Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Defence Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

No-one in this place doubts that the coronavirus pandemic has been the defining feature of 2020 and no-one doubts that strong action needs to be taken by the government. However, this government has neglected to acknowledge the fact that the economy was in a downward spiral even before the health crisis hit. Don't take it from me. Former federal Treasury secretary Dr Martin Parkinson said, 'Going into COVID, we'd had very weak productivity growth, very weak income growth, economic growth was quite anaemic.'

Almost a year ago the OECD was calling on the Morrison government to support the floundering economy. Instead, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer were denying and dithering as the economy deteriorated. Even before the drought, bushfires and the coronavirus crisis, annual growth was well below trend, consumption was very weak, business investment had fallen, underemployment and household debt had hit record levels, wages growth had hit record lows and the debt had more than doubled. The national accounts confirmed that the Australian economy shrank in the first three months of the year, even before the worst impacts of the coronavirus were felt.

When the coalition came to power in September 2013 gross debt stood at $280.3 billion. By the end of January 2020 gross debt was $568.1 billion. Something likes two-thirds of government debt was borrowed by the government before the outbreak hit. We need to be clear that COVID-19 is not the sole villain in this government's blockbuster horror movie of a budget, featuring an eye-watering $1 trillion of debt—that's right, $1 trillion of debt—without a comprehensive plan for jobs.

They've locked in damaging cuts to JobKeeper in the face of serious underemployment and unemployment. The government's stubborn refusal to change JobKeeper has locked out of JobKeeper 600 meatworkers at JBS in my community. They have changed the eligibility criteria again and again, but they've locked 600 workers out of JobKeeper, causing them to lose their jobs. This government deliberately and intentionally harmed meatworkers in my electorate in terms of their financial prospects. In answer to a question of mine in question time the Prime Minister said that they could get JobSeeker and that JobSeeker is the same as JobKeeper. Prime Minister, JobKeeper is not the same as JobSeeker. These people want to keep their jobs. What you've done is sent them to the dole. That's what you've done.

The ABS labour force figures for September reveal the staggering reality. Over 400,000 jobs have been lost since the crisis, with 200,000 Australians dropping out of the labour market altogether. In September alone 30,000 jobs were lost and the unemployment rate rose to 6.9 per cent. Almost 2.6 million Australians were looking for either work or more work.

One thing that really strikes me about this government is the fact that the budget we're discussing today has a $213.7 billion deficit this year. The cumulative deficit over the forward estimates is $480 billion. That is a budget deficit in each year for the next decade. I got elected in 2007, and I can remember Joe Hockey, the member for North Sydney, the Shadow Treasurer, saying repeatedly—again and again and again—that upon them coming to government they would deliver a budget surplus in their first year and every year thereafter. I wonder how that's going now, Mr Hockey? And I wonder how that's going for those frontbenchers, so many of them who are still there from the Abbott years in opposition and the Turnbull years in opposition and, of course, the Nelson years in opposition. Where are those debt trucks now that we saw in the 2013 campaign? Those double-Bs—a conga line of double-Bs all over the place!

An opposition member: There'd be a shortage of trucks!

Exactly! Because what's happened is that the criticisms of the Labor government, of our side of politics, have been smashed to smithereens by these guys, by this government who have delivered budget deficits every year that they've been in—all seven years—and are projecting across the forward estimates budget deficits as far as the eye can see. They're going to get to a point, according to the budget papers, from a gross debt currently of $800 billion to a forecast of over a trillion dollars across the forward estimates but going up to $1.7 trillion over the decade. Let's not cop this nonsense from the Liberal and National Party that they're better managers of the budget. Let's not cop it.

The history of Australian politics and certainly of the last decade shows that the coalition government spent and spent and spent. They racked up deficits and they racked up debt, and they have the temerity to say to us, 'Where are you going to get the money from?' when it comes to our childcare reforms that the Leader of the Opposition announced in the budget reply speech. They've made $98 billion—not million, billion dollars—of un-offset expenditure in this budget.

One thing that really gets me about this budget, when you have a really close look at it, is what happens in 2021-2022. We've got a snapback, but they've forgotten about that snapback—they used to talk about it all the time. There's a 17.5 per cent spending snapback—spending falls off the cliff. But what are the budget papers saying? The budget papers say there are going to be 300,000 more people unemployed at that point in time than there were pre-COVID-19. That's right: a 7.25 per cent unemployment rate. So they're snapping it back when we're going to have 300,000 more Australians unemployed, let alone underemployed, than when the COVID-19 pandemic hit our health system and our economy and our community. So this government just hasn't got a clue on this stuff. They really don't. They've got no credibility on debt and deficit. They're not really fair dinkum about sustaining jobs.

When the member for Gorton asked the Prime Minister in question time about some form of a wage subsidy, he dismissed it. He was only forced into that wage subsidy, which we call JobKeeper, by the fact that the ACTU, the Labor Party and the business community rounded on the government and said they had to do it. It was inadequate—casuals were left off, the university sector was left off, the childcare sector was punted, the local government sector was punted and a lot of people were left out. But the government at least did something, and now they want to be patted on the back for their economic management! They were forced into JobKeeper, but they stubbornly refused to help the meat workers in my electorate. They refused to help them.

The Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Philip Lowe, argues that much more needs to be done to tackle the jobs crisis. He's absolutely correct. He said the RBA wants to see more than just progress towards full employment. The Prime Minister doesn't have a goal to achieve full employment. They don't. The budget papers that we're debating here today show they're not interested in full employment. The government's unacceptably high six per cent target for unemployment will see a generation of Australians sacrificed to the crisis, and 200,000 more of them when the snapback takes place in 2021-22.

Budgets, whether it is at home or in business or in a community organisation or a government, tell us a lot about your values, your ethics, your priorities. What about this government? This was a really big opportunity, because there was a lot of bipartisanship from our side of politics and goodwill in the community to undertake great nation-building and historic reform. But what are we left with? They could have had a new deal like Franklin Roosevelt's in the Great Depression in the 1930s. They could have acted like Labor prime ministers had done, like Ben Chifley had done following World War II, with the great post-war reconstruction and establishing the Snowy Mountains Scheme. We would have been very supportive that, I can assure you. In the 1970s what did Gough Whitlam do? He launched significant urban renewal programs, which saw local road infrastructure, sewerage to homes, better funding for local councils. That is what happened. In my community so much of Ipswich was sewered because of the work of Gough Whitlam and the work they did to renew communities. People in the suburbs, not just in the rural towns but in the urban areas, should be treated like all Australians should be treated. It is not just an economy that is built for the rich; it should be for all of us. Consider the lasting impact of what Bob Hawke did on economic and industrial reforms; Paul Keating's superannuation scheme; Kevin Rudd's nation-building; Julia Gillard's NDIS. This was an opportunity for this government in the budget. They could have done a lot, but what did they do? Even John Howard, to give him credit, established the Future Fund, which I think it is a good thing. But this government lack vision; they lack ambition; they want to leave people behind; they give us platitudes about us all being in it together. The National Cabinet was this wonderful initiative that was going to unify the country, but they spend the whole time attacking governments, interestingly, led by Labor Party premiers, like in Queensland and Victoria and Western Australia—even to point of litigating in Western Australia until they realised that that was a political disaster in Western Australia. In Queensland, just because there's an election, you have seen the Prime Minister spend a week—I can't believe it. I think I read what Denis Atkins said: in 40 years of covering politics he has never seen a Prime Minister spend a whole week campaigning in a state election. That is because the Leader of the Opposition in Queensland, Deb Frecklington, is so hopeless and incompetent and has lived up to my expectations of her lack of intelligence and capability. Honestly, Prime Minister, concentrate on your job and not campaigning against the Queensland government or getting your ministers to launch jihads on the Victorian Labor government or litigating in WA against the Western Australian Labor government. There is not a word about Tasmania, New South Wales or South Australia. This is a Prime Minister that should be doing his job. It's all about politics, it's all about the announcements, it's all about a marketing exercise and not about economic reform or the budget or the best interests of Australians or what we need to do to take the economy towards full employment.

Even then he divides Australians. Look what they have done in terms of their hiring subsidy and their credit, where 928,000 people over the age of 35 are left off any support. So it's not a budget for middle-aged people or older people, let alone people who need home care. There are about 103,000 places required in home-care packages for older Australians as our population ages. The government has spent nearly every MYEFO and budget cutting funding for aged care, even when the Prime Minister was the Minister for Social Services and the aged care portfolio was in that area, not back with the health portfolio.

The government seems like it's bereft of ideas. All they are doing in many ways is rolling out money, hoping that the business community will come back and snap back. What hasn't snapped back so far is that even on the budget's projections there are 160,000 people more who will lose their jobs by the end of the year. Guess what the government's doing? The government is going to force people by the end of the year to go back to $40 a day when it comes to JobSeeker. JobKeeper is being reduced as well, and it finishes in March next year. This is a government that seems to lack focus.

In my community, this budget has provided nothing. It doesn't matter whether we have a state MP, a mayor, a councillor or a senator with an LNP membership ticket in their pocket, our community seems to get nothing under coalition governments. So there's no funding for the continuation of the Ipswich Motorway project. There's no funding for the business case for the Ipswich to Springfield rail line. There's no funding for the Cunningham Highway upgrade around Willowbank, from Ebenezer Creek to Yamanto. There's no funding for a second Bremer River crossing such as the Norman Street Bridge. There's no funding for an Ipswich sports stadium at North Ipswich Reserve. There is no extra veterans recovery centre. They've got six veterans recovery centres. I've got the biggest RAAF base in the country, at Amberley. We projected we would have seven if we won the election. Guess which one has been left out. It's my community again, with the biggest RAAF base in the country and no veterans recovery funding in the budget. This is an outrageous government that ignores my community. It continually ignores our area, doesn't fund our community and ignores the meatworkers in Ipswich. It ignores the workers in Ipswich, whether they work in Woolies or in Kilcoy Pastoral Company. It has done nothing to assist regarding the challenges we have with the China embargo. It should do far better, and this budget proves it is a government out of touch with my local community.

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