Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too wish to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2021-2022 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2021-2022. It is an opportunity to talk about the spending of the government but also to look at areas where money isn't being spent properly and areas where money should have been spent.

The Morrison government is all about distraction. Because there could be an election called at some stage in March, these last two weeks of parliament may be the end of this parliamentary session. You would think the government would come to this place with bills that had a better vision for Australia and the betterment of our next generation of Australians, a better plan for pensioners and a better plan for creating jobs and some good infrastructure that creates local jobs. Instead, in the last two weeks of parliament we have seen bills that have been divisive, wedge politics and issues that are not for the betterment of this country. The government is all about distraction, as I said, instead of taking action on the things that matter to Australians. We deserve an economy that works for the Australian people, not the other way round. This country deserves a government that actually puts them first and not politics first. That's all we've seen here in the last two weeks.

In the last two weeks there has been a tirade on the Leader of the Opposition. There have been all sorts of comments about fiscal responsibility, him not having had a treasury position and a range of other things. Our side of politics, the Labor Party, shouldn't be lectured on fiscal responsibility by the most wasteful government since Federation. We shouldn't be lectured by a government that doubled the debt before the pandemic. Before the pandemic the debt had been doubled. Despite the rhetoric from the government, it is one of the highest-taxing governments of the last 30 years. It is now collecting approximately $4,500 more from each Australian than when Labor was last in government in 2013. That is, $4,500 more on average from every single Australian since Labor was in government in 2013.

When you look at their track record over the last three years you see that they have had major failings. They failed on the vaccine rollout. They didn't deliver one new federal quarantine facility. They didn't order enough rapid antigen tests. They presided over a crisis in aged care. They disappeared when workers and small businesses needed help the most. I spoke to many small businesses in my electorate, as many of you would have. They told me of the trials, tribulations and difficult times they were having. We saw the government splash around billions of dollars on JobKeeper payments to businesses. Many did quite well out of it. We saw businesses whose takings tripled still receive billions of dollars in JobKeeper.

The failures aren't limited to budgetary matters either. We know that the economy is suffering under this government's watch. Productivity has been flatlining, and poor productivity performance means a smaller economy that's growing less than it could be. Another decade of failed productivity targets would leave very hardworking Australians—Australian families—worse off.

Something that this Prime Minister and Treasurer and this government will never understand is that you can't rort and waste your way to productivity growth. To really get productivity moving, we need investment in energy, technology, infrastructure and human capital—in people and not politics. We need investment in infrastructure that will propel our economy forward, cleaner and cheaper energy and an NBN that will underpin our digital economy.

We need a plan to train people through the TAFE and university systems and more university places to fill skills shortages, now and into the future. Last week I met with Engineers Australia and they told me that there is not a single course in this country for nuclear engineers—not a single course in this country—and, on the other hand, we're talking about building nuclear-powered submarines. Who's going to do it? And there's no plan in place. There is no training facility. There is nowhere that someone can train as a nuclear engineer to be able to work on the nuclear-powered submarines.

We cannot afford another decade like this. This government has just looked at quick fixes, pointscoring and political fixes, not fixes to get this country on its feet to be a power in the future.

You can see this when you look at different areas, and the pension is an area I've spoken about many times in this place. This government has a very bad track record on supporting pensioners. We've become used to seeing the government try and chip away at people's aged pensions, ever since they've been in government. When we look at them, that's all that they've done when it comes to policies on pensions—pensions for people who have worked hard and contributed to our economy and our society all their lives.

When Labor was last in government, there was an actual increase of $30, on top of CPIs, on top of other increases that come naturally throughout the course of the year—an actual increase. Over the last seven years, this government's track record has been to cut, or to try to cut, the pension, time and time again. And it's on the record. In 2014, in their first budget, they tried to cut the pension indexation, and, as I've said, that cut would have meant that pensioners would have been forced to live on $80 less a week within 10 years. In that same year, they cut a billion dollars from pensioner concessions. Then they axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees holding the Commonwealth healthcare card. In 2015, they did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. The pension assets test—in other words, the amount that you can have in assets and still receive the pension—since it came into being has always been increased, not decreased, because the cost of living goes up and everything goes up with it. This was the first government that actually decreased it—brought it down. That affected, as I said, 370,000 pensioners—including many in my electorate who perhaps had very small assets and were receiving a part pension and a part income from some of those very small assets. At the same time, the government tried to cut the pension for over 1.5 million Australians by scrapping the energy supplement for pensioners.

