Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and its cognate bills, which form part of the 2017-18 budget that was handed down by the Treasurer just a few weeks ago. It is a budget that those opposite have claimed is fair and a budget that those opposite promise will deliver better days ahead. They are four years in government, but we are still waiting for the better days ahead to come.

I am not surprised about the speaking points that each of the members of the government have been emailed from the Treasurer's office. It seems that it has colluded with the PM's office to make sure they get the word 'fairness' into every speech. I wanted to know where that word 'fairness' came from. I saw an article in The Daily Telegraph saying that the Liberal Party has spent $200,000 in polling that told it it should use the word 'fairness'. That is where the idea of fairness came from. I quote:

The Daily Telegraph has learned the Liberal Party commissioned research firm Crosby Textor—

to provide data—

to help Mr Morrison formulate his second Budget, at a cost of more than $200,000.

…   …   …

Mr Morrison drew on the research to help him convince Mr Turnbull of the likely public support for meaningful changes to housing affordability in the Budget.

Government members who are here today all signed off on polling to tell them what they should say and what should be in the budget. They did not bother going down to do a street corner meeting or a mobile office or go to a pub or club in their area and say, 'Do you think we're running a good show here?' We know that the answer, had they actually bothered to listen to the community, would have been: a budget delivered by the former Abbott government and the Turnbull government delivering all of those horrific, toxic cuts, which then had to be abandoned because they could not get them through the Senate. They abandoned them not because they rejected them because they were a bad idea—they still support all of those harsh and cruel measures—but because they could not get them through. That is why they abandoned all of those reforms—junked them—and moved to try to find a way to prove that they are fair.

This is not a fair budget. Anyone who lives in mainstream Australia knows that it is clearly not a fair budget. This is what you get when you have a fly-in fly-out Prime Minister who comes into Queensland and a Treasurer who—I will put this on the record—did not even bother to set foot in Queensland before the budget this year. It was in June last year that the Treasurer was last in Queensland. I will tell you where he did go. He went to Germany, twice, before setting foot in Queensland. Is it any wonder that we have a huge number of LNP MPs from Queensland who have never bothered to go in to fight for Queensland, who have never bother to actually stand up for Queensland? Talking about infrastructure, which I will do in a little while, this is a budget that delivers nil for Queensland, and particularly for the south-west of Brisbane, which I am privileged to represent in this place.

This is a budget with a deficit for the coming year that has blown out; it is 10 times bigger than first forecast under this government. It will now reach $29.4 billion in this financial year. That is right: from the first forecast at $2.8 billion it has increased to a staggering $29.4 billion under this government. That is not to mention that the deficit for the year just passed has reached $37.6 billion, which has tripled from the government's first budget under Joe Hockey. The deficit has blown out. It is not under control and is not arrested but has tripled under their watch.

Who can forget that infamous night of Joe Hockey's first budget, a budget so well received that he was dispatched to America. That is how popular that budget was. It was a huge budget that wreaked havoc across middle- and low-income Australia and that caused the government to lose 16 seats at the last election. That is the economic management of this government. On the night that Joe Hockey delivered that budget, delivering some of the cruellest and harshest cuts to our community, he cranked up the music and said it was the best night of his life—'Fantastic! I'm going to put the axe through your family's budget and I'm going to cut funding for schools and health, but I'm going celebrate that'—and chomped down on cigars with Mathias Cormann, the finance minister. Little wonder that the community in Australia reacted strongly, stood up to the bullies inside this out-of-touch government, ensured a huge number of coalition MPs were thrown out of office and almost ensured a change of government.

The debt is now $375 billion, more than double than when the Liberals first came to office, and after all of this the government has the gall to say, 'Just trust us; we're great economic managers.' The Australian community have woken up to this myth. The Australian community have woken up to this lie. When it comes to the economic management of this country Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, and Scott Morrison simply cannot be trusted. On the watch of the member for Robertson, who is in the chamber, and that of every other member of this government, Australians were paying the highest amount of tax they had ever paid—ever. Not lower tax, not paying less; paying more—the highest amount of tax that Australia has ever paid in our history.

That record net debt will peak over the next three years, with gross debt equivalent to $20,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia. Compared to last year's budget, GDP growth is down, employment is down, wages are going down and, under the government's own budget papers, 100,000 jobs are expected to go—not stabilise, not increase; be lost, decrease. So let us not have any lectures from those opposite. Do not get up in this chamber and talk about fairness in any way, shape or form. Wage growth has hit record lows of just 1.8 per cent, which has fallen behind the cost of living, which is increasing at 2.1 per cent, which means wages of Australians are now going backwards. Let me repeat that: wages in Australia are now going backwards.

