Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills before the House. One of the most fundamental roles of the federal government is to ensure that communities across the country have access to Commonwealth funding. This funding is essential for ensuring the health, safety and security of our electorates. Unfortunately, throughout the almost decade of the Liberal-Nationals government, there has not been an equitable division of Commonwealth funds across our electorates. What we have seen is this government using the public purse as its own personal slush fund. When grants programs work the way they are supposed to, we see benefit right across the nation, in all our electorates. We see regional areas strengthened. We see critical infrastructure expanded. We see communities thrive. This has not happened under the Morrison government for the very simple reason that they're more interested in their own political survival than they are in the welfare of the Australian people.

Many Labor and Independent held electorates across the country, like our electorate of McEwen, have been neglected by this Morrison government. The electorate of McEwen has been waiting for federal funding for the Macedon Ranges Regional Sports Precinct since 2018. The project has been fully planned and has continued to involve collaboration with community groups, sporting associations, the state government, the local council and me. The Macedon Ranges council have committed $10.7 million. The Victorian government has committed $11.6 million. The AFL has committed $100,000. Both the state and local governments recognise the need for a growing community to have access to sporting facilities, and it's these facilities that help our community thrive through the teamwork, collaboration and health within a quickly growing area like McEwen.

Despite application after application to the federal government for a grant under the Building Better Regions Fund, the Morrison government has refused to fund this project and, in fact, has misled the community on multiple occasions by getting them to put applications in and not doing a thing. The excuse is that the funding process is competitive, but, of the 54 community projects approved for funding under the grants scheme, 43 went to councils and organisations within Liberal electorates.

The reality is that the Morrison government are using this grant scheme as their personal slush fund and ignoring communities like Macedon Ranges who would benefit from this money. It's no wonder that the government are failing to introduce a national anticorruption commission and that the plans they have made are only for a commission without retrospective powers. It's pretty clear what the Morrison government are afraid of. They are afraid of facing accountability for the shameful way in which they have allocated public funds throughout their time in government. Electorates like McEwen deserve proper Commonwealth support as much as any other. We're fed up with having our needs overlooked and disregarded by this government. There are so many areas of funding in which the government is failing our communities, and the cries for help fall on deaf ears.

One of the biggest issues facing families in our electorate is child care. The Liberal government have been dragged kicking and screaming to the table on childcare reform, and the issue has only intensified throughout the course of the pandemic. Due to the immense pressure and hard work from the member for Kingston, the Liberal government, after ignoring the calls of Australian women and families, business leaders, economists and the early learning sector for years, finally were dragged kicking and screaming to do a patch-up on child care. But, instead of the real support that Australian families need, what the government delivered was a cynical attempt to deal with their ongoing PR crisis. The provisions did nothing to help millions of families struggling across our nation. Beyond the hype and the media spin, the government's plan for child care fails to benefit the majority of Australian families.

Labor's childcare plan would benefit around one million Australian families. The government's plan would only support about a quarter of that and only those families with more than one child requiring child care. Then, when the eldest child of such families begins attending school, the extra support provided will be ripped away. In contrast, Labor's childcare plan benefits 86 per cent of all Australian families with children under six, regardless of how many children they have. The vast majority of low- and middle-income-earning families would be better off under Labor, even the families who would see some of the benefits under the government's childcare plan. The Morrison government is leaving our families behind and denying support to those who are in need of it most.

A few months ago we received an email from a woman in the electorate named Doreen, who has two children, both aged under four. Think about this, Deputy Speaker. Doreen and her husband both work full time, and they're spending $3,000 a month on child care. It's like a second mortgage. Like many families, they had hoped that the government's promised increase in support for child care would help give them financial relief right now, but the childcare support put forward by this government will not come into effect until July this year. By that point, Doreen's oldest child will be attending kindergarten, and her family will no longer be able to get the benefits anyway. It's always about announcement, but, when you get through the detail, there is always a catch. There is always a little hook from this government that leaves people short and short-changes Australian families.

An honourab le member: Ts and Cs apply!

Exactly! Thousands of families across Australia and in our electorate are in the same position. They need relief now. But the government are still dragging their feet and failing to support the families who need it. The government like to claim they support families, but, below the surface and beyond the marketing campaigns, the only thing the government are interested in is making an empty promise, making an announcement, and a plan which fails to benefit most Australian families.

I will turn to health care. Our healthcare systems are in desperate need of assistance as well. Particularly, the regional areas of my electorate are in dire need of increased funding and Commonwealth support. Every week I am inundated with calls from my constituents. They are scared—parents of young children, families and partners of those struggling with chronic illness, healthcare workers who are overwhelmed with the demand for their services. They ring my office regularly with harrowing stories of the strain on local GP clinics in our electorate. There simply aren't enough doctors in our towns to look after the needs of our communities. Parents with sick children cannot find doctors to treat them. Our GPs are doing the very best they can, but they are overworked, tired and struggling to keep up.

