Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the appropriation bills. I want to particularly address the portfolio areas for which I hold shadow responsibility—the arts, science, the digital economy and government services. This is a budget which fails to meet the needs of Australians and Australia in macroeconomic terms, in failing to address the inflation challenge we face—indeed, on the contrary, making the inflation challenge worse. It also fails to meet the needs of the nation across individual portfolios, including those for which I have responsibility.

I turn, firstly, to the Arts portfolio. Certainly all who believe that the Australian arts sector needs more Commonwealth arts officials and more Commonwealth bureaucrats will greet this budget with delight. But that's not something the coalition thinks is a wonderful idea. We believe a good principle when it comes to arts funding is getting as much of the money as possible to the front line, where shows are delivered, where audiences get to see performers. That principle is, sadly, very largely absent from this budget when it comes to arts funding.

We welcome continued funding support for the national collecting institutions, but this very much continues the work of the previous coalition government. On top of business-as-usual funding, we delivered $22 million for the new gallery at Bundanon in 2019; $20 million to the National Gallery for lighting upgrades in 2020; and $28.6 million for capital works at the National Gallery in May 2021. At the National Library we delivered nearly $30 million for Trove between 2016 and 2023, and in 2021 we delivered $47 million for digitising and the preservation of works held across eight national collecting institutions.

Similarly, the continuing support for attracting global screen productions, belatedly announced in this budget after Labor equivocated for quite some time, builds on the coalition's work. The Morrison government committed $540 million towards the location incentive program, which delivered an effective 30 per cent level of support to production budgets, matching globally competitive levels.

This budget, predictably, saw the Albanese government congratulating itself on its support for the arts, with the word 'record' being thrown around a lot. Actually, the fact is that annual Commonwealth arts funding reached a record level of $1 billion in 2021-22, under a coalition government. Nothing announced in Labor's budget changes that fact.

We also saw the provision of funding for the new Creative Australia. It is what used to be known as the Australia Council, which has been abolished and replaced by Creative Australia, although its board will be called the Australia Council board—crystal clear! What's also crystal clear is $199 million of funding over four years for more Commonwealth arts officials; we know that around Australia that is what people are crying out for! This funding has been redirected from a number of places, with the government having cancelled several programs funded under the previous coalition government—including the temporary support fund, which supported Australian made and scripted movies and television productions, and the balance of the location incentive program. Again, we see this fundamental approach—cut money going to frontline delivery of arts activity and shift money to add more bureaucrats in Canberra. Every dollar which goes to fund more bureaucrats is a dollar that cannot go to artists, performers and people in the arts sector who deliver actual arts activities.

Let me turn to the Science portfolio, where, again, there has been a lamentable lack of focus from this government. There's not much new money for science in this budget. There's a fair bit of repackaging and rebadging. For example, the measure for enhanced support of small and medium-sized businesses and startups in Budget Paper No. 2 on page 163 predominantly repurposes and expands funding that was previously supporting small and medium enterprises through the entrepreneurs program. It's additionally offset by redirecting funding from within the Industry, Science and Resources portfolio. The measure for growing Australia's critical technologies industries in Budget Paper No. 2 on page 164 will be fully offset by redirecting funding from within the Industry, Science and Resources portfolio. We did see the release of the National Quantum Strategy, but there was no new funding associated with the announcement and no detail of how those words on the page will be translated into deliverable action. There was no new funding for artificial intelligence in this budget; instead there was roughly $20 million per year over five years to be funded by 'redirecting funding' from within the industry portfolio. It is perhaps no great surprise that the reaction from stakeholders has been less than overwhelming. The CEO of Sapia.ai, Barb Hyman, said:

This is a massive missed opportunity from the Federal Government to surge ahead in what is fast becoming the race to not only pioneer but leverage new AI technologies.

…   …   …

… this innovation is time-sensitive. By the time it's a focus globally, it will be too late.

In the space sector, we have also seen a troubling lack of commitment from the Albanese government. In the October 2022 budget, there was $181 million dollars over the four-year forward estimates under the program for growing Australia's space industry. In this budget, nearly $70 million of that has simply been cut. In Budget Paper No. 2, page 166, under the measure for refocusing support for the Australian space industry, there has been $34.4 million removed from 2022-23, $9 million removed from 2023-24 and $8 million removed from 2024-25, with the savings being partially redirected to fund other government priorities. There it is in black and white: space is not a priority for this government.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 17 : 37 to 18 : 05

The Australian space association fears for the future of the Moon to Mars initiative. Tenders were expected to have been opened by now, but by the time of the budget there had been no movement on the National Space Mission for Earth Observation. The previous government, the coalition, allocated $1.2 billion from 2021-22, with $38.5 million per year ongoing for this project. That would have seen Australia design, build and operate four new satellites. We also invested $48.9 million in the 2018-19 and the 2021-22 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlooks over five years in the Australian Space Agency. By contrast, Labor has committed just $34.2 million over three years from 2023-24. This comes at a time when developing sovereign space capability and sovereign satellite capability is key not only to business opportunities but also to strengthening our national security at a time when space is increasingly highly contested. It seems that the Prime Minister is happy to turn up at a photo opportunity at the remarkable Australian company Gilmour Space Technologies, but when it comes to maintaining the previous coalition government's substantial long-term funding commitments to growing Australia's space industry, the Prime Minister is nowhere to be seen.

