Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak tonight in reply to the budget. After budget night, I put together a detailed online survey to hear how this year's budget will affect the day-to-day lives of the people and communities of Indi, and in just under a week I had received a whopping 1,402 responses to that survey. The constituents who spoke up are diverse, from school leavers in Mansfield to aged-care workers in Bright and retired veterans in Wodonga. One-third of respondents came from our bigger towns of Wodonga, Wangaratta and Benalla, and two-thirds came from the smaller towns and districts right across the electorate. I'll be using this speech tonight to bring their voices to parliament, because, at the end of the day, that's what I'm here to do.

I'm also proud to be using this speech to launch the publication of the Indi budget survey report 2021, which sets out the views of all those who responded. The top-line finding from the survey is pretty simple: big budget announcements mean nothing to the people of Indi until there is real change on the ground. Billions in mental health funding means nothing unless you can access mental health services close to your home in a timely fashion at a price that you can afford to pay. Big infrastructure announcements are useless if they're just announcements made over and over again for political points and sod is never turned. Income tax cuts mean diddly squat if fewer than one in 20 people in the community earn enough to benefit from them.

As an Independent, I've got the privilege of calling things as I see them. I'm not a robotic cheerleader for the government; nor am I relentless critic. I'll be using the voices of the community collected in this survey when I'm deciding how to vote on bills and, when meeting with relevant ministers and the Prime Minister, I'll be sharing what they had to say.

Firstly, on renewables and climate action, across the board the communities of Indi were disappointed in the lack of action on climate in this budget. Many listed it as their top concern, and over 80 per cent said the government should be doing much more to scale up renewables instead of propping up gas. As one constituent from Yea put it: 'The time for obfuscating and procrastinating on climate change has passed. We want concrete commitments to climate change now.'

Two hundred and seventy billion dollars was announced for the defence industry in this budget and $110 billion was announced for infrastructure, while only $1.6 billion was announced for emissions reduction. The numbers tell you plain and simple that the government simply—

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Regional Australia doesn't want to see a doubling down on dead-end gas projects and soon-to-be-stranded assets. It knows the longer the government stalls the more we'll see foreign renewable companies setting up wind and solar farms in our back yards and pumping the profits off shore. Regional Australia knows the real economic opportunity is in locally owned renewables. Later this month, the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy will inquire into my Australian Local Power Agency Bill, which will do just that: put the regions, like Indi, front and centre in what is an inevitable renewables boom. That bill is still on the table. It's fully costed, and it could have been lifted into this budget. I invite the government to listen carefully to the evidence community energy groups will give at that inquiry.

The government also made considerable strides in delivering on the royal commission into aged care. But, while $17.7 billion over five years is commendable, it still falls way too short. The aged-care sector called for $10 billion each year to fully implement the royal commission recommendations, but this announcement really comes nowhere near that. The community of Indi knows what it's like to deal with a broken aged-care system. Almost half of the survey respondents were seriously concerned about the lack of skilled aged-care workers in the region. Constituents also listed unacceptable waiting times and staff-to-resident ratios as urgent issues of concern. One aged-care worker from Bright put it bluntly: 'The new requirement of 200 minutes of care per day will simply just not happen where I work as we are so chronically short of staff.' I've heard these implementation concerns right across the board. The people of Indi simply don't have faith that the government can deliver beyond these announcements. When asked to rate how confident they were that the government could fix the horrific failures uncovered by the royal commission, the average level of confidence was a measly three out of 10.

The one-off payment of $1,145 payment per resident to aged-care providers in regional areas really is a drop in the ocean. The additional $630 million bucket for regional aged care also has no detail on how it will be spent on the ground and if the government will fill the gaps in thin markets, like the royal commission recommended. The more than $1 billion invested in the JobTrainer program doesn't specify how the government will make sure that newly qualified aged-care workers stay in or, indeed, move to the regions. While the extra 80,000 home-care packages are great, we've still got 20,000 people on the waiting list. How many of these will be in regional Australia? Who will the government prioritise? These are questions that I can't answer for my constituents, and I certainly won't get answers in the government glossies.

Residential aged-care facilities across Indi—in Bright, Alexandra and Eildon—are vulnerable. Years of underfunding means facilities are often rundown and there simply aren't enough beds to go around. Some families have to make the heartbreaking decision to send their elderly loved ones to an aged-care facility hours away. This is a decision that no family should have to make. The process of fixing our fractured aged-care system has only just begun and we shouldn't congratulate this government for just coming to the table. I'll have my congratulations ready when implementation actually hits the ground.

