Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State (House)) Share this | Hansard source

Wages policy is such a huge priority on that side of the parliament that in a five-minute answer, the Assistant Minister for Finance said 'wages' with 17 seconds to go but then didn't say anything actually about wages. He just said 'wages', because the member for Moreton was within his rights to say, 'Don't you care at all about how people are being paid in this country?' It says it all about how out of touch those opposite are, that we can't even hear a peep about wages. In a serious non-political question about the sensitivity of the budget forecast to a more realistic forecast on wages in line with what the Governor of the RBA said, those opposite can't even bring themselves to utter a full sentence about wages in this country. I think that does say it all.

If the member for North Sydney and the member for Banks were out listening to their community or indeed any community, they would know one of the main reasons people aren't in a big rush to give the Treasurer a big pat on the back for the economy is that the economy that people feel—the economy that people experience—is dictated largely by whether or not they're able to work hard and provide for their families. Wages are a big part of that. It's disappointing but not especially surprising that those opposite don't realise that. It's disappointing but not especially surprising that we don't get any concession or recognition when those opposite talk about debt. They always say that debt was disastrous under the Labor Party. Net debt is literally twice as big now after five years of those opposite in government.

The member for Banks bangs on and on about how Labor didn't deliver a surplus during the global financial crisis. That's a matter of historical record. But what is also a matter of historical record is this mob under rosy global conditions—quite good global conditions—is yet to deliver a surplus. Spare us the dusted-off Tony Abbott talking points of 2013; they really should be beneath someone who walks around this place and pretends to be a serious contributor to the economic debate.

The reality is that this budget is built on three dodgy elements. The forecast surplus in 2019-20, and the forecasts generally, are based on three dodgy sets of assumptions. The first one is wages, as I mentioned. The second one I dealt with very briefly in the beginning. It is that the entire 2019-20 surplus is based on assuming that we can pull forward $3.3 billion in tobacco tax revenue. I hope we can; we do want to crack down on illegal tobacco, but the people of Australia need to know there's $3.3 billion claimed there and it's only a $2.2 billion surplus. You don't need to be a genius to work out—even the member for Banks can probably work it out—that the surplus in 2019-20 is entirely reliant on that tobacco tax bring forward. The third set of dodgy assumptions—the cooking of the books in its most partisan and political form—is that the budget continues to claim billions of dollars in savings which have no chance of passing the Senate. In this place, the political commentators call them the zombie savings because they just won't die. The parliament keeps voting against them, and those opposite, just because they want to deliver a rosier set of numbers than they are entitled to do, continue to claim a whole bunch of zombie measures.

The worst one is the pensioner energy supplement, which has been defeated in the parliament. It takes money off seniors who need it, particularly in the winter but also in the hot summers, to pay their electricity bill. Those opposite want to take it away from them. The parliament, to its eternal credit, crossbenchers included, has continued to knock that back. Yet, in the budget, there it was again. The budget is claiming a billion dollars in savings from the energy supplement which won't pass this place, so there's a billion dollar black hole right there. Those opposite like to talk about budget black holes—there's a billion dollar hole right there.

The same is true of the family tax benefits, the maximum liquid assets waiting period, the pension supplement for people overseas, the pension residency requirement and the pensioner education supplement. There's a theme emerging. These are all attacks on pensioners. They say to the pensioners of Australia, 'We can't find $14 a fortnight for your energy supplement, but we can find almost $5 billion for the Commonwealth Bank,' the biggest single beneficiary of the company tax cuts that those opposite pretend to be so proud of, which give $17 billion to the big four banks and $80 billion to big business, which will largely spray around overseas for multinationals.

So my question to the assistant minister—I'm not expecting an answer given he hasn't even engaged on a simple nonpartisan thing like wages policy—is: when will the government be pulling the zombie measures out of the budget so the people of Australia can get a serious fair dinkum sense of the budget position without the government cooking the books with savings that won't pass this parliament?

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