Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the motion and in favour of the amendments that have been circulated in my name, which I formally move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes the 2020–21 budget:

(1) will deliver a decade of deficits and accrue one trillion dollars of debt;

(2) spends $98 billion on unemployment, but keeps unemployment too high for too long;

(3) continues to leave too many Australians behind without support;

(4) fails to address key policy areas such as childcare, aged care and social housing;

(5) prioritises the funnelling of billions of taxpayers' dollars into funds for the Coalition Government to rort and pork barrel at the expense of hard-working Australians; and

(6) fails to outline a vision for the country".

I want to direct my remarks today to a group of Australians that our opponents used to talk about almost incessantly. Robert Menzies called them 'the forgotten people'. It was his phrase for Australia's middle class, the people who work hard to raise a family, put a roof over their heads and help build their communities. If the government's budget tells us anything, it's that today, in 2020, the Liberals have forgotten about 'the forgotten people'.

Indeed, the political amnesia was in effect well before the worst bushfires in recorded history, and an unexpected crisis brought about by a once-in-a-century pandemic. In the Liberals' seven years in power, the Australian economy never achieved trend growth. Wages stagnated across the board, from bakers to bank tellers, yet the cost of everything that's important to small business and hardworking Australian families went up. Power prices soared. The cost of child care soared, especially the parents who wanted to go back to work full time. Apprenticeships and traineeships dried up—ditto full-time work, as casualisation climbed and climbed again. Getting a university degree increasingly left young professionals saddled with spiralling debts. Business investment and new business registrations were both at historic lows. Even the Reserve Bank was pleading with the government to do more to kickstart the economy—but all for nought. On top of all of this, this government has managed to devastate the relationship with our most important trading partner.

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, and so it is with our coalition opponents. Blinded by their obsessive self-image, they somehow saw themselves as the champions of aspiration, despite the data and the chorus of calls to change course. That economic neglect and political narcissism was always going to be exposed in a moment of crisis, and, unfortunately for millions of Australians, that is precisely what has come to pass.

As families and business owners battled during unprecedented bushfires to save the homes and livelihoods they'd worked so hard to build, the Prime Minister was on a beach in Hawaii. And while volunteers rallied with hoses and fire trucks to fight the flames, coalition MPs took pot shots at climate science and spread ridiculous conspiracy theories about arsonists. As it turned out, this was a desperately needed reality check. It shattered the Prime Minister's false vanity, and just as well.

When coronavirus hit, he was ill-equipped and needed Labor to show him the way forward. Labor saw wage subsidies as the seawall that Australians needed to protect them against the oncoming economic tsunami. We proposed it. He rejected it. And then he capitulated. But, as usual, when he did, the important details eluded him. After presiding over the greatest expansion of casualisation in the workforce this country has ever seen, the Prime Minister left casuals behind in his JobKeeper plan, and, after decades of Labor arguing that trickle-down economics was a hoax, it took a pandemic for the Prime Minister to realise the truths in our arguments.

Increasing unemployment benefits via the JobSeeker payment was a breakthrough moment for Australia. It was the moment they accepted the fact that not only is it morally the right thing to do but also it is economically responsible to build economic demand. For a precious moment, even the Treasurer argued that low-income people spent every dollar they got while high income earners tended to save it. But, as with so much, their heart was simply not in it. So, even now, as unemployment is going up, support for the unemployed is going down.

But that wasn't the only home truth the pandemic taught this government. Let's talk about child care. At the height of the pandemic, the coalition government got a rare insight into the critical role that child care plays in the Australian economy. As social restrictions were imposed, it became obvious that so many of our essential service workers could not do their jobs if they didn't have access to child care. We also got an insight into the precarious financial state of many of our childcare providers. Short-term support was provided, but, in an act of complete disdain for the workers, they cut the childcare workers off JobKeeper.

This experience should've shown the Morrison government once and for all that child care is a key plank in a modern economy where both parents have to work. The so-called party of aspiration has really only ever believed in the aspirations of half the population. We all remember Tony Abbott saying: 'Women should do all the ironing.'

