Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

This is a budget that is devoid of any vision for our nation. It offers no plan for recovery for our economy, and it fails to tackle the problems that Australians are facing on a daily basis. In summation, it offers little hope for Australians and for our nation.

This is a big-spending budget; the deficit will be $213 billion in the coming year. Gross debt will grow to $1.7 trillion, or 55 per cent of our nation's GDP, under this government. Will this budget leave Australians and Australia better off? The answer to that question is, no, it won't leave our nation better off. It doesn't deal with any of the problems that our economy has been facing over the period of this government: low wages growth; chronically bad productivity resulting in very little growth in GDP for our nation; business investment heading down, and continuing to head down; and workers falling further and further behind, and their families being worse off. It won't deal with these issues, or offer a plan to ensure that our economy can recover, and recover in better shape than it was in when it went into this recession. It's a big-spending budget, but the money has been allocated in the wrong areas. It has not been allocated to the areas where you're going to boost productivity, where workers and their families will be better off, where pensioners and self-funded retirees will be better off, and where small businesses have the support to grow and to become medium- to big-sized businesses into the future. None of that support is available from this government in this budget.

I want to deal with some of the myths that are being perpetrated by this government about their management of the economy and their management of our nation's finances. They always make this claim, those opposite, the Liberal and National parties, that the conservatives are better at managing money, that they're better at managing our nation's finances. Well that has been blown out of the water by the fact that the nation's biggest budget deficit and the largest amount of debt that the nation has ever taken on will happen on their watch. And I don't see them all having their little selfies and photos with the 'Back in black' mugs anymore, which they were prior to this budget.

An opposition member: Or the debt trucks!

Or the debt trucks! What about those debt trucks that were rolled out across the country? You would normally have seen the debt trucks rolled out by now, during the election in Queensland, if this was a typical time for the Liberal and National parties in Queensland; but, no, that's not occurring anymore, is it? That is not occurring anymore, because of what this government has done to our nation's finances.

I want to point out some of the wastage of taxpayer dollars that has been undertaken by this government, completely dispelling this myth that they are better managers of our nation's finances. It started with sport rorts. We all remember that, don't we? It was this wonderful program where the Liberal and National parties, through the minister and—guess what?—signed off by the Prime Minister, pork barrelled hard-earned taxpayer dollars into projects in seats held by the Liberal Party and National Party—against the advice of Sport Australia. The Australian National Audit Office uncovered what was going on with this scheme, and it resulted in the resignation of the minister—despite the fact the minister had been in constant contact with the Prime Minister's office. So there we have the first one: sports rorts.

Then we move on to water rorts, where the government paid double the independent evaluation for water licences to a company that was established by none other than the Minister for Energy in—guess where—the Cayman Islands! We've got a minister in this government establishing a company in the Cayman Islands. Why do people establish companies in the Cayman Islands? I can tell you why: to avoid paying tax in Australia. Yet this government paid well above the independent evaluation to a company established by the minister in the Cayman Islands! And it doesn't end there with this minister. Then there was the grass rorts saga, where this minister lobbied the environment minister to have environmental laws watered down because a company that he was previously a shareholder in had been investigated for breaches of land-clearing laws.

Oh, and it doesn't end there. Then we move on to the farcical situation with Badgerys Creek. If you want a good example of the Liberals with their snouts in the trough and abusing taxpayers dollars, look no further than what has gone on with Badgerys Creek, where this government paid a Liberal Party donor—I mean, you can't make this stuff up—10 times the amount that the land was valued at in Badgerys Creek. It's complete rorting, corruption and abuse of taxpayers dollars by this government. And they want to say that they are better at managing our nations finances! What a joke!

Well, it doesn't end there. Then we move on to some of the government big programs like the National Broadband Network. The Minister for Communications announced a month or so ago—guess what?—that this government was actually going to look to moving to fibre to the premises. Remember when the National Broadband Network was established, the original plan of the Kevin Rudd government was to ensure that every Australian had access regardless of where they lived and what their income was to high-speed broadband via a high-speed network to their premises—to their home or to their business. Then, the wonderful Minister for Communications, who thinks that he's the expert on everything to do with the Internet and communications, Malcom Turnbull, came along and said, 'No, we're going to change the system; we are going to make sure that, instead of rolling it out to your premises, we're going to stop at the end of the street and the rest of the connection will be via the copper network. And, in doing so, we'll roll it out more quickly and we will save money.' Well, guess what? They doubled the cost of it and it still has not been completed.

Now the minister has the hide to come along and say—at the cost of $4.5 billion, I might add: 'We are going to go back to Labor's original plan because'—guess what?—'the current system is not working.' The current system is not working because the copper network is basically stuffed and it's not delivering what the government said they would. So there they go—wasting another $4.5 million of taxpayer fund all for political expediency and basically so Malcom Turnbull could fulfil a dream and become Prime Minister of this country.

