Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

This budget reminds me of something that was once said by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. He remarked, about the first night of a play that he had written—it had gone down very badly and the reviews were terrible—that the show was excellent but the audience was poor. The same could be said of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer; they think that their budget is excellent and that the Australian public can't see its brilliance. That's the trouble in relation to this budget.

We've got a situation where the budget is neither fair nor responsible. The unemployment rate has gone up to 5.6 per cent, and is much higher in parts of the country, particularly in working-class and middle-class communities. We've got a situation where the ABS data shows that wages are stagnant. We've got a situation where, according to the latest data, wages are only growing at a rate of about 2.1 per cent per annum. Profits are going up much higher and, indeed, the government wants to give big business massive tax cuts. It seems strange and inconsistent to the Australian public that that's the case. We've got a situation where wage rises for the Public Service in the December 2017 quarter were 2.3 per cent, compared to 3.2 per cent in the December 2016 quarter. So, wage rises are not going up, despite the fact that the budget is quite optimistic about wage rises. In fact, wage rises are diminishing.

The government is optimistic, thinking that the budget will deliver big revenue increases in terms of tax revenue to the budget, when in fact wage rises are abating. They're presiding over consistently low wages growth, but they've got no plans to seriously deal with the problem except support the taking away of penalty rates for 700,000 of the lowest-paid workers in the country. It's a government that doesn't understand dwindling bargaining power and doesn't understand the challenges that working-class people face each and every day in the country.

The government, when they were in opposition, said that they would deliver a surplus in their first year and every year thereafter. They talked about a one per cent surplus. They have failed to deliver that. Having not tackled effectively the challenge to the economy of illegal tobacco, they're optimistic that they are going to bring in more than $3 billion in revenue from a crackdown on illegal tobacco and that that's going to provide for a surplus in years to come. So from a start where they're bringing in virtually no revenue they say they're going to raise an enormous sum of money that way.

This government talked about a debt-and-deficit disaster, but that's not the case, according to them now. They never talk about it. Why not? It must be because they're embarrassed. They must be. We've got a new record for gross debt in this country, which is now $528.3 billion. That is an increase of $255.3 billion under this government from 2013 to 2018—that is, across their tenure on the treasury bench. Do those on the other side of the chamber ever talk about a debt-and-deficit disaster now? They do not—not at all. This is a government which has failed monumentally. Those opposite trumpet jobs and growth. They talk about a billion extra jobs, without actually acknowledging, like respected economist Stephen Koukoulas, that it is in fact population growth that has created this jobs growth. According to this budget, we will have to elect this Prime Minister and this government not just once, not just twice but perhaps three times before most of the tax cuts that they laud in the budget are delivered. This is a government which seems out of touch with the needs of working class Australians.

Those opposite talked about the net debt—not just the gross debt—plenty of times. Net debt for the coming year is double what it was when the government came to power. I will be interested to hear during this appropriations debate speeches from those on the treasury bench about debt-and-deficit disasters, or about debt and deficits at all. We will probably not hear anything from the government, because it has failed monumentally.

Like family budgets, government budgets show the priorities, values, ethics and choices that that government makes. What is the government doing? It is continuing the cuts it has made in the past. It has locked them in once again. What are we seeing? There is $17 billion in cuts to schools. We see the Catholic education system up in arms across the media today. We are seeing $2.2 billion in cuts to universities. I was at the Ipswich Show in my electorate on the weekend, doing a mobile office across three days. I thank the Labor Party campaign workers across Ipswich and the Somerset region who were there with me. I was with the state member for Ipswich, Jennifer Howard, and the member for Ipswich West, Jim Madden, and their staff. I talked to Geraldine Mackenzie, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southern Queensland, which has a campus in my electorate in Springfield and one in Ipswich. I talked with her about the concerns that the University of Southern Queensland has in relation to that and the challenges it faces.

Then there are the cuts of a billion dollars to the health and hospital services system in this country: cuts to Medicare and the keeping for another year of the rebate freeze on specialists. In my electorate there is TAFE south-west, with its great campus at Bundamba. There has been $270 million in cuts to TAFE and apprentices. And, of course, $80 million has been cut from that beloved institution in Australia the ABC. There has been $1.5 billion in cuts to remote housing, ending a national partnership agreement. It's simply not good enough. As a local federal MP I've got to say that the cuts of $3 billion to aged care that have been locked in are part of the cruel hoax that has been perpetrated upon the aged care sector. Of course, they're onto it now. It took them 24 hours, but they're onto it—the fact that they have funding for 14,000 new in-home aged-care places over four years but all the money comes from within the aged-care budget. There's no new money at all. As in infrastructure, which falls off a cliff in the next few years, there are 3,500 places a year. Not even the government can keep pace with the demand. The waiting list grew by 20,000 in the last six months of last year. Of course, the government want older Australians to work until they're 70 years of age, and they cut the energy supplement of $14 from these older Australians, who should be respected and supported. The cuts to Queensland health, of $160 million, continue. Emergency department visits, cataract extractions, knee replacements and birth assistance are all at risk from this government. We see Medicare statistics showing it costs more to see specialists and GPs.

