Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Morrison government's budget was a chance to lay out a long-term strategy to rebuild our economy and our country for the better. Unfortunately, despite racking up $1 trillion of debt, this budget was more of the same—a short-term political fix full of missed opportunities. When you unpick the headlines, what you realise is that this budget doesn't fix the issues that are affecting all of us. It doesn't fix wages. In fact, it predicts a cut in real wages. It doesn't address the climate crisis. There was no new investment in renewable energy. It doesn't take seriously the very real and very genuine concerns of Australian women. In fact, in the last eight years, this government has spent nearly as much on government advertising as it has on addressing violence against women. It is a series of announcements without substance. It's the kind that make you wonder, 'What is the point of this government, when it doesn't follow through, when it doesn't improve people's lives and when it doesn't take responsibility?' When government members come to this place and they spend question time giving each other pats on the back and telling themselves how well they've done and how they wouldn't be anywhere else, what out-of-touch hubris that is.

We are feeling the extreme consequences of that lack of responsibility and of the focus on headlines over delivery in Melbourne right now. Right now in Melbourne parents are scrambling to once again prepare themselves for trying to juggle home schooling and working from home. Local businesses in my community are being pushed to the edge. They are wondering if they can survive another lockdown. And all of us are facing the mental strain of not knowing what's coming next. Why are we going into lockdown? Because this government failed on its responsibilities—quarantine and vaccines. The outbreak in Melbourne at the moment started with a case that was transmitted from hotel quarantine in Adelaide. And, yet, despite it being clear for more than a year now that hotel quarantine is not fit for purpose, despite quarantine being a federal responsibility, there are zero dollars in this budget for new quarantine facilities.

The Head of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, Nancy Baxter, was talking about this on the ABC this morning. She said: 'I can't think of a rationale for not trying to improve quarantine. You know, if it's the money, how much money is it going to cost to shut down Melbourne for a week? This can't be about the money.' Well, it's clearly not about the money. It is about a complete failure of this government to do its job. And yet, once again, this government is congratulating itself on a job well done.

Then we come to the vaccine rollout or the lack of a vaccine rollout. I've been very concerned in the past few days at the rise in cases in Melbourne. Due to that concern, yesterday my office contacted all the aged-care facilities in my electorate. I was devastated to learn that there is an aged-care facility in my electorate that has still not had its first vaccine. In fact, it was not scheduled to have its first round of vaccines until July. What a disgrace. These are vulnerable older Australians who are being left unprotected by this government. Not only that, in at least four of the facilities in my electorate staff have not been vaccinated and there is no plan to get them vaccinated. In fact, they've been told that they should just arrange to do that themselves. Again, what an abject failure of responsibility. If we think about how the outbreak started last time, how Melbourne got into the position where we were left with a very long, very difficult lockdown, it started with workers moving between aged-care homes. And yet we haven't vaccinated those people. Despite this being a federal government responsibility, the federal government has not put any attention to this. This morning Minister Colbeck told reporters that apparently he's, 'very comfortable with the rollout'. Well, I hope Minister Colbeck is comfortable with telling that to families in my electorate.

Some of the most difficult conversations I have had in my time as a member were with families of people in aged care last year during Melbourne's lockdown. Those were families whose older residents in those aged-care facilities had died. They were devastated. Of course they were devastated. Those were families who couldn't see their older relatives for a long period of time and spent that time worrying about them, not being able to go and check on what was happening to them in the aged-care facility. Of course they were scared. That was a terrible time. Why are we still here all this time later? Why are families going to have to go through this again, because of the failure of this government to do its job and to pick up its responsibility? It is an absolute disgrace and I think that they should be ashamed of themselves.

It's not just on vaccines that this government has failed aged care. I've been having discussions across my community in the past few months about how people realise that there is a systemic failure in aged care in our country. We saw so much of that highlighted through the royal commission into aged care. In this budget the government tipped more money into aged care so you'd think that might fix it. Unfortunately, once again, it's all money that's not doing the job it should. It's this government looking for a headline, looking for the political fix, and not following through.

Let's look at what the Morrison government didn't invest in aged care in this budget. They didn't tie increased funding to providing better food and care for residents so that it's not just swallowed up by private providers. They didn't accept the royal commission's recommendation to require a nurse to be on duty at all times in residential aged-care homes. They didn't improve wages and conditions for aged-care workers who are at the frontline of our system. Again, when I'm talking to people in my community who have experience in aged care or who know that they're getting to close to having experience with aged care what they tell me most, and what they are concerned about most, is the level of care their elderly resident or they might get in that aged-care facility. They know that the level of care that is provided at the moment isn't as it should be. They know that staff are underpaid and underworked. Of course, those staff themselves know that they are underpaid and underworked. Who would be an aged-care worker, working for a wage less than what you can get in McDonald's or in Woolworths, doing very, very difficult, very emotionally draining work caring for our older Australians? These people were ignored in Scott Morrison's budget. These people will not get a wage increase from the Prime Minister's budget. These people are being left behind.