Then we move on to energy policy. They've had 22 different policies—and all the waste of taxpayers dollars that they spent on investigations and the Public Service putting together 22 different policies that have never got anywhere. And the country still doesn't have an energy policy. We're still paying too much for electricity and gas—guess what?—the nation's carbon pollution is going up and up and up and our kids are going to pay the costs. All of these abuses of taxpayers dollars have been undertaken by this government.

Then last week it was uncovered in estimates what is going on in our nation's postal service, where this government has lined the board with Liberal Party mates that are now abusing taxpayers dollars. They are giving away to senior executives Cartier watches that cost between $15,000 and $20,000 and the CEO spent money on high-priced hotels while basically living in Melbourne; yet, at the same time, the postal service is being cut back! Residents in my area have been told that the mail will only be delivered every second day, not every day as they are entitled to and that they pay taxes for. The government have lined the board with their Liberal Party mates, who are abusing taxpayers' dollars.

And don't get me started on what's going on at ASIC. You'd think they would have learned the lesson after the royal commission and all of the scandals and rip-offs of Australian taxpayers that have occurred and that we'd have a strong, independent Australian Securities and Investments Commission. But no. Once again they line the board with their mates. What's been going on? We find out, through estimates, that the chair of ASIC has had a $118,000 tax bill paid for by the taxpayer. Who on earth in Australia gets that? Who, of the hardworking Australian people who go to work every day and do their job, gets the government to pay their tax bill? No-one. Well, it happens under this Liberal government. Then we find out that the deputy chair has had his rent paid by the government. He has had to resign in disgrace. All of this is going on while only 10 of the 76 recommendations of the royal commission have been implemented by this government. It's almost two years since the royal commissioner handed down his findings in the royal commission, after all of the abuse that Australians had to cop in the financial services industry, and still only 10 of those 76 recommendations have been implemented, because this government is more interested in providing jobs for its mates on government instrumentalities and wasting taxpayers' dollars than getting on and doing the job of fixing up our financial services industry.

Then yesterday we uncovered that the government is providing subsidies to the operators of private jets in this country, whilst thousands of dnata workers who work for airlines in this country missed out on JobKeeper. These aren't high-paid people. They are good, salt-of-the-earth hardworking Australians that are on basic wages. They get nothing. They're out of a job, with no support whatsoever. Yet with people like Clive Palmer and others that fly around the country in private jets—'Yeah, we'll give them a handout, because they're a Liberal Party mate, and don't we owe them for the ads that they ran during the last election.' Qantas has sacked 2½ thousand of its workers and, guess what, they're going to bring in a foreign corporation to take those workers' jobs and offer wages and conditions that are lower than what the workers would have got. There is no support for them from this government. No. They're out on their backside, and the likes of Clive Palmer and other wealthy Australians get a subsidy to operate their private jets. The government are looking after their mates and forgetting the average Australians—the hardworking workers of this country and their families; pensioners and self-funded retirees, who've got nothing from this government during this crisis; and small businesses.

This is a budget that is devoid of vision and does not help those that are in need—not to mention the cuts to services that have been going on in this country. My wife is a registered nurse and works in a public hospital. The chronic staff shortages that are going on in our public hospitals, and the lack of services, are unbelievable. Hospital waiting lists for elective surgery are blowing out by the day. The government is making it harder for our kids to get an education. If you're a low- to middle-income family trying to get your kid into a university degree, this government has just put up the cost of that for anyone going into humanities, in some cases increasing it by 113 per cent. TAFE fees have doubled under this government for a kid trying to get an apprenticeship. And, as I mentioned earlier, Australia Post are now saying that they're going to deliver letters every second day rather than every day, as they should, and which our taxes go to fund. These are the services that are being cut by the government, yet in this budget they're continuing with tax cuts that take $130 billion out of the federal budget in the future, on top of the $216 billion deficit that they're going to leave Australians with. I ask those opposite and, in particular, the Treasurer: if you're taking all this money out of the budget and you're cutting services as they are, what else are you going to cut? You can't continue to run a budget and run the nation's finances like that, taking $130 billion out of the budget without cutting services. That is exactly what this government is going to do. It's going to cut services further so Australians are worse off, and it's not fair. That is why Labor, in its response, is trying to concentrate on the issues that are affecting Australians. Our policy deals with the high cost of child care and the fact that many people can't get their kids into child care because they can't afford to go to work, because of that high cost, making sure that the subsidy is fair and that people can afford to go to work. That will boost productivity and boost the growth of the nation. That is how you allocate public funds to a problem that exists in our economy and make sure you get a better deal for people.

Homelessness has been on the rise. We should be investing in social housing, and that is what Labor is proposing. But this government ignores those problems and instead lines the pockets of mates who do the right thing by the Liberal Party, which is the wrong thing by the Australian people. (Time expired)

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