David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's my great honour and pleasure to be speaking about the appropriations and the budget delivered this year by the returned coalition Nationals and Liberal government. It was a major effort: six years of continued discipline and economic tough decisions to bring our budget into surplus. In this budget we have got a $7.1 billion projected surplus and we're on track to deliver that—as opposed to a $55 billion deficit when we assumed the government benches in 2013. And we have done this at the same time as lowering taxes. That is a great achievement.

Around 4.5 million taxpayers will get a low- and middle-income tax offset of $1,080. If there are two of you working in that wage bracket up to $126,000, there's the potential for both of you to be getting that—up to $2,160 in a rebate which you can put aside against your mortgage, across your leasing payments, add to your savings or just household expenses. That lower tax benefit extends to 10 million taxpayers: the middle- and low-income people are the people that needed the most help, and that's why they were the beneficiaries of it.

But our budget also delivers a tax plan out to 2024 that will, in a practical sense, get rid of bracket creep until you get up to earning over $200,000. That is a major long-term plan, but we are delivering in spades already up-front now. If you recall, in last year's budget, we delivered $158 billion worth of tax cuts, and this comes on top of that, and this opposition was promising $375 billion worth of extra taxes.

As a result of having a balanced budget, with lower taxes, it means our commitments to extra spending in health, education and aged care are all being delivered. I'll just go through some of them that are making a huge difference in the Lyne electorate. School funding in non-government schools and government schools across the Lyne electorate is going up. But, as well as that, we have other funds to help schools—the Schools Community Fund and other initiatives for regional students and education access in the tertiary space. We are expanding regional university hubs and centres, and we have plans to deliver one here in the Lyne electorate.

We also have the environment community fund and the Stronger Communities Program. All these funds giving direct assistance to our local communities are a result of having a balanced budget. We can't have these sorts of grant funds without maintaining our fiscal discipline. But the big winners are much bigger than these community based funds. We have the Building Better Regions Fund, which is delivering benefits around regional Australia, and we will have the capacity to have another round of that.

I might just add: aged-care funding—for which I've been fighting for increased services and funding since I was elected into parliament for the Lyne electorate in 2013—in the Lyne electorate has gone up from $90 million per year in recurrent funding to over $135 million in recurrent funding. There are huge capital works underway in aged care. In Forster, GLAICA are developing a massive extension. The plans are drawn up and things are about to kick off. They've already done their seniors living complex. In Wauchope, Bundaleer Care Services are in receipt of an $8.6 million capital grant to extend onto a new site and deliver an aged-care facility specialising in dementia. That will be a $30 million project, courtesy of that $8 million grant from the federal aged-care budget. We also have two new aged-care capital works projects that are going to be rolled out, and this budget and the forward estimates are delivering the funds for that. We've got the Figtrees on the Manning project, which is being started by Bushland Health in Taree. Bushland Health runs many seniors living complexes and aged-care facilities, and they are building a new seniors living and aged-care facility 500 metres from their existing facility in downtown Taree. That is courtesy of an $8.6 million grant as well, for all the public works that have to be done to create this new complex. It's really going to transform the Manning Valley and the Taree economy. We also have on the books a $25 million capital works expansion by the Salvation Army, also in Taree, and the builders have commenced building a brand new 58-bed, state-of-the-art aged-care facility in Gloucester in the middle of the Lyne electorate. We also have cranes in Forster, with an $18 million initial build at the Forster Civic Precinct.

Our budget considerations and management have delivered the funds to make these capital works projects go ahead. It's a massive injection of economic activity when an aged-care facility is built. You have the capital works to start with, which delivers construction employment and fit-out. It delivers services, so there's social benefit. The economic benefit is that all these aged-care facilities require long-term, regular, non-seasonal employment of highly skilled workers. In the Lyne electorate, we have the oldest demographic in the country. This work comes on top of earlier capital works extensions done in the southern part of the electorate.

