Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the budget handed down by the Treasurer this year, we saw, undoubtedly, huge spending. We also saw enormous slush funds, huge amounts of money, described as decisions taken but not announced, and we saw those accompanied by short-term marketing and spin. There is no doubt—as the shadow Treasurer said in his contribution before mine—that, in this budget, we've seen a conservative government hand down generational debt without generational reform. This is from a government that, over its eight years, has presided over not just stagnant wages growth but record low wages growth. Its budget predicts more of the same. This budget predicts economic growth to return to below trend, participation to fall and business investment to be soft. For all of the money that has been spent in areas which desperately need spending, there's a real feeling that this is just trying to paper over cracks and to replace money that has been taken out over the eight years of this government.

For all of the money that is being spent, for all of the announcements and the marketing, what is fundamentally missing from the budget handed down by the Morrison government this year is any sense of a vision for the future—any sense of a vision for the sort of country Australia wants to be. There is absolutely no doubt that economic prosperity, fairly shared, has to play a central role in the national agenda. But as I've contended before, for Australia and Australians to truly thrive it should be embedded in a larger story. As other democracies around the world have done, we should be embedding that economic story in Australia in a story of wellbeing—the wellbeing of people, the wellbeing of places and the wellbeing of the environment that we live in and that we love. But we don't do that in this country. So we've seen missed opportunities, again and again, for budgets to be vehicles for important structural reform in this country. We've had too many piecemeal and temporary reforms. We've had too many failures to build community support for a creative national vision, for a long-term agenda. We've had too many politicians willing to talk about that but, when they have their hands on the levers of power, not delivering it.

That hasn't always been the case in this country. Between 1901 and World War II, Australia built a thriving democracy based on a living wage, supplemented by an age pension, an interventionist state and a nearly universal franchise, which included votes for women—although not our First Nations people. After World War II, we renewed our Australian compact by committing to full employment, mass migration, a huge expansion of housing and the broadening of tertiary education. From the eighties, we introduced sweeping reforms that deregulated and opened our economy, while expanding the social wage—with Medicare, family support and superannuation—and better protecting our environment.

Times of profound national change came with crisis which threatened health, wealth and wellbeing, as we've experienced in 2020 and as we continue to deal with today. Times of profound change require leaders from across the political, social, business and civil spheres of society to work together—to achieve larger goals, to stand back, to agree to a simple, compelling narrative that the population could rally behind, to think larger and longer, to build a nation in which everyone could have a job, to open our nation to the world, to have a consistent frame and direction for the country. We did that over roughly 40-year intervals. We're at another 40-year interval today. We should be doing that now. Instead, we have announcements of COVID commissions. We have national cabinets that one minute are on a war footing and the next minute aren't meeting. We have ideas being floated without background work being done, and we have a lack of vision—national and local—for the future.

What is also strikingly absent from this budget, from a conservative government that likes to say it's a great economic manager, is any agenda for productivity growth. It has an absolute reliance on the unemployment rate apparently continuing to decline and that having an impact on wages growth, but no agenda for productivity and growth. Members of the government use words like 'industry', 'innovation' and 'skills', but there is no comprehensive and coordinated skills, industry and innovation agenda. This is a government that can spend $600 million on a new gas-fired power plant, which every economist in the country seems to say is the wrong course, but can't actually concentrate on a proper agenda for the skills and jobs of the future.

We have relied on the flow of capital and on people and ideas from abroad for our economic dynamism over the years. Things have changed now. Supply chains have been broken. We don't have international talent and students coming in at the moment. We can't have a government that just puts up the shutters on things like climate policy and on developing the Australian wherewithal to deal with those challenges. We need to have a future made in Australia, a future based on Australian capabilities, Australian strengths and Australian investment. It is the time to invest in the skills and opportunities of our people and the innovation of our businesses. It's time to have that as a huge part of an agenda, and a budget that measures the wellbeing of our people, our places and our environment.

We do have the highest debt in our nation's history to look forward to, and deficits for as far as the eye can see, but what will we have to show for it under this government? If it were to be re-elected, how long would it take before we saw this government revert to form and cut essential services at the expense of working and middle-class people? Future generations will have to pay this debt back, so we need to invest in the drivers of growth, productivity and wages. We need to invest in opportunities and skills for people and innovative capabilities of businesses. We have to recognise that there are huge economic shifts happening—not just in our country but around the world—towards a knowledge driven economy, a clean economy and a caring economy. These are areas where we are well placed to lead the world if we have a government with a vision and a plan.

