Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When we last gathered, I had begun my address on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and cognate bills and I had been making the point, with regard to the new mining industry super tax being propounded by the Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, and the Treasurer, Mr Swan, that they were asking us to trust in them that this was a good tax. In looking at the question of trust, I drew people’s attention to the fact that Mr Swan was asking us to think the modelling showed that the mining industry paid only 17c in the dollar in tax. I asked whether you would believe that with regard to his track record back in 2000, when he was exposed by Wayne Sanderson, a journalist on The 7.30 Report, who brought to light that the Treasurer, the member for Lilley, who lost his seat in 1996, had tried very hard to keep it by giving to Lee Birmingham a brown paper envelope which contained some $1,400 in $50 notes. I said the envelope was taken by the said Lee Birmingham to the Democrats’ campaign manager, with whom, Mr Birmingham said, Mr Swan had spent some time only a day or two before. Mr Birmingham delivered the brown paper envelope to the Democrats and the Democrats in return gave their preferences to Mr Swan.

Subsequent to that, Mr Swan said that he had been wronged and that he had not paid for those preferences at all. He said the matter was referred to the Australian Federal Police, which it was. He said he had been cleared, but I think what the Australian Federal Police spokesman actually said was, ‘There is no further action in relation to Wayne Swan. I cannot say there is no case to answer, but no further action will be taken.’ That is very different from being cleared of wrongdoing. I reminded the House of this form, as we say, when we came to deal with the question of the case that is being put forward for the need for this great big new mining tax to be placed at the rate of 40c in the dollar on top of royalties, but royalties at a particular stage to be refunded, and only a permitted six per cent return to be earned before that supertax comes in.

I think it is important that we know the calibre and character of the people with whom we are dealing, because it is very likely that the Prime Minister and Mr Swan will try very hard to cut a deal, and they may even cut a deal on this mining tax. But you can never, ever believe that that will be the end of the matter. Time and again before the 2007 election, they swore that they would not do certain things. For example, they said they would never tamper with the 30 per cent rebate on private health insurance. They said they would not means test it or cut it, and of course they did. They said they would build 222 new childcare establishments, and of course that got scrapped in the last budget.

Mr Rudd described himself as a ‘fiscal conservative’ and said that he would manage things just as John Howard had done and that you could trust him. But he has shown himself to be totally untrustworthy in the way that the government have embarked upon a tax-and-spend regime. We had policies introduced—like the pink batts affair, where we spent $2.45 billion to put pink batts and other insulation into the roofs of family homes. There were supposed to be proper training programs overseen by the Deputy Prime Minister and member of the gang of four, Ms Gillard, who was supposed to ensure that everybody putting insulation into roofs would be properly trained. Of course, that did not happen. Unfortunately, four deaths and 146 fires have occurred, and now we have reports that more investigations and inspections of roofs should be undertaken than the government is prepared to undertake; and, in any event, they are planning to spend something like a billion dollars to take stuff out again. Highly incompetent.

I have often asked: why is it that Mr Garrett is the man who had responsibility stripped from him and Ms Gillard did not? What is the difference between Mr Garrett and Ms Gillard? I suspect that the only answer is ‘hair’. If you look seriously at the problem that has been left as a result of the faulty installations and the failure to train, the Deputy Prime Minister is just as culpable, if not more so, than Mr Garrett. But of course Mr Garrett continues to sit on the front bench, because he knows what is in that letter of 14 August of last year, when he wrote to the Prime Minister outlining his fears. The Prime Minister has refused to let that letter be made public and has locked it up as a cabinet paper for the next 30 years so that we cannot see its contents. But of course Mr Garrett knows what is in the letter, so he can continue to sit on the front bench. If we really think about it, it was Ms Gillard’s numbers that put Mr Rudd into the position of leader so he could become Prime Minister, so she too will not be penalised for her shortcomings with regard to the pink batts affair.

But then we come to a second area of hers—that is, the Building the Education Revolution. That title seems totally unconnected to the fact that they are building school halls, sheltered outdoor learning areas and canteens which are so inadequate that they cannot take a pie warmer, with inflated costs where big supporters of the Labor Party in the past are able to take large amounts of money that the state government is paying over on behalf of the federal government. The Deputy Prime Minister seems to be in a complete state of denial in that she refuses to acknowledge that there is a huge problem with this program. Sixteen billion dollars! There are so many things that could have been done which would have added to the productivity of this nation in the future, and yet we are absolutely weighed down by this hideous expenditure.