So what is the answer to this problem that the government have? Are they looking at job creation? Are they looking at how we can stimulate the economy? No, they are going to cut penalty rates. While wages and standards of living are falling and inequality is growing and is at a 75-year high in Australia, they are going to cut wages. That is their solution. They are going to give around 10,400 workers in my community a pay cut. I will not stand for that, my community will not stand for it, and Bill Shorten and Labor will fight that every step of the way. They are going to cut the wages of 700,000 Australians. That is what is going to happen under this government. They are proud of it, they have been encouraging it and their speaking notes, straight out of the IPA, are all programmed to cut wages and to cut government spending. That is the Liberal way. That means higher inequality in Australia, at a record 75-year high. That is not something I would be proud of as a government.

The only better days that are apparently coming under this Treasurer are planned for a couple of people in Australia—that is, big business and millionaires. They are going to do very well under this government. They are going to do exceptionally well. Big business will get $65 billion worth of tax cuts, and millionaires will get a $16,400 tax cut. They will get a bonus, but under this budget someone earning around $65,000, living in my electorate and in great working- and middle-class suburbs right across Australia, will pay more. They do not get a tax cut; they get to pay $325 more per year under this government. How on earth could you ever describe that as fair?

The Prime Minister said in his speech that the budget was about choices, and the government have made choices. They have chosen big business over working families. They have chosen multinationals over Medicare. As we have seen time and time again, this budget fails the fairness test, it fails the jobs test and it fails the Medicare test. Yet there we were on budget night, with the government wanting some sort of congratulations for their supposed Medicare guarantee.

Let's talk about the facts. The Medicare rebate will not apply to 93 per cent of scans, including the X-rays, MRIs and ultrasounds used to diagnose some of the most common forms of cancer. The Medicare rebate will only be lifted on 59 of the 891 radiology items listed on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. That is just seven per cent, and the government wants to be congratulated. While mammograms and a number of CT scans will be indexed under the plan, X-rays, MRIs and ultrasounds for such common conditions as brain, lung, breast and ovarian cancers will not. The rebate on common scans for arthritis and nuclear medicine will also remain frozen. There is no Medicare guarantee under this government and there never will be. Time and time again this government shows its true colours.

The people in my electorate of Oxley know that it was this side of the chamber and a former member for Oxley that built and delivered Medicare. It was Bill Hayden who first developed universal health care for this country. During the 1973 second reading speech on the Health Insurance Bill 1973 to introduce Medibank, as it was called at the time, and opposed by the Liberal Party, Mr Hayden said it was to provide:

… the most equitable and efficient means of providing health insurance coverage for all Australians.

It was introduced by Labor, by Bill Hayden, and opposed by the Liberal Party. It was not just for the wealthy, not just for the few, but for all Australians. Let's be clear: Medicare is under attack by this government. It always will be as long as the Liberal Party has breath in its body.

This is a government which thinks it is fair for someone earning $1 million to get a tax cut while someone earning $65,000 will pay $325 more in tax. This government's new tax increases will affect every Australian, right down to someone on an income of $21,000. A truck driver in Goodna on $55,000 will pay $275 a year extra in tax. A small-business manager in Jindalee on $80,000 will pay an extra $400. The thousands of families living in Springfield, Forest Lake and Inala will be part of the 100,000 families that are worse off as part of this government's cuts to family payments. And this government still thinks that it is a fair budget. No fair budget would hike taxes for those earning less than $87,000. At the same time, they are giving a tax cut to everyone earning more than $180,000. That means that a millionaire gets a $16,400 tax cut on the same day that up to 700,000 Australians lose their penalty rates. On that same day, someone earning $65,000 a year gets a $325 a year tax increase. How on earth is that fair? No fair budget would give multinationals and banks a $65 billion tax cut at the expense of Middle Australia. No fair budget would be ripping $22 billion from our kids' real needs based funding for schools.

Three years ago, having promised no cuts to schools, the government ripped away $30 billion. Last week, they told the parents and students of Australia to be grateful that they were now only cutting $22 billion. Parents and teachers know that they are going to be worse off as a result of these cuts. As we have heard, that is the equivalent of cutting $2.4 million from every school in Australia over the next decade or sacking 22,000 teachers. We on this side of the chamber know this, as do the parents, educators and principals of Australia. The Catholic parish schools in particular in my electorate have been contacting me. They are worried about what the impacts of this government's proposed education reform will mean. In my home state of Queensland, state schools alone are expected to lose $300 million. They are going to be $300 million worse off under this government's plan. We know that a lot of this funding has been pushed out to the never-never, with significant funding increases under this government not flowing to Queensland schools until 2027. We know that under the next 10 years we will lose funding.

We know the situation when it comes to jobs, skills, training and investment. We have seen this government rip out $2.8 billion worth of training. They have stood by while we have lost over 13,000 apprenticeships on their watch. Thousands of people are missing out under this government. I will defend what our community needs against this unfair budget.

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