The government have failed rural electorates. In McEwen, families are faced with weeks-long waits for appointments with a GP. The government want Australians to believe that their incentive programs are going to fix this, but what they're not telling you is that many of the communities that are most in need, including those in McEwen, aren't going to see any of the money from the programs. We have written to the federal Minister for Health and Aged Care on numerous occasions to ask for urgent assistance for our region, but we've had no support in the responses. Meanwhile, every day the people of McEwen are turned away from GP clinics and emergency rooms because there are not enough doctors to care for them.

This is not the level of medical care that should be acceptable in Australia, especially in the midst of a pandemic and while our country is attempting to deal with COVID. You can never be sure when you or your family might need to see a doctor, but if you do you want to know that one will be available. Time and time again the Morrison government has put politics above the lives of Australians. The fact that the Morrison government has failed to secure basic medical care for the people of McEwan and so many other Australians across the country, you would think would be an embarrassment to the coalition, particularly in the midst of a pandemic. The state of rural and regional health care is a damning indictment on the priorities of this government.

If the issues plaguing regional health care within our electorate were not bad enough, we turn to the state of aged care under the Morrison government, which is even worse. Aged-care residents have suffered more than any other group throughout the course of this pandemic. Today in question time we heard responses that were pretty much just, 'Well, that's how it is.' When a minister of the Crown spends his time at the cricket and not facing up to the challenges of his job, with any normal government at any normal time—and you can go back and read Erskine May and look at every single Reps practice—you would expect in a situation like that the minister should resign. That is the history of the Westminster system, but it's not the history of a government that is covered in corruption.

Aged-care homes are being forced to lock down in response to COVID infection. During such times, many residents lose the capacity to communicate and interact with family and their support networks, making the staffing crisis experienced in their homes and the anxieties associated with COVID even more difficult to cope with. More than two years into this pandemic the situation in aged care is just as dire as it's ever been. Across the country we hear reports of understaffed aged-care homes, residents' buzzers being left unattended and residents left to die alone.

Our criticism of the Morrison government's response to the aged-care crisis is not politics. It is not political mudslinging; it is just a fact. The Morrison government delayed and outright rejected many of the crucial recommendations that their own royal commission—a royal commission they were forced into because they didn't want it—put forth as necessary changes for the reform of this industry. The government's plan includes none of the recommended workforce changes that the royal commission outlined as being required. There is nothing to improve the wages of overstretched and undervalued workers in the aged-care industry. This government has ignored the recommendations and failed every single one of those workers. They have shirked primary responsibility for the mandatory care of aged-care residents. The proposal does not meet the recommendation made by the royal commission that includes cleaning and some administration work as some of the care minutes that will mandated. That simply is not good enough. Staffing levels are central to many of the problems in residential aged care, and these reforms are crucial to increasing the standards of care and ensuring that the horrific stories of neglect that we heard throughout the course of the royal commission do not continue into the future.

If all of this wasn't enough, the government have failed to clear the home-care package waiting list for over 100,000 people, ignoring the wishes of Australians who want to age at home. This has left many older Australians with no option but to go to an overworked, understaffed home which the government has failed to reform. The Morrison government has failed to take any of the steps that Labor and stakeholders have called for over the past two years in particular, and now, in the midst of the pandemic, aged care is what it is due to this neglect and not being able to stop a preventable crisis.

The government's repeated attempts to cut NDIS funding for participants is another example of the way in which the government is rejecting the needs of the most vulnerable in our community. The government ripped $4.6 billion out of the NDIS, and the ministry repeatedly failed to act despite 1,200 Australians dying while waiting to be funded by the scheme. My electorate of McEwen is not alone. There are many electorates that are in need of Commonwealth funding and assistance. There are so many programs that need increased funding. Electorates like ours are repeatedly disregarded and disrespected by this immoral and irresponsible Morrison government.

The way in which the Morrison government have continually ignored their responsibility to divide Commonwealth funds in accordance with need is something that a normal person would be embarrassed by. The pork-barrelling, the secret coalition slush funds are definitely an embarrassment at a time when faith in our political institutions is falling. Australians don't pay more tax if they live in coalition-held electorates. They don't work harder, so they don't deserve to get a disproportionate amount of public funds.

People in our communities are sick and tired of being left behind by this government. They are sick and tired of being left behind in child care, in aged care and in health care. They are exhausted by applying again and again for grants that they have no chance of receiving because they haven't made it onto the shifty little spreadsheets that have been brought up over the last few years. The pork-barrelling must end. The cabinet-run slush funds must end. Communities need support. The communities that are suffering are the ones that need the most support, not just those that are in a coalition electorate.

It's time to see the end of this tired, failed, scandal-ridden government. Australians deserve a government that is on their side, a government that is going to stand up and deliver. When we look at things like child care, Medicare and aged care, Labor cares. Only an Albanese Labor government will deliver benefits for all Australians and bring Australians together, rather than what we've seen over the past eight years of division, both inside and outside the cabinet and on the streets. It's time that we replaced this tired, worn-out government with one that is going to be there for you when you need it.

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