There is a net result for what this government has done, and it staggers me to think that it was done in just 2½ years. The coalition had left behind an economy which was debt free. We had paid off the $96 billion that Labor had left last time. Not only were we debt free; there was money in the bank, in the super fund, the education fund and other funds, and there was a surplus of $20 billion. How did they manage in just 2½ years to turn that around to borrowings? Bonds on issue are expected to be about $154 billion. The interest that they will pay in 2010-11 will be $4.6 billion and it will be $6.1 billion the year after that—money that could otherwise have been spent on benefits for the Australian people. We now have a deficit of $57 billion and we have not even started counting $43 billion for the National Broadband Network, which quite frankly nobody is going to want. The government is building a white elephant. What we have seen is a huge amount of debt imposed upon the Australian public. And it is their debt; they are the ones who are going to have to pay it back. There is no magic pudding.

The mining industry seems to be looked at by the government as either a magic pudding or a golden goose, in that they feel, with the huge tax they are going to place on that industry, that somehow they will be able to get themselves a $1 billion surplus in 2013. That is just staggering, if you think about it. If you examine it, they are trying to say that they are not going to change anything that is in the budget for 2010-11 for the next three years. What sort of nonsense is that? The forward estimates are based on what is in the budget as it is currently promulgated by the government, and yet every six months we have supplementary estimates to change the predictions because of a change in government policy or to correct mistakes that were in the original document. So to try and say that there will be no change between now and in three years time is pushing credibility just too far.

But for the Australian people the real choice is going to be this: they trusted Mr Rudd to govern the country as a fiscal conservative and in the interests of the Australian people. They trusted that he would not plunge us into debt, that he would not give us bad policies, that he would not squander money. We are a fair minded people, and fair minded people, Mr Rudd, gave you a go. They had great confidence in you. It was smiles all round until reality hit them, and then suddenly we see, and they see, that that trust was misplaced. We gave you a fair go, Mr Rudd, but now it is time for you to go. The Australian people cannot afford another three years which are a repeat of the 2½ that we have already had.

This is a wonderful country. It does not deserve what has been visited upon it. As we sat in question time this afternoon, we heard the usual spin—answering no questions, not even when they were well defined. It is just the same, almost non-sensical rhetoric that pours out. As I said, the Deputy Prime Minister refuses to see that there has been any waste in her program. So much so that, on 1 July, without even waiting to receive the report of the so-called audit—for want of a better word—she has put in place to look at the expenditure, she is going to roll out another $5.5 billion.

The plan is for this government to go on borrowing $700 million a week for the next three years. We will put in place a system whereby we will reduce our debt, reduce the deficit and start to put good, solid governance for the Australian people in place where the Australian people can again have confidence in government. Clearly every indicator shows that presently there is no confidence that Mr Rudd and his gang of four can deliver anything but debt and deficit. So I will say it again: we gave you a go, Mr Rudd. The Australian people gave you a fair go. Now it is time for you to go.

Chris Trevor (Flynn, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2010-2011 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011. In speaking on these bills today I want to reflect on the economy in general and also to speak more broadly on the 2010-11 budget and the effects it will have on my home electorate of Flynn in Central Queensland.

As our Treasurer Wayne Swan said on budget night, of Australia’s 18 years of continuous economic expansion, Australians can be proudest of the one just passed. I could not agree more with this comment. As the local federal member for Flynn I reflect on the challenges faced just 12 months ago, I am proud of what our great country has achieved. Twelve months ago the people in my electorate of Flynn, and indeed people everywhere in Australia, were gripped with that crippling fear at the hands of the global financial crisis. It was in fact a fear that made each working day sombre, the mood despondent. Certainly the air of unease was present on the many, many mining, industrial and construction sites in my home town of Gladstone and across the electorate of Flynn.

It was in fact a fear that each day the workers carried with them, constantly aware that at any moment their employer could give them a tap on the shoulder to tell them that they no longer had a job. Sadly, it was a fear that turned into a reality for hundreds and hundreds of good men and women in the electorate of Flynn. But today, as a result of sound economic management by the Rudd Labor government, as a country we stand having avoided a recession and we have emerged in the position of economic strength. Indeed, my home electorate of Flynn, which I have described as the industrial powerhouse of the nation, is now on the cusp of a major unprecedented economic boom. Multiple new projects worth billions and billions of dollars are ready to commence in the imminent future across the whole of the electorate of Flynn, creating thousands of new jobs and dwarfing any other boom that has ever been seen before.

Today as I move around the electorate of Flynn I see that the fear is gone. It has been replaced with a sense of renewed energy, keenness and some impatience as people eagerly await the imminent growth and prosperity which will come, which our government has set the platform for through its action in the budget.

The 2010-11 budget aims to build on the successes we have had as a nation during the global recession, creating a stronger and more secure economy for working families. With responsible and sound economic management, our government will halve peak debt and get the budget back into the black in three years—that is, three years early and well ahead of any major advanced economy in the world. Our government and the Treasurer of Australia, Wayne Swan, are to be commended. On behalf of the people of Flynn, I thank them.

