Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The budget this year is just like every other Liberal budget: it fails the fairness test. The Liberal's budget looks after big business at the expense of people who work and struggle. The budget gives an extra $80 billion tax hand-out to big business, including $17 billion for big banks, at the same time as it hits schools and hospitals with savage cuts. It's not just like previous budgets; it still has the nasties from the nastiest of Liberal budgets, the 2014 Abbott budget. Remember the pride that the Abbott government had when they were cutting funding to schools and hospitals, how proud they were of that appalling 2014 budget, the plans to axe the energy supplement for pensioners and some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and increasing the pension age to 70? Those so-called zombie measures are still in this budget. The government aren't bragging about them this year, as they did last year and in 2014; but those measures are still there, quietly sitting there and waiting to strip money away from pensioners, from our capacity to educate our children and from the health system that supports us when we are sick.

The budget locks in the cutting of the energy supplement for pensioners, costing pensioners around $14 a fortnight. The budget will force Australians to work until they're 70 before they're eligible for pension. There are $17 billion in cuts to schools and $2.2 billion in cuts to universities. There are cuts to hospitals and cuts to Medicare by keeping the rebate freeze on specialists for one more year. It seems the government learnt nothing from 2014. They're cutting away at the living standards of pensioners, cutting funding to our basic services and giving billions of dollars to big companies, many of which are overseas, and $17 billion of that $80 billion going to the big banks.

It also goes further and has some new nasty cuts. There's another $270 million in new cuts to TAFE and apprentices on top of extraordinary cuts that they've already applied. There's more than another $80 million in new cuts to the ABC. There is a $1.5 billion cut to remote housing by ending the national partnership agreement. The old cuts are still there, and they've added some new cuts. These are cuts that they apply in order to help pay for a massive $80 billion tax cut to big companies. I have to be a little bit fair here, in that the Liberal government says they are also going to provide tax relief for low- and middle-income Australians with the first tranche on 1 July of this year. It is actually paid at the end of the financial year. It is around $10 a week for someone on $125,000. If you're on one of the lower incomes, it's maybe $4 or $5 a week. As always with this tricky government, it's all a bit strange. There's a second and third tranche. The first comes one comes in 1 July, which is between $4 and $10 a week for low- and middle-income earners.

The second and third tranche—they are in 2022 and 2024, so are two elections away; elect Malcolm Turnbull twice and you'll get them—target people on much higher incomes. So, we've got the first tranche for people on low- and middle-incomes. Then, in 2024, some six years away, there are tax cuts that are much larger for people on higher incomes. The interesting thing—and this is where their trickiness comes in—they've said that if Labor doesn't support the tax cuts in 2022 and 2024 now, then the people who need tax cuts now won't get them. So, Labor has to support all of it, including the big tax cuts in 2022 and 2024, two elections away, in order for people who really do need tax cuts to get them now. Quite frankly, I feel like saying, 'So there! Support our big cuts or you won't get your little ones.' This is the nature of the government that we have.

We have said quite clearly that if they split the bill, Labor is prepared to support that first tranche of tax cuts right now—we can pass it today. The people who would get those cuts are suffering from stagnating wages, the cost of living is rising, rents in my area of Parramatta are some of the highest in Sydney, and the median house price passed $1 million over a year ago. People are actually struggling and that tax cut for the low- and middle-income earners will actually make a difference. But, the government is holding it to ransom—either the opposition supports tax cuts for the wealthier end of town or people who need it most don't get it.

Remember when they did this with the NDIS? This is not the first time they've played this trick. They tried to hold people with disability hostage, claiming that the money wasn't in the budget and Labor had to agree to all sorts of cuts in order to guarantee funding. It didn't work, and suddenly the money was there after all, as it always was. It was a hostage attempt then to use people with disabilities to try to force the Labor Party to make other cuts to other sections of the community, and they're doing it again now.

The budget doesn't pass the fairness test, but it also doesn't pass the fiscal test. In fact, it doesn't pass the government's own fiscal test. The Liberal Party used to rail against a 'debt and deficit disaster' and now there's barely a peep from them. That's not surprising actually, because it's much, much, much worse now than it was when they came to government. On the back of the best global economic conditions in more than a decade, when the world is growing, when other economies are growing and doing well, we find that Australia is going almost the opposite way. Net debt for this coming year is double what it was when the Liberals came to office. If the Liberals in opposition thought that the Labor Party's debt and deficit coming out of a global financial crisis was a disaster, what is it when it's double that now under the best global conditions we've had for a decade? The world economy is growing and still the debt is double, the net debt is double what it was when the Liberals came to office. On their watch, gross debt has crashed through half a trillion dollars for the first time in history, and it will remain above half a trillion dollars every year for the next decade. Both types of debt are growing faster under this government than under the previous Labor government, which had a financial crisis to contend with. This year's deficit, 2017-18, is 6.5 times bigger than the Liberals predicted in their 'horror budget' of 2014.

