Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills, which are the Turnbull government's decisions about how they will tax Australians and how they will spend Australians' tax dollars once they've collected it. Just like budgets past, they deliver a clear picture of what the Turnbull government stands for. This, sadly, is a coalescence of no vision. They have no vision at all. Contrary to the rhetoric from the Treasurer on budget night, the Prime Minister in the media and every single government MP speaking on the bill, the Liberal and National Party do not stand for fairness. Fairness is not a quality you can fake, fairness is not a quality you can rote learn and fairness is not a quality you can trot out when it suits your political interests in the electoral cycle and then shove far down in the bottom drawer. Fairness comes from the heart and not from a focus group. It's a set of values and a belief that informs every decision you make.

I want to use this speech today to go through some of the elements of this budget, piece by piece, to explain exactly how out of touch the Turnbull government is when it comes to policies that damage Australia and do not set out a clear future. What we have is a budget that is slightly less cruel than other coalition budgets, but it is yet another attempt by the coalition to trick Australians into believing that the coalition care about everyone rather than just the top end of town. The government's fiscal strategy, as unveiled in 2014, has failed. Federal government gross debt has surged from $310 billion in 2014 to over $534 billion this year. Net debt, as a share of GDP, has risen from 13.1 per cent in 2013 to a disgraceful nearly 20 per cent this year. If the coalition government ever claims that they're competent economic managers, Australians need to tell them that they're dreaming.

This budget, yet again, demonstrates the failure of the Turnbull government to properly fund front-line health services, particularly hospitals and Medicare. Fundamentally, the Turnbull government does not care about the health of Australians; they believe it should be a private responsibility. The Turnbull government doesn't care about protecting our wonderful public health system. It does not fundamentally believe in Medicare. Health fairness is not in the DNA of the coalition government. This government is ripping $160 million out of Queensland public hospitals. What's that the equivalent of? It's the equivalent of 240,000 emergency department visits or 44,000 cataract extractions that can change someone's life. It's the equivalent of 6,150 knee replacements, which might enable someone to go back to work, or 26,500 births. That's a lot of money. It will affect every Queenslander and every Queensland family. The next time someone is cradling one of their children or sitting with a loved one in the emergency ward, soothing their distress, they will simply have to wait longer to receive the necessary health care.

For people living in Brisbane's south side in Moreton, the hospitals that service the needs of their families will have their funding slashed by this uncaring Turnbull government. The Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital will have its funding cut by more than $2 million and Princess Alexandra Hospital will have its funding cut by more than $13 million, and we know how many Queenslanders these hospitals look at. The Turnbull government simply do not understand fairness nor do they understand the damage they are doing to our public hospital system. In question time and after question time, they stand and try to pull the wool over the eyes of Australians and tell them that there are no cuts to hospitals; but we know that this is simply not true. The budget papers reveal this.

Here are the facts: in the 2013 election platform, the Liberal Party stated that they would fund public hospitals at 50 per cent growth funding of the efficient price of the cost of hospital services. That was in the Liberal Party's election commitment. Then, the 2014, 2015, 2016 and now 2018 budget papers show that the government is in fact only funding public hospitals at 45 per cent of growth in hospitals and a cap of 6.5 per cent overall growth in funding. This volte-face from the government represents a $715 million cut to Australian hospitals between 2017 and 2020. What does that translate into? A $3.2 million cut to QEII hospital and a $13 million cut to the Princess Alexandra Hospital. Shame.

As a former teacher and a parent with two boys, one in primary school and one in high school, I know that education is crucial. It's always been important to me. Unfortunately, we see a Turnbull government that does not value education—not education for all, that's for sure. In this budget, the Turnbull government missed the chance to restore the $17 billion cut from Australian schools. That's right—the coalition can find $17 billion in tax cuts for the big banks, but they can't find $17 billion to educate our kids. Here's the bottom line; it's very simple. Under Labor led by Bill Shorten, Labor will restore every cent. Of this funding we'll put it back into our schools, nearly 90 per cent of it will go to public schools—the schools needing it the most, the schools that do the heaviest lifting in society.

In Moreton, $15 million has been ripped from public schools, and this Turnbull budget will not restore it. Shame. These cuts will mean fewer teachers for Moreton schools, less one-on-one attention for children in Moreton and less help with the basics like reading, writing and maths for Moreton schoolkids. I've said it before and it's so true: the Turnbull government are economic vandals masquerading as politicians. They want to talk about how the economy works for big business, but they don't think about how our economy works for everyone, especially if our kids can't get a decent education. We know from the Gonski investigation that productivity gains come from investing in education. The Turnbull government are short-sighted. We know that investing in our schools benefits everyone and our country.

I'm appalled that the Turnbull government is ripping a further $270 million from TAFE, skills and apprenticeships in this year's budget, and that $270 million cut comes on top of the more than $3 billion—yes, $3 billion—that this out-of-touch government has already ripped from vocational education and training. This comes at a time when nine out of 10 new jobs created in the next four years will need either a university degree or some sort of TAFE qualification. That's why Labor believes in quality universities and strong public TAFEs, working side by side, equal partners investing in our nation's future. Labor's alternative vision in this space could not be clearer. Let's go through it.

Labor, under Bill Shorten, will stop the slide to dodgy private providers and back public TAFE all the way. We'll renovate campuses and rebuild workshops. We will ensure that two out of every three, as a minimum, of our training dollars go to public TAFE. We'll invest in programs to help older workers retrain later in life. Also, in our first term, Labor will cover all up-front fees for 100,000 TAFE places in high-priority sectors. We would expect at least half of these opportunities to go to the women of Australia. Under Labor, a skills vacancy will not last one day longer than it takes to train an Australian to do that job.

