Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024. As always, I've been listening to and talking to people in businesses in my regional and rural electorate of Forrest in WA and simply asking them: 'Are you better off now than you were a year ago when Labor came into government?' These are the hardworking Australians who want to get ahead. There's no doubt that Labor's budget will see inflation stay higher for longer, impacting on every Australian, including those in my electorate. That's every household, every small business, every self-funded retiree and every mortgage holder, who has been paying and will continue to pay more for longer than they should for goods and services. It's a budget built on bracket creep. That's additional taxes paid by hardworking Australians who are just trying to get ahead.

Labour promised to lower the cost of living. Well, it has broken that promise, and that's just one of at least 12 promises that Labor has broken. This budget does not support the hardworking Australians who simply want to get ahead and those who are on the front line of the effects of the cost of living, the cost to small businesses and Labor's increased taxes. These are the ones who are clearly now Labor's working poor, and this comes from a Labor government that's presiding over the highest rate of inflation since the target band of two to three per cent was first established in 1993.

At the same time that we have this historically high inflation rate, the government is frontloading the spending. Of the $20 billion in spending measures, $12 billion will roll out over the next 12 months. This actually means that inflation will stay higher for longer for Australian families and businesses. It's a big-spending, high-taxing budget that bakes in even greater structural spending. In fact, government spending has increased by $185 billion, but those same hardworking Australians who are just trying to get ahead have been ignored. Compared to the coalition's last budget, over the next five years the tax paid by Australians will increase by more than $300 million. Labor has removed the low- and middle-income tax offset, which means that 10 million Australians who earn under $126,000 will be paying up to $1,500 more a year in tax.

This government has sent Australia backwards in its first full year. There is no plan to address inflation, it has failed to deliver on cost-of-living relief, it has failed to deliver the $275 cut to electricity and it has certainly failed to deliver cheaper mortgages. It has failed to bring Australians even closer together as a united and cohesive nation. Instead, we are seeing division created by the government.

We know we're desperately short of housing and rentals, so Labor's answer is to bring in 1.5 million people—715,000 of those over the next two years. That's around 6,000 a week. Where on earth are they going to live, and how much will this increase rents, as well as building costs, for Australians? At the same time, they have cut infrastructure in the budget. It's a really contrary approach. The 1.5 million people will add to the pressure on waiting lists in hospitals, schools and childcare centres, particularly in rural and regional Australia, where we already have those childcare deserts.

Labor promised to get wages moving, but when paired with seven per cent inflation, real wages have actually gone backwards. At the same time, Labor is actually employing at least 10,000 new public servants. That's on top of the 181,000 already there, and I recently read where they're working on at least a 10.5 per cent wage increase, which is currently under negotiation.

There is no doubt that Labor's policies are making it harder and harder for people and business. It's certainly making it harder for small business. I hear about this all the time. Labor's high inflation is increasing every business input cost for pharmacies in rural, regional and remote areas, for farmers, for the truckies and for the transport and logistics sector. Labor is makes life harder for self-funded retirees. And, if you're using electricity, Labor is making it more expensive for you, as well as putting your access to reliable, affordable and available electricity at risk. So Labor is talking not only about a big Australia, with its 1.5 million migrants; it's clearly all about big unions, big business and big government being in charge.

We do know that regional Australia is well and truly in Labor's firing line. These are the very people, the businesses and industry in the ag and resources sector, that have supported and propped up the Australian economy through both the global financial crisis and COVID. The terms of trade prove this unequivocally. But both industries are under attack from both federal and state Labor governments, which have no respect for and place no value on these critical sectors, except perhaps as cash cows for their agenda of redistribution of the economic benefits of hard work and the redistribution of wealth. The Labor government is hitting both sectors with higher taxes, market intervention and layer upon layer of regulation and control.

Added to the price caps, the minister now has exceptional powers to control the gas industry. There is reduced funding for gas exploration and projects because the government has removed gas infrastructure from the National Reconstruction Fund. But Labor has also provided additional support for activists waging endless lawfare, has introduced a mandatory code of conduct, is applying higher taxes to gas companies, is introducing radical industrial relations laws and is using the safeguard mechanism, which is effectively another carbon tax, to add even greater cost to the sector.

Around 36 per cent of the companies affected by Labor's latest carbon tax are in WA. Iluka Resources at Capel processing plant in my electorate is just one of the key producers of critical minerals that is going to suffer—the critical minerals we need in the transition to lower emissions. If Labor is so keen to reduce emissions, why is it that Simcoa in my electorate, the one that produces silicon—another critical mineral used in solar panels—cannot secure the ash it needs in the extractive process because of state Labor's ban on sustainable hardwood logging. Instead, they're going to have to buy coal from Colombia, ship it to the Netherlands to be crushed and washed, and then ship it to the Bunbury port. I don't know how on earth this is a better result for global emissions reduction. They are also affected by the safeguard mechanism—the carbon tax.

