David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Lilley proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government putting at risk the living standards of middle Australia by its failure to invest adequately in the reforms to build the capacity of the Australian economy.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The test of any budget is the degree to which it builds for the future. This Treasurer has splashed a lot of money around. It is always popular to do that, and it is easy to do that in very good times when there is a 21st century gold rush on. He has been splashing money around like confetti. But doing that is not building for the future. At the Press Club today the Treasurer said that this budget contained far-sighted reform, that it was all about the future. There is an old saying: if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. What the Treasurer has tried in this budget is ignorance.

The absence in this budget of any far-sighted initiatives when it comes to training and education means that we have prejudiced our future—we have not put forward the initiatives required to invest in productivity, to lift our growth and to maintain prosperity well into the future. So it is the failure of the government particularly to invest in education and training as well as the failure of the government to put forward a national infrastructure plan that mean that this Treasurer has turned his back on the future. He did not fairly face the future; he turned his back on the future.

This budget is more directed at the government’s short-term political needs than the long-term needs of the country. This Treasurer has turned his back on far-sighted, serious, broad based reform that is absolutely essential to lift productivity and to ease the speed limits on the Australian economy. In doing that, the Treasurer has turned his back on all of the expert advice that is coming to this government about the need to lift productivity to ensure that we can create wealth for the future. Let me quote the Business Council, an organisation that is close to the Treasurer and the government. The Business Council had this to say:

Serious constraints and imbalances are emerging within the economy that, in the absence of reform in key areas, will slow growth, limit opportunities and undermine the economy’s capacity to deal with longer-term challenges ...

Or why don’t we quote the OECD:

... reform efforts have slackened off, despite new challenges.

Perhaps most significantly, particularly for all those Australian families paying higher interest rates, the Treasurer has ignored the concerns of the Reserve Bank in their Statement on Monetary Policy published only last week. So Australians have had two interest rate rises in the last 14 months from this Treasurer, who promised record low interest rates at the last election. They have had two interest rate rises since that time, which is putting families in this country under considerable financial pressure. This is what the Reserve Bank board had to say last week, after they raised interest rates for the second time:

... the economy has been operating with limited spare capacity, and underlying inflation has been forecast to increase gradually ... the Board had taken the view that the next move in interest rates was more likely to be up than down ...

So what does the Treasurer do in the face of this challenge, clearly outlined by the Reserve Bank board in their Statement on Monetary Policy? Despite the fact that we have a 21st century gold rush, he does not include in this budget a national plan for infrastructure. We get a bit of National Party pork-barrelling and a bit more, but no overall national plan for infrastructure, which is so essential to lift our productivity.

And we most certainly get no action when it comes to the skills of our people to address the skills crisis and the government’s neglect of education. We are the only country in the OECD that has gone backwards in our investment when it comes to the education of our people. Investment in all the other countries is going up, particularly countries in our region. It is absolutely critical that we be more competitive because we have escalating foreign debt.

The Treasurer in this House has never before conceded that foreign debt—or our current account deficit—is a problem. Indeed, he did not concede that in the budget. You could not find very much in the budget about the Treasurer’s concern about the current account deficit. But we did get it at the Press Club today. He did admit that it was a problem. The truth is that the Treasurer is forecasting a recovery in exports in the budget. He has done so in every one of the last six budgets, and it has failed to materialise. It is our escalating current account deficit that is leading to an explosion in our foreign debt—up 2½ times from $193 billion to $500 billion. So this Treasurer here is the half-trillion dollar man! He has a foreign debt of $500 billion.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was gonna get it down!

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was. Then we had the ridiculous situation a week or so ago where he said it was zero debt day. All this Treasurer has done is shift the burden to households. He has sold assets, he has put up his taxes, he has taken the lazy way out and Australian households are now indebted to a great extent. It goes right back to the policy prescriptions of this Treasurer. Households have racked up $1 trillion of debt and foreign debt has blown out to half a trillion dollars. As Peter Costello knows, as foreign debt rises so too does the risk to interest rates.