The budget fails the fairness test, it fails the fiscal test and it also fails the future test, because if there's one thing you have to get right to build for the future it's the education of our children. When you look carefully at the figures—and they didn't mention this in their budget presentation on that Tuesday night—after the end of next year there is no funding for universal access to preschool—none. Labor introduced a commitment that children get 15 hours of preschool. There are 2,429 children in the Parramatta federal electorate who will be left in limbo when that funding comes to an end at the end of next year. There are 350,000 children across Australia who access preschool each year who depend on this funding. The government just flippantly says, 'Well, we fund it every year.' But it's not in the budget—it's not in the forward estimates. If you intend to fund it put it in the forward estimates. Have you left it out to make the surplus look bigger at some point in the future? Is that why you've left it out? If you're going to fund it, put it in the budget. Let me explain something to those of you who don't understand this. Businesses like child care centres have to build assets. They have to renovate and update. They have all sorts of things they have to spend money on. They actually need certainty. Doing it year by year does not work for businesses that actually have to invest in capital in order to provide their services.

Nor does it work for families. Anyone who knows parents in this day and age knows how difficult it is to organise the care of children in future years. Parents know: they look around, they pick their childcare centre and they pick their preschool, finding the best ones and trying to get their children into those centres before they return to work. They move house sometimes for the best care for their children. They need certainty. It's not okay to remove funding for universal access to preschool after 2019. It's not okay. If you're going to fund it, put it in the budget and let parents and businesses do what they need to do to provide the services that our children need to do well in the future.

And also for schools. In Parramatta, schools will lose over $28 million: $18.3 million from public schools and $9.8 from Catholic schools. That's not okay. Then consider the massive amounts that this government has already ripped out of TAFE and apprenticeships, and they're now ripping out more. That pathway also disappears for people in my community, and it's incredibly important. We have construction all over the place in Parramatta, but if our young people can't learn a trade because our TAFEs and our vocational education systems are being ripped apart by this government, one has to ask: what's the point? Our young people need those jobs and they need the training in order to get them.

We'll also lose $12 million from Westmead Hospital. And, as if that isn't bad enough, we'll lose $2.09 million from Cumberland Hospital. Anybody who's been in my electorate and who has visited the Cumberland Hospital knows that, of all of the hospitals, that's the one which cannot afford to lose that kind of money. These are dreadful cuts.

But there are three areas where the government claims they're actually going to put money in. I just want to deal with those. First of all, there's home care. They made a rather tricky promise to create 14,000 new in-home aged-care packages over four years. What they didn't say is that they were taking the money out of residential aged care to pay for it. It wasn't new money for the 14,000 new in-home aged-care packages over four years, it's a transfer of money. It's a hoax, particularly when you understand that there are 100,000 people on the waiting list now.

There are 150 electorates, so if it were averaged out that's 666 people in my electorate who'd be on the waiting list. I've got 12,000 people over the age of 70 and there's 666 on the waiting list. This 14,000 over four years is 23.3 places a year per electorate. We've got a waiting list of at least 666 and I've got 12,000 people over the age of 70, with more of those needing home care every year, and they're offering, by transferring money out of residential aged care, 23.3 places per electorate per year. Are they kidding? And that was worth announcing in the budget? That was actually important enough and impressive enough, in their eyes, to announce in the budget—really?

Obviously, they haven't spoken to any of the people who are desperate for in-home care. People are actually going to nursing homes because they can't get their home care packages. People are leaving the homes they have lived in all their lives, and leaving their partners, and going into nursing homes because this is a stuff-up. And they announced 23.3 places a year with great pride and great fanfare in the budget. Really!

Infrastructure: airport rail in Western Sydney was the great announcement. Yay! But there's no money to build it; it's another feasibility study. It's a hoax. We need airport rail and we need it to be there the day the airport opens. We need to plan it early enough for businesses to leverage the route and to make their plans as well. If you want to build a new city you've got to get the planning right and you've got to give other people time to do what they need to do to make the most of what you're doing. If you're putting in airport rail then get it done. Make a decision! How many feasibility studies? How many scoping studies? Put the money there to build it. Without money to build it, it's just paper. How long is this going to go on?

On the Great Barrier Reef: I know that a lot of people in my community really care about the health of our oceans. Many people write to me about marine parks and I know they care about this. They might have thought: 'Oh, $444 million to the Great Barrier Reef? Good!' It comes on top of figures that show Commonwealth funding to arrest declining water quality has been dropping by $11 million a year under this government, so they've been going backwards. But that $444 million is going to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, an organisation that had an $8 million budget and 10 staff last year. There wasn't even a tender process. This is an organisation chaired by John Schubert, the former chair of Esso. This is a private foundation that had 10 staff and an $8 million budget, and that's the organisation that is getting the great package for the Great Barrier Reef: $444 million without a tender process.

I would love to have time to talk about the wonderful things that Labor has in its policy, but, quite frankly, at the moment, the single most important thing we can do is just point out to people the hoax in this budget. There are tax cuts for low-income earners, but only if the parliament agrees to major tax cuts for high-income earners six years down the track. There is supposedly new funding for home care packages that is actually taken from residential home care and isn't even a drop in this ocean of backlog that this country faces. There are cuts to preschools, cuts to schools, cuts to TAFEs, cuts to universities—cuts to every single service that our young people need to build good lives. This is a hoax, and the fact that this government got up there and spruiked it on the night as a great thing shows that either they're completely out of touch or it's a big con.

Debate adjourned.

Federat ion Chamber adjourned at 13:06

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