Our government has put in place strict spending limits to ensure that we get back to surplus within three years and has also put in place key investments to prepare our country for the future. These include new investments in health, hospitals, skills training and infrastructure, the Renewable Energy Future Fund to tackle climate change, tax cuts and less red tape for small business, better superannuation, tax breaks on interest, a standard deduction to make tax time easier for working families and more money to protect our troops and our borders. All of this and still there will be a return to surplus three years ahead of schedule.

For small businesses the budget will provide a very positive tax break. Sole traders, partnerships and incorporated small businesses will all be able to instantly deduct the cost of assets valued at up to $5,000. There will also be a reduction in the company tax rate, down from 30 per cent to 28 per cent from 1 July 2012. This means that every single one of the 13,809 small businesses in Flynn will get a tax break under the Rudd Labor government.

An integral part of this year’s budget is the funding allocated for health care. The government is investing some $7.3 billion over five years, including 2009-10, to create the National Health and Hospitals Network. The 2010-11 budget delivers a further $2.2 billion package of investments to the National Health and Hospitals Network over four years. This massive injection of funding is working towards our government’s goal of better hospitals and better health for every Australian.

Another fundamental investment made in the budget is the funding to help raise the quality of services provided by budget based funded childcare centres. Undoonoo multifunction childcare centre in Woorabinda is one of many across Australia that will benefit from this. The Local Sporting Champions program is yet another great investment made in this budget. Having been a sportsman all my life I welcome this investment. The Australian government has doubled the number of Local Sporting Champions grants available in 2010-11. In regional areas such as Flynn, where children are almost always required to travel hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres to compete at state and national sporting events, this is immensely important. It will mean that more kids can receive much needed financial assistance to help cover the significant costs of chasing their dreams and competing at high levels in their chosen sports.

Another very important measure for the people of Flynn included in this budget is the $375 million allocated for a digital free-to-air satellite TV service that will enable viewers who are unable to receive TV in regional areas to see all of the digital channels enjoyed in the capital cities. It is a basic right that all Australians should share, including those in regional and rural Australia. I would also like to mention the Nation Building Program, in particular the Calliope Crossroads project, in Flynn. It is apparent to anyone in the region who has been faced with the difficult task of navigating across this intersection that a solution needs to be found quickly before the community is rocked by another serious accident at this location.

The $15 million allocated for this work in 2010-11 is an important step towards solving the dangerous problem that the Calliope Crossroads has caused for many residents. I am truly pleased to see funding allocated for this project, which is just one of the many projects under the Nation Building Program that will see great improvements to the roads throughout Flynn, including the Curra to Sarina project and the upgrading of the southern approaches to Gin Gin and Kirkwood roads. This funding, along with funding received under the Roads to Recovery program and the Black Spot Program, will bring to nearly $100 million the total funding being spent on local roads across Flynn. This is something that the people have cried out for, but no longer are they ignored.

The budget has also given rise to discussion of the resource super profits tax. I fully support the resource super profits tax, subject to ongoing negotiation and consultation. The taxpayers and ratepayers of Flynn should no longer be forced to pay for roads and infrastructure for the mining companies, only to see their superprofits go offshore to where the majority of their investors are. The resource super profits tax represents the long-needed change that the people of Flynn and the people of Australia deserve. It will finally give people back their fair share. As I have said publicly, I am happy to die in a ditch over this; I fully support it. It is sound economic policy and it is good news for the people of Australia and the people of Flynn.

In closing, I would like to reiterate the significance of this budget and our country’s achievements. We stand today with a healthy economy that has been strengthened by responsible management and decisive action through the previous budget. With continued responsible management the government will be back in the black in three years. This budget implements key investments in areas of great importance to the people of Australia. It is a fine vessel from which our country can launch into another era of great economic growth and prosperity. I commend with pride these bills to the House.

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and related bills. This is my 15th and final budget debate. It has been an absolute privilege to take part in the debate as the member for Hughes over those years. My first budget, the Howard government’s first budget, handed down on the evening of 20 August 1996, heralded the start of a significant change in Australia’s economic prosperity. It received the headline ‘The fair go budget’ because the measures taken were mindful of the tough choices that come with economic responsibility and with experience that had brought a finally honed sense of social awareness. I also remember my contribution in the 2006 budget debate. I spoke on the magnificent milestone of the Howard coalition government eliminating the $96 billion of debt that Labor left to the Australian people when it was last voted out of office.

