Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week we saw a budget that was delivered by the government, and most Australians are looking at the budget to see how the economy will work for them and not the other way around. The same goes for the government that they have elected: they want to see how that particular government will work for them and how it will benefit them through the budget and the economy that was laid out in that budget.

We have seen that this government is continuously more concerned with self-promotion rather than the financial prosperity of all Australians and not leaving anyone behind. At a time when Australians are all doing the right thing and we've had a tough year where everyone has done the right thing—some were working from home, others had to take pay cuts and others changed their working arrangements to work less to keep businesses going—we must be doing everything we possibly can in this place to get the economy back up on its feet and also to set a legacy after the pandemic for the economy.

The Australian public, who have done the right thing, also deserve a government that does the right thing by them. Honestly, at the moment, I don't think that is happening and I don't think the Australian public have a government that's doing the right thing by them. A great example is infrastructure. It is the perfect example. In their pre-budget announcement, the government talked up $10 billion of additional infrastructure investment, but the budget papers, in effect, show a $3.3 billion cut to infrastructure over the next four years. This discrepancy that we saw pre budget and just after budget is perfectly reflected in my home state of South Australia. South Australia was promised $3.2 billion in major road project funding, and boy do we need it. But, in effect, just two-thirds of it is actually in the federal budget. When you look at the budget papers and you look at the detail, there's only two-thirds of the 3.2 that we were promised. What's more, only $130 million will be delivered this year and it's unclear where the remaining $1.1 billion will be handed over.

The government talked a great deal about specific projects in my electorate such as the north-south corridor, one of Adelaide's biggest infrastructure projects. It goes through my electorate of Adelaide. But, as everyone has confirmed since then, this is nothing but another re-announcement. It is funding from 2019. In fact, it's been announced and re-announced since Tony Abbott was the Prime Minister and whatever construction will be undertaken is unlikely to start until late 2023—and who knows when it will be completed? This comes on the back of a long string of delays, uncertainties and changed plans. The project could deliver much-needed jobs right now and infrastructure that's needed right now in the inner metropolitan area of Adelaide.

My constituents in my electorate, and all South Australians, deserve much better. As I said, this announcement has been announced in 2014, 2015, the 2016 budget, the 2017 budget, the 2018 budget, the 2019 budget and—we still go on—2020 and 2021. It is a rehash announcement. To complete the project from start to finish we need $8.9 billion, yet we only see an odd billion dollars going in over the next 10 years. So next year, I am predicting, if there is no election and the same government is in, we'll hear the announcement again and again and again. This is a great example of a government that's great on the spin, great on the announcements but very lacking on the delivery, which is the thing that counts and that changes people's lives.

I'm not sure if this government thinks Australians are that gullible, but I have news. I talk to people all the time in my electorate, and Australians, especially in my electorate, are anything but gullible. They know and they're on to it. They can see through these empty promises. I had a street corner meeting on the weekend after the budget was announced, and people had actually looked at the detail. They were coming up to me and asking about the north-south corridor and the money for it. People do look at the detail in the budget.

People are on to it, and they're especially on to empty promises like the 'once-in-a-generation' reform to aged care. That is another area that has turned out to be smoke and mirrors. The government have announced 80,000 home-care packages to clear the current waiting list. They're not going to clear the current waiting list with 80,000 home-care packages. We have over a hundred thousand people waiting for packages right now, today, and that list is growing. We then have people who have been allocated a package but haven't had it come to fruition yet, so you can add on another 10,000 to 20,000 there. That takes the actual number of people waiting for an aged-care package to about 130,000. There are 80,000 new home-care packages, and that's great, but that leaves close to 50,000 people waiting to get a home-care package so they can be looked after in their own home. That is not good enough. We need to look after these people. They are people who have worked all their lives, who've built the foundations of this nation, yet nothing seems to be happening. We plug holes in one area and a big gush opens out of another one somewhere else.

There is nothing in the government's response to address, for example, the workforce shortages in aged care. One of the major reasons that people are waiting so long for a package is that there aren't the people to deliver them. You can announce 300,000 packages, but the trained workforce to go out and deliver them isn't there. You can announce millions of packages. It sounds great and you can do some fantastic marketing and advertising with it—especially if you've got the skills the Prime Minister has through his marketing career—but the reality is: how does it affect the lives of people on the ground, those elderly people who are waiting for those packages and who need that assistance to stay in their homes? Many of them die whilst they're on the list waiting for a package, or they get weaker and frailer, which means they then have to go into an aged-care facility, something that costs the government quadruple what it would have cost to keep them at home. It is just not fair.

