Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

It is a triumph of art over life that in a debate about the gap between announcements and delivery, my opposite number chose to talk about energy policy and the minister for energy. I think we're up to 21 energy policies in five or six short years and not one has managed to stick the landing yet—not one!

Seriously, this budget tonight is, as everyone admits, going to be one of the most crucial budgets in modern history—certainly, perhaps, one of the most crucial budgets since World War II. It's delivered at a time, we hope, when we're coming to the end of the second wave of this pandemic in Australia. As the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister said, we can be immensely proud of the efforts of millions of Australians, particularly those on the frontline but Australians more broadly who've given such efforts, made so many sacrifices to combat this pandemic. It's their efforts that mean that, as the assistant minister said, our nation is one of the best positioned in the world as this global pandemic wreaks such havoc.

We do remember that hundreds have died in the face of the pandemic here in Australia. We do remember that hundreds and hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs or are at risk of losing their jobs, and businesses are, in many cases, struggling to survive. But we look overseas and we thank ourselves that we are not so many other countries. But it is important to note that there has never been a time in the memory of any of us when a government has received more constructive support from an opposition than the support that this government has received from this opposition over the past several months. There has not been a time that anyone, hand on heart, could point to when an opposition has been so constructively supportive of the efforts of the national government.

But the truth is that this Prime Minister has too often been too slow to act. He's too slow to put supports in place for Australians in this pandemic, and now he has been too quick to rip those supports away. It is a matter of record that he resisted wage subsidies when we were arguing for them and they were being argued for by business and the Australian trade union movement. He called them 'very dangerous', and the result was there for all to see: the longest queues in front of Centrelink offices in the living memory of anyone. It's true that he got there, but he got there too slowly. As a result, many, many Australians lost their jobs who otherwise would be in jobs today.

When he did act, his targeting was terrible. Students living at home who might have had one or two casual shifts a week ended up with a bonanza of $750 a week from JobKeeper, while working households with young kids to support were cut out of the system altogether because they were casuals or because they worked at universities or with local government or for companies like dnata. Now, in the middle of the deepest recession in almost a century, he's cutting JobKeeper, he's cutting JobSeeker and he's giving the so-called legacy businesses, who have recovered, powers to cut their workers' wages by 40 per cent, cutting a minimum-wage worker to less than they would now be receiving under JobKeeper. All of this has a real impact.

He takes offence, as we saw again in question time, to this being called the Morrison recession, but it is an undeniable fact that this recession will be longer, it will be deeper and there will be more people in unemployment queues because of decisions taken by this Prime Minister. There is no clearer example than the premature withdrawal of JobKeeper and the JobSeeker supplement. But the recovery will also be slower as a result of this Prime Minister's addiction to announcements and his abysmal record on recovery. The member for Ballarat pointed out today that the final budget outcomes reveal that yet again last year the government underspent infrastructure announcements to the tune of $1.7 billion. That is six budgets in a row—six out of six. It is a perfect record of underspending their announced infrastructure commitments totalling almost $7 billion.

We have heard about the gas led recovery. It is long on promise and absolutely thin on any jobs that could be delivered in the time frame that we require in the deepest recession in almost a century. As the member for Watson said, there is the bushfire recovery. As the member for Gilmore, the member for Eden-Monaro and the member for Macquarie have pointed out, of the $200 million allocated last financial year to make those communities more prepared and more resilient for the next fire season, not a single dollar was spent. Australians have reacted magnificently to this pandemic, but we now need more from this Prime Minister than an avalanche of announcements with no real delivery.

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