As I said, this budget has delivered tax cuts not just for low- and middle-income earners—all 10 million of them who are going to get a benefit—but for small businesses, which are the engine room of the economy in our regional electorates. Small businesses that have turnovers of less than $50 million are now paying 27½ per cent company tax. We have increased the instant asset write-off from $25,000 to $30,000. By 2021-22, at the end of this term of government, we'll be getting to the range where, with the tax plan, the small business company tax rate will be dropping down to 25 per cent. With the changes in this last budget extending the threshold up to a turnover of $50 million, 22,000 more businesses will get the benefit of the instant asset write-off and the 27½ per cent company tax rate. We're also making sure that we are getting tax from multinationals that earn money and earn profits in the country, and that has delivered $12 billion into our Treasury.

The other big winner from the Lyne electorate budget is extra roads funding. We've announced $20 million for the Bucketts Way upgrade process, which is a staged process. In my first term of government, we delivered $16.5 million to the Bucketts Way upgrade. This $20 million will go into funds added by the state government and by the local government, the MidCoast Council. And because it links the Pacific Highway with the New England Highway, there's another $5 million from the Roads of Strategic Importance and Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity tranche of the infrastructure budget. So we are getting winners across the board.

As well as having the most senior, experienced and wise demographic in the country we have various areas on the coast experiencing rapid growth in population, with young families moving into the area. Schools are expanding. Funding for both government and non-government schools is going up. There is an absolute commitment from this government to deliver the best for every child in Australia. That also extends to our preschool commitment. We are delivering the funds required for every child in the year before school to have 12 hours of preschool in preparation for the start of their formal education.

Not only that, changes were rolled out before the budget—and this budget is funding them. There is an extra $2.7 billion for child care. It all has to be paid for. That's the amazing thing. We have increased spending on child care, preschool, government schools and non-government schools. We have had increases in funding to the states for the hospital system. We've had increased funding for a number of drugs on the PBS. We've started re-indexing Medicare rates. We've got record funding going into bulk-billing. This is at the same time as bringing the budget into surplus.

Part of that is good fiscal management. We have also reduced the number of people who are requiring income support. We have delivered 1.4 million new jobs. The majority of that increase has been in recent months towards full-time employment, not part-time employment, which the other side tends to criticise. The senior end of the working life spectrum has also experienced growth. At the young end of the spectrum we have seen the same phenomenon. We have many programs that have delivered people back into the workplace, such as the Youth Jobs PaTH. All these policies have been rolled out. The Prepare-Trial-Hire initiative has been incredibly successful. We have got young people into jobs.

I mentioned earlier in my speech on this budget our commitment to regional study hubs. They are going forward. There's another round coming up. All that is being funded by good fiscal management. Everything is possible if you can balance your books. We have grown the pie, we have grown the economy, and we have had massive growth in employment over the last six years. We are committed to continuing that. At the same time we have got the lowest proportion of people requiring income support for decades. We've been able to grow the pie and reduce expenditure on income support. The best support we can give unemployed people is getting the economy freed up so that businesses can employ people, and that's what we have been doing.

Just the other day we announced another program for businesses that are modernising their manufacturing capability. Large businesses will be able to apply in a competitive grants round so that they can co-invest in new manufacturing infrastructure. We do have a manufacturing base. We lost a lot of our bulk, cheaper manufacturing jobs over the last 15 or 20 years, but we have seen a growth in smart manufacturing, niche manufacturing, high-value input manufacturing and bespoke manufacturing. It's just a different sort of manufacturing. We have got companies like that in the Lyne electorate that do export. Food Machines makes equipment for many bodies in the US and other overseas countries as well as around this country. We have sporting goods manufacturers in the Manning Valley that provide high-quality, cutting-edge carbon fibre oars to rowers around the world. At the world championships, at national championships and at the Olympics, if you look on the TV screen, about 70 per cent of those oars will be from Croker Oars Australia, made in the beautiful Lyne electorate. And they have been growing as a result of our earlier program, the Regional Jobs and Investment Program on the north coast. All of these things are amazingly possible because we've controlled our finances.

It is a great honour to be the member for Lyne— (Time expired)

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