I should quote here the Treasurer’s own words from 1995. He was there in front of the debt truck. It had the numbers on it—$180 billion. He expressed his cold anger at a foreign debt of $180 billion. Where is the cold anger now, Treasurer? Where is the cold anger now that it has hit $500 billion? The half-trillion dollar man. Do you know what he said in 1995, when it was at $180 billion? He referred to:

… pressure on interest rates, on home buyers, on businesses, on those who have credit card bills, on those who are trying to pay off their cars and their mortgages.

That is what is happening out in the suburbs and the great towns and regional areas of this country, Treasurer. And you know very well, as the IMF has warned, that this does pose a threat to our interest rates. I will quote from the IMF:

... sustained current account deficits and the build-up of external debt ... could leave Australia potentially vulnerable to shifts in market sentiment ...

So, Treasurer, you are fairly blase about this problem. It is little wonder that you remarked on radio in Melbourne during the week that a rise in interest rates was not a problem for people with small mortgages. That was what our Treasurer said. The problem is there are no cheap houses and no small mortgages. This is a Treasurer who is completely out of touch. Who can forget when last year this Treasurer went on one of the current affairs programs and said, ‘Any interest rate with a single digit is okay.’ Does that mean that this Treasurer thinks an interest rate of 9.5 per cent is okay? Is that where he really thinks interest rates are heading? Is that why he is so blase about our level of foreign debt and the risk that it poses to interest rates in this country and the risk that it poses to sustainable prosperity in this country?

Of course, the Treasurer would claim that he has put forward a far-reaching tax reform package in the budget. I think if we look at that, we could call it a modest reform package. ‘Modesty’ is where he delivers a small amount of money to those in Middle Australia and on low incomes, but, of course, he is giving them back less than he has taken during the period that he has been in government. These people are currently facing the triple whammy. We have had two interest rate rises, we have record petrol prices and we have his industrial relations legislation which is eating away at the wages and working conditions of Australians. For those who lose their penalty rates that can mean over $200 a month. Someone receiving $10, $20 or even $30 from the Treasurer in this tax package can easily have that eaten up by rises in petrol prices, by the attack on their wages and working conditions and, of course, by rising interest rates, which he is very blase about.

But let us go back to the tax package. By next year, without any changes, average wage earners would have paid $13.40 per week more tax than the burden they faced in 1996. In the budget, he gives them less than $10 back. As I have said before, that is just $10 a week for someone on an average income and that is going to have to stretch a long way because the cost of servicing an average mortgage has increased by almost $13 a week since the last election. That is before you come to increases in the price of petrol. Let us have a look at the fairness of the tax package. This is a Treasurer who brought a tax package in here last year that absolutely ignored and treated with contempt low- and middle-income earners in this community. When we stood up and fought for them, all we got was the smirk and the ridicule because, once again, the Treasurer demonstrated last year just how out of touch he is with average Australians.

Labor is satisfied that this year’s tax proposals are fairer than those proposed last year. While last year’s tax cuts delivered only a third of the total relief on offer to those earning under $50,000 and two-thirds to those on incomes above, at least this year it delivers half and half. At least this year, half the tax cuts go to those below $50,000 and half go to those above $50,000. But the Treasurer says, ‘It’s a reform package.’ It is a bit of a reform package, but it has a way to go. Certainly, when we look at measures like the new $600 tax offset—a direct copy of what we put forward last year—which lifts the tax-free threshold to $10,000, that will certainly deliver for people moving from welfare to work and parents returning to work. But there is one problem in here and it shows you how sneaky this Treasurer is. Unlike Labor’s proposal at the last budget, the Treasurer’s proposal will not be available in the fortnightly pay packet when it is needed most. These are some of the lowest income earners in our community, but he has not been round crowing about that.

