Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure for me to stand here today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2017-18, because it really is about priorities and choices. The government has made their choices—the things they think Australians want. And they've set forward in the appropriations and in their budget their priorities—the things they think Australians need. When I look at what these choices and priorities are, I know that Australians do not share those choices and priorities. A $65 billion tax cut for big business is not something people in my electorate of Braddon in north-west and west-coast Tasmania see as a priority. They don't see that the big banks getting a tax cut is something they would be champing for, because it's not going to have any impact on them at all.

The things that are going to have an impact on the people in my electorate are things like health. The member for Forde said earlier that we on this side of the House have been whingeing about all these things—about health and education spending. Well, we're not whinging at all, when we're actually talking about the stories of people who are suffering under these cuts to the budget in areas like health and education. Yesterday in the Federation Chamber I took the opportunity to speak about a lady in my electorate, in my home town of Devonport—Karen. Karen is like many people in my electorate. They're on fixed incomes, they have health issues and they have to travel long distances—hundreds and hundreds of kilometres—to access specialists. Because of this government's Medicare freeze, Karen is now paying more and more out-of-pocket expenses when she goes to see her doctor. I know that the Prime Minister has a lot of loose change. To him, $36 is nothing. But when you're on a fixed income, it's a lot of money. When you have to travel from Devonport to Hobart to see a specialist and you're on a fixed income and you're $100 out of pocket, that is a lot of money. Karen is thankful that she's living in the country that we have, but she is struggling. She's struggling to pay for electricity. She's struggling to put petrol in the car.

The Prime Minister had an opportunity to drop his Medicare freeze at the start of this year but chose not to do so. I think it's about time that we, as Australians, use a very strong voice to tell the Prime Minister about exactly how the Medicare freeze is impacting on us as individuals. It means Karen has to pay more to see her specialists. And from the relatively short period of time that I've been here, I think that this government—day in, day out—is completely out of touch with Australians, because the freeze won't be lifted until 2020.

The Prime Minister has been promising—even before the election—that not one Australian would pay more to see their GP, and that is completely untrue, because we know from statistics, even in my electorate, that the cost to see your GP is increasing and increasing. Nationally, the Prime Minister is cutting $2.2 billion out of Medicare over the next four years, on top of the savings that have already been banked up from the time of that horror budget of 2014. This is not 'Mediscare', as those opposite would like to claim. This is the real impact that is hurting people all over regional Australia in particular, and people in my electorate.

But it's not just the cost of going to see a GP; it's the attitude that the Prime Minister has to the general health care of Australians, and the impact that has had on our hospitals. Already this government has cut more than $1 billion from Tasmanian hospitals. That's in addition to the $210 million cut to Tasmanian hospitals by the Liberal Premier of Tasmania. We are paying an appalling price for these cuts. At the coalface, the effects are enormous. We're seeing ambulance ramping like never before at our major hospitals. Emergency departments are overcrowded, with waiting times way beyond the acceptable time of 30 minutes. We're seeing that beds are not funded. If the beds are not funded, you can't get in there and get the treatment that you need. We're seeing patients getting shipped from hospital to hospital because of a shortage of beds.

There's a story of a man in my electorate who almost lost his foot because the hardworking staff at these local hospitals were under extreme pressure and lacked resources. That's a huge cost to an individual—to nearly lose your foot because you could not get adequate treatment, because there just aren't the resources in that hospital to take care of you. And there's the story of a young woman from my electorate who had to travel interstate, at her family's own cost, for critical surgery to save her sight because she could not get the care she needed in Tasmania. That's not because the care's not there; it's because she couldn't get in, because there weren't the resources for her to see the specialist in time. She nearly lost her sight.

If this weren't enough, the Prime Minister now wants to lock in further cuts to our hospitals for the next seven years. It was pleasing, despite Tasmania being in caretaker mode, that the Tasmanian representative, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, did not take up this offer for our state. This government's total health expenditure continues to reduce as a percentage of the total Commonwealth budget, and it's decreasing even further than when the leadership was under the member for Warringah. The fact is that this Prime Minister doesn't think our public hospitals deserve to be properly funded. This is not us whingeing; this is the true picture of what these cuts do to the people in our communities, and it's about time we talked about it more. Yet it is the priority of this government to underfund our health system.

In Tasmania we've seen considerable underfunding of infrastructure. Over the next four years, there's going to be a 65 per cent reduction in infrastructure funding for Tasmania. There has not been one new project commenced in Tasmania by this coalition government—over nearly five years, not one project. There was $100 million cut from the Midland Highway. There's been no investment in major regional roads, which are carrying increased freight and tourist numbers. We're seeing this tourism boom, but there's no infrastructure spending to assist with it. Despite repeated calls from the community in my electorate for the Bass Highway to be repaired, it's nothing but deaf ears from Canberra. I have tried to work, in a very bipartisan way, with the Tasmanian Liberal senators to try to get some funding for this critical piece of infrastructure, but there is nothing to be heard.

