Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, heaven forbid! We heard the Prime Minister today talk about the supposed falsehood of education cuts. We all know that schools had funding budgeted to them. It was in the budget papers in black and white. A certain figure was in the budget papers a couple of years ago and that figure was cut. So it's good to see that funding in total is now on the increase, but that's from a low base—a base that's already been cut. There'd be a lot more money for schools in your electorate, member for Mallee, if those cuts had not been made by this Treasurer.

I come to the budget. Two weeks ago, we listened as a Liberal Treasurer handed down a Liberal budget that again failed the fairness test. There was a $17 billion handout for big banks while cutting $17 billion from schools. What illustrates a budget that's unfair better than that? Here we have banks before a royal commission admitting to things like forging signatures, charging dead people fees and charging for services that were not delivered. So here we have the banks admitting to all of these things and this government's tough action for those crimes is to give them $17 billion in tax breaks. A round of applause for the tough action of this government! There was a $17 billion handout for banks while cutting $17 billion from schools. New aged-care packages are paid for by stripping the residential aged-care places. There is not one extra dollar for aged care; just a shuffling of the deck. There is a $270 million cut for TAFE. What a great way to train Aussie kids for jobs of the future: cutting their pathways to that future by cutting TAFE and training on top of the government's entire axing of the trade training centre program when it first came to government in 2013! I think that was one of the most scandalous decisions of this government. Those trade training centres were a project of the former Prime Minister, John Howard. I would have thought the Liberals would have been proud of that program. Labor liked that program and we kept it in place when we were in government. It worked. It gave kids who wanted to train for the future a place to gain skills, and one of the very first acts of the Liberals upon coming to power was to axe trade training centres. That cut, the cuts to TAFE and the drop in apprenticeships of 130,000 over the last five years all add up to a government that is not looking after the interests of young people. Thank you, Member for Mallee!

The government will make a $127 million cut to the ABC, all because this organisation dares to report news that this government doesn't like and airs opinions this government doesn't agree with. There's no reason I can think of as to why this government would be cutting that sort of money from the ABC other than just sheer malice against the national broadcaster. They might think they're being a bit smart in doing it, but we're talking about a funding cut that will result in less money for children's broadcasting, less money for drama production, less money for news and current affairs and, as far as I'm concerned, less money for regional and rural reporting. The ABC does a wonderful job in the regions in bringing the stories of country Australia to the rest of Australia, and that will all be put at risk because of this government's petty vindictiveness. The list goes on.

The big shining light of this budget, apparently, is a $10 a week, or about $540 a year, tax cut for working Australians. That's lorded as the government's major achievement of this budget—a 10-bucks-a-week tax cut. But they keep quiet about the more than $7,000 a year that they plan to give back to high-income earners, like every member in this place, bank executives, lawyers and highly paid surgeons. Anybody on more than $200,000 a year, by the time this government's tax program gets through the parliament, if it gets through the parliament, will be getting $7,000 a year back in tax breaks, when ordinary workers will get back just over $500. What an absolute disgrace when it comes to fairness. Australians expect better than this second-rate attempt to copy the failed trickle-down economic model that has wreaked absolute havoc across the once mighty American middle class. Trickle-down has been in place in America for the last 30 or 40 years, since Reagan. Kansas tried to take it even further; they've doubled back. I see the member for Brisbane having a bit of a chuckle—he's a member of the IPA brigade, I believe, or the retailers.

Ms Flint interjecting—

Sorry, the IPA brigade is over there—the member for Boothby.

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