In the digital economy sector, there is still no minister for the digital economy. The coalition government had such a minister. Leading nations around the world have such a minister. The United Kingdom, for example, has a Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, and Singapore does too. The coalition has a shadow minister for the digital economy, but curiously, this Labor government refuses to have such a portfolio, and neither has it produced a digital economy strategy. On the contrary, we have seen funding being cut in this area. The previous coalition government allocated more than $620 million over seven years to support a digital identity system, and we had developed draft legislation, with an exposure draft of the Trusted Digital Identity Bill being released in October 2021. In our 2022 election commitments we said we would expand the digital identity system; the Australian Labor Party did not announce a policy position on this issue. Labor does not appear to be progressing this legislation—certainly nothing has happened to date—and it has greatly reduced funding in this area. There was a mere $26.9 million allocated in this budget for the 2023-24 year to 'sustain and develop the next stage of the digital ID program'.

Under the previous coalition government some $60 million was invested in a Cyber Hubs program designed to deliver cybersecurity capability to Commonwealth entities. In the October budget, this government provided continued funding of $31.3 million. However, in the most recent budget, the decision has been taken to end the program. This budget allocates just $12.2 million to sustain cyber resilience of Commonwealth entities currently serviced by the Cyber Hubs pilot program. That means they're bringing this program to an end. At a time when the digital economy is of such critical importance, our advancement in the world and our national increase in productivity depend crucially on how we embrace technology and the digital economy. This government's lack of interest is a missed opportunity for Australia.

I turn now to the government services sector. The fact is that this government's failure to address the cost-of-living crisis means that more Australians are reaching for support from government. If ever there was a time to invest sensibly in ensuring the seamless, simple and safe delivery of government services it would be now, but this current government seems determined to miss the opportunity. This budget reveals a lamentable lack of vision for government services, particularly for the data and digital systems that today make up the backbone of Services Australia.

Under this budget, the minister has again failed to deliver a single new digital service delivery budget measure. The online government services portal, myGov, which connects Australians to Centrelink and Medicare, amongst other federal and state services, has received only a single year of funding under Labor's 2023-24 budget. Just think about that for a second, a single year's funding. Yet we have seen minister after minister, before this most recent budget, wheel out their standard talking points that it was somehow outrageous that the former coalition government had not locked in continued multiyear funding for every program in every portfolio across government. Apparently if you were to fund a program for only a year, that was a huge problem. And what is it that Labor have done with myGov? They've funded it for only a year.

Disturbingly, there has been no additional investment made to continue the transformation of myGov. Rather, the government says that its money is simply to 'sustain' the platform. That's code for funding that's designed to do no more than keep the lights on.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

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This is code for funding that is designed to do no more than keep the lights on, rather than enhance or improve myGov in any meaningful way. Labor's funding decision falls far short of the initial $138 million the independent, expert-led myGov user audit recommended. That user audit, led by respected former Telstra CEO David Thodey, made this recommendation following the thorough review of the myGov platform which reported earlier this year.

By contrast, the coalition when in government delivered sustainment funding alongside additional investments to upgrade the platform. In 2021-22 under our Digital Economy Strategy we delivered a $200.1 million myGov investment to deliver a simpler and more tailored experience for Australians. The coalition's investment in myGov was recently assessed by the user audit as being 'well crafted' and putting in place 'much-needed building blocks for a better myGov'.

But the coalition didn't just stop with myGov. For example, we also invested over $1.5 billion on the Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation project, upgrading vital IT infrastructure that underpins the payment system. Unfortunately, upgrading myGov and other digital systems will be more difficult in the future because under Labor over 1,200 specialist IT jobs at Services Australia have been cut, as this Labor government dances to the tune of its union masters and in this case the Community and Public Sector Union.

There were many good ideas raised in the recent myGov user audit—a standardised, open-source national digital and data design standard; a digital and data investment fund, modelled on the successful New South Wales government's Digital Restart Fund; and deeper cooperation with state, territory and local governments on key joint initiatives, such as the digital identity system. All of these were highlights of the recent myGov user audit. These recommendations, you would think, would be taken up by this government, but, sadly, there is nothing to be found in the budget papers demonstrating any commitment towards delivery of these important objectives. This is bad news for Australians who expect and deserve modern digital-led service delivery.

I conclude with the observation that this budget has left middle Australia behind with broken promises on energy prices and putting more pressure on inflation. It has also left behind important opportunities in the arts, in science, in space, for the digital economy and in government services. This has been an underwhelming budget and Australians will suffer on many fronts as a result.

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