We know that most of these workers are women. This was meant to be the budget for women. It was meant to be the budget when the Morrison government realised that a little bit over half of the population of Australia is female so we might want to do some things for them. Well, let's look at where women are in Australia at the moment. Let's look at what's happened to Australian women during the COVID recession and the situation that I think many women in my community will once again be in as we head into another lockdown. At the peak of the recession, more women than men lost jobs. At the peak of the recession, women spent three hours longer each day on household chores and caring responsibilities than men did. Two out of three women who experienced domestic violence during the pandemic said it started or got worse during the pandemic. And now we know that women are returning to work but returning to jobs where they have less security and fewer hours than men. Yet this was meant to be the budget for women. This was meant to be where the Morrison government got it.

Let's look at what we've found out in the past week about how they 'get' women, shall we? In the last week we've found out that there was a sham investigation into whether the Prime Minister's office was backgrounding against Brittany Higgins—a sham investigation conducted by the Prime Minister's own chief of staff. What disrespect to the bravery of Ms Higgins! Is that going to lead to any sort of change in behaviour in this Prime Minister's office? Of course not. We found out in the past week that, two years after the alleged rape that Ms Higgins has so bravely talked about—an alleged rape in this place of work—there have been no changes to security processes or procedures in this place, yet this government wants us to think that it takes women's safety and security seriously.

Of course, the member for Bowman, Andrew Laming, is still Chair of the Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training in this place. He's drawing an extra $20,000 on his salary despite his completely inappropriate behaviour towards women in his electorate. How are Australian women meant to take this government seriously? You can't just put the word 'women' in a title and think, 'That's alright; that'll be fine.' You have to follow through. You have to have standards. You have to set behaviour standards, and you have to set them in this place, because the women in this place should be safe, just as the women around Australia should be safe. They need the Morrison government to take their concerns seriously. They need the Morrison government to realise that they will not be bought off with the title 'women' in a budget and they will not be bought off with sham investigations. They want genuine change.

Women in Australia should come out of this pandemic stronger than they were before. There should be a focus on women's work. There should be increases in pay for women who are doing the frontline work that is getting us through this pandemic: our aged-care workers, our childcare workers. These people should be paid appropriately. We would then know that our vulnerable Australians in aged care are being cared for as they should be. But this government, once again, is all announcement and no responsibility, no follow-through.

In the time remaining I would like to raise one further area where the Morrison government has stepped away from any sense of responsibility—that is, Australia's place in the world. Since the government came to office, in 2013, they've slashed Australia's official development assistance by more than $11.8 billion, hurting some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, particularly those in our region. In particular it's hurting women, because we know that throughout this pandemic, around the world, it is women who are being hit hardest.

I was pleased to be at a briefing last night with the Global Partnership for Education, and with Julia Gillard, who heads that up, to talk about the effect the pandemic has had on women's and girls' education, in particular girls' education in developing countries. We know that when there's a disruption like this in countries where the education system isn't as well-resourced as ours, women and girls get pulled out of school, and they don't go back. They have to start work. These are young girls of maybe 11 or 14. They have to start work or they get married off. They don't get to go back and get an education. We heard last night from Julia Gillard but also from the country manager from Save the Children's Papua New Guinea program, and she was talking about the fact that in Papua New Guinea there are currently no female politicians. She was saying how her hope is that she can get more young girls in Papua New Guinea educated, so that one day they too might be elected to their parliament to help build a better future for women in Papua New Guinea. But those women and girls won't get there without an investment in their education, and, unfortunately, with our aid budget going backwards, this government will not be contributing to helping those women and girls get the education they deserve.

This is an investment in their future, but it is obviously an investment also in all of our futures. As this pandemic has shown us, these things are global. We are linked to the rest of the world. Despite the Prime Minister thinking that a 'fortress Australia' mentality will get us through this crisis, these crises affect us all across the world. They hit developing countries harder, and there are a lot of these countries in our region. It is in our interests, both as good neighbours and as people who care about the rest of the world and who do want to see women and girls get a decent education, to support these people. And it is in our national interests, as people who live in a neighbourhood where we want people to be safe, where we want decent health systems, where we want decent education, for us to take up that mantle. So it's so disappointing to see that there was no significant investment in overseas development assistance in this budget and that the Australian aid budget has been cut by 31 per cent since this government took office. Australian aid is now at the least generous it has been at any point in the history of our providing it. We rank 21 of 29 in the OECD for aid, and we're the 10th richest country in the world. I think Australia's better than this. I think Australia is better than this government—this government that's about announcements, this government that's about spin, this government that never takes responsibility, this government that has dropped the ball when it comes to vaccines and when it comes to quarantine, this government that's putting us at risk.

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