Unfortunately, I also remember the second Rudd Labor government budget last year—an extraordinary fiscal turnaround, where Labor undid 10 years of hard work by the Howard coalition government in less than 18 months. This was no small feat for a Prime Minister who once described himself as a fiscal conservative. The people of Australia now know that this Prime Minister says a lot but delivers very little. Many Australians are angered by what Kevin07 has become. In 2010, commentators are now describing this as the worst government since Whitlam; it is all talk and no action. However, this has not come about overnight; it is the result of failure after failure by this government and the Prime Minister and, unfortunately, they do not seem to be learning at all from their mistakes. In just a few years, the Rudd government has been responsible for, and accountable for, a litany of policy failures due to its unconscionable haste in implementation and its gross mismanagement in planning and operation.

The government’s failures can be explained in three categories: (1) monumental, (2) currently in the process of failing and (3) doomed to failure. Many Australians will recall the Prime Minister’s 2020 summit. Greatly lauded, it turned out to be the first of many failures. It was simply a celebrity talkfest. The 2020 summit brought 1,000 of the best and brightest to Canberra at a cost of millions of dollars, and it came up with few useable policy ideas. One of them was to have a review of Australia’s tax system—and we all know what happened with that. But I will talk about that in a moment. This was also the first instance where we saw the Prime Minister’s preference for talk over action.

Then came the government’s GroceryWatch, a costly fiasco and long abandoned. And we should not forget Fuelwatch, another costly fiasco that has also been abandoned. Fuelwatch was an interesting case. It may have been the first time the Prime Minister was found out being untruthful with the Australian public. The Prime Minister was caught out when a report from his own department contradicted everything that he was saying in relation to the scheme’s impact on fuel prices.

The Rudd Labor government has also let down Indigenous Australians. Mr Rudd did say sorry to the stolen generation—and I am on the record as welcoming this initiative. Many Australians may not have heard of the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program, but Indigenous Australians are well aware of this policy. It is a case of complete mismanagement. Last year, the ABC reported on Lateline that the program ‘has yet to build one single house’, despite $45 million of its $675 million budget already having been spent. A report from August 2009 said that the program was being criticised as too slow to deliver, its governance was overly bureaucratic and it was too costly in terms of its unit cost of housing and administration. The program has now been revised but the budget is still $672 million, with each new house expected to cost up to $520,000 after factoring in a proportion of administration costs and contingencies. As at February this year, two out of a target of 750 houses have been completed and 70 out of 2,500 refurbishments have finally been finished. It is a long way to a successful strategic housing implementation policy for Indigenous Australians. How much longer must they wait?

A program with similar problems concerning value for money but which has received even more publicity is known to parents as the ‘Julia Gillard memorial hall program’, but known officially as Building the Education Revolution. The Prime Minister-in-waiting was let loose with $16.2 billion. It has turned out to be a mistake. The only positive accomplishment from this program has been to show how much better the independent education sector is at investing government money than the heavyweight state education bureaucracies around Australia are. Fifteen months ago, the Building the Education Revolution program was the showpiece of the economic stimulus package of the Rudd Labor government. But now, millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money has been squandered, and the government was certainly warned about it. For example, $800,000 for a school toilet block, which should have cost around $170,000, is more than parents can understand. Spending millions on a single-room school in the country that was actually marked for closure next year is an insult to hardworking parents and teachers in our school communities.

And then there is the Minister for Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts. I am unaware of any program in which he has been concerned that has not been involved in controversy. First, there was the solar initiative that was abruptly ended three weeks early with only eight hours notice. This not only caused chaos and uncertainty within the industry, with many people intending to lodge applications missing out; it also caused the closure of many existing businesses across Australia that had invested significantly in this promised new environmentally responsible industry.

Then came the green loans mess. People gave up their jobs and paid $3,000 for specialist qualifications and insurance, to be trained as assessors, only to find that the demand for green loans had been grossly exaggerated. Many more assessors were trained than the program envisaged. And, after paying their fees and doing the training, they found that there was no work for the vast majority of them.

The most infamous of all has been the Home Insulation Program. This debacle was so poorly designed and implemented that it had to be scrapped—but, tragically, too late for four young men and their families. There were others who were injured. Over 87 homes have been lost to fire. There are thousands more homes that are still at risk. Millions of dollars of government money has been wasted. This was a giveaway program which was a disaster because of the lack of ministerial management, competence and accountability.

As a matter of fact, I met a lady, a constituent, at the local hairdresser who was told that it would cost $500 for her to have the insulation batts removed from her roof. She did not require them and she did not ask for them. She was bullied by the subcontractors. She already had insulation batts in her roof. She cannot use certain electrical appliances because she is fearful of a fire in the roof. She said it is going to cost her $500 to have the insulation removed. This is a woman who is a pensioner. She is a single lady who lives by herself, and she is very worried and daunted by the prospect of finding the money.