There is no guarantee that registered nurses will be onsite at all nursing homes 24/7, as was recommended by the royal commission. The royal commission recommended that a registered nurse be onsite 24/7. There is no guarantee of that in this announcement. And there will be no oversight of how providers spend the extra $10 per resident per day. A lot of these providers could refurbish their manager's office or fix the car park outside. It's absolutely wrong that there will be no oversight to make sure that the $3.2 billion, which comes down to $10 per resident per day, gets spent on the care of the elderly Australians who need it.

What's even worse is that there's no urgency to implementing any of these reforms, so unfortunately many of those people already living in aged-care facilities or waiting for packages will not live long enough to see if any of these reforms work. Many who want to avoid going into an aged-care facility won't be able to, because there will be no package to allow them to be looked after. Older Australians deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. From what I've seen in the budget announcements on aged care by this government, that is not happening. This government continues to let older Australians down. There are marketing ploys, like the announcement that was just made, but no delivery.

I'll give another example. The centrepiece of last year's budget was JobMaker. We all remember JobMaker. It was another great announcement and marketing opportunity for the Prime Minister, who went out spruiking it and doing interviews. It promised to create 450,000 jobs. That was the promise made at last year's budget: JobMaker will create 450,000 jobs. But they've only created 1,000 out of that program. Again, great sales and great marketing—as I said, the Prime Minister is skilled at marketing; that was his career before he came in to politics—but on the ground, where it actually affects people's lives and would make a real difference to someone getting a job through this particular program, only 1,000 jobs have been created. They sell a concept to hoodwink people, basically, with smoke and mirrors and then deliver zero.

We have one of the longest periods of stagnant and negative wages as well. It is not good for the economy when wages are stagnant or negative, yet there seems to be no urgency to deal with this. There seems to be no concern from the government. We know if wages are stagnant and everything else is going up, people have less to spend, there's less going into the economy and less circulating around the economy. That's not good for the economy; it has a flow-on effect. More and more working women are suffering under this government, especially under this government's poor workforce strategy. To top it all off, this government couldn't deliver on their own JobMaker target, the absolute centrepiece of last year's budget. You have to wonder how many of the promises of this year's budget, the 2021 budget, will go the same way. I've given a quick example of one particular announcement, and that was the aged-care announcement for the packages and the aged-care facilities.

Deputy Speaker, you might want to have a look at the government's childcare policy because that's obviously another discount policy that the government cobbled up to together in response to Labor's much superior policy announced by the member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth, and Anthony Albanese late last year, which would abolish the cap and increase the subsidy to lower childcare costs for virtually every family. Obviously the Prime Minister got into a bit of a panic about that and thought, 'We haven't done anything on child care!' So they decided to cobble together this policy which will only help one in four of the families who would benefit from Labor's plan.

Childcare is one of the major costs facing working families. Currently it is a disincentive to many, many parents who wish to work more hours. This Liberal government has announced a policy that will not assist families, will not boost workforce participation and, again, only pays lip service to this pressing problem. Once again this government is letting Australians down, especially mums and dads who need child care. We know that getting mums and dads into the workforce and getting more hours to work increases productivity and helps the economy, which means they have more money in their pockets to spend and keep the economy going.

Another area is the environment. What about the environment? There's virtually nothing in this budget to address the problems with the EPBC Act. There's no rural energy or climate change policy. We even heard the announcement that they're going to spend over $600 million on a new gas-fired power plant. Why is that happening? Why are they spending $600 million on a new gas-fired power plant? Because the private sector refused to build it. What does that tell us? If there is no money to be made in it, of course the private sector will not invest in it. It makes no economic or energy sense; otherwise the private sector would be in there doing it. The Morrison government can't even commit to net zero emissions by 2050. On the opposition benches, on our side of the House, in Labor, we want to ensure that Australia is ready to transition to a low-carbon future and ready to transition into the jobs of the future, and that's why we plan to make electric cars more affordable and we support the rollout of community batteries.

In the few seconds that I have left: I think for too many Australians the answer to some or all of these questions will be no, from what we have heard in the budget. Many will not be delivered. Again, this is a budget that promises a lot but delivers zero. (Time expired)

See this speech in context