Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2021-2022 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2021-2022 are about appropriations and appropriations, as we all know, are about funding. Funding defines a government's priorities, its ideologies and its competency. That's what I will focus much of my remarks on today. On Wednesday in my three-minute statement I summarised some of the defining features that best characterise the past nine years of coalition governments. The list of matters I referred to was not comprehensive, so today I will restate those matters and provide some additional observations about our nation today.

We have a government that is beset by disgraced ministers, that has presided over the continuous mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, that has failed to secure adequate vaccine supplies, that has failed to secure personal protective equipment and that not only has failed to provide the latest rapid antigen test kits but did nothing about quarantine facilities. Then they paid billions of dollars in JobKeeper payments to very profitable companies that didn't need the money and whose profits soared while many deserving workers got absolutely nothing. It is estimated that the amount of money paid to profitable companies was around $20 billion—perhaps the biggest waste of public money that I have ever heard of.

Let me go to some of the other matters. We then had the $1 billion robodebt debacle, which not only cost $1 billion but I understand also cost the lives of people. Then there is the ongoing crisis in aged care. When you have to bring in the Army to assist in the aged-care sector that tells you that it is more than a crisis. I have never known of anything like that ever having to be done in the past. Yet we have a government that seems to want to just brush it to one side.

Across the country we have deterioration in our national health services. We have worsening inequality, with the highest 10 per cent of households by wealth now owning almost half of all wealth and the lowest 60 per cent owning just 16 per cent. Australian education outcomes have markedly fallen when compared with other countries. On climate change Australia now ranks near the bottom of 61 comparable countries on a global performance index. Australia now has the second-highest level of biodiversity deterioration in the world.

Then there is the Morrison government's total mismanagement of the NBN rollout which not only nearly doubled the cost from around $29 billion to well over $50 billion; NBN speeds in Australia are among the slowest in the developed world. The Great Barrier Reef is at serious risk, and we saw some acknowledgment of that a couple of weeks ago, when the government finally acknowledged that it needs to spend some money—too little, too late. Australian foreign aid contributions are at an all-time low. After nine years in office and now into its third proposal, the first nuclear submarine is not likely to be in service for another two decades, again leaving Australia vulnerable.

Whilst Australians call for more honesty in government, the Morrison government refuses to have a national integrity commission, but it has stacked the courts and the Administrative Appeals Tribunals with its mates, many of whom are underqualified for the job. In other attempts to avoid scrutiny, the Morrison government has cut $783 million from the ABC, and $14 million from the Audit Office. The coalition killed off Australian car making, but now pretentiously talks about backing Australian manufacturing. At a time that it is talking up national security, it has presided over the 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin.

I go to some of the rorting—and, again, this is not a comprehensive list but some of the issues perhaps more publicly talked about. There was the $660 million car park fund, primarily used to fund questionable car parks in coalition held marginal seats. We had the $100 million sports rorts, again used to fund projects in coalition seats. There were millions of dollars in water buybacks, sometimes paid out at rates well above the market rate and, not surprisingly, to either people connected to or friends of the current government. We had the $220 million regional rorts program; the $3 billion road rorts program, where some 83 per cent of the funding went to coalition held seats; and the $150 million pool rorts fund, where again just about all the money went to coalition seats.

There was the $440 million Great Barrier Reef Foundation allocation, criticised by the Auditor-General and without any justification whatsoever. There's the $30 million paid for the Leppington Triangle airport land, again purchased at an estimated 10 times the market value. Even more concerning, the land was then leased back to the buyers at a value of less than $1 million. There's the $39 million allegedly improperly paid to an Australian shipbuilder, and the $1 million wasted on Clive Palmer's High Court challenge to the Western Australian border closures.

In the course of this debate, I've heard coalition speakers come into this chamber and boast about the number of projects they've been able to secure funding for in their electorate. What they were really doing was acknowledging the rorts of this government and how it channelled all of those funds into coalition held seats. The question today is whether Australia is in fact a better place after nine years of coalition governments and whether we could have done better over that time. More importantly, people are now asking, 'What are the emerging difficulties into the future, and who is best able to lead us through those difficulties?' Navigating difficulties takes good leadership, something that is sadly lacking in this government.