At every stage of the unfolding disaster of mismanagement, experts warned the environment minister that the program was gravely flawed, but there still was no action taken. This has been the biggest admission of policy and delivery failure in recent political history. The scale of the failure and the impact on the community has been massive, and it was only made worse when the government scrapped the insulation replacement program. This has well and truly put a bulldozer through the whole insulation industry in Australia, ruining longstanding small family businesses. Many are left in debt or are bankrupt and many more are without jobs.

On a further policy failure, something which I have been passionately against has been the ETS. The government attempted to railroad the ETS legislation through the House of Representatives and the Senate before Copenhagen for no reason other than that it would have allowed Mr Rudd to strut the world stage. The Prime Minister went to Copenhagen, taking 114 staff—one of the largest of the 190 delegations—at huge cost to the Australian taxpayer and the world’s environment, for yet another failed policy.

Another policy failure of this government is the change to the immigration laws. So far in 2010 we have seen the arrival of 68 boats, carrying 3,354 people. This is more than three per week. We have had seven boats, carrying 336 people, in just the last nine days. The unprecedented rate of illegal boat arrivals has overwhelmed our detention centres. In November 2007 there were just four people in detention who had arrived in Australia illegally by boat. Today there are more than 3,300 illegal boat arrivals in detention. Labor’s border protection policies are also proving to be as inhumane as they are ineffective. There is nothing humane about a policy that has attracted 6,389 people, being trafficked by criminals in 136 leaky boats for huge profit. There is nothing humane about an increase in the number of children being kept in detention from just 21 in 2007 to more than 450 today.

This government has also reopened the Curtin detention centre in remote Western Australia. Those being transferred to Curtin are being detained indefinitely under the Prime Minister’s new, discriminatory asylum freeze—a knee-jerk policy. This is in stark conflict with the government’s stated detention principles, which prohibit indefinite detention. The only boats that this Prime Minister is stopping are those carrying minerals to our export markets.

Other policy failures of half-hearted implementation that I do not have time to report in detail include the trades training centres—where are they? The childcare centres in schools—where are they? There is the increasing cost of child care. The GP superclinics—where are they? There is the promise to take Japan to court on whaling; the health reforms, which so far are just a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign; and the National Broadband Network, which was to cost $4 billion but then became $7 billion and now is up to $43 billion. The internet filter—where is it? The failures include the computers in schools program, which delivered only one-quarter of what was promised for double the cost; the bank guarantee that contributed to more than 200,000 investment accounts being frozen; the homeland security department; cuts to IVF, private health rebates, cataract surgery, the home savers account and Ruddbank; the promise to reduce consultancy fees to the government, which have now blown out to almost $1 billion; uranium contracts and relations with India; the Asia-Pacific body; and tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars spent because the Prime Minister wants a United Nations Security Council seat. So does the buck still stop with this Prime Minister?

However, the greatest concern at present is this government’s obsession with introducing new taxes. Who would have thought that a review of Australia’s tax system would have resulted in more taxes? The Rudd mining tax is a bad tax: it is bad for investment, it is bad for jobs, it is bad for consumers and it is bad for investor confidence. It is a triple whammy on jobs, on retirees and on consumers. It is a damaging retrospective tax which is a dagger aimed at the heart of Australia’s prosperity. The coalition will oppose it in opposition and rescind it in government. And one of the things that the Rudd Labor government has failed to appreciate is that a vast number of people in Australia who own shares in mining companies are hardworking ordinary Australian families. Many of them are now self-funded retirees. Many of them are families who have wanted to invest in Australia’s prosperity. And these are the people, the ordinary hardworking Australian families, who will be hurt by this tax.

A national policy, as we know, has local impacts. I have an engineering company in my electorate. It is called Williamson Tool and Engineering. It has been in my electorate for three generations. It employs 25 workers, who all derive their livelihoods from working for this company. It produces heavy equipment for the mining industry, and it is very worried about the uncertainty of whether it will have orders to ensure the future of its employees. As a matter of fact, many of its orders have been put on hold until further notice. So often the impact of national policies is felt in the local area, especially in an area like mine, the electorate of Hughes, which is a residential area in southern Sydney. This tax has a very negative impact on workers in my electorate.

It is the retrospectivity of the government’s new tax that upsets the miners and the investors the most. The Rudd government deceitfully confuses economic and accounting profits to make its super tax claims. The major aspect of any investment analysis for a mining project includes a detailed assessment of risk, and this has been totally ignored by this big-spending government in its grab for tax cash. Risk assessment measures the premium investors require above the tax-free rate for the investment to proceed or for a mine to commence. Miners, for instance, will include within their analysis of risk hazard components the possibility of cyclone events, the possibility of drought events and the possibility that their test drilling assessment of ore body size may be overly optimistic. Outrage risk, on the other hand, is a far higher and less predictable component of risk. Many insurance products, for instance, will not cover outrage risk. Insurance companies often disclaim outrage risks as acts of God, refusing to cover claims for massive floods, for instance.

