Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hindmarsh for allowing me to steal his podium mid-sentence! I also thank the member for Cunningham for allowing me to step in ahead of her on the speakers list. I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and related bills before the House. In doing so, I want to address where this budget fails to deliver on fairness and to give a fair go to the people I represent in the federal seat of Calwell.

My constituents are very much everyday Australians. They are workers, families, students, pensioners, young people and refugees—in fact, a large number of them are refugees, as we are receiving a huge number of the 12,000 that have come in from Syria due to the extra places. My constituents are also people with disabilities and, by and large, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and very diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of them have worked and continue to work in the low-skilled area of manufacturing, although that is now a vanishing job area. I have highly skilled people, employed people, self-employed people and large numbers of underemployed and unemployed people. They are, by and large, resilient and very hardworking Australians, and they were looking for a fair go in this budget.

It is a budget that the Treasurer has termed 'a fair budget for a time when things are looking up'. So my constituents were hoping for some fair measures that might be of assistance to them in the way in which they get through their daily lives. I think 'a fair go' generally means giving everyone a real and equal opportunity and the resources to have a go and to make the best of what they can. It means paying taxes and making contributions to budgets according to each person's capacity to do so. It also means paying your fair share if you are a corporate or big business, and it certainly does not mean ordinary households and workers doing the heavy lifting of budget repair by paying higher taxes as company taxes and wages decline. I am glad to see, in recent commentary in the media over the last couple of days, that so-called top budget experts are making that point, and they are making it very loudly.

The budget's across-the-board tax increase to fund Medicare, the NDIS and its $65 billion corporate tax cuts at the expense of education through a $22 billion cut to schools, hikes in university fees and cuts to TAFE and apprenticeships is hardly a vote of confidence in enabling opportunity for the ordinary people in my electorate. By choosing to deliver to big business and choosing multinationals at the expense of middle- and working-class Australians, and by making the risky assumption that company taxes will translate into jobs growth and wages growth, the government is putting its eggs in one basket and, therefore, failing to secure better days for all of the people in my electorate and for ordinary Australians generally.

I have had a number of my constituents call me since the budget was delivered to raise their concerns. I also had the opportunity, like many of my colleagues, to visit some of my public schools and, indeed Catholic schools in the short period between the budget and the next parliamentary sitting week. I think it is probably best to use some of their voices today here in the chamber to illustrate the frustration and disappointment of the people in my electorate with the budget.

Sam Caruso is a constituent of mine. I have known him for a long time. He lives in Roxburgh Park. He recently retired after 52 years of working in very labour-intensive jobs. He has been a fitter and turner, and most of his life has been spent working on road construction. He began work at the age of 14, not an unusual story for many of the people who I represent, and now he is very much looking forward to having a rest, as he put it to me, and enjoying his retirement. He and I and many other people in this country feel that people like him have done their bit for the country. They have done their bit for the economy. They have done their bit for the budget. It is now time for them to retire to enjoy their senior years. I think we owe him and others like him that right.

One of the first things Sam said to me is that the thought that the government is still harbouring the idea of raising the pension age to 70—which, as we know, would be the highest in the developed world—riles him. It does a lot of other people also, including me. The type of manual labour that Sam has been involved in for 52 years does eventually take its toll on people. It is the sort of physical work that is not found in corporate boardrooms and it is the sort of work that captains of industry would never understand and would never endure. So people like Sam after 52 years of work are hardly in a state to be physically able to continue to do this sort of work until the age of 70. The question is: what happens to people like Sam?

The zombie measure on raising the age of retirement to 70 was introduced in the 2014 budget. I remember the then Treasurer Joe Hockey said: 'What we are going to do is deliver a fairer system for the age pension. We ae going to focus on the sustainability of the system with a reasonable quality of life. The age pension expenditure today is currently more than we spend on defence.' Well, some people might argue that that is not a bad thing. The fact that our age pension spending exceeds that of our defence spending is a sign of a civilised society that is focused on and prioritises the care of its elderly and, in this case, its pensioners.

As I said, the then Treasurer Joe Hockey made that quote. But I want to quote shadow minister Jenny Macklin when she said:

How does Mr Turnbull expect construction workers, nurses and farmers to work until they’re 70? He’s completely out of touch.

The government is out of touch because it does not actually understand the type of work that these Australians are involved in and it does not seem to care very much whether people are able to retire and have quality time with their families and to do the sorts of things that they did not get a chance to do while they were working and doing their bit for the country.

