Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to use this opportunity to talk about what the budget does for the residents in my electorate, which covers most of the Knox area in outer eastern Melbourne. As other members of the parliament will know, our overall objective with this budget was to create stronger economic growth, because that ultimately underpins jobs and wealth creation; to create more opportunities, particularly for young people; and, finally, to make a safer community, which is of course desperately important, particularly in Melbourne.

I would like to start, though, by discussing education, particularly school education, and what the budget does in that regard. We all know that if you get a good school education then the opportunities arise for the rest of your life. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that every kid, no matter what their background and no matter what school they go to, gets that great start in life by going to a good school. Funding is an important element of that. Through this budget every single one of the 39 schools in the electorate of Aston, which covers most of Knox, receives an increase in funding. They have surety that over the next decade, year on year, they will have funding increases. A school like Rowville Secondary College, which is one of the larger schools in my electorate, will go from $4.7 million of federal funding this year to $4.95 million next year. Over the next 10 years it will have an increase, collectively, of $16 million. Of course, a good school education is about more than funding—it involves great teachers and good teaching practice—but funding is important, and we recognise that in this budget.

I would also like to discuss infrastructure, particularly road and rail infrastructure. Everyone in Knox knows just how congested the roads are getting. We have seen this over the last five or so years. It is almost like the roads in Melbourne are coming to a standstill. This is in part because the infrastructure has not been built to keep up with the growing population. We particularly feel that in outer eastern Melbourne.

I am pleased to say that the federal budget this year allocates $7.4 billion to Victoria. Some very important projects will directly benefit residents in my electorate, perhaps none more so than the $500 million dedicated to upgrading the Monash Freeway. People refer to that sometimes as the Monash car park in the morning—I know for myself that it often is—and this will enable additional lane capacity on the Monash Freeway to get that freeway moving better.

There is also some money to do the next stage of the airport rail link. This is an important project for everybody in my electorate and across Melbourne and Victoria. We have put money to get the next stage done. We have put money towards another very large project—the Inland Rail from Melbourne to Brisbane. It will largely be used for freight, but it will generate thousands of jobs. There is a commitment in this budget as well to get that project going.

Of course there are other smaller projects that are occurring in Knox that were election commitments of mine. We have already found funding for those, and those projects will soon be underway. The largest one of those is the Henderson Road bridge. This will connect the two sides of Henderson Road—the side in Rowville with the side in Knoxfield—and will provide an additional north-south link across Knox and take a bit of pressure off Stud Road as well. That is a really important project that is already funded and will be getting underway. It will be completed I hope within a couple of years.

I want to move to housing affordability. This is something that young people raise with me all the time. Indeed, their parents raise with me the fact that it is so difficult now for young people to get into the housing market because house prices have risen so much in recent years, and we certainly see that in our area and our community. There is no silver bullet for this, but in the budget we have announced a number of very practical measures that we are going to do to help young people get into the housing market. The most important is a new scheme that will enable people to save for a deposit more quickly. In essence, a young person will be able to put $30,000 into a dedicated part of their superannuation account. By doing that they will obviously get tax advantages. That means that they will be able to save a deposit potentially 30 per cent faster than they can presently. That is a real direct benefit to young people saving for their first home.

We are also taking other steps on the housing affordability front. An important measure there is cracking down on some of the foreign investment. We have already taken significant steps on that front and we are taking more steps again in this budget, including, for example, placing a limit on foreign ownership in new developments and introducing an annual charge on foreign owners who buy residential property and leave it vacant. We certainly know many properties like that in Knox.

Further, there are also measures that encourage and provide incentives for people to downsize, should they choose, to a smaller home. They will not be disadvantaged in doing so. There are special incentives there. That might free up some of the larger family homes for young families coming in who might benefit from those homes. There is no compulsion; it is a choice for the people who own that property at the moment, but there will be incentives for them to take up those opportunities.

Next I want to briefly discuss small business. Small business is the backbone of the economy in Knox. There are about 14,000 small- and medium-sized businesses in my electorate, which covers most of Knox. We know that, because they are the ones providing most of the jobs, when they do well the whole community does well. There are so many families where it is the plumber, the carpenter or the driver who has their own business. We want to encourage them and help them to grow and to employ more people. We are doing that through a number of steps.

The most important one is small- and medium-sized business tax cuts. It does not matter if you are a company or not, you will benefit from a small business tax cut directly on your income earned. We are also extending the $20,000 instant asset write-off. That means that you can purchase equipment—any number of pieces—up to the value of $20,000 and immediately write that off in the current financial year. Obviously that can help with your cash flow. There are a whole bunch of other smaller measures as well which will help small business people. We strongly support them. I strongly support the small business people in my electorate, as I said, because when they do well the entire community does well.

I will touch on something which goes across the board. I have personal responsibility, with Christian Porter, the Minister for Social Services, for overseeing some of the important welfare changes that we have made. In essence, we are trying to put stronger incentives in the welfare system to encourage people at every opportunity to take the job when it is available. If there is a good job there, we want people to take it rather than languish on welfare. For those who are trying to skirt around the system—and we all know some people are like that—it is going to be so much tougher for such people to do that under our new regime.

We are also, importantly, introducing trials of drug testing of new welfare recipients—new people going onto unemployment benefits. This is going to be an important trial. The aim of the measure is to identify people who, in some respects, may have a drug problem and assist them to get off it, because if they are on drugs today the chances of them getting a job are so much more diminished. Of course, they will not get the jobs which require regular drug tests, and many jobs these days do exactly that: require a drug test. If you think about truck drivers, if you think about any job in the mining industry and if you think about some of our big companies—Qantas, Toll et cetera—these sorts of companies require drug tests. The Defence Force and border security et cetera require drug tests. We want to make sure people have opportunities to get those jobs. For them to get those jobs they have to be drug free, so this drug testing is going to be important. It is a trial stge. We have not identified the locations yet, but we will be working very quickly on that and getting that up and running.

I will talk about the macro budget settings. Everybody knows that we have been deep in deficit since the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years where they destroyed the surpluses which we had and put us deep into the red. We now have a pathway back to surplus. This budget ensures that by financial year 2021 we will be back in surplus and can start paying off that debt again. That is not just very important not just for today but it is critically important for the next generation, because if we continue to run large budget deficits, as the Labor Party would like us to do, in essence we are just borrowing from our children, and they will have to pay higher taxes in the future because of our expenditure today. We do not think this is fair. Our aim is to get back to balance in a couple of years and then to start paying back the debt as soon as we get there.

There is so much more in the budget which directly impacts and supports the residents of Knox. The NDIS scheme, which is going to be fully funded and rolled out, is going to directly help thousands of people who have disabilities. I am very proud of the fact that we are going to be doing that. There are so many other smaller initiatives which are going to directly benefit the local residents as well. I have tried to touch on the big ones: the schooling initiatives, the housing affordability initiatives and the extra roads and rail. We are making some really important changes to support small business growth. We are doing important welfare reform measures to encourage young people, able bodied young people, to take those jobs when they are there, and introducing drug testing. And, perhaps, overall, ensuring that we get the finances back under control, so that we are not handing over debt to future generations. I am very proud of this budget. It is a good one for the residents of Knox and it is a good one for all Australians.

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