Similarly, the decision to lift the 30c threshold from $21,000 to $25,000 and reduce the Medicare levy shade-in will improve incentives for low-income earners. Notwithstanding these improvements, the tax measures announced last night fall short of systematically addressing punishingly high effective marginal tax rates. They are still in the system punishing, particularly, second-income earners who are predominantly women—so much for this Treasurer’s lofty rhetoric about being female friendly. He has constructed one of the most unfriendly tax systems in the world when it comes to women and he continues to do it. Middle-income families will face a tax grab on extra earnings of 51.5c in the dollar because the increase in the family tax benefit A threshold just shifts taper zones; it does not actually reduce them. Similarly, second-income earners will still routinely face marginal tax rates of up to 60c in the dollar on personal income between $10,000 and $20,000 per year. So it is not a perfect package, but it is certainly an improvement.

But what does all this add up to? What this adds up to is that the government only have one long-term plan to produce economic growth and lift productivity. That long-term plan is to slash wages. That long-term plan is to take the Australian workforce down the food chain, down the low-skilled, low-wage road. That is the plan they have to be more competitive—to compete against China and India, to compete in our region. That is their plan. But we have a different plan. We have a long-term plan. We have a belief in the Australian workforce. We believe we must train the Australian workforce. We believe we must educate the Australian workforce. We believe we must go forward for the long term in bold new initiatives when it comes to education and training, not back to the Dark Ages where this Treasurer wants to take Australian working conditions.

So there is a very clear and stark difference and it jumps out of the budget. You could see it in the budget speech. You open it up and, on the last page, there is a heading ‘Education’ with about five or six lines and that is it. In 4,000 words, the Treasurer could barely manage 100 words, or even 50. When it comes to the most critical element of boosting productivity in this society, of maintaining prosperity for the future, the Treasurer turned his back on the future; he went back to the past. He wants to go back to the industrial relations Dark Ages. He does not want to skill this workforce, he does not want to train this workforce and he does not want to invest in the future. That is why this budget does not provide for the long term. It is merely a short-term political document from someone who is not a serious Treasurer when it comes to reform—just a pretend PM. (Time expired)

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This matter of public importance is supposedly about the living standards of Middle Australia and the government’s failure to invest adequately in reforms to build the capacity of the Australian economy. I listened very carefully to 15 minutes of a speech from the shadow Treasurer and he named not one single area of infrastructure which he thinks the government should have invested in last night but failed to do so. There was not one road—

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the Princes Highway on the South Coast?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did not mention the Princes Highway. The member for Throsby interjects, asking about the Princes Highway. There is one problem—the shadow Treasurer did not mention the Princes Highway. The Labor Party have an MPI on the failure to invest in infrastructure, they mention not one policy or area of infrastructure and it takes the backbench to interject on their own spokesman to say what he should have said—the Princes Highway. But he did not say it. He had 15 minutes in which to name the projects that we have failed to invest in. He just did not get around to mentioning one—not one road, not one rail, not one tax cut, not one superannuation change and not one IR change. We heard 15 minutes on an MPI which is allegedly about the failure to invest in infrastructure and not one policy was mentioned.

I think it was Gary Gray who said that he thought Labor’s problem was that they were getting white sliced bread politicians—people who come through their organisation, go to Labor Party training schools and come into parliament with no real business experience or no real life experience and no commitment to anything. And when he was talking about it who was he referring to? The member for Perth and the member for Lilley. What they learned at the ALP training school is to get up and complain about everything in the world but to never have a policy.

I invite those people who are sitting in the gallery to think about this: last night for 30 minutes I presented a detailed plan on how this government would invest in the Australian economy with $800 million for the Hume Highway, $220 million for the Bruce Highway, $45 million to do flood works in Tully, $323 million for the Great Northern Highway, money for the East Tamar Highway, $500 million for the Murray-Darling Basin and $220 million for the Australian Rail Track Corporation. I stood here and I enumerated them one by one in relation to rail, road and transport. Then I went on to tax—tax thresholds and tax rates. Then I went on to superannuation, business tax and depreciation. Then I went on to small business changes. I went through them one by one.

