Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish it were a pleasure to rise and speak in this debate on the appropriation bills, but it is not. We are speaking today about a budget that is not Labor light, as so many have called it. The budget is a poor imitation of what fairness and decency look like. The fact is the government may have stripped away some of its zombie measures, some of its cuts to families, some of its cuts to education and some of its health cuts, but it is still a budget that seeks to penalised low-income earners so that they can hand out $67 billion in tax cuts to big business.

At the heart of this budget is the same lifters-and-leaners approach. If you are looking for work, you are a leaner. If you need a disability support payment, you are a leaner. If you need assistance to make sure your kids get the textbooks and uniforms they need for school, according to those opposite, you are a leaner. In fact, just about the only people those opposite do not think are leaners are the big multinational companies and high-income earners.

The Prime Minister says that fairness is at the centre of this budget, but let us look at the facts. If you earn over $180,000, you will get a tax cut but everyone else will pay more. Those earning $80,000 a year will pay at least $400 more tax. In fact, the government will rip $8.2 billion out of the pockets of workers. It is always the same from those opposite—lifters and leaners; bludgers and their mates in big business.

If you want to see how unfair this government is, look no further than the Minister for Human Services's portfolio. Every time he runs out of things to say he announces another welfare crackdown. At this point, by my count, we are up to at least No. 9 in terms of welfare crackdowns. This government has run the Department of Human Services into the ground. We have had robo-debt and skyrocketing wait times at Centrelink, not to mention blowouts in pension claim processing. These are not problems that only affect leaners. These are issues that affect people receiving an age pension, people who have lost their job, young families who want to claim their family tax benefit or those with disabilities who need some support. That means age pensioners waiting longer in queues and on phones. It means more jobseekers waiting for hours on the phone, struggling to clarify their responsibilities. It means people with a disability trying to get assistance they need. It means new mums and dads jumping through bureaucratic hoops trying to get parental leave so that they can spend time with their children.

The minister says that the average wait time for calls to Centrelink is around 12 minutes, but the truth is that for most Centrelink clients the wait times are often hours. For older Australians, the time in December last year just to get an answer before being put back on hold was 23 minutes; for youth and students the wait time was 33 minutes; and for the dissipation solutions the wait time was an unbelievable 57 minutes.

I know those in the chamber are eager to hear the Turnbull government's solution to the damning service standards at Centrelink: surprise, surprise, it is more cuts! A total of 12,000 staff are to be axed from the Department of Human Services, which is already at breaking point trying to deal with the incredible mess created by the minister's bungled robo-debt system. This makes no sense. In the last two years this government has cut 2,000 jobs from the Department of Human Services—almost 5,000 in five years. There is no way that this will improve services. What it will do is put more pressure on hardworking Department of Human Services staff, who are already under immense pressure. This will only make things worse for those who are already struggling. These cuts are a tragedy for those who are already struggling to find work and are being demoralised and dehumanised by a system that is broken, and they are heartbreaking for those who will lose their jobs.

The minister has yet to explain his justification for these cuts, other than saving money at the expense of the most vulnerable communities in Australia. He has been completely silent. After all these job cuts and falling service levels the minister owes this place and the community an explanation. The best he has offered so far is a plan to replace 2,000 job cuts in his department with 250 labour hire call centre workers. These workers will most likely be casual and will be untrained in the complexities of our social safety net. Most disappointingly, they will be unable to actually help in specific cases. They will offer general information.

Last year Centrelink missed almost 29 million calls—29 million calls went unanswered. Just to fix that problem, without actually making wait times any better, those 250 privatised call centre staff will need to answer 116,000 calls each year. Working 260 days a year, excluding public holidays and weekends, they will need to answer at least 440 calls a day just to stop people getting the engaged signal when they call. That is the best those opposite have to offer and it is not going to make any difference at all.

But the disasters of Centrelink in this budget do not end there. We have all heard of the bungled robo-debt program of the Minister for Human Services. It is the one the Ombudsman said was not a fair or reasonable system. Robo-debt is a program that has seen thousands of Australians accused of defrauding the government, even though they have not done the wrong thing. It is the one that slugged thousands with debts they do not know, which were grossly inflated. This budget will expand the robo-debt system, seeking to claw $1 billion out of the pockets of age pensioners who have income streams and investments or super. If people own money or claim allowances they are not entitled to, they should pay it back, but we should be very sure before we accuse people of doing the wrong thing. We should not leave these decisions to unaccountable robots and computer programs.