The list goes on and on. We can look at another debacle that has taken place, and that is the NDIS—and we heard others speak about the NDIS in this place earlier. When we introduced the NDIS, it was the only national scheme of its kind in the world—something to be very proud of. It was designed to revolutionise disability care and put choice and dignity at the forefront for people living with disabilities. It was the envy of the world. But this Liberal Morrison government, since coming into office, has done nothing but undermine the scheme, through ripping $4.6 billion out of the NDIS; through people receiving services, for example, that they don't need—and I hear this all the time in my electorate—while being denied the services that they actually require to live with dignity; and through difficult, complicated application and review processes, with 1,200 Australians with disability dying while waiting to be funded by the scheme. This is a government that has no real interest in the NDIS. If it did, it would be fixing it. There would be a bill before the House on how to better the NDIS, not the wedge politics we've been seeing over the last few weeks.

This being an appropriations bill, it's obviously about funding and monetary policies, and it takes me to infrastructure. The Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments have made a mockery in my electorate of the North-South Motorway. They've been delaying money in every budget since 2013. I have to say that it was a Labor initiative. I was there with the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, in 2013 when we turned the first sod. It was a Labor initiative. We saw the Prime Minister flying into Adelaide last weekend to make a commitment for the North-South Motorway. But South Australians have woken up to this government. We can't trust that this money will ever come, let alone when it was promised, as has been the history since 2013, when they came into government. How many more times will the government reannounce funding for this project instead of actually getting on with delivering it? Infrastructure projects are key job creators. If you want to create jobs and boost the economy, it's done through good infrastructure, and this government has dismally failed on this.

Construction of the final passage of the North-South Corridor has come to a standstill. Last year, documents leaked by members of the state Liberal government showed that the North-South Corridor upgrade may not be completed until possibly 2035, a decade later than was originally planned by Labor. This means that we could experience five federal elections, four Olympic Games, until this upgrade is complete. This means greater uncertainty for businesses and residents. It means people are being left in limbo at a time when business confidence is at an all time low. We have seen a government that again plays wedge politics instead of putting bills before this House in this cycle of parliament to better the economy and to make Australia a better country. They're more interested in politics than the betterment of this nation.

Health care and Medicare are more important areas that this government has neglected. The pandemic has shown us how important our healthcare system is, but this government can't be trusted with it. It recently launched its biggest attack on Medicare in decades. To use the recent Victorian COVID-19 outbreak to sneak in almost 1,000 changes to the Medicare Benefits Schedule is just wrong on so many levels. These changes would radically alter the cost of hundreds of orthopaedic, cardiac and general surgery items. And the Morrison government's plan to cut Medicare rebates means patients must choose between cancelling life-changing surgeries and being hit with huge bills that they can't afford to pay or that they were never told about. Many are finding that surprise when they go for surgery. It's estimated that, in South Australia, patients are paying around 33 per cent more out of pocket for non-referral visits, compared to 2013.

We've seen a government that—from 2013, when they were elected—have said that they have a vision for this nation, but their only vision is that they stay in power. That's their No. 1 goal. As I said, at this stage of the cycle of the three-year term—when we should be seeing debates and bills in this place about our education system, about bettering our training systems, about health care and about giving pensioners some certainty and dignity in their lives—we're seeing the typical wedge politics and scaremongering. We're seeing division, which they want to create, in the community through the bills that they have brought to this House—on what they thought were the most important things to discuss in these last few weeks. Australians are smarter than that. Australians know that the things that keep this country going—the things that matter to them—are education for their kids, a good healthcare system when they need it and secure work. They're the three things that the nation requires at this moment, but this government is more interested in playing politics and staying in power at any cost.

Those opposite have been in government for almost a decade, and over that time we've seen many, many failures, the biggest one of all being the pandemic. As I said, not a single quarantine facility has been built, when all the advice coming from the health bureaucrats and the experts was that we need a facility to house people for a period of time when they come into the country. We saw the spread of the pandemic. Yes, we did do better than most nations at the beginning, but when you see the things that weren't put in place, like the rapid antigen tests—I wrote, personally, to the health minister back in May last year, suggesting that we have rapid antigen tests, and the answer that came back was a no. Unfortunately, we have a government that is only interested in politics and securing its own future, not Australia's future.

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