Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have returned to Canberra with, I noticed this morning, the one per cent budget bounce the government got in the Newspoll a couple of weeks ago having gone. They are back to another slump in the polls. It is pretty clear why. After a couple of weeks of digesting the reality of this budget, it has dawned on people that this is a fundamentally unfair budget from a desperate government with no narrative and no reason to be.

The ultimate test of any budget should be—must be—how it addresses the big challenges which our nation faces. Key amongst those challenges are sluggish growth and low wage growth, as well as unemployment and underemployment. This budget gives up on jobs and growth, which is perhaps a blessing for those of us who have had to listen to that slogan for near to 12 months. I do not think we are going to hear much more about jobs and growth when the growth projections in this budget are down, wages growth is down and unemployment is up, with 95,000 fewer jobs forecast in this budget.

The budget fails the fiscal responsibility test. I heard the honourable member for Lyne, who spoke before me, talking about a credible financial path. That is what they said in their first budget and their second budget and their third budget, and they are saying it again. Yet, four years on, gross debt is shortly to pass $500 billion, well on track to exceed $700 billion in 10 years, and the deficit this year will be 10 times bigger than was forecast in the Liberals' first budget. That is a credible financial path, apparently. It is sort of magic economics: we vote Tony Abbott in and somehow the budget is going to whirr back into surplus because they are so competent. The numbers tell another story. After so many years of hearing from then-Treasurer Hockey—whatever he is doing now—and everybody else that there is no revenue problem, there is a funny admission. Finally, there is an honest admission that there is in fact a revenue problem, with the bank levy slammed on with no notice and a tax rise for everyone founded on a lie over the National Disability Insurance Scheme funding. But they still will not undertake responsible structural changes over the medium term, which is what we really need for a credible path back to surplus. There is a housing crisis, but this budget does nothing of substance in relation to housing. Indeed, their signature initiative, which we keep hearing so much about, many economists say will tip more money into the housing market and fuel the affordability problems by adding to demand. There is an infrastructure crisis. We are on track for a record low level of investment, with cuts to infrastructure this year and zero new dollars for Victoria. The truth can only be found if you look at what is in the budget papers, rather than believe the spin that you hear in question time and heard in the Treasurer's speech on budget night, because most of the things that are talked about are not actually funded.

Overall, the budget is a tawdry, sad, confused little document. The member for Herbert, who is in the chamber, knows the Hollowmen documentary. This budget is something that you would see produced out of that sort of budget policy process. It has been designed in a focus group. You can imagine people sitting down, saying, 'Where are we vulnerable? We haven't spent enough on Medicare. People think we're pretty bad on schools. We'll just put a little fig leaf—a tick in a box—next to everything and try and band-aid over the truth with a few little gimmicks.' But overall it adds up to nothing. It is an abject sign of the failure of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. I think the newspapers are right in calling him the worst Treasurer in modern Australian history, as they are.

An honourable member interjecting —

I do not think it is harsh; I think it is generous. Budgets are about choices, and the government has made fundamentally unfair choices. We have got tax cuts for the top end—a two per cent tax cut for every member of this parliament; we are in the top tax bracket. On the same day we get a tax cut there are cuts to penalty rates for 700,000 low-income workers. We found $65 billion apparently in the medium term for tax cuts to companies, including big multinationals and the banks. Apparently the banks are going to get back through the tax cuts almost as much as they will pay in the levy. It is a kind of pea-and-thimble trick. This is accompanied by a $22.3 billion cut to school funding when compared to the existing arrangements. There are tax cuts for the top end—that is, for us—and a tax rise for everyone else.

There are a couple of issues I want to turn my remarks to. The first is the degradation of public services. This budget continues and ramps up the Liberal government's sustained attack on Australia's public services and public servants, who work for all of us. We see further cuts of $1.9 billion to core public services through so-called efficiency dividends, plus another 1,188 jobs to go at Centrelink with the start of the privatisation of Centrelink that is quite clearly outlined in the budget papers.