The minister has not acted to fix the problem of his broken system. In fact, he is still waiting for PricewaterhouseCoopers to finish their review and tell him if it is working. Policy and programs designed and implemented poorly are not just a failure of management. When it comes to social and human services they are plain cruel. Quite aside from the disastrous administration of this program, the minister's response to the public outcry summed up just how nasty those opposite can be. Rather than fix the problems with the program they chose to leak private information about a private individual to the media. Centrelink clients are currently waiting hours on the phone trying to get information. Perhaps they should be putting media requests to the minister's office. Then, it seems to happen more quickly!

This budget is unfair because, at its heart, this government is unfair. But the failure does not end with the Department of Human Services. The schools in almost every electorate across the country will suffer thanks to this budget. The Liberal's faux Gonski 2.0 funding program is a con designed to hide the fact that their only plan for schools is cuts. Those opposite are selling out students, whether they are in public, independent or Catholic schools, and it is simply unacceptable. We already know that, under the government's plan, schools will get $22 billion less in funding than they would have under the real Gonski plan. Those opposite are more interested in giving $65 billion in tax cuts to the big end of town than properly funding schools. It is astounding.

It is worth examining the history in this area. In the Abbott years, firstly, they told us we were on a unity ticket. Then they won and they changed their minds. They said that they did not think fair funding mattered. They continued on that argument for a while, but the community did not buy it, so now the Prime Minister has changed tack. He decided to commission a review into the Gonski review, to be led by David Gonski, to establish whether the needs-based model was a good one. That just seems to me to be astounding. But Mr Turnbull's Gonski 2.0 is a fiction. It will actually see less funding made available for schools.

In the community of Barton, which I represent, there will be about $14 million less funding for schools in 2018 and 2019. There will be less money for programs tailored to the needs of students in our area, which means less one-on-one attention for students who need it and less support for students with a disability. The contact I have had with the schools I have visited clearly outlines what this is going to mean for students. That seems to be where the focus should be. It will mean students who are behind in literacy will not be able to catch up. It will mean students who are anxious and who have self-esteem issues will not ever rebuild that self-esteem. It will mean parents will be very, very worried about the programs they have supported in schools, as will the school principals and staff who have added to those schools and, therefore, to the life choices of those children. Put simply, these funding cuts marketed as Gonski 2.0 will hurt schools in all of our electorates.

This is not a fair budget. This is the kind of budget that a Liberal government struggling in the polls produces when it is out of ideas. This is not a budget about fairness. It is more of the same from a government which is entirely bereft of ideas. Those opposite keep saying that this is a budget that offers fairness, opportunity and security. They are just three words. Those three words are important words, but not in the way they are being applied in this budget. It simply cannot be. It is not fair, it does not provide opportunity and it certainly does not provide security. In fact, it does the opposite of those three fine goals. It does not offer any of those things for struggling parents, those looking for work, students or older Australians. People do not choose to be unemployed. People do not choose to grow old. People do not choose to have a disability. Those groups of people that rely on us in this place to represent them—that rely on us in this place to make their lives bearable—must be sorely disappointed.

What this budget does offer is service cuts and empty rhetoric. No wonder there is such cynicism out in the community about the role of politicians. This budget does not demonstrate that there is any fairness or any opportunity. There is certainly no security. This government is trying to convince the community with empty slogans and lip-service. If it starts listening to the community, it might know what it is supposed to do and who it is elected to serve in this place.

I will just finish up by focusing on that very point. We are elected by people to serve in this place. We are elected by people who expect us to carry their aspirations, their hurts, their loves, their pains and their joys into this place. They do not expect government to design budgets that will undermine the very life that they have sought to build and that will undermine the very way in which fairness is understood in this country. At the start, I said that I wished it were a joy for me to stand and give this speech about this budget. But it is not, simply because it is so very unfair.

Sitting suspended from 13:30 to 16:02

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