Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to stand up and speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 3) Bill today. There are a number of aspects to this bill which I will touch on in my remarks this morning. As with many things with this government, there are some good things that the bill contains, but it is by no means enough. By no means is this government doing enough. There are two big schedules. One touches on health and the other touches on housing.

To health first of all, schedule 1 refers to the increase in the low-income threshold for the Medicare levy. Obviously the Labor Party supports that. We want to make sure that health care is affordable for all and that we have universal health care, not the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach that those opposite have been trying to push since they came in. We all remember the 2014 budget, where Joe Hockey tried to bring in the GP co-payment so that people would have to pay to go and see a doctor. We will never forget those days. But we of course support a measure to help ensure people are able to afford health care in this country.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the No. 1 health challenge that we face in this country right now, and that is the vaccine rollout. It's all very well and good for the government to come in and increase the Medicare levy, but they are taking absolutely no action when it comes to their failed vaccine rollout. I'm about to go back to the great state of Victoria, where there are a lot of very nervous businesses and very nervous families right now. Can I remind the House of the way in which this particular outbreak occurred. A man went to India. He didn't catch the virus in India; he caught it in hotel quarantine in Adelaide, in South Australia. He then went to Victoria and spread the Indian variant of the coronavirus around the community.

To make matters worse, we are finding out via a press release by the health minister that there are at least 30 aged-care facilities that haven't even had one vaccination yet—not even one. We saw the devastating effect that not vaccinating our aged-care population had when the coronavirus raged through Victoria last time. And what did they do? What was their response? They didn't kick into gear and do everything possible to exercise the full resources of the federal government to protect the people of Australia and the people of Victoria. What did they do?

What did the Prime Minister say? He said: 'It's not a race; there's no urgency; there's no rush; look how great it is in Australia'—all that sort of stuff. Yes, we have had it really good in Australia. We've been lucky. But being lucky doesn't get you through a pandemic. Being thorough gets you through a pandemic.

This government, with its failed vaccine rollout, is leaving Victorians vulnerable, leaving Australians vulnerable, leaving the aged-care system vulnerable. They said that we were going to get to four million vaccinations by the end of March. That meant we were going to have to vaccinate about 120,000 Australians per day. It became clear that we were not going to be able to do that via the way in which this federal government—the health minister—designed this vaccine rollout, and that we were not even going to get anywhere near 120,000 vaccinations per day. Did he take a breath, gather in the troops, bring people into his office and say, 'Alright, folks; how are we going to fix this? Let's find a way through it. Let's ramp up our activity. Let's get this done'? No, no. That was way too hard for the health minister. What did he do? What did the Prime Minister do? They said: 'Well, we're just not going to have targets. It's too hard. We're not going to bother having targets. Forget anything that we ever said about having targets. That's too difficult.'

Well, Australians are paying the price. Businesses are paying the price. Victorians are paying the price for this government throwing their hands in the air, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and saying: 'It's all too difficult. Forget the targets that we had in the first place. It's too difficult. It's too much for us. It's just too hard.' Well, today Victorians face another lockdown. We face businesses being shut tomorrow. We face families being isolated. We face the anxiety of being isolated because of this really awful virus. The federal government, instead of ensuring that the vaccine is rolled out in order to protect their citizens, throw their hands in the air and don't take responsibility. They made lots of announcements and were happy to put Liberal Party branding on the announcements, but they will walk or run for the hills when it comes to actually taking any responsibility.

Last night the federal health minister made an announcement that he was going to send a few extra vaccines to Victoria. He literally waited until people were sick until he bothered to try and do something to fix his vaccine rollout. Imagine that. Imagine not doing it in order to prevent people from getting sick but waiting until Australians and Victorians have gotten sick before doing anything about the vaccine rollout.

Schedule 2 of this bill goes to a measure around assisting single parents to be able to get into the housing market, which obviously the Labor Party supports, because it has never been more difficult, in the history of our country, to get into the home market. Under their watch, under eight years of flat wages and rising house prices, under eight years of stagnant wages for Australians, Australians have been left behind by a housing market that is running away from too many of them. If you are 30 years of age today, there is a less than four in 10 chance that you are going to be able to get into the housing market in Australia. It never used to be like that. The majority of Australians used to be able to get into the housing market, but not anymore. Now less than 40 per cent of young Australians can get into the housing market.

The government pat themselves on the back and they say, 'We're doing all of these things,' and the Minister for Housing comes into this place and says, 'Look at me, look at me, look at me,' but the truth is, out on the streets, it has never, ever been harder for Australians to get into the housing market. It makes a difference, because those people who are able to get into the housing market in Australia are retiring with a net worth of around $980,000, and those Australians who do not get into the housing market are retiring with around $40,000 of net worth. Being a homeowner in this country is a great wealth creator. It's a great way for Australians to raise capital and to find financial security. But, under this government's watch, it has never been harder to get into the housing market, which means that more and more Australians are being pushed into the rental market, which means rental prices are going up, which means more and more Australians are in rental stress—spending more than 30 per cent of their income on their rent payments. Housing is becoming unaffordable.

While these measures are good—they are good—they will not address the supply issues in this country. We're only ever tinkering with demand. The government, with their policy for housing, do not tinker with supply; they tinker with demand.

We need to be building more houses. We need to be building more affordable houses. We need to be building more social housing. Housing needs to be more affordable in this country. That's why the Labor Party has a plan—a $10 billion fund—to get building, to deal with supply. We cannot just put more money into the demand side of the equation—it's just going to keep pushing housing prices through the roof—especially given the government's absolute reluctance to tackle wages in this country.

We need to deal with supply, but the only thing that this housing minister is willing to do is to fob it all off to the states—to not accept any responsibility. Well, that's not good enough. We need a federal government active in this space, a federal government that is committed to safe and secure housing for Australians. But not under this federal government.

Finally, I just want to mention, before I hand over to my learned colleague the member for Parramatta, that there are a number of changes to the DGR status for some groups. There are some wonderful organisations. This is always a very important process for a number of local organisations and I thank all of the organisations who have gone through all of this lengthy process.

But I do want to mention the Sydney Chevra Kadisha and the Great Synagogue in Sydney—even though I am a proud Melbournian. The Chevra Kadisha is an institution that is there for people in the most difficult of times. It is an outstanding organisation run by outstanding people. It must be a very, very difficult job, to bring comfort to people at the end of someone's life, but they do it with distinction. I congratulate them on getting this DGR status.

So, in summary, the federal government needs to get their vaccine rollout right. They need to do something about housing—and all of this tinkering around the edges is good, but it's not enough.

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