Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2017-2018 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2017-2018. Like those on this side of the House, I intend raising a lot of the concerns that I and my constituents have about the unfairness in many of the measures that are contained within this budget. It seems that, year after year, we have yet another unfair budget that particularly impacts people in regional and rural areas. This budget is indeed unfair because it delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires whilst hurting families, especially in regional areas like mine, in the electorate of Richmond, on the North Coast of New South Wales. Budgets are all about choices, but this government's choices are all wrong.

Before I list some of the details that concern me about the budget, I will talk about the fact that one of the harshest choices is the lack of funding to assist northern New South Wales recover from the devastating recent floods. Those floods were a devastating and heartbreaking event felt by the people in our region and that are still very pertinent in our concerns. Make no mistake, the flooding associated with Cyclone Debbie has been far reaching, with many homes wrecked and businesses destroyed. It will be a very long road to rebuild and repair. Of course, the tragedy of lives lost due to the flooding is extremely sad. Again, I would like to express my condolences to all those families and communities that lost loved ones in the floods. The massive weather event caused by Cyclone Debbie spread south from Queensland and caused the largest flood that we have ever seen. The swiftness and strength of the rain was overwhelming for us. The record rainfall resulted in thousands of residents having to be evacuated from flood affected areas. I again strongly commend our outstanding police and emergency service workers, our SES volunteers and our council staff for their work and commitment throughout that challenging time. I would like also to commend our community again for coming together and assisting one another.

Whilst locals welcomed the very early decision to appoint a disaster recovery coordinator, we have rightly been very critical of both the New South Wales government and the federal government for their lack of substantial funding and commitment to repair and rebuild our region. In fact, our community had to protest and campaign locally to force the state government to commit to category C funding, particularly for business assistance. Many smaller villages, like Uki, are still waiting for this. In some areas, such as the Byron shire, they are still waiting for some disaster relief payments. It has certainly been a very long time since the floods and we will keep pressing the state and federal governments to ensure that funding is there as well as to obtain more needed funding.

I would like particularly to thank both the federal opposition leader, Bill Shorten, and the New South Wales opposition leader, Luke Foley, for visiting Murwillumbah and Lismore and meeting firsthand and listening to residents, business and council representatives and SES volunteers and community groups. Both of them, individually, held very extensive roundtables with all of those community representatives, and I thank them for that. I know that New South Wales Labor subsequently released an 11-point plan to address many of the urgent issues that were raised at these meetings. To date, the New South Wales state government has failed to lend support to the plan, let alone adopt it, despite the offer of bipartisan support from Labor. I again call on it to do that.

I would like to thank the New South Wales opposition leader for returning to the North Coast the week before last. Again he met with locals in Tumbulgum, Murwillumbah and Lismore, continuing to hear their concerns. He renewed his call to the state government to waive payroll tax for flood affected businesses and to set up two separate funds: a local government infrastructure fund and a business assistance fund.

Recently, Tweed Shire Council passed a resolution calling on the New South Wales Premier to waive payroll tax for the next 12 months for all flood affected businesses on the New South Wales North Coast. I would like to thank the council for its continued advocacy for our community. I particularly acknowledge the outstanding work of Tweed shire mayor, Katie Milne, and our deputy mayor, Chris Cherry. I also acknowledge all of the hard working Tweed councillors. I especially acknowledge the Tweed council general manager, Troy Green, and thank him for his leadership and resolve in such challenging times for our region.

Whilst we have a very strong community, we need governments that support us. I acknowledge that both the Prime Minister and the New South Wales Premier visited Murwillumbah very briefly soon after the event, but I call on them to come back for a substantial period of time, to sit down with our community and business leaders and hear their stories firsthand, hear about the action that is needed to help us recover and rebuild, and to deliver substantial funding to help us do that.