The problem at the core of the coalition's approach to child care is that they see it as welfare. How else could they construct a budget that champions a $27 billion tax break for investment in businesses and see that as an economic measure, but see a $6 billion initiative to expand the availability of child care as welfare? Both measures are essential to moving the economy along, to growing aspiration and to growing participation.

When the government was scrambling for ways to help small and medium businesses to face the onslaught, again they looked back to Labor policies. Remember this: it was the former Treasurer Wayne Swan who introduced the instant asset write-off. They opposed it. They voted against it. And they dismantled it. It's our policy and we're proud of it—because we are a party of small business. Tradies, cafe owners, hairdressers and myriad other business owners know they can rely on policies to get the details of these issues right—and so can all of those frontline workers against this invisible enemy. Labor immediately saw that nurses, aged-care workers and allied health staff were in great danger as COVID-19 spread. We saw the agonising choice that they faced, especially the army of casual workers in the healthcare sector, between quarantining at home without an income and going to work and risking infection. Pandemic leave could and should have been one of the first things the government did to protect not only healthcare workers but also the vulnerable clients they serve. To this government's eternal shame, it took months before it was rolled out.

For us, there was something about the way the government handled this crisis that never completely rang true. We talk a lot about vision in this place, so much so that sometimes people forget what it really means. The government has never really had a vision to support what it did with the pandemic. The grim economic realities of this pandemic open their eyes ever so briefly, but all too soon they looked away again. An unfortunate reality is laid bare in this Treasurer's budget. I opened my remarks by reflecting on the statement of Robert Menzies and his 'forgotten Australians'. Let me now say that Australia's aspirational classes have never been forgotten by Labor. Those who strive to get their own home, get their kids into a career, build a business and get involved with their local community aren't some political theory or label. They are our neighbours, our classmates, our parents. But there is a forgotten class in Australia, there is a forgotten group of Australians: those in insecure work; those who sleep rough on our streets at night; those who don't have a home or a permanent residence; those who lives of quiet desperation in social housing or in underfunded nursing homes; middle-aged workers who find themselves on the scrapheap, with a desire and ability to give more but without the opportunity. Why is it that the Liberals don't afford these people the gift of aspiration? Why is it that they are the new forgotten generation? Why are they never counted by those opposite as a source of this country's economic recovery rather than the brake that they so patently believed to be the case? When I talk about their lack of vision, that's the blind spot that this budget reveals.

I return again to child care. Marginal tax rates can be as high as 70 and 90 cents in the dollar for working families where mum wants to work five days a week, or dad. Yet there is nothing in this budget to address that. When the economic lightning hit the proverbial dunny in March, the government saw how vital a role child care plays in sustaining the economy. But now it's only Labor's vision that sees aspiration by parents to work full time to get ahead even as they raise a family. It's only Labor that sees that tax cuts that get swallowed up by childcare fees are going to help nobody. It's only Labor that sees how middle-aged workers are some of our nation's most productive and valuable contributors and deserve a leg up as much as anybody else. It's only Labor that sees lowering power prices by rewiring the nation as the best way to get government back on its feet. These things should be no-brainers for a government of true vision. With these omissions, this government condemns the Liberals for leaving behind the very people they claim to represent. But, worse than that, it also leaves behind those that the Liberals have never really cared about, those that they dismiss as leaners.

Those opposite haven't learnt the lesson of how important a properly functioning aged-care sector is, even with the recent evidence staring them in the face. They've forgotten the dignity written on the faces of rough sleepers after just a few nights in proper accommodation and how that experience uplifted us all, and they're simply blind to the dreams of those who live in social housing and want hope for themselves and their family. Those opposite will never understand why a single mother on disability support, living in a housing commission flat, has every right to expect that her son might go to university and enter a profession, start a business and create jobs or lead a political party with a real vision for the future. They will never understand that the price of these inadequacies is measured not just in the missed opportunities but in cold, hard cash.

We look on in amazement that a government could rack up a debt which is galloping towards $1.7 trillion but leave nothing behind as a legacy for future generations, who are going to be paying off that debt. Where is the big vision? Where is the big infrastructure project? Where is the structural or the social reform? It's simply not there. It's the biggest budget deficit since World War II, in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP, with government debt galloping towards $1.7 trillion. Australians deserve better than this. They deserve much, much more, and they'll get it at the next election.

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