The real issue here is that working to 70 might be okay for some in the future. I might, if I am lucky, choose to work beyond that as well. But for people like Sam in my electorate, the ones who are physically unable to work because they have endured so much physical labour, what are the alternatives for them? Unfortunately, the government is silent on this. Are workers with their working life potentially prolonged to 70 now expected to end it on unemployment benefits, just ticking boxes at the Job Network providers? What kind of indignity is that for people who have worked most of their lives? Sam cannot imagine himself being able to work on the roads until he is 70. He asked me to say that. He cannot imagine other fellow Australians doing hard yakka until the age of 70 either.

It is only a government that sees its citizens as cogs in wheels that could come up with this nasty policy. Only a government that does not really understand the value and dignity of its citizens could come up with a plan to head off the availability of the age pension to its citizens while, simultaneously, thinking nothing of handing over $65 billion worth of tax cuts to big business—tax cuts that are actually coming out of the public purse, contributed to by the taxes of people like Sam.

The budget is taking from the labour of middle and working class taxpayers and handing it to the corporate speculators. The idea that company tax cuts will lead to jobs growth is speculative. The truth is that most people I speak to tend to think that this is going to be an opportunity for the corporates to increase their profit margins rather than to create jobs. That is the view of the people out on the streets. It is very important to make that point here today.

Returning to Sam—because Sam is very important; there are many Sams in my electorate—he will not forget that this budget has provided little help for or interest in helping the automotive supply chain manufacturers successfully transition either. My electorate, the federal seat of Calwell, is home to the now closed Ford factory plant. It was a Liberal government that ended car manufacturing in this country, and the so-called Growth Fund that was introduced, which was supposed to help the supply chain diversify, has always been grossly underfunded. There is no joy in this budget for people in that industry, because the top-up that was introduced in the 2017 budget has for many been too little and come too late. Our manufacturing firms struggle to remain competitive, especially now, in light of skyrocketing energy prices. The budget has offered no immediate assistance for manufacturers who are under serious pressure as result of this. To this end, I want to speak about Willow Ware and their 200 employees in my electorate.

Willow Ware is a manufacturer in my electorate that has experienced the disinterest this government has in helping Australian manufacturers. It is a 130-year-old company, founded by Ralph Wilson Sr, and I think we are on to the third consecutive Ralph Wilson. Willow Ware has survived the Great Depression. It has survived the credit crunch and the global financial crisis. It is a company that, during the world wars, did its bit for Australia—this iconic Australian company, by the way, makes the Esky; that is how iconic it is—but now that it needs help it is having to fight this government's war against manufacturing. Last year, Willow Ware was faced with the very real possibility of shutting its doors, ending a long family tradition of manufacturing Australian products, including the iconic Esky, and leaving 200 people in my electorate unemployed and their families out in the cold. It faced challenges from cheap overseas mass imports, with major outlets preferring the cheap plastic buckets to the quality, Australian-made product. In order to compete it needed to transform and upgrade its machinery, but it faced challenges with rising energy costs. Willow Ware is a company that also makes a car component for the Toyota motor car company—it received an award for from Toyota last year—so it is part of the automotive parts supply chain.

Willow Ware reached out to the Turnbull government and its ministers. It invited the Prime Minister to visit its factory in Tullamarine, but Mr Turnbull's office told the company he was unavailable. This is a company that is very close to the Prime Minister's political party, by the way. It wrote to the then minister for innovation, Christopher Pyne, in early 2016 for some assistance. All it got back was a letter suggesting that it apply for a government grant that was already out of date. Approaches were made after the last election to the then innovation minister, Greg Hunt, and to the current minister for industry, Arthur Sinodinos, all to no avail. As the local member, I have tried to help Willow Ware. The Leader of the Opposition visited its factory, and the shadow minister for industry, Senator Kim Carr, and I have made a number of trips to the Willow Ware factory in Tullamarine. We have tried to be of assistance to Willow Ware.

The truth is that they came close to closing their doors not long ago. If it had not been for the Andrews state Labor government intervening and assisting Willow to make that transition—that crucial transition and upgrading in order to be able, as I said, to compete against cheap imports—I feel that our local electorate would have copped another 200 job losses as a direct result of a situation that exists in Australian manufacturing at the moment and is dependent largely on who are in government and what their attitude towards manufacturing is. So I am pleased to say that we have been able to preserve Willow Ware, one of the last iconic Australian manufacturers, in my electorate and protect their jobs.

On the issue of manufacturing and jobs growth—and I do not have much time left, unfortunately—I must say that the whole debate around penalty rates and working conditions and the incredible failure of the government to understand the needs of working men and women in the middle- to lower-class sectors of the economy have left me and a lot of other people absolutely dumbfounded. The idea that penalty rates are somehow a luxury that employers cannot afford is so ludicrous that it needs an entire 15 minutes to explain. On that note, I thank the Deputy Speaker!

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