Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Preventing Family Violence) Share this | Hansard source

You can imagine my disbelief when I heard the member for Brisbane asking the minister to tell students who work casual jobs on the weekend just how great this budget has been for them. Yes, by all means, Minister, do tell them how lucky they are to have myGov. That'll certainly make up for the fact that you're cutting their penalty rates and cutting $2.2 billion out of their university funding! They will be absolutely delighted that you've got an app they can use on the smartphone for which they can't afford the plan: 'Here, have an app. This'll make up for it. Sure, $77 a week is a real shame, students, and sorry about the fact that your universities are having to cost-cut to absorb the $2.2 billion in cuts baked in by this budget. But here's an app, because we're so cool in PMO. We're so great. We do apps. We're hip. We're groovy. We're with it. We're 'young thangs'.' Yes, that's great! Do tell, Minister. Excellent question, Member for Brisbane. I really think that was a fantastic own goal by the member for Brisbane. Let's hear it!

I did mention that I wanted to ask a few more questions about women. We also heard from the APSC at budget estimates that, since the current minister became the Minister for Women, the government hasn't asked for any briefing or advice on Balancing the future: the Australian Public Service gender equality strategy. We also heard that nothing has been done on a number of priorities listed in the strategy, so I ask the minister: is gender equality in the Public Service a priority for you as Minister for Women? Will there still be a review of the Commonwealth maternity leave act, as it's called? Will training still be developed for the APS on the differential impact of gender in mainstream policy development? Will there be a best practice guide in training and managing flexible work arrangements in the APS? And will there be a return-to-work framework for working parents rolled out across the APS?

I also expect that you, Minister, like everyone else in this place, are concerned about the particular vulnerability to violence that women with disabilities have. Minister, $50,000 was allocated to support the National Women's Alliances to engage with the disability sector this financial year. But, a week out from the end of the year, the money hasn't been spent. Minister, have you even decided yet how you'll spend the money and is this now just a year of funding lost for women with disabilities? Finally, on the issue of the Office for Women, why haven't any Women's Leadership and Development Strategy grants been made this financial year?

I also wanted to ask some questions in respect of Prime Minister and Cabinet that don't relate to the Office for Women. The first goes to the $23.3 million in additional funding that, as is shown in Budget Paper No. 2, went to PM&C to enhance the department's capability to provide policy support to the government in domestic and international policy. What weakness in the department's capability was identified that this was meant to address? How was it identified? Was there an external review? Did the Prime Minister indicate dissatisfaction with the capability of the department? The measure description cross-references a measure from the 2017-18 budget called 'Departmental supplementation'. This measure saw PM&C receive $20 million over four years to support the delivery of critical policy advice and assist the government in meeting its objective. What is the difference between the two measures? Was it simply that $20 million over four years wasn't enough to sufficiently enhance the capability of the department?

I also want to ask about outcome 1 in the portfolio budget statement. Page 30 of the 2018-19 portfolio budget statement for PM&C shows that total departmental funding for outcome 1 for the year 2018-19 is $146,022,000. Earlier in the papers, outcome 1 is defined:

Provide high quality policy advice and support to the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, Portfolio Ministers and Assistant Ministers including through the coordination of government activities, policy development and program delivery.

If you go back two years, outcome 1 had almost exactly the same definition. The only change is the renaming of parliamentary secretaries as assistant ministers. Yet, when we look at total funding for outcome 1, it is $124,070,000—some $22 million less for the year. To put it another way, departmental funding has increased more than 25 per cent in two years. Did the Prime Minister himself identify this need for extra support? Does the department have any metrics for measuring how much the government's performance has increased following this significant increase in funding? Can the minister explain the increase in funding, given that, as I said earlier, the only apparent change was the renaming of parliamentary secretaries to assistant ministers? I'm sure that was a move appreciated by assistant ministers but not by too many other people.

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