Great societies have great public services—schools, TAFEs, universities, hospitals, health care, defence forces, police, emergency services and aged care. There are even our foreign affairs and trade representatives across the globe to advance Australia's interests and help craft economic and security environments in which we can prosper. To deliver great public services you need great people who are motivated, committed and supported. I am constantly disappointed when listening to many of those opposite—not all, but many—who like to degrade public servants, dragging up stereotypes and talking about people living off the public teat and so on. I think we should aspire to have the best and the brightest in our society taking careers in the public service and we should value the work that they do.

Yet, with no explanation—none at all—this budget inflicts further massive cuts on Centrelink and the Department of Human Services. Buried in Budget Paper No. 4 on page 136 it says that 1,188 jobs will be cut next year. That comes on top of 5,000 or so jobs cut since the government was elected four years ago. Even worse, some may argue, buried in Budget Paper No. 2 on page 147 is the advice that the government is now privatising 250 jobs to call centres. It is a trial. It is the start, but we know it is the thin end of the wedge. There is no advice of course about how much this will cost. If you look in the table and think, 'I wonder how much this is going to cost?' all that is written is 'NFP'. That does not mean 'not-for-profit'; it is not a volunteering initiative. It means 'not for publication'—'We're not going to tell you,' says the government, 'how much this privatisation is going to cost.'

Centrelink of course, as any member in this place who spends any time in their electorate office would know, is one of the most stressed areas of the government. The delays in answering phones are a national joke. There were 36 million unanswered calls last year. We have started to find out how they rort the statistics. When the minister talks about the average wait time, he picks a telephone queue, which is probably one that no-one calls—maybe his office calls a few times—and says: 'It is only 12 minutes. There is nothing to worry about.' The reality is that, if you call and get through and get transferred to another person, transferred to another person and transferred to another person and have been on the phone for one hour and a quarter, that counts as four calls and it is averaged out to lower the call wait times. The hang up times—the 36 million calls where no-one gets through—are not counted in any statistics at all. So the statistics, even the ones that the government publishes, which are bad enough, are wrong. As anyone knows, getting through to Centrelink is a national joke.

There are delays in claims because of the lost staff, delays in disability support pension claims and family payments and, most particularly I have noticed in recent months, delays in age pension claims. I have had to escalate and try to push through a number of claims for people who say: 'It is all very well for Centrelink to say that they will back pay me in three months, four months, five months or six months when they get around to processing my pension, but I have had to retire from work because my husband has got a serious illness and I need the health care card because we go to specialists and we have pathology bills. We do all this stuff every week and we do not get a discount. The doctor does not give us a discount until we get the card. We cannot go to the doctor and get thousands of dollars of medical bills back paid, can we?'

These are the real impacts on the community through taking the human out of Human Services, which is what this government is doing. I encourage everyone to speak up against the cuts. The CPSU, the union that represents public sector workers, has started a campaign that deserves support. Importantly, I encourage people to direct their anger not at Centrelink staff, not at the people on the end of the phone, but at the government. It is this rotten government that deserves the anger of citizens trying to get basic services, not the stressed-out staff who remain trying to do their best.

Of course, it is not just Centrelink. We have heard from the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection that the government are starting to privatise and casualise there too. The government are putting 250 jobs into call centres over the next 12 months in Immigration. This is not just ordinary queries; this often is dealing with people's most personal information. In the case of many people who travel, or where there may be security issues, it is not an exaggeration to say that this is life and death information that these call centres deal with. In the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, already we have 450 labour hire contractors sitting there—not public servants but doing public servant work. I wonder what the overheads and the cost-benefit truly are for that.

The practical impacts, though, are further degraded services for the community and job losses and wage cuts for staff. Casualisation and insecure work are a growing issue. How are you supposed to get a home loan or do the basic things which people working full time would normally expect if you cannot go to the bank with a contract, because you are on week to week or fortnight to fortnight, which is what the government wants to do to more of its own workforce?