You would think that if the Labor Party had a complaint that there were not enough projects they would have come in here at the first opportunity to reply to the budget and say, ‘You were wrong about the Great Northern Highway. That money should have gone to the Princes Highway; it has a higher business case.’ But he did not say that, did he? He could have said, ‘You were wrong about the Murray-Darling Basin Commission because what we ought to be doing is working on rivers up in northern Queensland,’ but he did not. He could have said, ‘You were wrong on superannuation because you should not have changed end benefits; you should have addressed contributions tax,’ but he did not. He could have said, ‘You were wrong about the income tax rate because you moved thresholds too much at the top when you should have moved them down the bottom,’ or, ‘You are wrong about the rate,’ but he never actually had a policy. This is what you get from a white-bread politician—whatever the government has done it is the wrong thing, but what he would do he cannot ever say. Whatever you do, never announce a policy, because if you announce a policy you might be held accountable and that is the one thing to be avoided at all costs by the roosters of the Labor Party. Never be held accountable. If you put a policy out there, people can assess it. They can work out distributionally whether it is better or worse. They can work out who would be the winners and who would be the losers.

In the lead up to this budget, the shadow Treasurer was out there saying what I should do in relation to tax. Somebody put this question to him: what do you think the rate should be? It was not a bad question. He said, ‘I am not putting any rates out there because then Peter Costello would cost them and he would come into the parliament and debate them.’ Fancy actually discussing a policy. He cannot put out a policy. Why? Because I would debate a policy. So he comes in here and engages in 15 minutes of diatribe, allegedly on the failure to invest, without naming any particular project.

I have to say that the Minister for Foreign Affairs was pretty good in question time today. He observed that he has been here for 21 years. I have not been here for that long, but I do not think I have ever seen an opposition run out of questions on the budget at No. 5 the day after. Normally, they try to keep going for 10 questions. Some of you have not been here long enough to know that it did not used to be like this. During budget week—and some of you are newer members—

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was the shadow Treasurer—

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘When I was the shadow Treasurer,’ the Minister for Foreign Affairs has interjected.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

we savaged the government.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During budget week the parliament would debate the budget, questions would be asked of the Treasurer and alternatives would be put. The opposition would not come in here the day after, ask three or four questions, put up a pretence and move on to the Cole royal commission. The opposition might as well come in here and wave a white flag as to go on to the Cole royal commission after five questions. I have never seen a worse response. I must say to the Labor backbench that I have now seen a lot of Labor shadow Treasurers. We had the member for Holt, Mr Gareth Evans. After that, we had the member for Hotham, Mr Crean. After that we had the member for Fraser, Mr McMullan.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was hopeless.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After that we had the member for Werriwa, Mr Latham.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was excellent!

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then we had the member for Hotham again, and now we have the member for Lilley. It is a big call as to who was the worst.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lilley, I think.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a big call as to who is the worst, but I have never heard a weaker response to a budget—and I have done a few of them now—than I have heard in this MPI.

It is hard for me to address the areas where allegedly we failed to invest in infrastructure because I have not heard them, but I will remind the House what we did in relation to infrastructure: $2.3 billion, a 20 per cent increase, for our national infrastructure plan. I think it was said by the member for Lilley that there was no national infrastructure plan. We have AusLink—a five-year program. It was $12 billion; we increased it by 20 per cent last night. It is the biggest investment in road and rail transport in Australian history. It has never been done before. Last night we added to it the Hume Highway, the Bruce Highway, the Tully works, the Great Northern Highway, the Sturt Highway, the East Tamar Highway and the Victoria Highway.

We outlined all of the projects, including a national infrastructure plan of a dimension never seen before. The Murray-Darling Basin received the biggest injection of funds. The Darling is our biggest river catchment area. The Darling comes out of Queensland and joins the Murray, which divides New South Wales and Victoria. It flows to South Australia and provides the drinking water for Adelaide. We outlined an investment in dams and irrigation, an investment which has never been made before. That was the investment of last night.

Let us go to medical research—an area where Australia leads, as you heard during question time. We invented the bionic ear, penicillin and treatment for stomach ulcers and melanomas. Do I hear someone say one of those machines—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The pacemaker.

