Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

is absolutely, as the member for Barton says, zilch. There is no prospect of that happening, given the condition that those opposite are in. As I said, budget repair is necessary, but there is a much better way to go about it. We do not need a nasty, trickle-down agenda; we need decisions geared towards the three main economic objectives I mentioned before: growth that is inclusive, hard work that is rewarded and a decent social safety net for those at risk of being left behind.

Beyond the economy and the budget, the government's agenda has important consequences for our society and for our politics as well. We have a Prime Minister who likes to stand up at lecterns and talk about how worried he is about the outbreak of populism and the outbreak of protectionism. We are all worried about that. But the real issue is when you say to the Australian people: we are going to attack your schools and hospitals; we are going to attack your wages; we are going to cut your family payments; we are going to go missing on tax avoidance, because we always go soft on the big end of town—and by the way we are going to give away $50 billion that we took from your hospitals and schools and give it to big business. The only possible consequence of a policy agenda like that is to say to so many people in the broader Australian community that they are not being listened to by their government in this place.

No wonder, then, that people are looking for populist alternatives, when they have a Prime Minster with an agenda that is so at odds with the hopes, aspirations and ambitions of ordinary working people from Middle Australia and of vulnerable people as well, who just want a fair go from this government. They want a government that will listen to them. Instead they get this mob. Is it any wonder that the people have turned so starkly on the government and that some people are looking for alternatives? That is a very damaging thing for the Prime Minister and the government to have done.

We will, as I said, continue to play a constructive role when it comes to budget repair. Our responsibility is not just to improve the bottom line but to improve lives. We have led the conversation. We have already demonstrated our bona fides when it comes to budget repair. Straight after last year's election, we put forward a budget repair package worth more than $8 billion over the forward estimates and $80 billion over the medium term. We are pleased to see that the government picked some of our policies, including an increase to the tobacco excise, changes to VET FEE-HELP and opposing the return of the baby bonus.

We also put forward reforms to negative gearing and capital gains, which we encourage the government to support for the sake of the budget but also for the sake of first-home owners. Like many of the proposals that we have made, we have found a way to have a win-win—something that can improve the budget but also improve the lives of people trying to get a toehold in a very difficult housing market, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne.

We negotiated with the government to secure $6.3 billion in budget savings in the first omnibus bill. This was more than what the government originally proposed. But what our negotiations did was civilise the original omnibus bill and help protect vulnerable people targeted by cuts. They saved the Australian Renewable Energy Agency as well. We are also being proactive in opposition when it comes to ways to improve budget transparency and how Australia's fiscal blueprint is presented to Australians.

I released our better budgeting discussion paper last month, and I am very pleased with the reaction, with different sections of the community making submissions. We sent it to leading academics, accountants, economists and stakeholder groups, and I am very pleased to see people engaging in that process in a constructive and very helpful way. That will open up a public conversation about the best ways to budget for capital and recurrent spending, how to more accurately paint the longer-term picture, how to increase the transparency of key issues and assumptions, and more of those sorts of things.

Instead of focusing on inclusive growth or budget repair that is fair, the Prime Minister's priorities, as I said before, are hopelessly twisted. We have a situation where this Prime Minister thinks that the three biggest problems in the economy—the three biggest challenges that we need to overcome together—are that low income people are paid too much, that multinational corporations pay too much tax and that it is too difficult to make somebody feel horrible because of their race. When you think about it that way you can see why the Australian people have turned, and are turning, on those opposite.

You can judge a government by what they do in the budget, the priorities that they demonstrate in the decisions that they make. We saw today in the omnibus bill more attacks on vulnerable people from the 2014 budget, where the Prime Minister just rubbed out Tony Abbott's name and wrote 'Malcolm Turnbull' on there instead, in cuts to family payments—we have seen it in all kinds of ways today.

My Labor colleagues and I will continue to lead the way when it comes to setting the policy agenda and fixing the budget. We will continue to play that constructive role. We will agree with budget repair measures where we can, and we will disagree where we must. We will not support measures that unfairly target the most vulnerable people in our community nor ask them to carry the heaviest burden for the government's budget failures. We will keep offering alternative, responsible policies and savings measures, as is our role in opposition, and we will always prioritise budget repair that is fair.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.

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