I have to note the response of the new minister for infrastructure, the Deputy Prime Minister, to a question—I think it was on Tuesday—from our shadow minister for infrastructure, the member for Grayndler, who asked him about the decrease in infrastructure spending for Tasmania. The only thing the Deputy Prime Minister could talk about was that he visited a piece of irrigation infrastructure in Tasmania—I think it was in the Southern Midlands—last year as agriculture minister. Every piece of water and irrigation infrastructure in Tasmania was a Labor project, at state level and federally! But then the minister went on to talk about the Inland Rail. I've actually thought, particularly in the last week and a half, that the only project the Deputy Prime Minister, as the new infrastructure minister, seems to know in his portfolio is the Inland Rail, because that's all he could talk about. He actually said it would benefit Tasmania. Now, he would get some credibility from me if he then said, 'We'll build a rail bridge over Bass Strait.' But that's not going to happen, is it? He could not talk about one infrastructure project that he or this government has put in place to benefit Tasmania.

I could go on about the NBN. There will probably be many on this side talking about the NBN. My electorate is predominantly fibre to the node. It hardly works at my house, let alone support the businesses in the central towns of Devonport and Burnie, which are really struggling with an inferior piece of critical infrastructure.

Then we can go to the priorities of the government and its corporate tax cuts. The member for Forde before said, 'We hear the Labor Party whingeing about health and education, but they don't know how they're going to pay for it.' Well, I can tell you how we're going to pay for it, and that is to not give big business a massive tax cut. But this tax cut is not just for the corporate end of town; it is for the banks.

I want to run through something that I found quite astounding. It happened in November last year. The National Australia Bank pays tax. It pays about $2½ billion of tax. I think in 2016 it had a net profit of $5.3 billion. It announced in November that it would cut 6,000 jobs. Can those opposite honestly tell me that if you give the NAB or any other bank a tax cut that they're going to employ more people? I mean, how ridiculous is this! This is why the Australian public do not believe that this government's tax cut to big business is going to trickle down and, all of a sudden, create all these jobs. It's just going to benefit shareholders and the back pockets of those CEOs.

Let's go to some of these CEOs. We had a report the other day that the Prime Minister was derided on the ABC about big companies in Australia not paying any tax. One in five companies are not paying tax, and one of those is Qantas. We all enjoy Qantas. I have to fly Qantas a lot to get here. But Qantas has been tax free for 10 years. It hasn't had to pay any tax. It is planning a $3 billion investment for 2018-19. Great! Excellent! But you look at what's happening at the top of that company: the CEO's salary in 2016 was $12.9 million. Now it is $24.6 million.

Now let's look at the workers. We've got a company not paying any tax, ready to invest lots of money, paying its CEO millions and millions and millions of dollars, but the workers at Qantas have not had an average pay rise that has exceeded inflation. Can those opposite honestly tell me that Qantas, if we give it a tax cut—if it does start paying tax, which, even though it's profitable, will be, I think, in about two years time or whenever it decides to do that—is going to pass that tax cut onto its workers? I don't think so. The banks won't do it, and the big companies will not do it.

So what do we do here? What are the priorities? Certainly for me they are health and education. I think most people on this side have been talking about that. But one very topical issue that has not got any attention in budgets, from this government or at a state level, is biosecurity. Unfortunately, and sadly, the farmers in my electorate have been hit by fruit fly. We've had a million-dollar cut to Biosecurity Tasmania by the Tasmanian Liberals; we've got no checks on things coming through our ports. This is how these things happen. It happens because the resources are not there to prepare Tasmania for an incursion.

What's even more interesting is that the state minister for agriculture and the Deputy Premier of the state, in his own question time brief of May 2015, confirmed that the federal government cut biosecurity funding to Tasmania. This government has put Tasmania at risk of getting incursions of fruit fly. It will devastate our economy. This exposes the failure of this government to protect Tasmanian farmers and our primary industries. This is a state Liberal minister's question time brief. He and his own bureaucracy are blaming the federal government for underfunding biosecurity in Tasmania.

Now we have fruit fly. This will just completely destroy our local economy and our farms. This QTB really hangs the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, who would have been agriculture minister at the time, out to dry. It's an absolute failing of this government. This QTB says that we are now in a fruit fly emergency. What is happening now? Fruit is being dumped. We are locked out of markets. Products need chemical fumigation. These are things we are now experiencing at a huge cost to not only Tasmania's state budget but farmers as well.

Not only that, we got another kick in the teeth from this government, with 1,900 apprenticeships having been lost in Tasmania since the Liberal Party was elected. In my electorate, we've suffered the loss of 704 apprentices, so we're not even trying to give a pathway to people in our communities before they leave school and unfortunately, sadly, find they're out of work. The Commonwealth government and the state Liberal government have had four years to tackle this—four years to fix TAFE; four years to invest in infrastructure and projects in Tasmania to build apprenticeships and give people training—and they have failed year on year. Why we would give them another chance is beyond me.

These are the priorities of my electorate that have been kicked, hammered and thrown away by this government. They don't care about health, they don't care about education and they don't care about the agricultural sector in Tasmania. They certainly don't care about the priorities of the people of Tasmania and the people of my electorate. They would be very pleased to give corporate tax cuts to the big end of town, which will not have any impact on the people in my electorate at all.

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