Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the debate on the appropriation bill (No. 1) 2017-2018 and related bills. This is my first budget as the member for Werriwa, and I rise today to speak to you about how the 2017 budget will impact my constituents in south-west Sydney. Overall, this is an unfair budget that delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires while hurting every Australian family. People in Werriwa are often doing it tough. We have above-average unemployment, lower than average incomes and long commutes for workers to job centres across Sydney. This budget is so unjust because it places the greatest burden on those who can least afford it at a time when cost of living continues to rise unabated. This budget attacks those initiatives that are designed to reduce inequality and help those most in need: Medicare, social security, education, housing affordability, jobs and infrastructure. Today I want to outline how this government's cuts in each of these areas will affect my constituents.

This year's budget included an announcement that the Medicare freeze will remain in place across the health system. This means that Australians will have to wait more than 12 months for relief, and some will be left waiting more than two years for the freeze on specialist procedures and allied health services to be lifted. This includes GP and specialist consultations, which are frozen till 2018; specialist procedures, which are frozen till July 2019; and allied health services, including psychologists and social workers, which remain frozen until July 2019. For people in my electorate, already struggling to make ends meet, the continuing freeze on Medicare services means there are fewer bulk-billing doctors and specialists available. This puts further strain on household budgets and means people avoid visiting the doctor. It also means that many people who cannot afford doctors' fees are forced into overcrowded waiting rooms in emergency departments in our public hospitals—departments that have already been neglected for too long by the O'Farrell, Baird and Berejiklian New South Wales governments. It is not enough for the Liberals simply to place the provision of universal health care on the backburner so that big business can get a tax cut that will never trickle down to our workers.

The 2017 budget also attacks those people receiving social security benefits. Not only does the budget maintain the pension age at 70, which is the oldest pension age in the developed world; the Liberals are also axing the energy supplement to new pensioners, including people with a disability, carers and Newstart recipients. That means, for single pensioners, a cut of $14.10 per fortnight or $365 per annum, and it leaves couples $21.20 a fortnight worse off, which equates to $550 a year. A cut of $14.10 per fortnight may seem modest to some, but it fails to take into consideration just how tough it is to make ends meet on a pension when rent and energy costs keep rising. Average rents in Werriwa have increased from $310 a week in 2011 to an average of $370 a week in 2016. That is a 16 per cent increase. The budget introduced new cuts to the family tax benefit, which will leave another 100,000 Australians worse off, while delivering tax cuts to companies and to big business.

Perhaps the biggest impact from the budget in my electorate will be the cuts to needs based funding proposed by the Liberals. The importance of education in an electorate with a higher than average unemployment rate cannot be overstated. The extra funding provided by Labor has already delivered tangible benefits to the schools in my area. This includes Lurnea High School, my alma mater, where Labor's needs based funding has delivered a speech pathologist to ensure that students beginning year 7 are not left behind compared to their peers. However, this budget will unbelievably cut nearly $1½ million in funding from Lurnea High School in 2018-19. Who is going to explain to these kids who were benefiting so greatly from the speech pathologists, extra teachers and support that, as a country, we felt it was more important to cut the tax of giant multinationals than help the children of migrants receive a proper education that will provide untold benefits to that child, their family and our society broadly?

The $22 billion cut from schools will hit classrooms across my electorate, with seven schools losing over $1 million in 2018-19. They include Ashcroft High School, Bonnyrigg Heights Public School, Casula High School, Cecil Hills High School, James Busby High School, Lurnea High School, Lurnea Public School and Miller Technology High School. They will all lose funding, from $914,000 up to $1,464,000, over that time. This list is just the start. Every single school in Werriwa loses out under these cuts to education, with a total amount of funding cuts in my electorate of over $28 million. In case you missed it, the Liberals are cutting $28,263,169 from Werriwa's public schools.

Despite these staggering numbers, it is the human cost that really worries me the most. This means that targeted literacy and numeracy programs and one-on-one support for students in the upper years of high school will have to go. It also means that principals will be forced to choose between funding individual support for students with a disability or funding a speech pathologist to help children who are lacking. What do they cut? It will leave poor and disadvantaged communities, like some of the areas I represent, without resourcing to give children a decent, proper and equitable education. Whether they live in those poor and disadvantaged communities or in Wentworth Point, we need to give kids in Werriwa the same opportunity.

The Liberals and the Greens, of course, were not satisfied with cutting funding to public schools, so they have ensured the Catholic parish schools will also face significant funding cuts. Last night I visited a forum of Catholic schools in my electorate. Over 200 teachers, parents and school leaders were there expressing their concerns about the changes to needs based funding for the Catholic systemic system. I thank Mark Turkington and his team for their warm welcome and insights into their school model. This is a system that has, by investing its funding as a sector, improved year 3 NAPLAN results for students exponentially over the last 10 years and improved results for HSC students over the same 10 years, from approximately 30 per cent of students receiving band 5 and 6 results to 75 per cent receiving band 5 and 6 results in 2016.