The mining sector and its ability to attract capital investment must therefore self-insure against both hazard and outrage risks, which it does by assessing each investment hurdle rate at multiples of up to two, three or four times the government’s risk-free rate of return, which today sits at 5.7 per cent. In other words, miners will not invest, nor will they attract capital to invest, unless the mine achieves an investment hurdle rate that takes the many risks involved into account. To confuse the Australian public into thinking super profits emerged after the mine has recorded a risk-free rate of return of five to six per cent is to totally misconstrue the fact that investors require a hurdle rate of return to risk their capital in the first place. By saying that its current super tax strategies only tax super profits, the government has been empirically dishonest. It has failed to account for or acknowledge the risk premium involved in mining that all mining shareholders have historically taken. It is this fundamental dishonesty which has increased our country’s sovereign risk profile overnight. Any proposed change in future tax imposts allow investors to recalibrate their investment decisions. To attack historical investment is, however, not only deceitful to current mining shareholders; it is totally un-Australian and smacks of unfair play. Our long-term international investment attractiveness may have been irreversibly damaged.

The Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply speech set down the coalition’s vision for Australia, in contrast to the government’s:

The coalition wants an Australia that is prosperous, united and respected, where families’ choices are taken seriously by government; where pensioners and carers are regarded as people who have served and are serving our country; where officials understand that the public are their masters, not their servants; where migrants are welcome but borders are secure; where people’s taxes give them decent hospitals and proper highways; and where the armed forces represent our country’s best values. But we also know that government cannot solve all problems immediately and that overpromising and underdelivering politicians are the cause of so much cynicism about public life.

This coalition will provide strong economic management. Tony Abbott and the Liberals will balance the budget, reduce Labor’s debt, ease financial pressure on Australian families and protect jobs. We will protect private health insurance and improve local health services. We will fight to take pressure off families and public hospitals by opposing Labor’s cuts to the private healthcare rebate.

We also believe Australia’s local hospitals need more doctors, nurses and beds, not more bureaucrats. Our plan for re-election will help our public hospitals with strong local hospital boards that will put patients first. We will implement a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme, and our scheme will provide six months parental leave at full pay, giving women real time and real money to care for their newborns.

We are serious about border security. People smuggling is an inhuman business that puts lives at risk. Vulnerable people die on unseaworthy boats. Furthermore, every place provided to a person who has arrived illegally by a leaky boat is a place denied to another person who is waiting endlessly in a refugee camp in another country, potentially in great need and seeking to come to Australia by legal means. (Time expired)

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the chamber for the 13 minutes I have left to speak on this matter. I enjoy listening to opposition members’ speeches about budgets and policy, because they are ‘gunna gunna’ do a lot of ‘gunna gunna’. But they had twelve years to ‘gunna do something’ and unfortunately they did not find the time or opportunity or enough in the boom times to deliver on the ‘gunna gunna do’ things.

I am proud to stand here and talk about the things we are actually doing and the things we are actually delivering after only 2½ years of being in government. In this budget, we are strengthening and broadening the economy and taking very important steps to make sure there is fairness in the things that we do. We have a simpler tax system. We have a long-term plan for better superannuation. We are also talking about less tax for business, and especially for small business. The opposition are supposedly friends to small business, but they could not find it in their hearts in 12 years to lower tax rates and do more for small business.

Just as importantly, if not more importantly, the Commonwealth is providing vital infrastructure and playing a key role in, for example, Queensland and Western Australia—the mining states, where you need that infrastructure. You need government to be in there making sure that infrastructure is delivered.

We also want to make sure that all Australians share in the benefits that come from the economy. We want to make sure they get a fairer share of that. We want to make sure that we continue to have a positive impact on jobs, a positive impact on growth and a positive impact on savings. No report is more indicative of that than the Intergenerational report, which shows us—and I have time to mention only a couple of facts—that by 2050 there will be twice as many 65-year-olds and four times as many 85-year-olds as there are today. The most startling figure of all—which government needs to sit up and take notice of—is that today there are about five Australians working for every person aged over 65, but in 2050 there will only be 2.7.

So the government has to take very serious policy decisions today. We have to make sure that we do the right things for future generations. It is not just about what is popular today; it is about what needs to be done in terms of the economy in the long term. One of the key things that we can do to sustain the national economy is to reduce company tax. It is one of the biggest things we can do. Reducing company tax is something that you would expect the Liberal Party to champion. Reducing company tax below 30 per cent was almost thought impossible, but it will be a Labor government that will reduce it below 30 per cent, to a magic number: one with a ‘2’ in front of it. That is something that the Liberal Party should take note of. We want to fund that. We want to make that happen, and we can make that happen. We want to get the company tax rate down to 28 per cent. We want to make sure we can boost the retirement savings of individual people, so that they have got something to show for it and are more independent in their retirement. They are the things we want to do. And we want to make sure we increase infrastructure spending, as we already have, through a range of things.