I've spoken about Labor's vision for education—primary, secondary and vocational—and now I'll finish the quadrella with tertiary. There is a quote from Confucius that I often like to use when discussing education which says, 'If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for 10 years, plant trees. If your plan is for 100 years, educate children.' Labor takes the long-term view of education. In government, Labor uncapped degree places and opened the doors of university to a new generation. Tens of thousands of students became the first person in their family to go to university—the fair go in action. But the Liberal freeze on university funding means 10,000 fewer places are available next year and, by 2032, over 200,000 people will miss out. And who misses out? Bizarrely, the once great National Party—the people that are supposed to believe in the bush—have wandered off the back roads and hit a bore drain and they're locking students from regional Australia out of university and doing the same to working-class kids.

A Shorten Labor government would restore certainty to this sector. We will uncap places, providing our nation with over 200,000 more university graduates. What does this mean for Moreton and the southside? When Labor first uncapped places there were 1,455 more uni places from 2008 through to 2016. Under Labor's new policy we'll see about 2,150 more students in Moreton alone on their way to university and the opportunities that brings. In Queensland, it would mean nearly 38,000 more students realising their dreams of a university qualification and the careers that follow. Under Labor, a university education is not a privilege you inherit; it's an opportunity you earn with talent and hard work.

If you search through these budget papers you won't find a single cent for the critical Cross River Rail, linking Dutton Park, on the south side of the city, with many places beyond—another snub by the Turnbull government for all who live in South East Queensland. The existing inner-city rail crossing over the Brisbane River, Merivale Bridge, is at full capacity. Infrastructure Australia has known this for years. We've tried to tell Prime Minister Turnbull, but he just doesn't get it. He must be too focused on Sydney. The four stations that are linked to it, that are common across the entire train network—Roma Street, Central Station, Fortitude Valley and Bowen Hills stations—then cause a bottleneck and a scheduling nightmare, one that actually flows right through to Redcliffe, to Beenleigh on the Ipswich line, to the Gold Coast, to Ferny Grove, to the Sunshine Coast and out to Cleveland. Every train that travels in Brisbane basically goes through these four stations, yet it's at capacity. The federal Labor Party committed $2.24 billion to partner with the Queensland Labor government to get this project done. In this budget the endlessly out-of-touch Turnbull government failed to take up our offer of bipartisanship to deliver this critical piece of congestion-busting public transport infrastructure that would serve all Queenslanders. Sadly, they are contributing to productivity bottlenecks in Queensland and it is not good enough. Queenslanders know that Cross River Rail will help to reduce congestion on local roads and get southsiders back home to their families after work much sooner.

But there is another important piece of infrastructure that was also overlooked by the Turnbull government. There is no mention of it at all in the budget papers: the Cooper Plains rail crossing. I wrote to Prime Minister Turnbull before the budget asking him to stand up and help southsiders. Sadly, I'm yet to hear back. Maybe my letter got lost in the post or something! So, I stand here again, publicly asking the Prime Minister, the infrastructure minister and Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, all members of the Liberal and National parties: surely they can work something out and join the Queensland government to get this mess sorted?

I know that under Lord Mayor Campbell Newman two of the rail crossings on the north side were funded on a fifty-fifty basis. Sadly, Lord Mayor Quirk is offering only 15 per cent for the people on the south side of Brisbane. It note that it would be unfair that any northsider would want the southside to be treated the same! I've got a solution for this mess. I think it should be funded a third by the federal government, a third by the state government and a third by local government. The lord mayor has to go up only a further 18 per cent from the 15 per cent. That's my solution. What could be fairer in terms of getting things sorted?

I know the people of Moreton are sick of people arguing about the politics of who's responsible for the roads, the rail and the footpaths and all that sort of thing, and they are sick of buck-passing. I'm bringing the boomgate down on that sort of politics. My commitment to them is that I will get it done for you.

In every single budget that the coalition government has handed down since they took office in September 2013 they have tried to cut the pension—the coalition government has tried to cut the pension. Let's look at very recent history under coalition governments. The 2018 budget has done nothing to reverse the cuts already made, or to stop Mr Turnbull's cruel cut to the energy supplement. They've added 14,000 additional high-level Home Care Packages—a tick for that—while actually reducing the number of residential care places—a big cross for that. It is a bit of chicanery from the government, given that in its 2016 budget they had already cut aged care by $1.2 billion. With 105,000 older Australians currently on the waiting lists for Home Care Packages, 14,000 places over four years will not even keep pace with the current demand. The waiting list grew by 20,000 in the last six months of 2017 alone.

Labor has always protected pensioners and always will. Labor's recently announced pensioner guarantee will ensure that pensioners can still access cash refunds from excess dividend imputation credits. I will continue to fight to stop the government cutting the energy supplement and also increasing the pension age to 70. Surely, that decision could only be made by someone who had never done a week of labouring in their life. Recently I stood in this parliament and spoke about the fundamental unfairness of the Turnbull government's personal income tax plan. That unfairness is why Labor is seeking to get the bills split so that we can immediately support the parts that are fair. Labor will support the initial tranche to begin on 1 July and then go further to deliver bigger, better and fairer tax cuts for 10 million Australians after that.

See this speech in context