The Catholic school system also supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students with scholarships and supports many students with special needs. Students and teachers are concerned that they are being penalised, despite delivering a value-for-money education system which continues to deliver exceptional results. The take-out message from the meeting was the need to retain the right to distribute funds based on need to the students who require them. This is a process that has been working exceptionally well, as exemplified by the continuing improvement and great results across both primary schools and high schools in the Catholic system, especially in Werriwa. Both the Sydney Catholic schools and the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong have warned that the cuts may force them to raise fees and, in some cases, close schools, further disadvantaging students throughout my electorate who are being educated by the Catholic system. I will continue to oppose the education cuts being proposed by this government, as they will never be tolerable to me or the people I represent.

Another major issue for young people and families in my electorate is that of housing affordability, yet the package proposed by this budget is a complete sham. The only measures proposed by the Liberals in the budget will not impact the key drivers of housing affordability, which are generous tax concessions, such as negative gearing and capital gains tax exemptions, given to investors. Their proposal to allow salary sacrificing into super to allow first home buyers to save a deposit risks stimulating further demand, which will ultimately drive house prices higher. The first home saver packages also fail to take into account the possibility of an economic downturn, which could see a first home buyer lose a substantial amount of their savings. Whilst the more volatile investments in superannuation funds are less problematic when the investment is made for the long term, such as 20 or 30 years, first home buyers could be cheated out of their savings if there is a significant equities market downturn prior to the withdrawal of their additional savings.

Labor is the only party with a plan to increase affordable housing and tackle the demand issues associated with these generous tax concessions. This budget does little to address the substantive issues that are creating the housing affordability crisis across Sydney, something that is particularly acute in my electorate, where many young families come to settle down. Ten years ago, workers on an average wage could save for a house deposit in six years; now it takes them over 10 years. For young people, the situation is made even worse when you consider that a recent university graduate earning about $50,000 a year will be looking at $1,250 more in Medicare and HELP repayments. Add on the rise in childcare costs, and that means that entering the housing market is getting further and further away.

The issue of infrastructure is not unique to my electorate, but the site of the second airport at Badgerys Creek is. Whilst the airport promises to bring new jobs and investments to my area of Sydney, which has long been neglected, the airport will not benefit local residents if it is built without appropriate infrastructure in place from the day it opens. The airport is projected to service five million passengers a year at its opening, which will double within the first five years of operation. Without alternative mass-transport options, this is simply going to result in more cars on local roads. That is why the Labor Party has committed to building rail to the airport from day one. Without this, our roads will simply become more congested, making it harder for people to go about their daily lives. An airport without a rail line will also restrict the economic benefits of the airport, and businesses will be less likely to invest.

I also note the emphasis that has been placed on the funding allocation in this budget to progress work on a rail link to Tullamarine, in Melbourne. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport identifies that corridor as one of the most heavily congested in Melbourne, stating that the congestion is 'reducing the amenity, liveability and commuter experience of the surrounding suburbs'. That is a good justification for a project well overdue. However, if things are that bad because the transport infrastructure was not in place early, why are we repeating the same mistakes for Western Sydney?

Unfortunately, planning is not the government's strength, and now the cost of the short-sighted way they have approached things is becoming apparent to the public. Just ask constituents living in Long Point, who continue to wait, without an internet connection, for national broadband that they were told would be connected in March this year. Nobody can tell them when it will now be connected.

The people of Werriwa are also rightly concerned about jobs. We already have above-average unemployment, and there are 100,000 fewer jobs in the Australian economy right now than at last year's budget. Weaker growth and fewer jobs mean more Australians cannot find enough work to make ends meet, let alone consider saving for a house deposit. People living and working in my electorate have seen no real wages growth but will pay $300 more in taxes. Saying that this budget is fair is cold comfort for them when they hear that people earning over $1 million will receive a tax cut of $16,400 a year. The pay cut does not include the amount that they will lose when penalty rates are cut from 1 July. Police, nurses, baristas and any other shiftworkers in my electorate stand to lose $77 in take-home pay. That means, of course, that there is less money to spend in businesses across the region and elsewhere, further hurting my electorate. Nothing in this budget delivers good jobs right now, when they are needed, and as this government has no plan for jobs I am not sure when they will come.

Finally, the people of Werriwa deserve better than what has been delivered by this budget. They deserve proper funding of Medicare services; they deserve a pension that does not force them into poverty; they deserve a chance to buy a house for a price that will not cripple the family budget for ever, one that is in an area with decent infrastructure and public transport; and, most of all, they deserve a properly resourced schools system that gives their children the best start in life, the best chance for good jobs for their future and their children's future.

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