Before I get onto that, I want to congratulate the Treasurer, because I think he has done a great job in very tough times. I have always had the view that it is easy to be a good treasurer when times are good but much more difficult, complex and painful to be a good treasurer when times are tough. And those are the times we are facing now. Wayne Swan has been the Treasurer during the global financial crisis, and I think it is testament to the hard work that he has done as Treasurer—and also to the hard work done by the government—that Australian debt has been kept low, making sure that we are at the lowest end of the OECD in terms of government debt. And we have kept jobs strong. Numbers of jobs have actually grown when in other economies they have fallen. We have kept the national economy strong, but we have also kept growth strong. So people have not only their jobs but also their pay packets.

We hear the opposition talk about ‘wasting money’, and I keep thinking, ‘What are they talking about when they say “wasting money”?’ We are certainly not ‘wasting’ it on schools or education. We certainly could not be ‘wasting’ it on health and other great programs like that. I find it really interesting to hear the opposition talk about computers in schools and say that they would end this program. I would find it hard to go up to a year 9 or year 10 student and say, ‘You’ll be one of the ones who misses out if the opposition is elected, because they do not want you to have some of the latest technology—technology that you already understand and use at home but you can’t quite access in your school.’ I think every child should have those opportunities.

We are doing a range of things in education—things that might have been thought impossible but which are taking place right now. Drive to any electorate in this country and go and look at any school, and you will see the growth in employment, the jobs created, and the school buildings that are going up, whether those are new skills training centres, science blocks, libraries or halls, or refurbishments—whatever that school needed. There was no qualification, in or out, in terms of what the school needed; it was up to the school community to decide. I think that has been one of the greatest programs that this country has seen in over three decades—a real investment in schools and a real investment in education for our kids. It is also a real investment in job creation.

In my electorate, there have been over 512 projects—512 individual projects that had real people working in them, creating real things. They have been creating a lasting legacy that will help young people to learn better, to learn in better environments, to provide what those schools had been begging for but could never fundraise for. Some schools could never have contemplated that these projects would happen in their lifetimes, they were so significant. Under Building the Education Revolution in my electorate, there were 46 schools, 153 programs and funding of $107 million plus. Under the National School Pride Program, there were 46 schools, 91 projects and funding of $7½ million. Under Primary Schools for the 21st Century, there were 43 schools, 61 projects and funding of $99 million. Under Science and Language Centres for 21st Century Secondary Schools: one school; one project of $1.3 million. I do not know how the opposition can claim that this is a waste of money. But I can assure you that when I talk to the parents, the students themselves, the teachers, the school principals and the school communities, they are thankful, and they are thankful for a good reason because these are the sorts of facilities that they have been trying to build or have wanted in their schools for many years but could not achieve—certainly not through sausage sizzles or chook raffles.

We have done a lot on the economy to manage it through the global financial crisis. One of the most telling signs is the fact that Australia has maintained a very strong position in terms of its fiscal balance and its finances. We have maintained our AAA credit rating, and we have actually cut taxes in the last three budgets and will continue to cut taxes in the budgets to come.

When it comes to health, we have started the National Health and Hospitals Network program, which is going to deliver better hospitals. In the wasted 12 years that the former government had, they had opportunity. There were things they could have done in health. But, while people screamed for more beds or a better system, a national system, a better approach to hospitals and hospital funding, the then government sat and did nothing at all—except for one thing. They did rip out a billion dollars worth of funding. We are creating a thousand new nursing training places and we are going to double the number of GP training places as well. We are investing in new cancer research and treatment centres, desperately needed facilities, desperately needed people and desperately needed training places. We have invested billions of dollars in this area because it is something that needs to happen.

I want also to talk briefly about a very important segment of our community, and that is our seniors, who have contributed all their lives to the economy in good times and in bad times and who ought to be rewarded. One of the greatest things we could have ever done—that any government could have ever done—was to actually listen to seniors, particularly single seniors. They really needed some assistance with the pension, and that is exactly what they got from us. For single pensioners, there was an increase of $100 a fortnight, or $200 a month, and for couple pensioners an increase of $76 a fortnight, or $152 a month. That is something that has not been seen for over 30 years, something that many people thought was not possible. That is a huge ongoing commitment, budget to budget, year on year, into the future from the Rudd Labor government. Not only did we do that but we also understood that pensioners needed more than that. They also needed an increase in rent assistance. At the same time, we accompanied these increases with an increase in the cut-out amounts for income and assets so that pensioners had more in their pockets—they could keep more of these increases.