So this is a government which is out of touch with working-class and middle-class Australians. They should be looking to address these issues, reversing their cuts to public hospitals, reversing their cuts to schools, ending the Medicare rebate freeze and fixing the private health insurance affordability crisis which so many people acknowledge and recognise. Once and for all, they should scrap the tampon tax. It's critical that this government look after older Australians and the health of all Australians, but this government is not doing anything of the sort.

When it comes to income tax, the government are reducing the progressive nature of income tax in this country. The Grattan Institute makes it crystal clear that more than half of the tax cuts the government are proposing go to the top 20 per cent of income earners. Their tax cuts are not skewed, as the ones that Labor proposed in the budget-in-reply speech are, to middle- and working-class Australians.

In the portfolio that I represent as the shadow minister for immigration and border protection, we have seen cuts to the department: $256.3 million over five years. And guess what: it's really interesting because, having—as the secretary of the department said today—created this mega-department, this behemoth department, five months and one day ago, they have actually now decided to put $7 million towards a review of the department they created, which was about the security of the position of one man, the Prime Minister, and not the security of the country. No security agency has recommended to this government that it should create the Department of Home Affairs. So this strategic review of this mega-department was announced in the budget. We've seen inquiries and reports from the Auditor-General, and the department's own RAND Corporation report, criticise the establishment of the department in terms of their efficiencies and effectiveness.

There's no money, of course, in the budget for cybersecurity, despite the fact that the cyber-resilience of the department has failed again and again and we've seen audit report after audit report in relation to it. They've failed to maintain cybersecurity standards since 2014 in the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and now the Department of Home Affairs, and there's no money in the budget in relation to that. It's beyond belief that they tolerate this monumental level of incompetence displayed by the minister and the department secretary on this critical national security issue. Cybersecurity should be at the absolute forefront.

On top of that, the government's been locked in an ongoing dispute with thousands and thousands of Immigration and Border Protection employees over pay and conditions for over four years. They praise the frontline workers, but they won't pay them fairly, and these people have suffered real wage cuts at the hands of this conservative government. We have seen at the same time that internal staff surveys have shown that ABF staff have a deep-seated dissatisfaction with senior management in the department. We are fundamentally concerned with the safety and security of the Australian community. Australia's security and intelligence agencies are amongst the best in the world. We acknowledge that, but we have a minister in the portfolio of Home Affairs who is failing, and the department is failing.

It is not just that. There is also skilled migration. In the member for Aston's answer to the last question to him, what he didn't talk about was the fact that in the budget they've cut $270 million from the Skilling Australians Fund, having got rid of the national partnership. That is all about the fact that they've seen a huge reduction, tens of thousands of apprentices fewer in this country. We have about 150,000 fewer apprentices than when this government came to power. How can you deal with the challenge of skilled migration? How can you deal with the challenge of employment by cutting yet again on top of billions of dollars of cuts to TAFE and tertiary education? On top of that, the government cut another $270 million in the budget. I mean, we actually had to force this government, and they backflipped, to agree to labour market testing. For the first time in my 11 years in this place, the government finally agreed with Labor on labour market testing. We had to drag them kicking and screaming to agree to that in the last week of parliament, but they failed on skilled migration.

What the government are doing here is creating the Skilling Australians Fund. Their primary source of funding for apprenticeships and traineeships is deeply, deeply flawed and insecure because of its reliance on visa levies from overseas workers. They are saying the number of overseas workers is going to reduce but, at the same time—like a magic pudding—they are going to increase the Skilling Australians Fund with the money, so the money goes up but the number of overseas workers goes down. They are increasing levies on business. This is an out-of-touch government when it comes to this issue, completely out of touch. They are not fighting for local workers. They have finally agreed to proper labour market testing but they have not cracked down on the rorts in the migration system. They have failed to invest in skills and training. They have to do so much better in this area.

This government have failed in the budget. I just want to tell people before I finish that, finally last week, we got them to agree to backtrack on their assurance of support to those persons in those communities who apply for visas, which is so important. They tried to surreptitiously get it in, but we put pressure on and they finally backtracked. They moved the goalposts in this. They made these changes without any warning. Labor stood up to them, and they backflipped on that last week. I am pleased about that. It is great to see they finally saw a bit of sense in that area.

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