Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019 and the related bills. As has been said, this side of the House will be supporting supply. It is for this reason that I support these bills, which will appropriate about $7.9 billion for the remainder of this financial year and then around $108 billion for the 2018-19 financial year.

But my support for supply is in no way support for the unfair Liberal budget we have just witnessed. This budget is just like every other Liberal budget in that it fail the fairness test. While this is not unexpected, it is always disappointing. It is disappointing to see a federal government so committed to giving its friends at the top end of town an $80 billion tax handout but happy to cast aside the needs—yes, the needs—of children, the elderly and the sick. Instead of investing in schools, TAFEs and universities, instead of investing in hospitals and Medicare and instead of investing in the welfare of pensioners, this government is instead taking care of big business. It is taking care of the multinationals and it is taking care of the banks. I know the banks are having a bit of a rough trot at the moment, courtesy of the banking royal commission, but surely those opposite must question the need to make them feel better at the cost of $17 billion. A cynic in the room could even be forgiven for thinking that the $17 billion was by way of a mock apology for a banking royal commission that this government clearly did not want to have. This government stonewalled the banking royal commission for more than 600 days. It did everything it could to prevent the shocking and unacceptable banking practices that are now front-page news from being exposed. But, thanks to Labor's long and hard fight for the banking royal commission, the government capitulated and we are gaining an insight into how customers have been disgracefully treated by the banks.

This government ought to think long and hard about rewarding this behaviour, especially when we consider what is not being rewarded in this budget. The more than generous $80 billion in tax handouts to the top end of town have to be paid for from somewhere. Let's think about this for a moment. The government is giving $17 billion to the big banks and taking $17 billion out of education. So, on the one hand, it is giving $17 billion to the banks and, on the other hand, it is taking $17 billion out of the education portfolio. That truly is unbelievable. Unfortunately for the mums and dads worried about their children's education, unfortunately for those in the community who are sick or have ill family members and unfortunately for those pensioners who rely on the energy supplement to get by, that handout is being paid for with savage cuts to education, health and the pension. This government has plans to persist with its $715 million in cruel cuts to hospitals during the next two years, with further cuts locked in for the five years from 2020. Those opposite are forcing up the out-of-pocket costs on patients needing to see specialists by keeping the Medicare freeze in place. Do they not understand how this is hurting struggling households having difficulty with living pressures and how it is hurting those struggling with low and stagnant wage growth and others struggling with cuts to their wages of up to $77 per week, thanks to this government's shameful stance on penalty rates?

Difficult choices are being made around this country when it comes to things such as private health cover. When you are paying more and more for less and less, you'll find that people start ditching their private health insurance because they can no longer afford the annual price hikes and they can no longer see the point of private health insurance. So how about the government looks to address this affordability crisis, instead of rewarding those with at least an $80 billion windfall? The same applies to education. Cutting $17 billion from schools, as I said before, and cutting another $270 million from TAFE—where is the sense in this? To my mind, and to the minds of most Australians, the last thing we should be doing is stripping money from education. Rather, we should be investing in it and doing all that we can to encourage further investment in education.

I do not know how this government thinks this country can continue to ensure we will have a supply of skilled and trained workers when it continues to strip funding from vocational education. The whopping $3 billion ripped from vocational education has not been enough for Prime Minister Turnbull's government. This budget includes a further $270 million worth of cuts to TAFE and apprentices. I suggest the education minister take time to actually learn what TAFE is all about and how important it is in training Australians for all types of work.

Seriously, have we ever had to withstand a worse education minister in this country? Has there ever been an education minister more out of touch with universities, with TAFEs and even with the early childhood sector? The technical and further education system deserves more than the elitist and dismissive attitude of Senator Birmingham, and apprentices and those in technical education deserve more than the stripping of essential funding by the senator. It's time someone in the government woke up the education minister, gave him a good old shove and stopped him bagging a reputable institution that delivers much more than energy healing and basket weaving. The education minister showed his ignorance of the university sector when he proclaimed that they operate on rivers of gold. Anyone who has anything to do with the sector, anyone who has worked in it and anyone with a skerrick of interest in universities knows that this is only a misguided and dangerous fantasy. He showed his disdain for and ignorance of the TAFE sector as he casually dismissed the efforts of all those TAFE students currently studying. In case those opposite cannot assist the minister for education in learning what goes on in a TAFE, I'm going to take you through some of the many courses and examples of trades training delivered at South Metropolitan TAFE, which includes the Rockingham campus in my electorate of Brand: aero skills and skills in avionics, aviation—a commercial pilot licence—marine craft construction, maritime operations and marine engineering, engineering—industrial electrician, accounting, project management and nursing. The list goes on but, alas, there is no basket weaving or energy healing on offer at the moment.

I think the education minister doesn't really like the portfolio he's been given. He has shown his ignorance of the university sector, his disdain for TAFE and vocational education, and his utter ignorance of and inability to learn anything about early childhood learning and its funding. Given the magnitude of the cuts the minister for education is applying to the sector, it makes me suspect that Minister Birmingham is perhaps auditioning for another role in this government. Perhaps he's auditioning for the Finance portfolio, but of course we know it's going to take quite a few levers to get Senator Cormann out of that role.

While Minister Birmingham has cut into schools and TAFE, that doesn't complete the education trifecta. Of course, universities and higher education are the other place where this government has delivered cuts in very real and dangerous spades. I worked in the university sector before entering this place, so I speak from experience when I talk about how damaging this government's attack on the sector is and the dreadful impact it is having on our institutions, the staff and, most importantly, the students.

