Susan Lamb (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The long awaited 2017-18 budget that was passed by the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, earlier this month, is a budget that, despite claims frequently parroted by this government, is neither fair nor reasonable. I believe that the people of my electorate in Longman deserve fairness and I believe all Australian people deserve fairness, which is why I cannot stand by and passively let this government enact a poorly devised budget.

The Liberal-National Party like to think of themselves as the party of money management, but this could not be further from the truth. They have proven time and time again by short-sighted fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement that either they have determined to widen the class divide through economic inequality or they really have no idea what they are doing. I will give them the benefit of the doubt here by citing Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. But neglect and misunderstanding is no excuse when it comes to a federal budget and to the livelihoods and futures of over 24 million people. One concept that the Liberal-National Treasurer seems never to have grasped with this budget is that budgets are about people. They are about their health, their education, their families, their welfare, their environment. And they are about their future.

It is often said that the reason we have a kangaroo and an emu on our coat of arms is that neither of these native animals can move backwards. But we, as a nation, cannot move forward without looking forward, something that those opposite just refuse to do. Instead, they resort to short-sightedness for the sake of political spin. Moving forward is about investing in long-term, high-quality infrastructure. Instead, when he was the minister for communications, the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, dismantle Labor's future-ready national broadband network and replaced it with an unquestionably inferior system. People in my electorate, many of whom are still suffering from this appalling decision, were hoping for some remedial measures in this budget, but they have been disappointed again.

Moving forward means that we are investing in education and in our children. It is most certainly not ripping $22 billion away from our schools' funding. It is not ripping away $22 billion that the LNP committed to when it promised each and every family and each and every student in my electorate a unity ticket to prior to the 2013 electorate. It promised to support the recommendations of the initial Gonski review, which promised real needs based funding.

You really move forward when you understand that quick fixes are very rarely the solution to something as complicated and as important as the national budget. The government have taken no real steps forward. They have kicked up their feet and called it a day. But on this side of the chamber I am happy to say that the Labor Party has not. We are fighting back against this budget. Some in the media have claimed that this current budget is a good budget, a Labor budget. Whilst I appreciate that they are using 'Labor budget' and 'good budget' equally, the budget that Treasurer Scott Morrison brought down at the beginning of May was not 'good' and, I can tell you now, it certainly was not 'Labor'. It is not hard to see why the media may have made this mistake though.

The Treasurer's address was filled with enough spin to make anybody dizzy, and his party's rhetoric has been guided by that centrifugal force. For example, earlier this month the members for Petrie and Dickson, two electorates that border mine, posted a video on Facebook. Like true champions of the people, they confidently spoke of the Bruce Highway and the Deception Bay overpass as a big win in the budget. However, what they did not mention was that this budget did not have any big wins for the Bruce Highway, nor did it have any wins for the Deception Bay overpass. In actuality, the money for these projects was previously allocated under another federal budget; it is not new money at all.

These are not some projects for which the member for Dickson and the member for Petrie fought valiantly to secure funding. They were funded a long time ago. The government had just let them fall by the wayside. Instead of actually doing something and taking action for once, it had let the funds just sit there. The people of the Moreton Bay region could already be benefiting from the upgrades to the Bruce Highway and the Deception Bay overpass were it not for the inaction of this government. This government realises that its budget is so full of holes and so devoid of true wins for our constituents that it has now resorted to shallow political spin. If one of the biggest wins that you can parade from your budget is not actually from your budget, then maybe it is just not a very good budget.

Now, I have to say, I do welcome the upgrades—of course I do. What I do not welcome, however, is the political sleight of hand that this government is using. It is dishonest and it shows a complete lack of respect for the Australian people. This is a government which has mishandled Australia's infrastructure time and time again, and the people of my electorate are suffering every single day because of it. The people of Longman have been denied quality infrastructure for years, and the government has done nowhere near enough to fix it.