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australian scientists have led the world. We announced an investment last night to increase health and medical research, which was $125 million per annum, to $700 million—a fivefold increase—for 65 new fellowships and $235 million for laboratories and facilities and investment programs. But did he say, for example, that we had given it to the wrong institutes or that it should not have been done or that it should have gone through the ARC rather than the NHMRC? This is what politics and political debate used to be before the roosters debased parliamentary debate in this place with the kind of snippety little speeches that they give where everything is wrong but a policy never appears. That is what political debate used to be in this chamber. I think one of the problems for the Labor backbench is that they have not seen anything different. You think this is normative; it is not. You did not used to be that bad as an opposition. This is what has been happening under the Leader of the Opposition and the opposition policy—debasement with the kinds of shenanigans that we have been seeing of recent times.

Let me come to foreign debt. I knew that we would have a little bit of foreign debt, because Michelle Grattan told us that the Labor strategy group had recently had a meeting in Sydney with PowerPoint slides. The first of their slides was headed ‘What is our purpose?’ That is a good question. I am not sure what the answer was. The leadership group was there. One of the things that they decided they had to do was identify a major national problem. This is what the research focus group had told them: you have to find a major national problem and give a whole-of-opposition political focus to it. Labor believed that they could find an issue in the foreign debt ‘crisis’. The article stated:

… Labor believes it can build its economic credentials by teasing out the problem foreign debt can cause …

Here it is; it came out of a focus group and a PowerPoint slide. It is faithfully brought in here by the rooster, as he does all the time and as he runs through here, as a consequence of the focus group. Wouldn’t you think, by the way, if he were really concerned about foreign debt that he would have announced the policy which would deal with it? But you did not hear a policy on this matter either, because the at all costs Labor strategy is to never give a policy. ‘Never let them know where you stand, never allow yourself to be pinned down and never get into a policy debate,’ is what they are told coming out of the focus groups, ‘otherwise you can’t keep up the criticism.’

Let me make a point about foreign debt. No foreign debt is owed by the Australian government because the Australian government owes no debt—no domestic debt and no foreign debt in net terms. Yes, it is true that Australian corporations borrow overseas, and principally they are the banks—Westpac, Com Bank, the National and the ANZ. The principal borrowers overseas in this country are those companies. Would we be concerned if we thought they could not service their debt? Yes, we would. That is why we do stress tests on them, that is why we have APRA go through them and that is why we have the Reserve Bank. Are we worried that they cannot meet their debts? No, we are not, because all of our stress tests and the IMF stress test show that these banks—and every Australian knows it—are enormously profitable and very well capitalised.

That is who owes foreign debt in this country. Would foreign debt affect Australia’s interest rates? It would if it led to a downgrading of our credit, which it did under the Labor Party when it was downgraded on two occasions. But since we were elected we have taken that credit rating back up to AAA. You cannot get a higher credit rating than the Australian government has for foreign currency bonds, and that becomes the benchmark for private bonds operating in the market. I think we can push that one to one side as well.

In relation to our tax changes, the complaint seemed to be—and this is what he said—‘Last year we voted against tax changes and all we got was ridicule.’ You deserved it. That is what you deserve for voting against the tax changes this year. Labor have been so burned by that experience that he says, ‘We’re going to vote for it this year.’ In fact, he even seemed to suggest it was all his idea anyway. But it could not have been his idea, because he never expresses a policy and he certainly did not express this one.

Mr Deputy Speaker, if you want any evidence as to how rooster logic works in politics, you found it at the last election when Labor decided they were going to take a $600 payment off people. What was the reason why people were not worse off when you took $600 away from them? Remember what the member for Lilley said: ‘It wasn’t real money.’ Isn’t that funny? It went into bank accounts, it was exchanged for goods and services, but it was not real money. As Mr Latham said in his book, the night before the policy release he asked the member for Lilley what he should say about the abolition of the $600 annual payment. He replied, ‘Just say that it’s not real money.’ In other words, deny reality, contradict the obvious, assert against what actually is and try to skate through. It will not work, it is not comprehensive, it is not at all persuasive and it is one of the reasons why this has been the weakest opposition response to a budget in the last 11 years.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is extraordinary, isn’t it? We have seen the most amazing display of arrogance from this Treasurer—arrogance that we expect over and over again. He is doing it again here while he sits at the table—making silly noises like a silly little boy. Actually, Treasurer, what can happen in the workplace now is that if you smirk like you are smirking now you can actually get the sack. That is what happened to a constituent of mine recently. He got the sack for smirking in the workplace, like you have just smirked all the way through question time and through your response to this matter of public importance. All this Treasurer knows is how to smirk. One thing we have got to expect from this Treasurer is he knows how to smirk.