I note also that the Murwillumbah District Business Chamber has recently written to the New South Wales Premier, requesting that she visit Murwillumbah for a roundtable meeting with business and community representatives to update her on the continuing dire situation that we face, many weeks after the flood. The chamber has said that it is happy to meet with the Premier at any time it suits her, but it does want the meeting to take place soon, due to the struggle that Murwillumbah as a town continues to face.

Last Saturday's Tweed Daily News, one of our local papers, ran a story about the Premier being invited to meet with the chamber. The story reports that the Premier is refusing to come and meet with the chamber but is, instead, sending a representative. That is insulting to our community, to the business chamber and to the rest of the community. In that article, the acting vice-president of the chamber said:

Our chamber board has been actively keeping in touch with many flood-affected business owners and we are desperately worried about many of them due to the lack of suitable financial assistance available and the inconsistencies and barriers that exist to access funding and other financial support.

The ability of our businesses to recover is integral to the long-term recovery of our town as a whole.

The business chamber wrote to the premier asking her to come up, at any time that suited her, to sit with them and meet with them and talk about what they desperately need to rebuild and recover. The premier has refused to do that. She is sending a representative and quite frankly this is an absolute insult to our region. So I call on the New South Wales premier to listen to our community and commit to this meeting yourself. Quite frankly, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian's response so far has been disappointing and, I believe, disgraceful—the fact that she is not herself coming up to meet with our community. I intend to keep calling on her to come and meet with them. We also need to see comprehensive, long-term plans to address the mass destruction caused by the floods. We need much greater funds flowing to affected families, businesses and communities and indeed to our local governments, which have also suffered devastating losses.

We also desperately need more funding to address chronic homelessness issues. We had quite a large rally in Murwillumbah recently to highlight the issue of homelessness in our region, particularly since the floods, but also the general issues relating to accessing affordable housing. As I have said before to the House in relation to the flooding caused by Cyclone Debbie, we need our governments to help us, and our need for that help is absolutely desperate. That is one of the issues that I was concerned about that was not highlighted or addressed in this budget at all.

Since this unfair budget was announced, we have seen this incompetent government move from disaster to disaster. Whether it is cuts to the education funding or cuts to Medicare, they are truly incompetent and unfair. The Australian public do know this. This is also a budget that completely fails the economic credibility test. Remember, this is a government that promised to fix the budget. They had lots of talk about jobs and growth. Well, it does in fact fail the economic credibility test, because gross debt will now pass half a trillion dollars in the coming months, growth is down, employment is down, and wages growth is down. The budget also fails the jobs test, because unemployment is up. Also, the deficit is 10 times bigger for the coming year.

This is an unfair budget because it delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires, whilst hurting everyday Australian families. The only people who will see better days in this budget are the very well off or big business. That is a fact. For example, as a result of the budget, someone earning $1 million will pay over $16,000 less tax this year, while someone on $65,000 will pay $300 more tax in two years' time. That is incredibly unfair. In the budget the government chose to continue with its tax handouts to big business, whilst increasing taxes the workers but does nothing meaningful to tackle a huge issue across our communities, which is the housing affordability crisis. Compared with our initiatives, such as action on negative gearing and capital gains tax, we are seeing absolutely nothing from the government. And, of course, they harshly cut $22 billion from Australian schools and also extended their cuts to universities. We know that last night in this House all those Liberal and National party members voted six times to cut that $22 billion from our schools. I can tell you that in regional and rural areas this will be particularly harsh and will hurt those communities.

Also, this government is increasing taxes in the budget. As the real wages of ordinary workers go backwards, the government wants to slug low and middle income earners with new taxes. That is all that they are doing. We see the government running around trying to sell this budget by framing it around fairness. But it really is quite a contradiction with this government. How can it be fair when there is a $22 billion cut to schools, tax hikes for battlers, tax cuts for the top end of town, and their refusal to level the playing field for first home buyers. There is nothing fair at all in any of that, and people have seen through it. Indeed, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer said this budget was about choices. Well, they made their choices and they have chosen big business over middle and working class families.

