Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sure. Mr Deputy Speaker, let me give you some professional advice from the OECD, and you can pass it on to the Turnbull government if you like. The March OECD economic surveys: Australia notes the increasing concerns about inequality. It said:

Developing innovation-related skills will be important for the underprivileged and those displaced by economic restructuring and can help reduce gender wage gaps.

How about we talk about that? Let me remind those opposite: Western Sydney University has 20 per cent of its student body coming from low socio-economic backgrounds. Their female student body comprises 57 per cent of the student population. But wait—the OECD said more. The recommendations went on to say that growth could be bolstered through strong collaboration between business and research. Moreover, it recommended that Australia:

Put a greater weight … on collaboration in university funding and develop a more coordinated approach to industry placements for research students to strengthen the linkages between research and business sectors.

How does the Turnbull government deal with that recommendation? The Turnbull government will attempt to put an end to UWS's ability to partner with industry and government in proven job-creation programs. Really, in the face of such strong recommendations from such an esteemed organisation like the OECD, why is it that Western Sydney University will be jeopardised in the delivery of key collaborations and partnerships for start-ups, small to medium enterprises and future jobs and growth? It makes no sense to make these cuts at the expense of funding the university.

But that's not the end of it. The Turnbull government continues to make the wrong choices across all parts of Australia, robbing from the hardworking workers of Australia and giving to the rich and to the big end of town. Those in the government continue to tell themselves and us that they are the greatest economic managers this country has ever seen. But, taken as a whole, far from helping our communities this government has wreaked havoc on and terrified them as it continues, hell-bent, on its right-wing, trickle-down economic strategy. But we all know it doesn't work. By the time it trickles down to my community and electorate, all it will be is thin air.

Let's just have a look at Lindsay. I'm sad to say that the member for Banks has scuttled out of here, because he tried to tell me that there were so many businesses in my electorate that were going to benefit from these cuts to big multinational tax companies. Now, according to the ABS, Lindsay has 10,313 businesses operating right now. The vast majority of those businesses have a turnover of less than $2 million. A quarter turn over less than $50,000. So, when you look at businesses with $10 million or more of turnover, you'll find just 119 businesses out of 10,313 across Lindsay that may actually get something out of this. This is just over one per cent of businesses. They're not the businesses that are actually turning $50 million; they're just somewhere between $10 million and $50 million, and that is only a very, very small portion.

But the cuts that are coming as a result of this splash to big business actually affect more people in my electorate. The biggest factor in the trickle-down strategy is that they have to rob the workers—the penalty rates of all those young people; women, predominantly; students; pensioners and welfare recipients who want to get back on their feet—just to pay for it and to give handouts to big businesses. Every day here in parliament we are faced with legislation that just creates more and more disparity in our society. The people of Western Sydney want a government they can trust—a government that will invest in them and their futures. They do not want to be milked at every opportunity so that those opposite can pay for the bottomless pit that is corporate profit and corporate greed.

It is fanciful to think these changes are going to trickle down, when all we see is the reinforcement of inequality and the things that drive it. Economic and social disadvantage will be entrenched by this government, robbing people of opportunity. That is the legacy of this government, and I'm sad to say that it affects the people in my area—the community that I love and represent, and one of the hardest hit by these tax cuts, with disadvantages in schools and the university. It gives a tax break to the wealthy on the backs of every single student cohort across my electorate. And we haven't even got to the Nepean Hospital yet! We have a health system in distress and an underfunded Nepean Hospital that could do with some of the money that they are cutting just to give these corporate tax handouts to big businesses.

They have made affordable housing an impossible dream for more and more people because they refuse to take any action on it, and they have killed off any chance of saving when the cost of living just keeps rising but wages don't. But I suppose we can all just wait for the big end of town to open up their wallets. I'm sure those big banks and mining companies who are going to be the beneficiaries of these tax cuts are on the edge of their seats, they are waiting so much just to distribute their profits to the community! Well, let me tell you, Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I cannot see a time, or a world or an age in which we will live where the people who are being hurt by these tax cuts are actually going to be benefitted by any of them.

Try as I might to see what could possibly be a win for the people in Lindsay on this bill, I can only conclude that they get nothing out of this. Nothing—not one thing. And on the point of equality and disadvantage in Western Sydney, we know it all too well—all too well. I see the member for Parramatta here. She will know this, and when she speaks I'm sure that she will get up and talk about how unequally the people in Western Sydney get treated.

I'm going to point out to those opposite again, and again and again, the rip-offs and the rorts that are happening to the people of Western Sydney. This government has dudded us on education in Lindsay, with $23 million snatched from primary and secondary schools—schools that are at capacity and over capacity. We have university students slugged with higher fees, paying back their HELP debts at a much lower income threshold in the name of reducing debt. That is forgetting that these young men and women will now have the burden of paying off $50,000 debts while trying to enter the workforce and coming into that workforce at the ground level, whilst also seeking an independent lifestyle.

We see more and more focus on the casualisation of the workforce and more and more attacks on penalty rates. They're looking like they're going to come after a couple more awards yet, before they're actually finished having a go at people who earn penalty rates. We've got a housing crisis, and we've got an energy crisis. What we've just seen from the government is that they would rather spend an hour in here playing politics with energy than actually addressing it. It would have been nice to have that last hour actually debating some of the things that we could fix and we could change, but instead we saw an absolutely hopeless government playing politics.

Pensioners in Western Sydney have had their energy supplements scrapped. We've got energy prices out of control, and now they're scrapping the pensioners' energy supplement to pay for these big corporate tax cuts. From cradle to grave, under Malcolm Turnbull, you can expect to be having your pockets raided. The Turnbull government seem to only understand the value of a corporate dividend, which is no surprise given that he came out of Goldman Sachs, not from a hardworking western suburbs community.

How about those opposite start to try and understand the value of the society that they are actually meant to represent? We need investment in people and investment in services. How will this Prime Minister ever be able to have his 30-minute utopian villages that he crowed about last week in Erskine Park by cutting the services that those people out there rely on? The government claim they want to help people with the cost-of-living pressures. We just don't see that reflected in here. Young people are entitled, absolutely, to say: 'Yeah, right. Absolutely. Whatever.'

The government are increasing the cost of living and making everything harder to attain, not easier. With this bill, we see them giving more and more money to corporates, giving them a tax handout from this magic cash cow, increasing the country's debt to a whole new level that we've not seen before in this country on the backs of every single student group; the Nepean Hospital, in my electorate; the community legal centres that they helped defund; and children's education. They won't put any more money into stopping the national scourge that is domestic violence. They can't fund the universities. They certainly cannot find the money to support the people who need to be supported.

Debate interrupted.

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