In his reply on this MPI the Treasurer asked us to describe what it was that he got wrong in the budget. Of course, he pointedly refused to go to the critical issue that Labor has raised, which is his failure to invest in the skills of this nation. That did not get a mention in his response in this matter of public importance debate, because this budget does absolutely nothing to invest in the skills of our nation. We know and the people of Australia know that this Treasurer has failed to invest in the young people of our country. He has refused to invest in the skills of our nation. He has refused to invest in building prosperity for our future.

He did not mention the word ‘education’ once in his 30-minute speech yesterday—not once. There was no mention of education. We have a budget that has a massive amount of extra spending—about $11 billion in this coming year alone. How much extra on apprenticeships? You might think that out of $11 billion, if you were serious, there would be something. The Treasurer wants to know what he got wrong. I will tell him what he got wrong: all they are spending extra is $40 million on apprenticeships. This is the area that the Reserve Bank of Australia says is the No. 1 capacity constraint on the Australian economy that is putting upward pressure on interest rates. What has this Treasurer done when it comes to addressing this No. 1 capacity constraint? He has done next to nothing—

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Technical colleges.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did he mention technical colleges?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, he did.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad he mentioned technical colleges, because this government has completely failed to deliver on these technical colleges. There are in fact fewer than 100 extra people enrolled in these technical colleges.

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Stop talking down the trades. You are always talking down the trades.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Industry Group says we need 100,000 extra people. I am not sure who was the dope over there that mentioned the technical colleges, but thank you very much for mentioning them, because so far they have been a complete and total failure. I think it might have been the member for La Trobe by the way he is looking. The member for La Trobe should go back to the drawing board—

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is not even in the chamber.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously it is somebody I do not even recognise; he has made such a little contribution. Thank you very much for mentioning the technical colleges, because so far not even 100 extra people have been enrolled in them. The government promised that we would have 25 of them. So far they have managed to get four open and at the most only 100 extra people. The Australian Industry Group says we need 100,000 extra trained tradespeople. We had the Australian Industry Group last night coming out saying how incredibly disappointed it was with last night’s budget.

The Treasurer might come in here and arrogantly say: ‘I didn’t get anything wrong. I am absolutely perfect. I can smirk my way through anything.’ One thing he has got terribly wrong when it comes to the future of the Australian economy is the need to invest in skills. The Treasurer this morning on the radio tried to say the reason we have such a terrible skills shortage is that we do not have a pool of unemployed people that are underutilised. That just shows how incredibly out of touch he is.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Come to the Illawarra.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Go to the Illawarra. That would be one place. Go to Ballarat, go to Western Sydney, go to the Northern Rivers. There are so many places around Australia where there are, in particular, young people desperate to work who cannot find work. In fact, there are 500,000 officially unemployed people. Add to that the 600,000 people who are working part time who actually want to do some more work. Add to them the 1.2 million jobless Australians who want to work but who do not show up in the monthly unemployment figures. That is 2.3 million Australians who want to work or who want more work. But the Treasurer, of course, just wipes them off. Those unemployed people, those people who want more work, are not relevant to him. These people want to work. What they need is assistance to get the training that they need to get the jobs that are out there.

