse to back in their promise and fund the Gonski model, as they promised at the 2013 election. They refuse to change their position on that and they seek to divide us wherever we turn.

We have a government that is refusing to hold a royal commission into banking. Why would you refuse to do this? Why would you choose to dig in on this point? Why would you choose to live with the pain of the embarrassment of having the committee meet with the banks? Now we are going to go to some kind of tribunal with the banks when what we need here is a royal commission. It is high time in this place that those opposite started to put those who need help before the interests of big business and to hold big business accountable for their actions. We all know that the banks have a case to answer. The public know that the banks have a case to answer. The government need to get behind it and do the job that they have been elected to do.

It is time for them to invest in education and to give up on their $100,000 degrees. It is time for them to dig in and do the work and give the community the consistency and the certainty that they need. It is time that they got busy in employment and creating jobs. It is time they got busy in backing in health. It is time they got busy sitting with state ministers to talk about funding for our hospitals. We on this side remember the cuts that were delivered in the 2014 budget to hospitals in this country. Our communities are living with those cuts every day. It is time they started supporting the Australian people and started supporting our neighbours in our communities who are really doing it tough.

In my contribution I want to go to housing and homelessness because I do not feel that it gets raised enough. This government has no policy for homelessness. They have nothing on the table around housing affordability. They have nothing for that growing number of people in our communities—families in my electorate; mum's with kids—who find themselves, through either mortgage or rental stress, sleeping in cars.

It is over three years now since I was elected as the member for Lalor. One of the first things I did was hold a homelessness forum with the community organisations that support the homeless. We knew what was coming even before the 2014 budget hit the ground, because the messages were coming out that this government did not want to fund advocacy in the community sector. What a terrible thing if we know what is going on in our communities! What a terrible thing if the people who work with the most vulnerable and the most at risk have a voice and can contribute to the national debate by being funded to provide the research and the papers that we need to stand in this place and advocate for the people that we represent!

Three years ago this was becoming a crisis in my electorate. The city of Wyndham has the highest number of evictions in the state of Victoria. They were in crisis, but during the last three years under this government it was fast becoming something worse than that. On 11 August, the ABC Lateline program vividly captured the tyranny of local homelessness in my electorate. It was a reminder that any one of us can fall on hard times and find ourselves sleeping rough. The solemn reality is that many are forced into homelessness because of circumstances completely out of their control.

This program highlighted a young homeless man in Wyndham in the electorate of Lalor. He had lost his job when his employer shut up shop. He lost his home and he is now living in his car. He is a tradie, so the last thing he is going to give up is his car because without that car he is not employable. He has made a really smart decision to keep his wheels so that he has got the capacity to rejoin the workforce. This young man talked about his battles trying to stay connected in the community and looking for work and just trying to survive at the same time. This is one story; there are many in the electorate of Lalor. Local council and support services in the area are all reporting increasing numbers. None of the people that I have spoken to—and I have spoken to several who are homeless in our community—want to keep suffering the perpetual indignities that come with this. They simply want another chance to be part of their community.

Unfortunately, the cuts that have come into play across the last three years from that dreadful 2014 budget are pushing those services that support these people further and further behind the eight ball. The guard rail that used to stop people from going over this cliff edge is being undermined by the cuts from this government—and they are across the board. They are about domestic violence. They are about community legal centres. They are about community organisations. They are about relief funding. In Wyndham we are down to families and individuals getting one food voucher a year. It is outrageous. Cutting funding to these initiatives has meant heartbreaking stories. These are my neighbours. These are people who are living in our community. This government has no homelessness strategy, and they went to an election with no housing affordability strategy. In fact, they went to an election telling parents, 'Shell out. You need to shell out to buy the kids a house. That's how you can do it.' I am not sure what planet they live on 'Get yourself some rich parents and life will be good.'

Where is there a reference in this bill to homelessness or to housing affordability? Where is it in the appropriations bill? Where is it in the budget? Nothing has changed. This government is here, but they are giving us no certainty. They are giving no certainty to the most disadvantaged people in our community and no certainty to the systems that our communities rely on. They are giving no certainty around school education. If you want to apply a business model to all of our services, what they need is certainty. We need certainty in hospitals. We need certainty in aged care. We need certainty for our community organisations and some certainty for our community legal centres. We need certainty in the renewable energy sector. Pensioners need certainty. Superannuants need certainty—in the last 24 seconds, let's not go to the roller-coaster that superannuants have been on. Workers need certainty. What we are getting from this government is not certainty. There has been no action on the casualisation of the workforce. We have a system that is undermining conditions in workplaces. This government failed to deliver in last three years. This new government will do the same.

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