Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Fairness is not just a slogan. Fairness is not something that you can test in focus groups. That is not what fairness is. Fairness is not the answer to shore up this Prime Minister's leadership of the Liberal Party. Fairness is absolutely at the heart of what Australians understand to be the fair go. It means a government that is willing to invest in people, to pursue equal opportunity and to look after the most vulnerable people in our society.

Fairness is actually something you have to believe in. If you really believe in it then you will look at the detail in this budget and conclude that this budget is unfair. I will go through that detail here today. It is unfair because this budget gives tax cuts to millionaires and big businesses and tax rises to low- and middle-income families. The budget is unfair because of the cuts to schools and TAFE. It is unfair because it asks young people to pay more to go to university. It is unfair because it does not address housing affordability. It is unfair because it still contains cuts to families and pensioners. It is unfair because it contains unfair zombie cuts, including the plan to increase the pension age to 70.

For nearly a decade now the key economic debate of our time has been between austerity and inclusive growth; between harsh budget cuts on the one hand and social investment on the other; between trickle-down economics and a model of economic growth that enables everyone to fulfil their potential. This really has been the core economic debate around the world since the global financial crisis. Conservatives, of course, argue that the only way to save ourselves from the so-called debt and deficit disaster is to end what they call the age of entitlement. The conservatives argue that we are a nation of leaners and lifters, and that the only way we can all be better off is to give the big end of town a massive $65 billion handout and that wealth will somehow trickle down and eventually result in a small wage rise of $2 a day in 20 years time. That is the Liberal Party's logic.

Labor, on the other hand, have always shown that we believe in fairness—we do not just talk about it. We know that wages growth in Australia is at record lows and that the minimum wage has been declining as a proportion of average wages over the last 20 years. We do not want to see Australia go down the American road of the working poor. We do not want to see Sunday penalty rates cut. Of course we believe in budget repair that is fair but, more importantly, we believe in inclusive growth. We believe that without good health care, good schools and good universities and TAFEs we cannot be competitive because not all Australians will be able to fulfil their potential. Investing in human capital means investing in Australia's greatest resource—our people.

Here in 2017 we have a Liberal government led by this Prime Minister that wants to rebrand himself. Somehow, all of a sudden, we are meant to believe that the Liberals care about fairness. I am not buying that, and nor are the Australian people. Australians see through this fake Prime Minister, who actually does not believe in anything. Australians ultimately understand that contained in the 2017 budget are tax cuts for the top end of town and for multinationals, and a tax hike for battlers. Australians can see more cuts to family tax benefits and cuts to pensions with the axing of the energy supplement. What this means in real dollars is a cut of $365 a year for a single pensioner—a cut to 1.7 million Australian pensioners and unemployed people. Of course, it would not be a Liberal budget if it did not contain some nasties for pensioners. They always preference the top end of town over people who work and struggle to make ends meet.

Many of the 2014 zombie cuts have been temporarily removed from this year's budget. They include cuts to paid parental leave, the five-week wait for Newstart, cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them off Newstart onto the lower youth allowance—a cut that would have seen around $48 a week taken from these young people—and scrapping the pensioner education supplement and the education entry payment. How do we know that these cuts are only temporarily removed from this budget? Because the Prime Minister himself said that the unfair zombie cuts 'had merit'. The Prime Minister said:

Well it’s not a question of good or bad. I mean, they were measures that we thought, which we believed had merit.

These were unfair cuts to families, unfair cuts to pensioners, unfair cuts to young job seekers. Let us not forget that, in 2014, the now Prime Minister said, and I quote him again:

I support introducing co-payments for general practitioner pathology and diagnostic imaging services in the Medicare Benefits Schedule. I support the reforms to higher education. I support the changes to family payment reform.

I just remind the Prime Minister that those changes to family payment reform that he said he supported were an $8½ billion cut to family tax benefits.

Just to give one example of one type of family what those cuts would have meant, a family of $65,000 would have lost $6,000 a year. That is how much worse off they would have been. Every single Liberal and National Party member voted for those cuts. This Prime Minister was there when the decision was made to cut pension indexation in the 2014 budget—a cut that would have left pensioners around $80 a week worse off over a decade. This Prime Minister supported those measures. He now says those measures have merit—yet, again, an indication that he has no idea of what fairness means.

I do want to speak tonight about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It is a landmark Labor reform; a reform that is very, very dear to my heart. As the minister responsible for introducing the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the former Labor government, I do understand just how important this reform is. I know that the old system of disability support in this country is broken and is failing people with disability and their families. So no-one is more committed to the successful rollout of the NDIS than I am. I do acknowledge the fact that the government has continued the rollout of the NDIS in recent years. And it has concluded a number of bilateral agreements with the states on the rollout of the scheme.

But it has been an absolute disgrace that this government has undermined the funding security of the National Disability Insurance Scheme over these last three years. I want to make it absolutely crystal clear to people with disability and to their families and carers that the future of the NDIS is secure. The NDIS is secure. I want to make it clear that Australians with disabilities are too important for this government to play political games with. When the government claims that the NDIS is at risk because of funding, it, of course, causes unnecessary concern amongst people with disability, their families and carers. It is not right and it is, certainly, not fair. We of course can disagree on many, many issues, but we should not fight about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It is too important.

The government claim that Labor, when we were in government, did not make appropriate provision through various savings to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This is just not true. The government acknowledge that Labor did increase the Medicare levy, but, of course, they choose to ignore many other tough savings decisions that were made. They ignore changes to the private health insurance rebate, indexation of tobacco excise, import duties and fringe benefits concessions. The money from these savings is in the budget. Combined, this is enough money to pay for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Labor rejects the government's attempts to link the proposed increase to the Medicare levy with the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We reject that link just like we rejected the government's early attempt to link a whole range of other unfair cuts to the funding of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and to, effectively, hold the National Disability Insurance Scheme and people with disability to ransom with these unfair cuts. So I just want to say again, particularly to people with disability, that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is secure. Its funding is secure. It is fully funded. It was fully funded by Labor. It continues to be fully funded. What we should all be concentrating on now is the successful rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the interests of people with disability.

As for families, I am sorry to say there are more cuts to family tax benefits in this budget. Around 100,000 families will have their family tax benefits cut. So let's just have a look at what the size of these cuts will be. A family on a combined household income of $105,000 and with two children in high school will be around $1,700 worse off on 1 July 2018. That is how much those families will lose from this budget. This cut follows another decision by this government to freeze the rate of family tax benefits, which means that those benefits will not keep up with prices. A typical family with two young children will be around $440 worse off in 2018-19 as a result of this Liberal government's freeze on family tax benefit rates. This cut was originally in the government's horror 2014 budget. It was removed in 2015 after the legislation was defeated in the Senate. The government then rushed it back into the parliament this year—yet further evidence that you cannot believe anything this government says. If they say a cut is out of the budget, the next year back it comes.

There are many other cuts in this budget that I do not have time to refer to tonight, and many of them are very, very controversial. We will have further opportunities to discuss them when the specific legislation for them is brought in. There are so many changes in this budget that will hurt millions of Australians, while, at the same time, it gives a tax cut to the top end of town. That is why this budget is not fair.

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