Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My question relates to the work that the Minister for Finance and her department are doing to futureproof our economy. With joint oversight of investment funds like the Future Fund, which is Australia's version of a sovereign wealth fund, I'm keen to better understand the work being done in the department to ensure a future focused economy for all Australians. To be in a position where Australia's social security system, unemployment and underemployment, the cost-of-living crisis and the housing crisis are pushing more and more Australians into poverty is not a proud place to be.

Disadvantage in Australia is very real, including in my electorate of North Sydney. Recently, I heard from a young person who can't afford ongoing help for their mental health because they are already having to choose between groceries and essential service bills. I've heard from a mother who is worried her daughter cannot afford to move out of home. I've heard from an unemployed person on the disability service pension and the National Disability Insurance Scheme who's unable to access a GP with little to no out-of-pocket charges. I've heard from a local pharmacist who is sincerely concerned that his business will need to close or that he will at least need to fire two of his three pharmacists. I've heard from a self-funded retiree who receives no concessions and only lives with cost increases.

These personal experiences, shared from within my community across all stages of life—whether it is a young single worker, working families, small business owners, social security recipients or retirees—paint a picture of policy settings which seemingly insist on pitting generations against each other so that one generation wins and the next generation loses. Like most developed countries, Australia's population is ageing because of sustained low fertility and increased life expectancy. This has resulted in proportionally fewer children in the population and a larger proportion of people aged 65 or over. Working-age Australians, as a group, are net contributors to the budget. They pay more in taxes than they receive in either welfare benefits or spending. The contributions support older Australians, who then, having contributed earlier in life, take a lot more out in spending and pension payments than they contribute in taxes in their later life stage. Today's working-age Australians then, of course, anticipate that the generation after them will support them in the same way as they age.

But support through the tax and transfer system from the working population to children and older people is no longer delivering generational improvements in living standards. Instead, we are seeing wealth becoming more concentrated in older Australians and younger Australians being weighed down by not just the physical burden of real debt but the mental despair that comes with that realisation. Because of the ageing of the Australian population, young workers are being required to shoulder an accelerated share of the burden of financing government spending, an increasing proportion of which will benefit the nonworking, low-tax-paying older generations. At the same time many in the younger generations are struggling to find secure, well-paid jobs and secure, affordable housing, while many in older generations risk not receiving the support they need because government after government has failed to plan over the long-term on an intergenerational timescale. Many young workers are also having to pay off student loans. They are finding it almost impossible to buy a home, and they are going to have to deal with the rapidly growing costs of climate change. In truth, there was very little in the budget for young working Australians. There was no relief from rising university debt, there was little support for those struggling with their mental health and there was underwhelming action to meet the challenge of climate change.

Through it all it is most often young Australians who feel the financial distress most acutely, and there is ultimately little in this budget for those who have finished studying and started paying taxes. To address this intergenerational inequity and keep our economy future focused, we must get our macroeconomic policy settings right. The government must revisit the long list of productivity enhancing reforms advanced by federal and state productivity commissions to boost the long-term living standards. Tackling intergenerational inequity and poverty requires a whole-of-system approach addressing activity, productivity and wages, and will require the government to do some heavy lifting. Instead, we have been given a budget that has done little to offend but even less to drive a future-focused economy through reform. My question to the minister then is: what work is the department doing to overcome the vastly different impacts the government's policy settings have on the financial security of different generations and plan for the long-term intergenerational timescale?

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