I begin by talking about the economy. The government claim that they are better economic managers. The claim is simply untrue, as many speakers from this side of the House have pointed out in their contributions to this debate. After this government has been in office for nine years, as has been pointed out by other speakers, national debt not only doubled before COVID but today is getting close to a trillion dollars. This is a government that has had nine years to get its house in order, to gets its economy in order and to get its budget in order—nine years. The excuse 'we had to correct the mistakes of the previous governments' ran out years ago. If they can't do it after nine years, when will they be able to do it? The reality is that they can't, because they do not have the competency.

We then go to housing ownership. That's one of the most critical issues in most people's lives. It's probably the biggest investment they will make. Ownership rates in Australia are falling. House prices are now skyrocketing. It's likely that most first home buyers who want to get into the housing market will never be able to do so unless they have very rich parents or are on very high incomes. For those who can get a loan, future interest rate rises are likely to cripple them. At the same time, public housing numbers across Australia are falling. Three decades ago, in my own state of South Australia, there were over 60,000 public houses available. Today the number is just over 30,000. Even if you add to that the community houses that are available, the figure for social housing is well below what it was three decades ago. No wonder we have people that are homeless and no wonder people are struggling to get a roof over their head. Housing security matters. Housing security, whether it's public housing, private rental or personal ownership, creates stability and certainty in life. That's why Labor's $10 million commitment to social and affordable housing, where 30,000 houses will be built, is so important.

The Morrison government also talks about building up the economy through immigration and the like. Again I see a government that constantly relies on population growth to grow the economy. If you look at the forward estimates, where economic growth is projected, it's all based on population growth. Economic growth should not be dependent on population growth. The 10 most livable countries in the world all have relatively stable populations, and most of them have a population of fewer than 10 million people. We should have a strong and growing economy, and population growth should not be used to prop up the economy but to allow further expansion of economic opportunities where workforce shortages are a constraint.

We then look at unemployment. The statistics on unemployment don't reveal the real situation. As is said time and time again, an hour of work a week is not employment. Today we have people that are working multiple jobs to make ends meet. And, even worse than that, those multiple jobs, even full-time jobs, have never been more insecure. Wages are stagnant. My concern is that, whilst unemployment rates appear to be falling, once the borders are fully open and overseas temporary visa holders, backpackers and students come back into the country, they will absorb many of the jobs that are currently available. So, unless we do something about securing jobs for people today, the situation will change again in future, as it has been doing for the last decade, where unemployment rates were much higher and underemployment rates were even worse.

Job security is critical for people's futures. It is the one thing that people care about more than anything else, because, without job security, they see no future. Yet again, I see a government that is prepared to allow people to come in, and rightly so in many cases, not only without ensuring the jobs in this country are secure for those people—because many of them are exploited when they come here and get work, and we have had plenty of evidence of that—but also without ensuring that people within Australia have the secure jobs that they are looking for. The situation is deteriorating. Most Australians do not have secure work. Even when people have full-time work, because of the changing nature of the economy, there is less security in any job today than ever before.

We now have a government that is clearly in its dying days. As I said in my three-minute statement, it has reached its use-by date. It has become an incompetent rabble, where even its own members are turning on each other and turning on their prime minister. Its rorts over the last nine years have become a lead weight around this government's neck. That's why they don't want an anticorruption commission. They have fought, tooth and nail, to stop that from happening. They talk about it, as we all know, but they don't really want it. They don't want it, because they don't want it to expose and inquire into their very own rorts. But that will change if we get a change of government.

I have no doubt that the coalition government of today will try to buy its way back into government when it hands down its budget next month. It will run a smear campaign against the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, as it has been trying to do over the last few weeks, and every day in question time in this chamber. It will run a fear campaign against Labor on national security, international security and taxation, and, again, we have seen that day in and day out. It is all they have left to campaign on. But it will take a lot more than that to save the Morrison government. It's time for an Albanese-led Labor government to take office in this country.

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