One of the greatest things we did on coming to government—and it is still part of the work we are doing in these budgets—was to abolish Work Choices and to restore fairness into workplaces. That might be something that the opposition scoffs at, but for ordinary working people it was an important, fundamental, structural rock in terms of maintaining their ability to have a decent workplace, a decent job and a decent pay packet at the end of the week.

I want to mention briefly also the resource super profits tax. While a lot has been said, there are a number of facts that just cannot be escaped. The fact is that there needed to be taxation reform in the resources sector. The best way to do this—as agreed by the miners and as agreed by everybody, it seems, except perhaps the Leader of the Opposition—was through a profits tax based system. There is perhaps one other, Clive Palmer, who does not accept it, but everybody else does. All agree that this is the best method forward because not only does it provide in the good times; it also provides in the bad times when the booms are not there and the royalties just are not flexible enough. There is so much more that can be done.

As the smoke and fog lift and all of the misleading arguments that are being put forward about what this tax represents become clearer, ordinary people in the community have a better understanding that this is a tax that will help them. It is a tax that provides from a resource that belongs to all Australian people and it will help keep this economy strong in the good times and in the bad times, particularly when the boom times end for a period, as they always do in cycles. They boom and bust. This tax will actually provide for the mining companies as well. This is absolutely the best way forward and is something that ought to be supported in this place as well.

Most importantly, it provides for a very generous cut to the company tax rate to below 30 per cent, down to 28 per cent. The many hundreds of thousands of small businesses in this country have yet, perhaps, to fully comprehend what that means to them and what that means to all companies in Australia—that significant decrease of the company tax rate to below 30 per cent. I think that is something that has been long awaited and is very important but can only be delivered through the proper application of tax reform, and that is exactly what this government is doing.

It is always a tough job being a reformist government. It is always a tough job when you take on issues of taxation, but in the end you do it, you hold the line and you believe in what you are doing because it delivers for ordinary people, it delivers for the economy, it delivers for every single Australian and it delivers for small business people in this country. It ensures that we sustain the economy for jobs, for growth and for national savings. It underpins what will be the case in 10 years, 15 years or 20 years time.

I recall in debates in the past that, when it came to reform in the taxation area, there were always calls about it being the end of industry and that there would be no more jobs—and they were always wrong. The reality is that mining and the resource sector will continue to grow, as will our economy, as will jobs and as will the fair share of profits from the resource tax to make sure that all Australians get their fair share of what is, in the end, their resources.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to bring the second reading debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and the cognate bills to a close. This budget contains measures to boost the economy’s capacity and support economic growth by building skills and infrastructure. It contains measures that support saving for the future and ease cost-of-living pressures today. This budget implements the government’s tax reform agenda, making the tax system stronger, fairer and simpler. It invests in Australia’s health, with significant further investments in our National Health and Hospitals Network. This budget builds on the support provided to the economy during the economic downturn and delivers on the government’s commitment to return the budget to surplus as the economy recovers. We will see the budget return to surplus within three years. This is three years ahead of schedule and ahead of every major advanced economy.

We are investing $661 million in skills and training, which will include 70,000 new training places and support for 22,500 apprenticeships. The government’s Skills for Sustainable Growth will boost the skills of Australian workers and ensure that the education and training system is responsive to the needs of the economy. Foundation skills of literacy, numeracy and language, crucial to job seekers and for those wishing to upskill, will be provided. These investments in Australian workers will lead to higher workforce participation and higher productivity. This budget makes a $996 million equity investment in the Australian Railtrack Corporation for upgrades to major rail freight networks to increase Australia’s economic capacity.

This budget takes important steps to increase national savings. The government is introducing a tax discount for interest income and introducing reforms to deliver a saving and superannuation system that is fairer for low-income earners and provides flexibility for those needing to save as they approach retirement. The government has implemented policies that will ease the cost of living for working families and make tax returns simpler and fairer. Another round of personal income tax cuts is delivered, meeting the government’s commitment to deliver real benefits for working families. Tax time will be simplified through the provision of a standard deduction for work related expenses for Australian workers.

The 2010-11 budget invests an additional $2.2 billion over four years in the government’s health and hospital reform, with a focus on better hospitals, improved primary care and preventative health care. In this budget the government will provide a further $522.7 million over four years for Australia’s nursing workforce. The nurse’s role in general practice will be expanded, particularly in prevention and chronic disease management, and nurses will receive additional training and education in aged care. The government will commit $416.8 million over four years to improve after-hours access to GPs and to establish Medicare Locals across the country. We are providing an additional $355.2 million over three years to increase the number of GP superclinics. This will make it easier for people to access high-quality and comprehensive primary care services in one community location.

The government has succeeded in protecting the Australian economy and people through the worst of the economic downturn. I commend Appropriation Bill (No.1) 2010-2011 and the cognate bills to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.