Indi communities also welcomed the $2 billion in mental health funding. It was an announcement, though, that they greeted with cautious concern. There were no specific measures in this historic funding package that target regional Australia. Recent bushfires and border closures mean regional communities like Indi have particular mental health needs. Almost three-quarters of survey respondents who've tried to access mental health services in the last year have experienced significant barriers, from waiting times to exorbitant fees or simply no services available in their towns or down the road—and that's just not good enough. I'll be watching closely to see how the government rolls out its 24 new satellite Head to Health centres and if there is equity for regional electorates in need like my electorate. The last thing we need is pork barrelling on mental health. I'll also be making sure the government isn't just giving lip service to job creation like it did with its job maker hiring credit last budget. This mental health package will mean nothing if we can't get skilled workers into the communities that need them, especially in areas such as mental health and especially when we have such a widespread housing crisis. I've already taken some creative solutions to the health minister. For example, there are huge opportunities to mobilise mental health nurse practitioners but fundamental structural barriers to making that happen.

We simply can't afford to get mental health and aged care wrong, especially for communities like Benalla, which has the highest per capita level of suicide over the past decade in the state and one of the highest per capita levels of suicide attempts presenting to emergency departments. The people of Benalla are incredible. They are working so hard with community led programs to address this. This mental health funding needs to help communities like theirs or communities in the Upper Murray, who I have had to fight tooth and nail for to see bushfire mental health funding announcements made over a year ago finally delivered. I will continue to fight until we see affordable, local, quality mental health services on the ground in every country town.

We have to act fast. I've spent my professional life working as a nurse, a midwife and a rural health researcher in north-east Victoria, and I know that the demand for health services will double over the next 20 years as the population ages and our chronic disease morbidity climbs.

There was a lot of infrastructure funding in this budget, but there was nothing allocated for a badly needed investment in the Albury-Wodonga hospital. This is the busiest regional health service outside of Geelong. Surely it will be identified soon as a key priority in the regional deal. I absolutely hope so.

One announcement that I know was welcomed across the electorate is the $600 million to establish a permanent National Recovery and Resilience Agency. Bushfire affected communities in Towong Shire and Alpine Shire have had great success working with the outgoing National Bushfire Recovery Agency, and I commend all of the good people who were working in that agency. The tale of recovery is long, as we know down in Indi. The 2009 fires are still in the minds of communities in the Murrindindi Shire, who experienced horrific fires at that time, and they tell me constantly that recovery takes a long time.

I was pleased last night to welcome over $5.3 million in funding to 12 community projects across the Alpine and Towong shires in the latest round of the Local Economic Recovery Program funding. That funding is more than double the last round. It brings the total amount of bushfire recovery funding to Indi over the past 12 months to $79.6 million. I was particularly pleased to see funding for community halls. During and after the fires, I visited dozens of halls that became makeshift emergency relief centres and operational hubs in the most desperate of circumstances. The funding for the Tawonga, Corryong, Tallangatta and Harrietville halls will help these important places to become fit for purpose the next time an emergency comes around. It also recognises that our small halls are places for communities to come together to reconnect and rebuild after 18 months of drought, COVID, bushfires and border closures.

The $1.5 million for the mountain bike park in the Mitta state forest is a game changer for the tourism economy of the Mitta Valley, and it will attract bike-riding, including mountain-bike-riding, enthusiasts from around the nations. I welcome them to Mitta, and I know they'll be very welcome at the Mitta Valley park.

Survey respondents have strong views about the two different income tax cuts in this budget. The low- and middle-income tax offset will mean workers earning under $126,000 will get $1,080 in tax relief at tax time. This will benefit more than 80 per cent of workers in Indi, and that's welcome news at a time when low wage growth is hurting hip pockets. I'll be pleased to support that bill this week. The scheduled stage 3 tax cuts, on the other hand, will only go to workers earning $180,000 per year, and less than two per cent of people in Indi will benefit from these cuts. Some of them don't even want it. The policy gives no thought to the people of Indi and means less money to spend on things that matter to us.

The survey theme I'd like to close on is the total lack of funding for a federal integrity commission. I was disappointed—but in no way surprised, I have to say—to see zero dollars and zero staff allocated to the government's toothless integrity commission proposal in the budget papers. The Prime Minister is kicking the integrity can down the road at a time when record billions are going out the door in the lead-up to an election. This is simply unacceptable. Every age group in the survey listed integrity in politics and government as a top priority, and every age group had near zero confidence that the government could pass a bill to set up a robust integrity commission that's equipped with the powers to actually do its job. As one constituent from Wangaratta put it, 'The integrity commission has well and truly been swept under the carpet, never to be spoken of again,' and she's right. On 8 September, it will be 1,000 days since the Prime Minister promised to deliver an integrity commission to this nation. It's an election commitment that it is becoming increasingly clear he will default on. But I'll tell you this: I will never default on my promise to the people of Indi to keep fighting for a robust integrity commission. Now more than ever, we've got to make sure that we're smart and effective about how we spend our money, and, most importantly, we need to be honest too.

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