This is a budget that did nothing about the gaps in public and social housing, that trumpeted reforms to child care which go nowhere near what is needed and don't come close to Labor's and Anthony Albanese's policies, that did nothing to help insecure work. A Deloitte survey released today indicated that 47 per cent of women are now dissatisfied with their work, 76 per cent of women have taken on more work since the outset of coronavirus and many are less optimistic about their careers. The budget does nothing to help them. Where is the investment in a vision for flexible working, for wellbeing, for reforms to paid parental leave, for men to have opportunities to do more with their families and women to have opportunities to do more in the workforce?

How long will we have to wait for a real focus from this government and for real action around reporting and dealing with non-inclusive and unacceptable behaviour in workplaces—as the Deloitte survey asked? Perhaps they could start in this workplace and actually do what they said they would do and deal with the member for Bowman.

In my community, we were looking for investment in Dunkley to help us get through the COVID recession, but also to help us build the sort of future that we want. We were looking for investment in social and affordable housing. I received an email just last week: 'Hello, Peta. What can we do to help the families facing homelessness due to being given notice so landlords can sell their properties vacant?' Sixty-days notice isn't working in this climate. There's a single mother in Langwarrin with two weeks left to move. She's spent months looking and applying for rentals and is having no luck. Our renters are suffering. They need help, protection from eviction, and available housing. I went onto the Langwarrin locals Facebook page. There's a post from a woman who says she's getting beyond desperate and running out of time. She's been given notice to vacate. She and her daughter can't find anywhere to live, despite attending eight to 11 inspections a week, one to three inspections every weekday after work, with 80 people at rental inspections. They can't afford the rent. Her daughter goes to a local school. They are two weeks away from being homeless.

There is no investment in social and affordable housing in the Morrison budget, but there is a massive commitment from a future Labor government, because we know it's important for society, we know it's important for the economy and we know it's important for jobs. That's a vision. That's a vision for a budget grounded in the wellbeing of our people as well as the economy.

In Dunkley, we looked for a comprehensive and properly funded local jobs plan, but we didn't see one in the budget. We looked for when car parking that was promised at Kananook and Seaford would be delivered, but instead we heard the money was being removed. We looked for delivery of Ballarto Road upgrades that we'd been promised, and we didn't receive them. We looked for an investment in the proposed Ballam Park athletics redevelopment that the council's been asking for. Nothing. We looked for investment in vital new pavilions at the Emil Madsen Reserve in Mount Eliza, or for the Mornington Peninsula Bay Trail, for cycling and walking. I've been asking the government for funding for that for 12 months. Nothing. We looked for the government to fulfil its 2019 election promise that it was building the extension of the metro line to Baxter with a station at Langwarrin by funding the shortfall. Nothing. We looked for investment in the exciting proposed expansion of buildings and programs at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, for our cultural lives, for tourism, for jobs. Nothing. In fact, what McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery got was a rejection of their application for RISE funding. We looked for an investment in the buildings and the culture of the local Indigenous gathering place Nairm Marr Djambana. Nothing. We looked for a commitment to more capital funding for our local schools and for more capital funding for community programs. We didn't see it. We looked for investment in local manufacturing and a plan for local manufacturing in our area. We didn't see it. We looked for support for Monash University for the employees who have lost their jobs and the students who are now facing $50,000 worth of student fees to get a degree. We didn't get it. We looked for JobSeeker to be above the poverty line so that people in my community can live in dignity while looking for work and caring for their families. We didn't get it. We looked for targeted support for our local travel agents and for our arts and culture industries that are still struggling post JobKeeper. We didn't get it. We looked for action on aged care. We saw that there is some funding, and we're waiting with bated breath to see what it will actually deliver for our community.

We looked for a genuine commitment to reducing emissions and supporting renewable energy to make Australia a renewable energy powerhouse, to build our renewable energy economy and good, decent, secure jobs for the future. We looked for real action on climate change. We didn't see it. We looked for a strategy for electric vehicles so that Australia doesn't become, as was described in the paper on the weekend, 'the Cuba of the developed world' for cars to be dumped in our country because they don't meet the emissions standards anywhere else in the world. We didn't see it. We looked for an electric vehicles strategy for jobs for local mechanics and manufacturing. We didn't see it.

We didn't see a budget based on a vision for the future, on the pillars of the wellbeing of our community. We saw a budget to get a government through a political difficulty and a tight cycle, and that is selling the people of my community short today. It is absolutely selling the people of Australia short in the future. We want a good government. We want a responsible government. We need a new government.

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