The skills crisis in this country is the direct result of this Treasurer’s poor economic management. There is nobody else to blame but this Treasurer. He knows that this country is the only developed country in the world that has actually cut public funding to universities and TAFE. No wonder we have seen since this Treasurer has been in charge 300,000 young Australians turned away from TAFE. He does not think he got that wrong. No doubt he blames somebody else for that. There have been 300,000 young Australians turned away from TAFE. This is what the Treasurer has got wrong. There has been no investment in skills—and the Treasurer has now come back into the chamber—and the government’s only answer to the skills crisis is to bring in more skilled migrants from overseas. We have seen 270,000 extra migrants brought in from overseas since this government has been in power. At the same time it has turned away 300,000 Australians from TAFE. There was no new money in this budget for TAFE. There was a reduction in a whole lot of different programs. The Treasurer did not even bother to highlight it in his reply today as the major capacity constraint identified by the Reserve Bank. It has been one of the big criticisms that the government has received from the Australian Industry Group.

The Treasurer wanted us to highlight some of the policies that we have put forward. I am sure he does not really want to hear about them because, if he were prepared to take any notice, he might have implemented some of them in last night’s budget. One of the major problems with apprenticeships in this country is that 40 per cent of young people do not complete their apprenticeships. Labor has proposed a very straightforward policy whereby a trade completion bonus would be paid to young people to encourage them to complete.

We have also proposed skills accounts for every traditional trade apprentice, but the Treasurer is not really interested in new policies in this area. He said he was—he made a big song and dance about it in his reply—but he is now studiously avoiding taking any notice of the changes that Labor has proposed. Labor has proposed a skills account for every traditional trade apprentice, which will make sure that apprentices do not face any TAFE fees. We do not want anything getting in the way of young people undertaking a traditional trade apprenticeship. We want to encourage them to do so. We have also proposed that 4,000 extra school based apprenticeships be funded. We have said that the government should have a trade TAFE program in schools. How many more initiatives would the Treasurer like Labor to put forward?

There is one proposal that I am glad to say the government did pick up last night, and it did not cost very much money. Labor and the Australian Industry Group have put forward a proposal to extend employer incentives to higher level technical skills at the diploma and advanced diploma levels. I am glad that the Treasurer picked up that initiative. It is not very much money, but it is very important. Unfortunately, there are many other initiatives that Labor has put forward that the Treasurer has not picked up. We will continue to do the hard policy work and we hope that, one day, the Treasurer might take some notice. (Time expired)

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This matter of public importance, which says that the government is risking the living standards of Middle Australia by its failure to adequately address reforms to build our capacity, is plainly a wrong assertion. It is absolutely hypocritical that the member for Jagajaga has been chosen to be one of the speakers today on this very MPI. How many times did we hear the former Minister for Education, Science and Training plead with the member for the Jagajaga to ask questions about trade and vocational education and training? Yet the member for Jagajaga has the hide to come here today and criticise the Treasurer for paying scant regard to the whole concept of education and trades in the budget speech yesterday. This is a shadow minister who could not bring herself to actually utter the words ‘vocational education and training’. She could not bring herself to even talk about it. Instead she wanted to talk about university places and, through her very actions, denigrate and belittle the wishes of a lot of young kids who want to move into the trade areas.

The Labor Party does not have good form on this issue. When the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Employment, Education and Training, apprenticeship numbers were driven down. The number of apprenticeships under the minister for employment and education—who is the present Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, the member for Brand—went down by 122,600. Under the coalition government, more than 400,000 apprentices are in training today, which is a far cry from the Australian Labor Party’s position. Labor has a real cheek to come in here today to talk about the government’s failure to build the capacity of the Australian economy.

Of course, we are used to the ALP doing this. The member for Lilley and the member for Jagajaga used the MPI to make points that have no substance. The member for Lilley came in and said that our plan, through the budget, is to take people down a low-wage path. The best indication of where we are taking the Australian people and the economy is to look at what we have done in the last 10 years. We are now debt free. The budget that was brought down yesterday by the Hon. Treasurer indicates that no debt is owed by this government. Member for Jagajaga, how many times has that happened in the history of the Commonwealth? Go away and look at how many times that has been done by Australian governments over the last 100 years. The answer is twice. The last occasion was followed by the disastrous Whitlam government era in the early 1970s.