This is consistent, of course, with the government's ideology not only about cutting wages, as we see with penalty rates, but also about the EBA negotiations. This is perhaps the most shameful. I think that you can judge a government by how it manages its own workforce. The fact that staff in the Department of Human Services, year after year after year under this government, have had no EBA agreements in place and not one per cent, not a dollar, in a pay rise is bad enough. But do you know what the sticking point is? It is not actually money; it is the fact that the staff there are smart enough to refuse point blank to trade off their basic entitlements in the EBA for flexible working conditions by putting them into policies in which they then have no protection.

I know this from the time when I took the best part of a year working flexibly—I took part-time and reduced arrangements—while nursing my mum, with cancer, at home. With those entitlements—even as a senior public servant, I had the same entitlements—I could walk in and say: 'Hey, I've got personal and family responsibilities. I was raised by a single mum. Helping her die, and die well, at home is important to me.' I had an industrial right—not something that I had to beg for but an industrial right—under the EBA so that I was allowed to keep my job and cut my hours and still meet my caring responsibilities. That is what this government is trying to take away from every public servant through these disgraceful EBAs. I stand proudly with the public servants being attacked day in, day out, by this government. These sorts of measures should be called out and opposed.

In the time remaining, I would say that, if there is one group above all others who should be furious about how they are treated and forgotten in this budget, it is young people. Last week, members may remember that we heard a bit from those opposite about it being 75 years since Sir Robert Menzies's famous Forgotten People speech. Ironically, that was, of course, while Menzies himself was at risk of being forgotten by history, before his second coming when he made his seminal speech. Seventy-five years on, in this Liberal budget, there is no doubt at all that, if there is one group above all others which is forgotten, abandoned by Menzies's party, it is young people.

Those who cannot vote are completely sold out, with a $22.3 billion cut to school funding as compared to the current arrangements. The baseline those opposite use to talk about it as a funding increase is: 'Abbott cut $30 billion, so we've put a bit more back in.' Somehow that is a funding increase, even though it is still a massive cut. The greatest single con is the government trying to present it as an increase. It sells out the idea of equality of opportunity—that any kid, wherever they are from and whatever their family circumstances, has the best chance in life at fulfilling their potential—and it sells out Australia's future by not investing, to the required standard and in a reasonable time frame, the required funds.

I have heard particular anger through my office about the attacks on higher education. The latest cuts over the next two years, another 2.5 per cent out of universities, bring it to a total of around $4 billion cut from core university funding under this government. It is a pretence to say that this will not impact research and that it will not threaten our global standing in our rankings and quality of education. What it does is raise university fees and contributions to amongst the highest in the developed world. Worst of all, from an equity point of view, it lowers the repayment threshold for young people so graduates will be forced to repay their debts earlier. When people start earning $42,000, which is not a lot of money in today's society, they will get whacked to repay. This further undermines the equitable principles which underlie higher education loans programs.

Those opposite and their cheer squads say: 'Don't worry, it's just a few dollars. It's only a few dollars. It's $8 here and $10 there and $15 there.' Of course, if you have rich parents—the Prime Minister's housing policy—it is just a few dollars. But those few dollars make a real difference for ordinary families. These are people—perhaps they are the first in their family to go to university—who are genuinely worried about the debt they are taking on because they know from their friends that it will decrease their chances of getting a home loan until it is repaid, or because of the stories they hear of people deferring starting a family year after year because they cannot afford to repay their debt, and save for a home, and save for a family. We know from what we hear in the community—and from what I heard at Monash University when talking to students a couple of weeks ago, and what I hear from my own daughter, who is at the University of Melbourne—that young people are price sensitive. They are worried about their future and worried about taking on more debt. Just a few dollars here or a few dollars there do make a difference, and they fuel the rising inequality we see in this country.

The government, of course, is always prepared to find very large amounts of money for the top end. There is a two per cent tax cut for people on high incomes—including me—and a $65 billion company tax cut. It does go to priorities and choices. We saw a lot of the so-called zombie measures abandoned in this budget. I dearly hope that the higher education measures become the new and first zombie measures in this budget and will never pass this parliament. (Time expired)

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