Finally, they are doing something about a highway, but we are still waiting to hear what will be done for our communications infrastructure like the mobile phone towers that provide cellular service right across the country. In my electorate there are a number of mobile black spot sites that desperately need addressing. People in a lot of these areas, which are not very far from Brisbane CBD—actually they are less than about an hour away—receive no signal at all to their mobile phones.

It is 2017, and technology that was popularised back in the 1990s has barely reached Longman. The government had a Mobile Black Spot Program in place to ensure that areas all around Australia that had this issue would be upgraded and be able to receive cellular service. The final round of funding for that program has just been announced, and it seems that a number of areas—again, in my electorate—have been forgotten, despite my having raised this a number of times in parliament since being elected. There was no new money for this program in the 2017-18 budget, so it looks as if the government has just thrown in the towel.

We expect it though, because we know just how little this government cares about communications infrastructure. It was most evident when Labor's National Broadband Network was personally dismantled by the current Prime Minister for nothing short of some political gain. Instead of delivering what could have been the largest, most ambitious infrastructure project that our country has ever seen, providing high-speed, reliable internet to every household, Australians have been subjected to what can only be described as a dismal, dismal failure.

All those years ago we had Prime Minister Turnbull promising that every single home would be connected by 2016. Do you remember that? That was last year. It is nearing the end of the second quarter of 2017, and there are countless homes and countless businesses in the electorate of Longman that are still waiting to be connected. But, thanks to the government's mishandling of the NBN rollout, in many cases the houses that are yet to be connected are actually the lucky ones. Let me tell you: the ones that have not been connected are the lucky ones, because I have heard in countless horror stories from residents and small businesses operating out of my electorate of their struggles when connecting to the NBN. For many, connecting to the NBN has left them with a line that is less reliable than the one they had in the days of dial-up.

We live in a society where, whether you like it or not, a fast and reliable internet connection is absolutely imperative for many people's day-to-day lives, and the success of nearly every small business in today's modern economy is reliant on a fast and dependable internet connection. Not all that long ago I hosted a roundtable in my electorate with a number of local small businesses. Each and every one of them was able to share a way in which this shoddy NBN had set their businesses back.

As I have mentioned in this chamber before, the story from this discussion that stood out for me was of a retirement home on the passage side of Bribie Island. They lost all connectivity when they were apparently upgraded—and I use that term very loosely—to the NBN. They lost all connectivity to the internet and all connectivity to their landline. For a business in the aged care sector this can easily be a matter of life and death. A resident may need medication. They may need to get in contact with an ambulance. Without easy access to a landline phone or the internet they might not be able to get the services they need in time.

But we all know that this government is not one to offer much support to people when it comes to their health. Labor believes that affordable access to high-quality health care is a fundamental human right. This government does not tend to agree, though. In his budget speech the Treasurer boasted that his government was lifting the Medicare freeze. Actually, you probably could have heard the exasperated sigh of 'finally' collectively being spoken by the Australian people—except that it was not 'finally'. His health budget was full of smoke and mirrors. There are still some years to wait before that freeze is fully lifted.

The bulk-billing incentives for GPs will be indexed from 1 July this year. That is not too long to wait, and I will happily concede that. But when there is a wait until 1 July 2018 for the indexation of just a standard consultation, and until 1 July 2019 for specialist procedures and allied health services, the government's budget really tends to lose its shine. When you realise that there is a further wait until 2020 for even more crucial services, it is evident just how little this government really thinks about supporting our health care. Vital services like pregnancy support and mental health care will have to wait over three years for their indexation date. That is over three years for people who need pre-pregnancy support or mental health plans. This means that, despite Malcolm Turnbull and his spin, they are still cutting $2.2 billion over four years. The average personal median income in my electorate is pretty low—it is about $500 a week. There are a lot of people living in Longman who suffer from heath issues. These people need their freeze lifted, and they should not have to wait for years for this to happen.

You may have also heard that the government's secret hospitals task force has come to light in the last couple of days—the very, very secret task force—

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