The ruthless cuts of this government started before my being elected to this place in 2016. The 2014 budget was just the start of a long and sustained attack on Australians' right, regardless of their bank balance, to a university degree. It's a right based on ability, not bankability. There is still $2.2 billion in university cuts entrenched in the Treasurer's latest budget, despite the voices of many in the field telling how bad it is.

I have met with vice-chancellors and senior staff from three universities in Western Australia: UWA, which stands to lose $38 million, Curtin University, which stands to lose $86 million, and Murdoch University, which stands to lose $35 million from this budget. When the cuts to Edith Cowan University, which are $49 million, are added, this creates a cut of over $208 million from universities for my state of Western Australia. This is utterly unacceptable.

I've said this before: I can only imagine that it's the intention of this government, by putting universities in a funding vice, to push institutions toward instituting higher fees. What we are seeing is the opportunity for a better future that a higher education affords being taken away from those who cannot afford it. I have been to many open days and other university events, and I have talked to students and staff about how these cuts will impact them, and their views aren't positive. Their reality isn't positive. Instead of helping young people to start out on what should be one of the most exciting times as a young adult, we are saddling them with doubt, stress and debt.

I'd like to commend the work of the National Union of Students on their Build a Better Budget campaign. They are campaigning hard for a better deal for university students around the country. Those opposite would do well to listen to student-led grassroots campaigns like this one, and they would do well to work for better standards for students and to increase federal funding for universities around the country. Labor has committed to reversing the savage cuts to the university sector and to moving towards having 200,000 extra Australians attending university, effectively abolishing the Prime Minister's unfair cap on university student places. Labor has always been the only party serious about improving education standards and opportunities in Australia and will continue to be the only party to ensure that those commitments are met. It might seem like a cliched expression, but stating the obvious is somehow helpful in this place: young people are the future. We should be adequately funding, growing and adapting our education institutions to ensure that young Australians who aspire to reach a little higher through the Australian education system have the opportunity to do so. Increased cost of higher education will be unmanageable for many.

People are doing it tough when it comes to managing their household budget—faced with the rising cost of living and housing affordability pressures and when faced with underemployment and stagnated wage growth. Some of the most vulnerable people who are dealing with these pressures are doing it on a pension, a fixed income with no wriggle room. How is this government is taking care of them? The answer is that it's not. What it's doing instead is slashing the energy supplement from their pension and leaving a $14 hole in a pensioner's fortnightly pay. For many that will be a very difficult hole to fill. Fourteen dollars might not seem like much to those opposite, but it is when you're on a fixed income, when your pension is carefully budgeted to pay for essentials such as food, rent, heating and power. This burden should not be put on older people in our community. It will cause immeasurable stress on our elderly and vulnerable, and I for one take no comfort in their sacrifice to the big end of town's $80 billion tax handout.

But the vulnerable, regardless of where they are, are an easy target for some. This budget has extended the freeze in foreign aid funding, which is effectively another cut in funding, this time of $140 million, to some of the most desperate and poorest people in the world. Australia's overseas development assistance is at a record low, and the foreign minister has presided over more than $11 billion in cuts to date. The whole point of foreign aid, according to DFAT, is to promote our national interests by promoting prosperity, reducing poverty and enhancing stability, with a focus on our neighbourhood, but here we are as a country slashing our aid budget and undermining our role and responsibilities as a leader in our region.

In this budget, the government has given billions of dollars to those who do not need it, and those who need support most are paying for it. There is another way, a fairer way, of delivering a budget that Australia needs and deserves. Labor's approach to the budget is fair and responsible. It does not squeeze the most vulnerable to benefit the most well off. It is considered when it comes to budget repair. We'll deliver better funding for public hospitals, with every single public hospital benefitting from Labor's investment. Labor's $2.8 billion investment in hospitals will reverse the cruel cuts employed by this government. It will fund more beds, more services and more staff. Our plan will also deliver lower taxes for 10 million working Australians, and we'll also restore Sunday penalty rates. In fact, Labor's plan will see workers who earn up to $125,000 a year paying less tax than they would otherwise pay under this government, with more than four million people in this country getting a tax cut.

As I said before, Labor will abolish Prime Minister Turnbull's cap on university places, which denies disadvantaged students access to university. We introduced the demand driven funding system, a system which enabled more people to go to uni and that allowed an additional 190,000 students to get a place at one of the higher education institutions around this country. This is important when you consider that research tells us that by 2020—in only two years—two out of every three jobs created in this country will require a diploma or other higher education qualification. Investing in higher education place and young people's access to it is a smart thing to do and the right thing to do. We will also abolish upfront fees for 100,000 TAFE places in courses where Australia needs the skills. I would be more than happy to show Senator Birmingham, the supposed Minister for Education, around my local TAFE and show him firsthand what a vital institution it is and for him to meet with some young people engaged in vocational training. It might help open his eyes to the real world, where investment in vocational education delivers skilled workers. For that matter, I'd be very pleased to take him around a university as well.

Labor can deliver on our commitments because we put people ahead of big business and the banks and because that $80 billion of tax windfall to the top end of town can be much better used to deliver for more people in our country. We'll be guided by clear fiscal principles that repair the budget in a fair way. We will not ask the most vulnerable to carry the heaviest burden. Tough calls have been made on tax reform, but they are fair calls: negative gearing, capital gains tax, trusts, and dividend imputation refundability. We will close loopholes to those who need them least. Our plan is fairer and more responsible because we've made the big calls and we've got them right. (Time expired)

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