Far from being a low-wage economy, we have seen a 14 per cent increase in real wages under this Prime Minister and through the Treasurer’s stewardship of the economy. The member for Jagajaga should not come in here and criticise the government’s ability to build the capacity of the Australian economy as well as our record on vocational education and training.

The Treasurer has already outlined in his contribution on the MPI the government’s infrastructure contributions to rail and road. The superannuation changes will provide an incentive to people to further their contributions to superannuation, knowing that they will receive their contributions tax free. That will build national savings. What are national savings used for? National savings are used by banks and investment houses to further invest in our economy and in infrastructure.

Yesterday we also had the wonderful news, which this opposition has failed to mention, that as a skills-building policy initiative the government is putting funding into medical research. These bright Australian people will be making a contribution to the Australian economy and, through their contribution, there will be a flow-on effect to other occupations, skills and trades.

The member for Jagajaga has no form on this. In fact, it is the member for Jagajaga who has turned her back on the young kids who want to get into vocational education and training. These kids are basically told that it is a university degree or nothing else. We have had ministers coming into this place and saying over and over again, ‘We need to develop an Australian psyche which values vocational education and training and which places it at the same level as a university degree.’ The opposition has failed to do that.

The member for Jagajaga outlined some recent announcements by the ALP on TAFE and further education. It has been long overdue, but they have finally announced a policy on it. She talked about the assistance that the opposition will give to young kids to enable them to enter TAFE colleges and pay for the charges. But has the member for Jagajaga ever picked up the telephone and called Steve Bracks or Morris Iemma or written a letter to them to ask why they have increased the charges for TAFE courses? Member for Jagajaga, have you ever picked up the phone and spoken to your colleagues, the premiers of Victoria and New South Wales, and asked them, ‘Why are you creating a disincentive for these young kids’—who often come from households with income levels that would struggle to pay some of the TAFE fees—‘by increasing the charges’? No, she has not done that at all. Yet she comes in here and criticises the government’s initiatives on vocational education and training. She criticises the fact that the government has increased apprenticeship numbers from the low of minus 122,000 under the Labor Party to over 400,000. But of course she will not attack members of her own party in the states—who do, after all, have the principal responsibility for our TAFE systems—for what they have done to drive people away from the TAFE institutions.

The member for Jagajaga ridiculed the intervention about Australian technical colleges made by one of my colleagues. She said that she was glad about the intervention and laughed it off. Member for Jagajaga, my understanding is that your colleague in the Victorian parliament, Premier Steve Bracks, announced only a few weeks ago a model for introducing technical colleges into the Victorian education system that is modelled on the federal system. It has not got all the good parts about it; there are deficiencies in the Bracks government model. But at least the Premier has looked at our model and taken our lead. Yet you ridicule this government’s attempt at introducing Australian technical colleges throughout Australian electorates.

I am pleased that we have allocated around $343 million over five years to these 25 colleges. They are not all up and running; there are about four that are up and running. I am pleased that one of them, the Ringwood Secondary College, is in my electorate. This technical college has been overwhelmingly hailed by the schools in the area, the parents and the kids. They recognise that this is a very positive contribution. I am very proud of that initiative by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, and I am particularly proud of the fact that there is one in my electorate. The thing about the Australian technical colleges that the member for Jagajaga has failed to recognise is that it is a model which brings in local industry. This model looks at what industry wants and says, ‘This is the type of education we are after.’

This budget does build capacity. There is over $181 million for a range of collaborative vocational and technical education initiatives to build a better future for all Australians. Each year, more than 1.7 million Australians enrol in publicly funded vocational and technical training. That increase in the number of enrolments has been brought about by this government. I have a graph here—the ALP is very good at showing graphs—which shows Australian government expenditure on VTE. Members do not need to see the numbers but they can see that there is an upward trend here: there is increasing expenditure, not decreasing expenditure. The budget that we brought down yesterday indicates that even more money has been allocated for apprenticeships and employers. I denounce this MPI. (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.