Of great concern for future generations, as well as for state and federal budgets, is that there will be less—less—long-term investment in the gas sector in WA and the rest of Australia as a result of these measures. As for our trading partners, no wonder the Japanese are worried about sovereign risk and the continuity of critical energy supplies for their country. I see the Prime Minister has been in damage control on this issue. However, time will tell whether Japan will seek alternative suppliers to manage the sovereign risk Labor has created. There is no question that Labor pretends in public to support the gas industry, but its actions, the ones we've seen, speak louder than its words.

I'm seriously questioning whether Labor wants agriculture and food production in regional Australia either. Its own budget papers identify rural and regional Australia simply as the host of renewables, instead of the producers of some of the highest quality food in the world for both the Australian people and overseas consumers. We know from recent reports that Labor will not meet its 82 per cent renewables construction targets. It's well behind on its commitments to install the 22,000 solar panels every day that are needed, the 47-megawatt wind turbines every month to 2030, and the 28,000 kilometres of new transmission corridors at $100 billion. WA alone will need 4,000 kilometres of new transmission corridors at at least a million dollars a kilometre. All of this is to be located in regional and rural Australia. So how many communities, how many farms and how much of the food-producing land, the bushland area and the coastlines will be affected, and where? With the majority of those solar panels and wind turbines coming from China, I have serious concerns. These solar panels last only 10 to 15 years. The Labor government is actually undermining our national security by increasing our energy dependence on China.

Another part of Labor's budget gift to regional Australia, the area that's producing the wealth that's propping up their budget, is two new taxes. There's a new food and fibre tax on farmers to pay for the biosecurity risk created by international importers—those who actually compete with us in our domestic markets—costing our farmers $153 million. This is, effectively, forcing our fabulous local producers to cover their foreign-owned competitors' biosecurity import costs. I think it was David Littleproud who said, 'Why on earth would any Australian government tax their own farmers to allow foreigners to bring their products into this country?' Farmers are already paying charges on exporting their goods, but the Labor government is going to tax farmers. Add to this the 5.2-cent per litre increase in the heavy vehicle road-user charge, a cost that has to be passed onto people the country. This is the industry that throughout COVID was the backbone: it kept food in our supermarkets, it kept our industries going. It was the fantastic work of not only the truck drivers but also the entire industry that helped get us through some really tough times—and here is your reward: an increase taxes!

What's worse is that increases in transport costs disproportionately affect the cost of food and goods and everyday transport for people living in rural, regional and remote Australia. It disproportionately affects those people—us. It will also put up the cost for every small regional business and our farmers, because everything comes on the back of a truck. Many of these can't afford to pass the costs on. They are often pricetakers in their supply-and-value chain. They either have to absorb the costs or go out of business—they're the options. We've also got this government in the process of stopping live sheep exports, such a critical industry in WA. I suspect that once this is done Labor will move to stop live cattle exports as well. In their move to continue to reduce emissions, I'm really concerned about what's next. I don't know why the state government isn't standing up to Canberra on behalf of WA farmers—not only them but also their communities, the local businesses that depend on the sector, the grains industry that will be affected, and the broader WA economy.

But it doesn't stop there for regional and rural Australia. The impact of the decisions around pharmacies will most impact our small rural, regional and remote Australian pharmacies. These are not the big chains. These are the local small-business people who have invested. Add to this the fact that in regional Australia the government has extended the designated priority area for foreign doctors to work in peri-urban areas in the cities, away from rural and regional areas. We are desperately short of GPs in regional, rural and remote Australia. We know that 39 have already moved. Doctors have actually left our rural and regional areas to go to the cities as a result of this change. For rural and regional Australia this is a really key issue for us.

It doesn't stop there, either. For farmers and small-business owners with farms or premises in super funds, the tax will double for those with $3-million-plus, and the tax is now being applied to unrealised capital gains. How do you go if you've got a property in there and it changes year on year? This is going to be a nightmare. And what's next? I'm just waiting for Labor to introduce a methane tax on cows, sheep, pigs and goats. I read today in the papers that the Labor Party branches are pressuring the government to halve emissions from agriculture. What that says to me is that the methane tax is next. I'm not quite sure how Labor plans to administer it—whether it's asparagopsis or the tablets—to kangaroos, wild pigs and other feral animals, given the vast populations of them. At the same time that Labor's budget surplus is dependent on exports, this is happening to regional and rural Australia.

There are a lot of issues that are being faced by rural and regional Australia out of this particular budget. We're going to see increased and permanent structural spending, but I'm really concerned about the broader impacts of Labor's decisions, which really are going to affect rural and regional Australia the most. Increased taxes, the effects on those pharmacies and small businesses, and the disproportionate impact on rural and regional Australia, are, unfortunately, what we are seeing with Labor's budget.

Debate interrupted.

See this speech in context