They claim to be about lower taxes and smaller government, but the coalition has propped up its budget with $21 billion in new taxes. One of the harshest measures is the government's $22 billion cuts from our schools, which is the equivalent of cutting $2.4 million from every school in the country over the next decade, or like sacking 22,000 teachers. In my electorate every school will be worse off under this government's cuts. The school cuts mean $14 million in cuts in 2018-19 to my local public schools and, of course, massive cuts to our Catholic schools. This will be devastating for rural and regional areas, like mine.

In contrast to all of this, Labor will properly fund our schools, because we believe that every child in every classroom deserves every opportunity. We want better schools, better results and better support for our great teachers. Whilst the Prime Minister is cutting that $22 billion from schools, on the other hand, of course, he is giving a very big tax cut to big business of over $65 billion. So that is where this government's priorities lie, and it is only Labor that understands the importance of proper funding and needs based funding to ensure the future and full potential of all of our students right throughout the country. We have announced that we will commit to an extra $22 billion in funding for our schools and properly funding our schools and will continue to oppose this government's cruel cuts to our schools. Again, I highlight that last night in parliament we saw those members vote six times to cut that $22 billion from our schools. It is a disgrace, and our schoolchildren deserve so much better.

We are also seeing this government ripping $3.8 billion from universities and making Australians pay more for a degree, so we will also oppose the unfair cuts to universities and their funding and the increase in student fees. Also, we will be opposing the change to the repayment threshold that really does impact on women, Indigenous Australians and low-income earners the hardest. Again, talking about cuts to universities, and, indeed, any cuts to education generally, it is those people in regional and rural Australia who are impacted on the most. It is very difficult for our younger people to access training. We have also seen some massive cuts from this government to apprenticeships and TAFE. Indeed, at a state level as well we are seeing the state Liberal-National government shut many TAFEs in our region. So they are making it harder for younger people to get training of all sorts, but when we look at the cuts to university funding that particularly impacts on people from regional areas.

The budget also fails the test when it comes to health care, and it fails the Medicare test. The government have delayed reversing their unfair cuts to Medicare for three years, and that is because we know they are committed to destroying Medicare. We have seen that time and time again. In fact, yesterday we saw their secret task force to attack public hospitals. Indeed, we see that public hospital funding will be cut and the private health insurance rebate abolished under reported plans being progressed by a secret Turnbull government hospitals task force. It really is proof that they have not given up attacking Medicare. They are just expanding their attack to another target. They will try, in every way they can, to undermine Medicare, the universality of our healthcare system and bulk-billing initiatives. They will constantly try to do this. We will always be here fighting them and fighting against that.

In this budget speech, we heard so many times the Treasurer talking about 'better days ahead'. Where are they? I can tell you that they are not in regional and rural areas like mine, the North Coast of New South Wales. The fact is that budgets are about choices, as I said, and the Prime Minister has made his choices. The Prime Minister and the Liberal-National government have made their choices. They chose big business over middle- and working-class families, they have chosen multinationals over Medicare and they have chosen big business over battlers. So it is about choices, and it is important to note that a Shorten Labor government will make different choices. We will make choices that put people first and create more jobs for Australians and choices where we properly invest in our schools, such as investing that $22 billion. We would also save Medicare from this government's very, very cruel cuts. We understand how important it is to have all those initiatives in place, and it will be particularly important for those people in regional and rural Australia, who will be very, very harshly impacted on by these cuts.

I finish by saying the unfairness is harshly felt in regional and rural areas, particularly because of the education cuts but also the fact that this government is giving massive handouts to multimillionaires and big business but nothing for those everyday working people in the country. Those people are the ones who have told me that they know this government is not concerned about them. As I have said before, in regional and rural Australia, Labor has your back. We are always fighting for those people in the country to make sure they can have access to decent healthcare systems, education systems and infrastructure funding. We are the party of the country, the bush and regional and rural Australia. The Liberal-National Party is just the party of multinationals and big business. It is only Labor that stands up and fights for the country.

See this speech in context